Wardle

Getting Ready to Read

I think the person I am now is the same person that I was before I came to college. I came to college open to new experiences but when I talk to my friends back home, I find that none of us have changed any in the past eight or nine weeks and we are still able to connect just the same way as we had before we all left for school.
My whole senior year I was nervous to come to college because I was afraid of the leaving behind all my friends and family, and I was more nervous about how that would change me as a person. Coming to school, and going through all the different things so far that college has brought to me, I still am the same person that I was before. All that has really changed for me is that I have so many new people and have already developed friendships that I am sure will last. I have stayed the same person however, and it is evident when similar situations happen here that had happened when I was back home, and how I handled those situations.

Summary

Wardle uses her article to discuss identity both in writing and in the work place. She uses several other authors and sociologists to discuss the process of both entering into a sort of community and also what happens when one has been in the community for some time. She looks at three different "modes of belonging" which include: engagement, imagination, and alignment. Finally, she closes out the article by taking look Alan, at a person who instead of conforming to his new work place, kept his old habits and found it very hard to go about his work when he was expected to act in a different manner.

Synthesis

Wardle can easily be linked to authors that also look at what it takes to get into communities, especially things such as discourse communities. The two authors that were looked at on Wednesday, Gee and Swales, both discussed the importance of discourse communities and what it took to enter and to stay in the discourse communities. Along with the two authors, Bryson is another author that can relate back to Wardle, because Bryson talked about force of habit and how, which goes along with Alan, the man who could not break his habits and found it hard to remain in a workplace that expected him to change.

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
Our identity is a very complex thing, that is why not just one thing is able to define who a person is.	“According to Wenger, ‘layers build upon each other to produce our identity as a very complex interweaving of participative experience and reificative projections.” (524)
Sometimes becoming a member of something takes so much time and effort that it becomes easy to lose time for other things that used to be a major focus in someone’s life. This is seen every single day, one example could be a new job taking place of the importance of family for some time.	“We must also consider whether expanding involvement in one system forces us away from other activity systems we value – away from ‘activity systems of family, neighborhood, and friend that construct ethnic, racial, gender, and class identit(ies)’” (522)
Writing is easily influenced by things and places. If someone is writing in the work place, depending on the atmosphere of the work place, the writings of the authors can sometimes be effected.	“To tease our relationships between identity and writing in the workplace, we need theories that consider the workplace as a legitimate and important influence on subject information.” (522)
When someone believes strongly in what he or she is saying and has authority, he or she will not be questioned and she or he will be looked at as someone who knows that they are talking about.	“Those listening accept the speaker’s pronouncement because the speaker is who she is.” (526)
There are times where two different communities may have different standards which conflict with each other. People can find themselves in different groups of friends that may not like each other because of different activities that go on in the sets of friends.	“At times, however, participation in new communities requires accepting for oneself identities that are at odds with the values of other communities to which one belongs.” (525)

My Thoughts

I liked reading this article. Everything that she talked about was easy to follow and understand and even put myself in the shoes of the different points. With Alan, I could understand on both sides of the problem. I saw why Alan was hesititent to conform; however, I could also see why it was so important that he did. The article as a whole was very informative and really helped to better understand identity in both writing and in social situations.