Theorem 1: Discourses are different from language because you can’t only partly know a Discourse. A Discourse has to be complete to be properly displayed unlike language which you can know part of and still get by.
Theorem 2: Primary Discourses, although important and your first Discourse, are limited in that they cannot help create more Discourses. It does not have enough elements within it to develop and critique.
These theorems are controversial due to the way they exclude and threaten peoples feelings about they’re Discourses. They exclude because they make people feel as though they cannot join a new Discourse without mastery. To learn as people we need experience and lesson, but with Gee’s theorem we have to master Discourses, making it exponentially harder to fit into them. They threaten peoples feelings because over time we become comfortable in our Primary Discourses. They are the first true Discourse we learn, which makes them even easier to fall back on. To tell someone that they cannot truly use their primary Discourse to critique and learn other Discourses is to tell them they have nothing to fall back on when learning, and then bring in theorem 1 that says they can’t use the new Discourse without mastering it.
The three concepts are true acquisition, mushfake, and mushfake resistance. True acquisition is full fluency in a Discourse, which is very rare, as Gee says “–true acquisition (which is always full fluency) will rarely if ever happen”. Mushfake on the other hand is in essence faking knowing a Discourse in order to fit into that specific Discourse. Meta-knowledge is having knowledge about your own knowledge so you can accurately use your strengths in Discourse where you can and should. As Gee says “–we ought to produce ‘mushfaking,’ resisting students, full of meta-knowledge.”
Jordans class uses both mushfake and meta-knowledge in order to translate what they call “black english” into “standard english.” When the students originally start creating “black english” they try to use the knowledge they already know to change it back to standard, in other words trying to use meta-knowledge to solve this particular problem. Once Jordan explains everything else included they try to use mushfake, and act as though they understand even if they do not completely. As Gee says “partial acquisition coupled with meta-knowledge and strategies to ‘make do'” which basically means with prior knowledge and knowing the strategies to fake it, you can make do in a new Discourse. For these students that Discourse is translating “black english” into the “standard english” they understand easier.
