Wardle Questions

1. According to Wardle the three ways that newcomers try to belong in a new community are engagement, Imagination, and Alignment.  Engagement is defined as a “common enterprise” that newcomers and old timers pursue together to develop “interpersonal relationships” and a “sense of interacting trajectories that shape identities in relation to one another.” An example of this could include common ground between two members of the community. Like after talking to someone you discover they also play baseball and you two should play together sometime. The second aspect is Imagination, “a process of expanding…self by transcending… time and space and creating new images of the world and self. An example of this could include thinking of new ideas for the group to participate in. This can lead to a positive mode of belonging. Lastly there is Alignment; this is the “negotiating perspectives, finding common ground, defining broad visions and aspirations.” You would have to adopt the ideas of the group and an example of this could include doing something you personally do like to do, but participated because the group did. I feel this is aspect might be a major reason many people do not participate in joining new communities. This is an aspect that many people would try to stay away from because it destroys their identity, but joining a group which you love this aspect could be avoided.

3. I feel Alan’s conflict in his work place did not have a positive outcome because he clung to his old ways of doing things. He took a misstep but this is normal for many newcomers. He clung to his own ways of writing, which the group did not accept. On the other hand the group also did not change their views of what they found acceptable. Both sides should have been courteous to the other. This could have been handled to have a positive outcome by when the older member read the email they could of told the new comer the mistakes he has made and how not to make them or what to do to correct them. They could have easily talked this situation out to the newcomer so he realizes his mistakes rather than scolding his for them. This would have provided a much more positive outcome to the situation.

5. I agree with Wardle over Gee in this aspect of this the work place community. I agree with Wardle because he is exactly right about why Alan didn’t successfully join his new work place community. Alan was resisting the ideas behind this work place community. He did not want to adopt the identity that people in that community imagined for him. He was stuck in his old ways. I completely disagree with Gee’s statement of, Alan’s primary Discourse was very different from the Dominate Discourse he encountered in the Humanities Department. I disagree with this because that is ridiculous to say. That is like saying people cannot change from certain aspects of themselves because this is what they have been taught. If Alan really wanted to join that community then he could of changed, but he felt it was better to just stay true to his original self.

7. A time I can think of when an ascribed authority lost their authority through their linguistic actions, occurred for me in fifth grade. My fifth grade teacher Mrs. Bushnell was very picky about student she liked and didn’t like. Well I just happened to be one of the students she didn’t like, shocker! One of her favorite student was the one child in the class everyone and I didn’t like, just because of her favoritism to him. She would let him do whatever he wanted to never get in trouble. After dealing with this ridiculousness for a good chunk of the year, he personally bothered me and that’s when things got serious. One day in gym class he made me cry, and Mrs. Bushnell didn’t even care. So me and all my girlfriends went to the principal’s office and complained, multiple times. Well long story, short, by the end of the year she was fired and the students were happy.