In “Building Tasks” by James Paul Gee he touches on the topic of sign systems and knowledge as one of the seven different things we use language to build. Sign systems and knowledge can be used in the science Discourse by introducing data and how it affects the information being discussed. In the “IMRAD Cheat Sheet” produced by Carnegie Mellon University sign systems and knowledge would fall under the results sections. This is because as said my Carnegie Mellon University “… where the findings and outcomes of the research go”. We discuss the information we found in the experiment and what it told us. Sometimes the information we find can help us in our claim, while other times it can set us back. In Gee’s text, he says “We also use language to create, change, sustain, and revise, language itself and other sign systems and their ways of making knowledge claims about the world” (Gee 35). When we have information from an experiment we can then use that information to revise and change our beliefs before. Sign systems and knowledge can help us develop in a science Discourse and help us become fully immersed in that Discourse while helping us introduce data and the effects it has on out claims.

 

Both in “Building Tasks” written by James Paul Gee and in “Learning to Read Biology” by Christina Haas they discuss Discourse, and how entering a Discourse can change you. I believe within the same Discourse your identity in that Discourse can change over time. Haas brings this topic up by discussing Eliza, who is a college freshman who is trying to figure out how to enter the new Discourse of reading biology. In Gee’s text, he discusses more of the different pieces of language-in-use when entering or when you are in a Discourse. In Haas text she says “… 4-year examination of one student as she progressed during college, focusing primarily on how the student’s views of, and interactions with, disciplinary texts changed through her postsecondary education” (Haas 46). Haas is saying in this text that it is possible to change in a Discourse because the student she was observing did so. The student’s views and interactions changed when she became completely immersed in that Discourse. In Gee’s text, you can see that change that a student could make could be in a different way. In Gee’s text, he says “We often enact our identities by speaking or writing in such a way to attribute a certain identity to others, and identity that we explicitly or implicitly compare or contrast to our own.” (Gee 33). So for instance when the student that Haas was observing, when she was entering that new Discourse she could have been around upperclassman that had had previous experience in that Discourse. So by observing someone else that can help you in the Discourse and cause you to change within it and continue to change within that Discourse because you are always comparing yourself to others in that Discourse.