Audience, Ethos, and Agency

School seems to exist to give us all what Flower calls the "illusion of incompetence." Students, all people, in fact, have certain competencies, valuable competencies, that are simply not valued in academia or the workplace or by "us." In fact, many of what Gee would call dominant Discourses are designed to make outsiders feel like... well, outsiders. And while outsiders are trying to learn or operate within a foreign Discourse, they feel like pretenders. There are various ways authors try to suggest giving agency to student writers in order to give purpose to their writing, since it's pretty well established that writers write better when their writing has purpose. I feel like purpose is pretty well tied to audience. In fact, I think that a combination of Gee's and Flower's theories could come up with some sort of theory that emphasizes writing, agency, and ethos as social phenomenon.

I was recently struck by the phrase "Sometimes the most adult thing you can do is... ask for help when you need it." I'm ashamed to admit it's from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which may negate some of its impact, but I think it still rings true. If agency is truly a social thing, if agency only exists because someone is sponsoring it or as part of the ethos of a community then agency is being able to ask for help when you need it. And good agency sponsors can help with that. But the role of the student in this is learning to ask for help. Like Buffy, the supernatural demon slayer. Like Megan, the ambitious but uncertain Master's student.

(more after the jump)