1) James Gee’s focus on the “combination” of several ideas being the actual concept of literacy, or as he puts it, “Discourse”, is important to him because it is the entire foundation of his argument. Gee demonstrates the need for this combination when he states “If I enter my neighborhood bar and say to my tattooed up drinking buddy, as I sit down, ‘May I have a match please?’, my grammar is perfect, but what I have sad is wrong nonetheless,” and furthermore relates it to if he says “‘Gimme a match, wouldya?’, while placing a napkin on the barstool to avoid getting my newly pressed designer jeans dirty, I have said the right thing, but my ‘saying-doing’ combination is nonetheless wrong.” He is trying to illustrate and prove that one cannot work without the other, and that this combination is what is the key to correct literacy. Another example that Gee could have used is if when greeting my friend I shook their hand and said “I have missed you with my whole heart,” I would be wrong, and if I kissed my friend and said “What’s up dude?”, I would still be wrong. It is only through the combination, the only true and correct method, by shaking their hand AND saying “What’s up dude?” did I correctly use Discourse.
2) In his paper, James Gee, in basic terms, says that you can not teach somebody to be a professional anything through classes or teaching, but rather through doing or experiencing it. He relates this several times to the idea of literacy and Discourses as Gee states that you can not learn things, but you have to experience something to know how to do it. This idea is the very foundation of internships, on-the-job training, and rising through the ranks, as you need to see and do something done right several times before you can even hope to do it yourselves. This is a pretty universal and fundamental idea, but Gee revisits and expands on this through the lens of literacy and combines several other intriguing ideas with it.
5) Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk about body language talked a lot about nonverbal communication (mainly body language) to help yourself be more confident, less nervous, and more imposing to both yourself and others. This idea can very obviously be connected to the Discourse of business as while you can proficiently use Discourse in this field without these additions, they will greatly improve your success in whatever you do. Cuddy states that with her method she can help anyone achieve the desired mental state of a “person who’s powerful and assertive and dominant, but not very stress reactive, the person who’s laid back,” which is what any person in the business world would like to be. Discourse is not just speech, but the combination of several attributes such as speech, actions, tone and others, and with Cuddy’s experiment you can change both your body language and corresponding actions as well as your tone as you will be less nervous and your voice will show it.
I chose this annotations because it is at the beginning of the piece and engages the audience, making them focus on the words, and in the this case, the voice. It is a good idea to capture and keep your audience’s attention, and Cuddy does this well on several occasions.
I chose this annotation because it was the culmination of the whole argument, and in the video she got excited, letting her audience know this is what they really need to pay attention to, and showing them she has a real passion for it, making them more interest.
I annotated this piece because it was relatable. Gee uses a lot of big concepts and words and it is good to give the reader a reason to care, to be invested, to be connected.
Cuddy is talking a about a lot of scientific concepts and words and it is good to add humor in order to keep the reader, or in this case, audience happy and still intrigued.
