An individual does not have to leave behind values from a primary discourse to enter a dominant discourse. A primary discourse is the discourse an individual is born with, where as a dominant discourse is the view that society has shaped to make the image of a perfect life. Throughout the writing of Gee, he heavily supports the idea that a human is giving a set of discourses and they can not be changed which is wrong. By focusing on his first theorem “However, someone cannot engage in a discourse in a less than fully fluent manner. You are either in it or you’re not” (Gee 9), Gee over looks the problem of catorgerizing individuals. Gee is basically saying that he is capping off an individual, rather than allowing them to prove themselves and challenge their set views. There is no way of advancing in Gees eye’s he believes that everyone has to follow the views they are giving based on a race. Delpit reviewed Gees theories and highly disagreed with his two theorems, but mainly his first theorem which I disagree with as well. When Delpit states “The point must not be to eliminate students’ home languages, but rather to add other voices an discourse to their repertories”(Deplit 553), she is saying give a student a chance to engage in new values to add more knowledge to the individual. Deplit fully agrees with the point that no individual has to leave their primary discourse behind. The goal of being successful is just expanding the knowledge of life in order to eventually get to the dominant discourse discussed. One cannot have a social status if they agree with Gee and just stay within the guidelines of their race. Everyone can be successful and have dominant discourse. They just have to be open to other values, or voices. It is not just whites that can be successful any race, or gender can be successful.
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Sarah,
I agree with your statements about Delpit. When you talk about Gee and say that he says there is no way of advancing, but what about mushfake or metaknowledge? I know that both of these things are almost like “faking it until you make it” but sometimes you do not always have to be completely immersed into a discourse to be part of it. In your post you did a really nice job at setting up the Barclay’s formula. You stated your claim and used quotes from both Delpit and Gee to back your claim that one does not have to leave their discourse to be part of a new one.