Ideas:
1) Discourse Entry Difficulty
2) You’re Either in a Discourse, or You’re Not
3) Mushfake vs Faking It
Paragraph 1: Discourse Entry Difficulty
Both Gee and Cuddy argue that a Discourse is something that can be difficult to enter, however they have different views on how difficult it may be. In “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction,” Gee states a theorem that support his belief that Discourses are almost impossible to enter. Someone cannot decide to be in a Discourse if they do not actually belong. His first theorem states that “. . . someone cannot engage in a Discourse in a less than fully fluent manner. You are either in it or you’re not. Discourses are connected with displays of identity; failing to fully display an identity is tantamount to announcing you don’t have that identity” (Gee 10). As humans, one cannot jump from social group to social group, pretending as though they belong. Gee is saying that it will be obvious that you are not a part of that Discourse, and you will not be accepted in. Whereas Gee believes Discourses are not something one can just decide to be a part of, Cuddy believes the exact opposite. Amy Cuddy, in her TED Talk “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,” explains how someone could fake their way into a Discourse by using personal anecdotes of herself, and her students who have done just that. She explains how one of her students almost failed a class for not participating. The student had felt as though she didn’t belong, therefore Cuddy gave her student the advice: fake it until you make it. Cuddy states, “she comes back to me months later, and I realized that she had not just faked it till she made it, she had actually faked it until she became it,” (Cuddy Paragraph 33). This contradicts Gee’s idea of Discourse entry entirely. His belief that one cannot simply decide to enter a Discourse is shot down by Cuddy when she tells her student to fake it. Her student pretended to be a part of something she felt as though she was not a part of, and eventually gained access. While Gee and Cuddy disagree about the level of difficulty, both believe that it is difficult to gain access to a new Discourse.
Paragraph 2: Mushfake vs Faking It
In Gee’s “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction,” he introduces the idea of a mushfake Discourse, which can be compared to Cuddy’s idea of faking it. He defines mushfake as being able to make “do with something less when the real thing is not available,” (Gee 13) which he connects to practices in prison, such as when an inmate will make a hat out of their underwear to protect their hair from lice. The underwear hats would be considered mushfake because they are not real hats, they were made from a different material. Gee states that a mushfake Discourse is “partial acquisition coupled with meta-knowledge and strategies to ‘make do,’” (Gee 13) meaning that is a Discourse in which you have partially developed, and use other knowledge and strategies to be in a Discourse. Mushfake is a tangible form of Cuddy’s idea of faking it, whereas Cuddy is more of a psychological idea. Cuddy’s research in “power-poses” and their effects on people’s well being relates to their way of using their minds to change, or enter a Discourse rather than physical items. Fifteen minutes into Cuddy’s presentation, she goes on to say “…our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes.” (Cuddy paragraph 26). This is significant because she is explaining how we can train our minds to make us more confident. Gee’s mushfake is the idea of using past knowledge to create the image that you know what a Discourse is all about, and can then join it, whereas Cuddy’s idea is to train your mind into thinking we are already in the Discourse, which will then allow us access. Gee and Cuddy both have similar ideas on Discourse entry, but they take different approaches to reach the same outcome.
ENG110J
