Over these past days we have done a lot of talking about invisible narratives and different discourses that surround us. I was never really exposed to these issue before I started college, and even so in my last English class we didn't talk about none of these issues. My teacher taught in a very academic form and focused on really getting every sentence in our essays grammatically correct and making sure that our thesis statement connected with the entire essay. So when I started English 214, it was a very different environment that I was not used to.
In previous classes I had been exposed to a lot of injustices people of color have to suffer from, but it was never about invisible narratives, and especially different discourses we surround ourselves with. We talked about how even without noticing we do it, we tend to surround ourselves with people that think, look, and act the same as we do. Rather than surrounding ourselves with different people that have different perspectives that allow us to be more open minded about things.
We talked about different discourses in different majors. Which at first I had no idea there was such thing. But once we started to talk about it, it seems kind of normal for them to do so. Since they have to have a specific language to communicate with other colleges. But the problem is that people outside the discourse will not be able to understand much of what is being talked. Which brings the topic we talked about, if writers should simplify their writing with words that are more common to people outside the discourse to allow them to understand what is being talked? Which in my opinion they shouldn't have to, since the people who are reading the article are usually people who are interested in the major and therefore have some background knowledge to understand what they are reading.
Going back to invisible narratives, in class when we were talking about how the media plays a huge role in how they portray white and people of color. The media portrays people of color as always being the evil or bad ones in the story and white people as being the victims. Which is really bad because then we start to believe it ourselves and we fall into the invisible narrative society has created. Its amazing how society with the help of the media, have presented us and made us believe that only rich white males can be successful in life. We were raised with this picture in out mind just because its all we saw.
Its crazy how we dehumanize ourselves without even noticing we are. Our society has brought us upon this and made us believe it is normal when its no where near normal. We need to stop oppressing others and ourselves if we want to start seeing a different society.
Its so funny you say that because I totally agree with you, when you say how coming into this class was sort of a slap in the face. Like you my english professor made sure we had a thesis, great spelling, ect.!!! I have always hated english because I feel like it is not my strongest, I can't pull out a essay out of my ass and get an A minus, like I can't when i try the best I am getting is a B and thats when I spend hours working on it. Anyways when I came into this class I hated it! I was like "no this professor is doing everything wrong! We aren't suppose to come up with the rules, thats not our job. And why is she not making us write analytical essay likes other english classes?" For the record I love this class now! I don't hate english itself as much anymore, its actually interesting doing things differently and thats what I hated this at first how things were so different because like you I have never ever in my English class had a class like this. English classes were always about reading a book or a passage and writing a analytical essay, however its different and it has opened my eyes to so many things.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with everything you are saying. I think this English class has really shaped what we think and what we are looking forward in our major discourse. Even though the media portray us people of color as the "evil" ones we still have managed to move forward in life. Is up to us to maintain ourselves going up to the top and prove the white people that people of color can succeed in life as well due to our hard work and effort.
ReplyDeleteI like what you have to say here. I feel the same way. Always in my past english classes it has been about getting the structure right, the sentences, the wording, the phrases, the notation, etc. Then coming into this class we all of a sudden are questioning why and if we should be learning all of this!! I'd never even thought of questioning something that I thought was just a given we were supposed to learn. I'v aways seen english class as a place to learn how to write in a proper academic form that is acceptable for the professional world. Looking at all the different types of discourses and asking all these questions about invisible narratives helps me better understand the back story to what and why we are learning in english class. Although the reality is not what we would like, that we are learning how to essentially write like a "White male" it is what we need to learn to be ready for the competitive workforce.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. This class is very interesting. I agree with you, we learn about the injustices that people of color go through, but we do not connect the injustices to English. This class incorporates invisible narratives from media and society to writing and different types of writing or discourses. Some of the invisible narratives we learned in this class is very shocking, like how little girls wear fairies and princesses on their clothes. I like how you said that we dehumanize ourselves without noticing. There are definitely a lot more invisible narratives I still have to uncover in society.
ReplyDeleteIn the first paragraph, I thought to myself, I could of written that too! I think it's amazing how different classes are in college even if they're the same subjects as in high school. Since society is so integrated, we don't realize how there are still invisible narratives out there. Great job on touching up on every aspect we've been learning about in class that take part with invisible narratives, since they are everywhere!
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