The Tangle of Discourses by Rebecca Raby

Things I Understood

This passage was hard to understand for me it was because of the wording. But from what I did understand. Raby has five discourses that she feels molds ideas of teens in society: the storm, becoming, at-risk, social problem, and pleasurable consumption. “The determination to establish separate identities and to demonstrate their independence, one way or another, from their parents’ world, often brands teenagers as potential troublemakers in the public and we think the worst.”(Raby pg 436) I believe Raby is trying to say, that often we tell are teens who to be and how to act with discourses. “A discourse refers to a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of events” (Raby pg 430) From what I understood of these discourses are imbedded into adolescent experience from the outside by “professional positions who hold a particular authority and thus create knowledge about certain subjects” (Raby pg 430).

Things I didn’t Understand

I believe that I understood the passage, after reading it carefully. I just felt like the way the passage was worded was hard to understand.

Imbedded link http://www.canada.com/life/parenting/Teen+girls+fashion+tightrope/1506573/story.html