Secondary Discourse

When I created the hubs within the concept map, it became evident that there were foundational pieces that built upon each other and as such I will seek to explore the different concepts through a building of ideas. The bottom and most fundamental piece of the concept map is discourse. According to
Gee, discourse is “a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or “social network” (1992, pp. 21). This is the umbrella term of which the rest of the concepts within this particular layer relate. From the general term there is the more specified, dominate discourse which is defined as the “discourse that lead to social goods

According to Delpit, “Frazier’s achievements provided proof of the ability to acquire a secondary dominate discourse no matter one’s beginning” (1992, pp. 299). Therefore, it is possible for individuals to move into different societies and, while maintaining who they are, acquire the skills, actions, etc. that allow them to obtain societal goods. This then opens the door for students to turn what may be otherwise known as strictly a secondary discourse into one that is an additional primary discourse. This thought process then lends itself to the idea that students can learn to perform secondary discourse. It is not simply that student can only teach the learned discourse but that they can also seamlessly act within the discourse as if they had acquired the discourse from birth. Specifically, individuals are able to learn to perform a secondary discourse as if it was a primary discourse when they are taught “how to cheat” within the discourse. In others words, when students are taught the fundamental rules which, when followed, make them, without question, seem to belong to the discourse they are learning how to perform their secondary

Culture of power in this blub is directly related to the dominate discourse. This connection was made because the culture of power is defined as “rules related to linguistic forms, communicative strategies, and presentation of self” which are the “rules for participating in power” (Delpit, 1988, pp. 282). If one acquired the dominate discourse, then likewise they have internalized the rules to participate in the culture of power. In more detail, the culture of power is fleshed out by the five aspects of power. Namely the aspects of power are “1. Issues of power are enacted in classrooms. 2. There are codes of rules for participating in power… 3. The rules of the culture of power are reflections of the rules of the culture of those who have power. 4. If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly of that culture makes acquiring power easier. 5. The more power one has the less aware they are of that power” (Delpit, 1988, pp. 282). All of these aspects of power relate to the dominate discourse in the fact that they help to flesh out how dominate discourse is created, perpetuated, and