James Paul Gee What Is Literacy Summary

If Gee’s “What is Literacy” were a boat, we’d all be bailing water.
In recent weeks all of us have been introduced to the essay “What is Literacy” written by Linguist James Paul Gee in 1987. Within this document Gee employs his learned skills to provide a “useful” definition for the word literacy. Prior to providing us this insight however, Gee must provide definitions for various other words and ideas as well as numerous theories in an effort to support his final supposition. Words such as discourse and sub-discourse are introduced by Gee who then goes on to characterize them in great detail, going so far as to provide five basic rules and/or guidelines for these discourses. Gee next bestows us with a theory in reference to how individuals obtain knowledge according to cited authors
While driving home from a weekend trip with just my wife and me in the car I was startled as my wife sat up suddenly and adamantly stressed her belief it was imperative we get home as soon as possible. When I pressed her for more information she only related that something grave had happened to the one of our children. My attempts to calm and dissuade her fears as a simple bad dream only met with further urgency on her part so in an attempt to placate her I increased speed. She simply KNEW something was wrong. Upon arrival home we were met by the baby-sitter who informed us, that while crossing the street, our oldest son had been hit by a car but luckily he did not sustain any injuries other than a case of shock. The knowledge of the injury to our child was not obtained by her through acquisition or learning as Gee suggests are the only ways to obtain knowledge, this was instead knowledge obtained through a mother’s