I was at a conference this past weekend on leadership. Of the ten or so participants in the three day event, I knew one person before the conference started. We were all instructed for the first day of the conference to not reveal anything about who we were and what our jobs are. We were on first-name only basis with each other. This situation provided a setting for cross-boundary discourse. We all had to come out of our zones of comfortable discourse to explain our issues and talk about our jobs and the worlds we work in without revealing what exactly it is we do. This forced us all to speak in every-day discourse, to talk with one another as equals. Of the ten participants, there was a student, a teacher, an elementary school principal, a police detective and body guard, counselors for a women's crisis center, a pastor, a manager for a non-profit organization, and a college administrator.
For the first day of this conference, we were able to understand each other not by the jargon we used or through specified discourse, but through common language - through cross-boundary discourse. As Royster comments, individual discourse communities can be disheartening and alienating for those not familiar with that discourse community. The importance of being able to come out of that community and work with/communicate with people of other discourse communities effectively is what (I think) academic discourse should really be about.
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1 comment:
I like your example. Although we were not directly "violated", you were a participant in the kind of academic dissonance Royster refers to. Good job.
Rawk.
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