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Leland Drongesen

ENC 1101

27 October 2019

Language and Literacy Narrative

From a young age, my parents put a high level of importance on reading and writing.

Beginning at the age of 3, they would often make me watch videos that would help me learn how

to spell and sound out words. This knowledge aided me when I began Pre-K and started to learn

the alphabet and began to read. This foundation continued to grow when I began elementary

school, at this point I began to read simple books such as “The Magic Treehouse” and “Junie B.

Jones”, leading me to read more advanced books that I enjoyed such as “The Wizard of Oz” and

various “Sunshine State” Books, which was an incentive reading program in elementary schools

in the state of Florida. As I continued on in the education system, my knowledge of reading and

writing progressed, and I could comprehend a greater depth of the complexity of the English

language. As this knowledge grew, I began to seek books and pieces of literature that seemed

appealing to me, which appeared to be realistic fiction books such as “The Fault in Our Stars” by

John Green, “Looking For Alaska” by John Green, and “Misery” by Stephen King. I gravitated

toward these types of novels because they always seemed to have a moral or lesson for the reader

to learn from, which I found intriguing.

While I began to discover the types of literature that I enjoyed reading, I simultaneously

found some difficulty in academic writing. It seemed hard for me to convey my thoughts through

words and I felt as though my vocabulary was not advanced as it should be at times. Progressing

through middle and high school, I faced frustration with learning new types of writing and

attempting to convey my thoughts in new kinds of ways. I have worked on these aspects through
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practice and they continue to develop, however, I still find trouble in communicating my

thoughts at times. I also faced difficulty in finding interest in the topics I was writing about.

Often, teachers at my school did not care about what they were teaching, so I lacked the ambition

to write on these topics, which made reading and writing unappealing to me. My attitude toward

these topics changed once again toward the end of high school, when I began to discover that I

could read and write for myself, rather than solely for academic purposes. This has encouraged

me to be more focused when writing and made it seem like less of a laboring task.

I continue to work on my relationship with reading and writing and now find it to be

more of an enjoyable activity. While I may not have enjoyed writing in high school, it taught me

useful habits that I still use to this day including using proper punctuation, spelling, and

vocabulary. I also developed better reading habits, learning that I often need to read a piece of

literature more than once if I am going to analyze and write about it. While these have been

important aspects in my acquisition of language, among the most important includes the family

and friends around me who have taught me everything about spoken language. I would not talk

the way I do, or be the person I am for that matter, if I did not learn from the people that I did,

even if the learning process has been uncomfortable at times. For example, there are certain

occasions where language use makes me feel as though I do not belong or fit in. For example, at

my previous job most of the employees spoke Spanish, therefore they would all communicate to

each other and joke around in Spanish. I, however, do not understand Spanish and often felt left

out of conversations due to this. While it was an uncomfortable situation, I learned how

important language is in having relationships and how it impacts so many other areas of my life.
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As I explained, I often find it difficult to fit in with others who may speak Spanish or

have a different language background than I do, as I do not understand certain innuendos and

jokes, just as someone who speaks another language would have difficulty understanding many

aspects of the English language. A language you know can be just as hard to understand if there

is no context or if the person speaking “mushfake” because they don’t understand. Gee describes

mushfaked discourse as “partial acquisition coupled with meta-knowledge and strategies to

‘make-do’” (Gee 13). I have done this in English group assignments in high school where I did

not read the material well, or “skimmed” it and had to discuss a piece of literature that I knew

very little to nothing about. It impacted me because I could not effectively communicate ideas

and was not an efficient member of the group, as I could not come up with a correct answer. At

many schools I attended, which were mostly middle class, the only effective way to get good

grades was to come up with the correct answer. According to Jean Anyon, “In the middle-class

school, work is getting the right answer. If one accumulates enough right answers, one gets a

good grade.” (Anyon 18). This was the “hidden curriculum” at most of my schools, get enough

correct answers and you will pass, this however, is not the most efficient method as students do

not always learn well like this. Teachers in schools like this typically use tremendous amounts of

facts directly from the textbooks and do not offer a “critical perspective” on what they are

teaching to the students (Anyon 22).

It is difficult to teach discourses in an environment like this, as they are more complex

than correct and incorrect answers. According to Gee “Discourses are ways of being in the

world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social

identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes.” (6-7). Based on this
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definition, my “identity kit” would include being a young middle-class American man, as well as

a student, part-time cashier, and gym member. Gee describes dominant discourses as

participation in a group whose ultimate goal is to obtain prestige and prosperity (8). Therefore,

my role as a student is considered a dominant discourse, since the purpose of completing college

is to acquire money and status. This applies to my role as a cashier as well, as I work in order to

acquire money and goods for things that I need. Non-dominant discourses are described by Gee

as a group focused on a social network without a specific intention of obtaining status or wealth

(8). Since my role as a gym member is about my membership at the gym and no goal of status or

wealth, it is considered a non-dominant discourse. Interestingly, I unintentionally change my

demeanor and language use depending on the discourse I am participating in. For example, I will

likely act and speak more informally at the gym than I would working as a cashier. This relates

heavily to the idea of code switching, as described by Vershawn Ashanti Young.

In “The Problem of Linguistic Double Consciousness” by Vershawn Ashanti Young,

Code Switching is described as “a method comparing black English to standard English so that

they can learn to switch from one to the other in different settings” (Young 4). While code

switching is not specific to this definition, it gives a good idea of how code switching applies in

everyday life. I often use code switching for different settings, for example, if I’m at a party and

speaking a certain way, my dialect and tone would likely change when I come home and speak to

my parents. Another prominent example in my life includes switching from socializing to an

academic setting, as I act and speak differently in front of my friends than I would in a

classroom. This is likely because I have learned certain rules and what speaking styles are

appropriate in different settings as a language user. While there are many things I have learned to

be “correct”, these are actually just ideas that have been imposed on me by literacy sponsors in
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my life, including the distinction between my idea of “proper language” and “social language”

which I switch between frequently. This has impacted me by allowing me to understand other

people's ideas of “proper” and what they were taught differently by literacy sponsors within their

life.

Literacy sponsors are present in everyone's life and they shape the way everyone learns

language. In “Sponsors of Literacy” by Deborah Brandt, she describes literacy sponsors as “any

agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable support teach, model as well as recruit,

regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy---and gain advantage by it in some way.” (166). Based on

this definition some of the most important literacy sponsors in my life include my family,

specifically my parents, and the multiple English teachers I have had throughout my years of

schooling that have aided in my understanding of language. Some of the institutions and

experiences that align with Brandts definition of literacy sponsors include my high school and

the many different variations of English classes that I took there, including different composition

and literature classes. As technology has advanced, it has continued to help me develop as a

writer. Websites like google word and drive have helped me specifically by allowing me a place

to draft and store my ideas.

While my understanding of the English language has grown significantly over the years, I

am continuously growing as a language user. There is a near infinite amount to learn about the

complex English language, as it is constantly changing. Taking an introspective view at how

literacy has been present in my life has helped me realize a lot about how language has impacted

me and continues to assist me in my daily life.

Works Cited
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Gee, James Paul. “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction.” Journal of

Education, vol. 171, no. 1, 1989, pp. 5–17.

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” National Council of Teachers of English, vol.

49, May 1998, pp. 165–185.

Anyon, Jean. “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work*.” Childhood

Socialization 2017, pp. 369–394.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “The Problem of Linguistic Double Consciousness.”

Language Diversity and Academic Writing, 2017, pp. 325–334.