Rogers, PoCo, and Second Activity

One thing about the pieces by Rogers et al that intersted me is how Rogers places the onus on the speaker/writer for successful communication. This mirrors what a lot of socilolinguistics literature and I'm wondering if what I learned about communicative theory/anthropology within sociolinguistics (the ethnograpy of speaking) was influenced by Rogers.

In terms of the discussion of postcolonial theory, I would say that its an approach that is far from homogenous, and one can actually argue that Rogers compliments some of what comes out of poco. For example, one text that has been highly influential in poco theory is Homi K. Bhabha's _The Location of Culture_. It covers a lot of ground, but one aspect central to Bhabha is that he was influenced by Derrida (and in a bit we can draw some connections to what Bean has to say, as well). Bhabha's all about decentering what one might call Orientalism, in very much the sense that Edward Said used the term (though many think of Bhabha and Said as oppositional, for reasons too complex to go into here). In _Orientalism_ (which many argue is the foundational text of poco), Said asserted that West (the Occient) produces and implements binary oppositions (here Derrida comes in for Bhabha)--the Occident (the center) and the Orient (the margin, or periphery) being the central one, with the Occident being civilized and enlightened and the Orient savage and ignorant. The West constructs the Orient as the Other through discourses which produce "knowledge" of the Orient and therefore establish power over it (Said was highly influenced by Foucault who was, incidentally, one of Derrida's professors).

Bhabha takes this central premise and seeks to problematize, or disturb, Bhabha binary oppositions--deconstructing the discourses the West has created about the Orient. In doing so, Bhahba believes, a "Third Space" (a key term for Bhabha) can be created where cultures can come into contact, engage and transform one other in a to create a much more complex understanding than is possible with the binary oppositions that existed before. Bhabha advocates hybridity--a new space where both cultures exist in their mutually changed state--and he even speaks of a "multivocality," a multivalent discourse that will exist between cultures in this Third Space. To me, this mirrors Rogers quite nicely.

As for my second activity, the complimentary relationship I've drawn between Rogers and Poco speaks to what Bean talks about in the Strategies he outlines in Chapter 7. Bean talks about Piaget's "decentering"--"Piagetians have shown that a major block to critical thinking is egocentrism, that is, a person's inability to imagine alternative views" and Piaget advocated "decentering--getting students outside of the assumptions of their own worldview" (127). Bean then outlines an assignment where students "role-play unfamiliar points of view" or "what-if situations" (ibid). To me, that's analogous to what Rogers is doing in advocating that a writer state his reader's argument first in such a way that the reader will agree that the writer has summed up the position well, and it's similar to the writing assignments we've all seen in which students are asked to take a controversial issue or argument and argue for position "opposite" from their own.

For me, I think a variation on the theme could be having students construct solid arguments for "both" sides (though I resist the dichotomy) of an argument, so that they can articulate a more synthesized position. In terms of the writing assignment I spoke of earlier, I could have students argue for a prescriptivist vs. descriptivist approach to language. Again, the goal would be for them to understand that while everyone speaks a dialect and that all dialects are equal, there is value in being able to approximate the standard variety of a language (namely, English).