Summary
With
“Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces” Elizabeth Wardle
attempts to stress the difficulties one faces when attempting to penetrate and
absorb a new discourse community. She argues that a discourse community is
capable of shaping a person’s identity, regardless of whether the person
accepts that fact or doesn’t. Wardle, through her fictitious recent college
grad and newly employed Alan, details the difficulties that come with immersion
into a discourse community: identity, authority, rebellion. Newcomers must
approach a discourse community with caution, Wardle suggests, but also with
open-mindedness, determination and an acceptance of failure combined with the
belief that failure doesn’t really mean failure.
Synthesis
Wardle’s
approach and analysis of the discourse community shares similarities with
Swales, Gee and Devitt et al. But it also presents many differences and
alternate, contrasting ideas. Alan does represent the idea of being either in or out through his difficulty accepting the community he’s entered.
Either you’re naturally, inherently a part of that society or you’re not. There’s
no in between. Or maybe there is. Wardle doesn’t exactly subscribe to that
belief fully, but does help to substantiate it. Like Swales, she’s able to
locate and identify specific criteria for community acceptance.
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