Drugs

Kamy Pennon

English

Essay 2

The discourse used in classrooms today is institutionalized and establishes not only what is said but the way in which we say it. It gives those in a classroom an integrated set of words, metaphors, and symbols that enable attendants to create and converse consistently. The discourse in a class is undoubtedly different from the discourse used in the real world. After being a staple in the college classroom, I sometimes wonder why the discourse used in the classrooms is so noticeably distinctive from the discourse used in the outside world. The factuality of the situation is university students are in an educational environment leading students to constantly hear new and large words. We hear these words coming from the mouths of other students, professors, and the texts that are read throughout our courses. At times it seems that speaking this discourse is inconspicuously required and not optional.

It is a necessity to learn and know the discourse since the present environment deems it mandatory for succeeding. To pass a test, a quiz, and assignments the knowledge of a particular discipline’s discourse must me learned or mimicked as Bartholomae calls it in “Inventing the University.” Whether you are an 18 year old leaving home for the first time or a 45 year old single mother returning to school, the university environment can be intimidating. We have frequently discussed the comparison of joining a university to the joining of a community since like a community; the university has its own set discourse. However, there is more pressure when sitting in a college classroom than being a newcomer in a community since the demands for university students can be set high. Yet, the demands are more prevalent with students. It seems to also be a competition amongst students to see who is the smartest in the class. The winner is determined through whoever answers the most questions, starts class discussions, talks the most about assignments, finishes the professor’s sentences, or corrects the professor. This competition, I have noticed is more common in my English class than any of my other classes for reasons that are unknown to me.

For that 18 and 45 year old this classroom experience can be overwhelming and threatening causing them to want to learn this language as soon as possible so they will not fell like an outsider. If the 18 year old entered the classroom speaking the urban slang of community and the 45 year old answers a question with a heavy country accent and “old hick talk”, these two would be seen as different and probably looked down on. These forms of speech are silenced in the classroom with disturbed looks and restless sighs. When many students enter a writing class, for instance, they are entering an unfamiliar territory and must now learn this discourse in order to gain acceptance in the classroom’s secret little society.

The experience I encounter in my sociology or history classrooms are much more different than the English classroom experience. Students are more relaxed and understanding and there is no classroom contest of intelligence. We sit in our sits, take notes, listen to lectures, take quizzes, and have discussions just as the happenings in the English classroom. Yet, for whatever reason students restrain from rivalries that separate the classroom and concentrate more so on what the professor has just said and not on the question the dub girl in the corner just asked. No one dare enter the classroom speaking the “black” English Mellix refers to in her essay “From Outside In.” For this is a “no no” as well as a disgrace and embarrassment to the classroom as a whole. The difference between the two languages is evident and one in respect to my family and friends; is inappropriate for the classroom. The language I hear on a day to day basis influenced my everyday discourse. I am originally from Dallas and have lived in Oak Cliff, a community in Dallas, where I hear a lot slang and broken English. I go to church where the dialect is dissimilar; I then attend school where I hear a completely different speech. This is my forth school year in Commerce and when I go back home those around me notice a little country twang when I talk. When I am in the classroom I speak the discourse of relation to that subject which is generally not very different from what I normally use day to day.

Williams and Colomb’s “The Novice Writer”, uses the term novice to describe those who are to master the language