Discourse—James Paul Gee's Definition

In his essay, “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction and What is Literacy?” James Paul Gee defines a discourse as:

a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or "social network.” (Gee)

Gee's is a better definition (for instructors) than the one presented on the discourse conventions webpage, yet the latter seems more suitable for student writers.

What do you think?

Literacy—James Paul Gee's View

For James Paul Gee (same essay as above), literacy is the “control of secondary uses of language,” where “secondary uses of language” denotes those uses of language in a discourse group other than ones family.

Gee's sense of literacy provides an excellent tool for conceiving of the situation of the first-year college students; they are novice writers in the eyes of both the academy and their future profession.

Separate Revising and Copy Editing—Reprise

[Below is a reprint (from the Notes for the Plain of Perspective)]

While both revising and copy editing involve making changes to a text, the focus (objective) of revising is different from the focus of copy editing.

• In revising, the changes are focused on improving clarity and sufficiently motivating the target audience to achieve the desired consequence (chosen by the writer).
• In copyediting, the changes are focused on making the document acceptable to the relevant discourse community of the target audience (especially with regard to punctuation, spelling, grammar, and the formatting).

Since revising and copy editing involved different sets of knowledge and skill,

• distinguishing between the revising and copy editing helps students make better sense of these aspects of writing.