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Discourse
The object of this
exercise is to see if you can unscramble the text and put it back into its
original form. You can choose from several different types of texts, a story, a
description and a poem:A Story: The Sword in the Stone
One winter day, a stranger arrived at the castle where young Arthur lived with his adopted family.
The stranger came from London.
He told a strange and wonderful tale.
"Since King Uther died, many knights have fought to wear the crown."
"We thought the fighting would last forever, but now a miracle has happened."
"On Christmas Day, a crowd was gathered at the Great Church."
"Suddenly, in a flash of blinding light, a stone appeared in the yard where none had been before."
"A shining sword rose out of the stone, bearing mysterious words."
"It said: 'Whoever Can Draw this Sword from the Stone is the True King of England.'"
"On New Year's Day there will be a tournament."
"Knights and lords will show their skill with sword and spear."
"Then, anyone who wishes to be King may try to draw the sword from the stone."
You can probably reassemble this story with no problem, even of you have never heard it before, because you know from experience how stories are organized in our culture. This is a skill that is gradually learned over time, usually in childhood. To see how difficult is can be for a child to reproduce the "correct" form of a story, consider this example of a story "written" and illustrated by a little boy named Sam, when he was four years old:
The Wizard, the Grass-Skirt Girl and the Mare
And here's the adventure. They go all the way off the picture in this adventure.
This is the Grass-Skirt Girl. She's cleaning her eyelashes.
They go all the way to Australia.
Now they are going where the Mountain Valley is. This is the Mountain Valley.
The Grass-Skirt Girl's hand.
The Grass-Skirt Girl goes on a path. And she goes all the way. First she meets a cow, then she meets a bird, then a little girl and boy and then she went back home to her Mommy.
The cow turned into a honey bee and then turned into a fox.
The Grass-Skirt Girl gets caught inside a shark and then comes out.
The Grass-Skirt Girl is looking for her Mommy. She is hungry. Instead she goes inside an oxygen breather, an underwater snake!
Here is a picture of the Grass-Skirt Girl. She is just standing there looking.
The End
The Wizard, the Grass-Skirt Girl and the Mare has some but not all of the features of stories as we expect them to exist. There is a series of actions, but they are not organized into a plot, and the overall meaning or moral is not clear to the uninitiated reader. The title mentions two characters, the Wizard and the Mare, who don't appear in the body of the story. The ending is not very satisfying, because we cannot tell the point of the Grass-Skirt Girl's adventures.
When Sam wrote this story he was making a kind of collage of the other stories he had recently heard read to him, in particular a version of The Gingerbread Man in a pastiche of fairy tales called The Stinky Cheese Man, a fact book about deep sea diving and the Bible story of Jonah and the Whale. Even though Sam has not yet completely appropriated or begun to use the full range of conventions for story writing in our culture, he is borrowing freely from other sources, and this is one of the most important characteristics of literary writing. We can see that Sam is "trying on" other writer's voices and adapting them to his own purpose, and so we can also see that our discourse competence is built up from our participation in and use of the kinds of communicative events that are characteristics of our culture.
An Essay: Complicated Dinosaurs
Whatever happened to the dinosaurs?
Once, not so long ago, dinosaurs were pretty easy to understand.
You had the large placid ones that ate plants.
And you had the smaller, scary ones that ate the former.
These days the dinosaurs are much more complicated.
Now we have dinosaurs that are social, dinosaurs that are small and ferocious, even some that might have been warm-blooded.
It seems that the more we dig up new fossils and reexamine old ones, the more we find out, and the more we need to learn.
Essays, too, have a regular structure that has to be internalized as part of the process of language learning. Learning how to organize an essay is an important step in learning to be perceived as a rational human being in American middle class culture. As you can see reading Sam, Sam and Nico's Album Comic Book, by Sam, children learn early on that essays must center around one theme. Here again, however, we note that Sam's description is little more than an enumeration of characters. Sam has yet to learn all the rules for organizing his essays according to the expectations we share in our culture. Although the theme is present (i.e. brave knights) there is no thesis, or main idea, and the text lacks a satisfactory argument structure and summary statement such as we find at the end of the text about dinosaurs.
