The ideas of Gee and Cuddy offer the reader multiple perspectives on how a person can fit into society. These ideas provide a negative and a positive view on how what a person can do to enter a Discourse. The big difference between these two papers is that one has to do with the confidence level of participant, and the other provides examples of already perceived placement in a Discourse. These papers come together with one idea that it takes commitment and discipline to be accepted. Discourses only allow certain people within, but depending on the different levels of accessibility, an outsider can be let in.

        Gee and Cuddy use their ideas to form arguments about how a person can be let into a Discourse. In Gee’s “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics introduction” he claims that a Discourse can only be opened through enculturation or the practice through learning from a mentor. This stops others from entering a Discourse without the proper required skills, which they learn, not what they are taught. The gate that holds someone from entering a Discourse can only be opened from “(Apprenticeship) [or the] social practices through scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have already mastered the Discourse” (Gee 7). For the purpose of entering a Discourse is to first have had experience participating around the ideas and nuances that come with learning it first hand from someone who is already in it. In Cuddy’s Ted talk she explains how a person to help guide you can set you on the right track for the rest of your life. After Cuddy’s tragic car crash incident during her college career, she was told that she would never make it through college. Because of this traumatic event in her life Cuddy did not have enough confidence to perform to standard in her classes. With the idea of dropping out of school in the air, her mentor told her “You are not quitting… You’re going to stay, and this is what you’re going to do. You are going to fake it” (Cuddy 17:03). Because of her Mentor she did not drop out of school, Cuddy In this situation is the apprentice and her mentor the master of the Discourse. Taught by her mentor she was able to properly live her life in her new Discourse.

 

In Cuddy’s Ted Talk she presents the healthy option for people who need a boost in confidence in order to complete a goal. But for this idea from Cuddy to work, the individual must select a particular Discourse to be apart of. It would be impossible for someone to fake it to becoming a surgeon since it first requires the understanding of the many different things that first comes with it. But this idea can be applied to smaller or less demanding Discourses. Because of this, i believe that the idea of faking is merely circumstantial and will not work for many Discourses. This will work for most of the non-dominant Secondary Discourses a person will have in their life. Compared to a normal Discourse, non-dominant Discourses are the similar but require  very different forms of entry. This is due to the fact that there can be less demanding on the requirements for entering a Discourse. Because of this, you can find many people who seem out of place in a certain Discourse and who show signs of not belonging.

This can be tied into an idea from Gee that is:

“A Discourse is a sort of “Identity kit” which comes with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize. Being “trained” as a linguist meant that I learned to speak, think, and act like a linguist, and to recognize others when they do so” (7). The way that a person gets into a Discourse is how well they can fake their identity kit. The harder it is to fake the identity kit the harder it is to get into the Discourse at hand.

        On a certain level Gee and Cuddy agree with how a person can be close but not in a Discourse. In Gee, a person who wants to join a Discourse must have to go through  an extensive hands on learning process (7). The ones who want to get in but don’t meet the requirements are known as a pretender.

These people only have a partial view into a particular Discourse:

“That is, you don’t have the identity or social role which is the basis for the existence of the Discourse in the first place. In fact, the lack of fluency may very well mark you as a pretender to the social role instantiated in the Discourse (an outsider with the pretentions to become an insider)” (Gee 10). A pretender can only consider a Discourse, but not be apart of it, this is due to them not having the proper form of an identity kit. This is what people are identified as if they do not belong in a Discourse, they are just someone who tries to pretend that they are.

In Cuddy’s Ted Talk, she explains that confidence in a subject shows that they adapt to a Discourse and become apart of it. This is shown when a person wants to be fluent in a Discourse, but does not have what it takes to get into one. Her belief is that “Fake it till you become it. Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize” (Cuddy 19:15). Her idea is that if there is a Discourse that you want to become apart of, but are struggling to do so, there is an option to fake like you are already in it.  The hope is that after faking it so much that the person will have the knowledge of that Discourse and therefore be let into it. Fake it until you become it is similar to being a pretender in a sense that they are both not on the same level as someone that is a master of the Discourse.

        A Discourse is extremely hard to get into, it requires an understanding of how to fake it until you can make it in and, an understanding of learning by experience. With there being many Discourses, an outsider has a couple options of how to get in. The first being the ability to learn from a master, and the second is finding one that faking it will work. Gee and Cuddy both give options to a person who cannot make it into a Discourse. Discourses are dependent on people who have put the work and time in to learn it, not the people who try to fake it being apart of it.