Sam, Sam and Nico's Album Comic Book
This is the handsome knight Sir Sam and he is brave.
And this is Sir Sam's handsome brother knight Sir Nico, and he is brave.
And this is Sir Nico's handsome brother knight, Sir Other Sam, and he is brave. He can shoot fireballs. Watch out for fireballs shooting out of his arms and hands!
Sir Edward XIV on his horse, and its very popular for knights to ride on horseback.
The End
A Poem: Knight-in Armour by A.A. Milne From Now We Are Six, Copyright E.P.Dutton 1927)
Whenever I'm a shining Knight.
I buckle on my armour tight;
And then I look about for things,
Like Rushings-Out and Rescuings,
And Savings from the Dragon's Lair, And fighting all the Dragons there.
And sometimes when our fights begin,
I think I'll let the Dragons win...
And then I think perhaps I won't,
Because they're Dragons, and I don't.
By age six, Sam has learned a great deal more about texts than he knew when he was four, and can even compose poetry. The short poems below were made in the context of a homework assignment that involved learning to read the words "after," "ate," and "asked."
Short Poems by Sam
After the sunrise floating down,
I saw a little bird sitting down.
I ate, I ate,
I ate a little plate.
Asked, asked.
I asked a man in a mask.
Sam's poems show that he has internalized some of the rules that we use to appreciate poetry: They have both rhyme and rhythm, and they show some of the disregard for logic that can characterize poetic texts. Sam has learned how to use these features of language because he is a member of a cultural community that values and regularly employs this kind of literacy. He has had many opportunities to hear songs and poems and to observe their structure.
Our discourse competence is the result of this kind of extended participation in particular literacy events, and it includes the poetic and playful uses of language as well as the conventions that govern other genres such as narratives and essays.
One winter day, a stranger arrived at the castle where young Arthur lived with his adopted family.
The stranger came from London.
He told a strange and wonderful tale.
"Since King Uther died, many knights have fought to wear the crown."
"We thought the fighting would last forever, but now a miracle has happened."
"On Christmas Day, a crowd was gathered at the Great Church."
"Suddenly, in a flash of blinding light, a stone appeared in the yard where none had been before."
"A shining sword rose out of the stone, bearing mysterious words."
"It said: 'Whoever Can Draw this Sword from the Stone is the True King of England.'"
"On New Year's Day there will be a tournament."
"Knights and lords will show their skill with sword and spear."
"Then, anyone who wishes to be King may try to draw the sword from the stone."
You can probably reassemble this story with no problem, even of you have never heard it before, because you know from experience how stories are organized in our culture. This is a skill that is gradually learned over time, usually in childhood. To see how difficult is can be for a child to reproduce the "correct" form of a story, consider this example of a story "written" and illustrated by a little boy named Sam, when he was four years old:
The Wizard, the Grass-Skirt Girl and the Mare
And here's the adventure. They go all the way off the picture in this adventure.
This is the Grass-Skirt Girl. She's cleaning her eyelashes.
They go all the way to Australia.
Now they are going where the Mountain Valley is. This is the Mountain Valley.
The Grass-Skirt Girl's hand.
The Grass-Skirt Girl goes on a path. And she goes all the way. First she meets a cow, then she meets a bird, then a little girl and boy and then she went back home to her Mommy.
The cow turned into a honey bee and then turned into a fox.
The Grass-Skirt Girl gets caught inside a shark and then comes out.
The Grass-Skirt Girl is looking for her Mommy. She is hungry. Instead she goes inside an oxygen breather, an underwater snake!
Here is a picture of the Grass-Skirt Girl. She is just standing there looking.
The End
The Wizard, the Grass-Skirt Girl and the Mare has some but not all of the features of stories as we expect them to exist. There is a series of actions, but they are not organized into a plot, and the overall meaning or moral is not clear to the uninitiated reader. The title mentions two characters, the Wizard and the Mare, who don't appear in the body of the story. The ending is not very satisfying, because we cannot tell the point of the Grass-Skirt Girl's adventures.
When Sam wrote this story he was making a kind of collage of the other stories he had recently heard read to him, in particular a version of The Gingerbread Man in a pastiche of fairy tales called The Stinky Cheese Man, a fact book about deep sea diving and the Bible story of Jonah and the Whale. Even though Sam has not yet completely appropriated or begun to use the full range of conventions for story writing in our culture, he is borrowing freely from other sources, and this is one of the most important characteristics of literary writing. We can see that Sam is "trying on" other writer's voices and adapting them to his own purpose, and so we can also see that our discourse competence is built up from our participation in and use of the kinds of communicative events that are characteristics of our culture.
An Essay: Complicated Dinosaurs
Whatever happened to the dinosaurs?
Once, not so long ago, dinosaurs were pretty easy to understand.
You had the large placid ones that ate plants.
And you had the smaller, scary ones that ate the former.
These days the dinosaurs are much more complicated.
Now we have dinosaurs that are social, dinosaurs that are small and ferocious, even some that might have been warm-blooded.
It seems that the more we dig up new fossils and reexamine old ones, the more we find out, and the more we need to learn.
Essays, too, have a regular structure that has to be internalized as part of the process of language learning. Learning how to organize an essay is an important step in learning to be perceived as a rational human being in American middle class culture. As you can see reading Sam, Sam and Nico's Album Comic Book, by Sam, children learn early on that essays must center around one theme. Here again, however, we note that Sam's description is little more than an enumeration of characters. Sam has yet to learn all the rules for organizing his essays according to the expectations we share in our culture. Although the theme is present (i.e. brave knights) there is no thesis, or main idea, and the text lacks a satisfactory argument structure and summary statement such as we find at the end of the text about dinosaurs.
Sam, Sam and Nico's Album Comic Book
This is the handsome knight Sir Sam and he is brave.
And this is Sir Sam's handsome brother knight Sir Nico, and he is brave.
And this is Sir Nico's handsome brother knight, Sir Other Sam, and he is brave. He can shoot fireballs. Watch out for fireballs shooting out of his arms and hands!
Sir Edward XIV on his horse, and its very popular for knights to ride on horseback.
The End
A Poem: Knight-in Armour by A.A. Milne From Now We Are Six, Copyright E.P.Dutton 1927)
Whenever I'm a shining Knight.
I buckle on my armour tight;
And then I look about for things,
Like Rushings-Out and Rescuings,
And Savings from the Dragon's Lair, And fighting all the Dragons there.
And sometimes when our fights begin,
I think I'll let the Dragons win...
And then I think perhaps I won't,
Because they're Dragons, and I don't.
By age six, Sam has learned a great deal more about texts than he knew when he was four, and can even compose poetry. The short poems below were made in the context of a homework assignment that involved learning to read the words "after," "ate," and "asked."
Short Poems by Sam
After the sunrise floating down,
I saw a little bird sitting down.
I ate, I ate,
I ate a little plate.
Asked, asked.
I asked a man in a mask.
Sam's poems show that he has internalized some of the rules that we use to appreciate poetry: They have both rhyme and rhythm, and they show some of the disregard for logic that can characterize poetic texts. Sam has learned how to use these features of language because he is a member of a cultural community that values and regularly employs this kind of literacy. He has had many opportunities to hear songs and poems and to observe their structure.
Our discourse competence is the result of this kind of extended participation in particular literacy events, and it includes the poetic and playful uses of language as well as the conventions that govern other genres such as narratives and essays.