Análisis de ligninas 1 Tinción de ligninas

Eric grew up attending a Wesleyan church in the same local community as Indiana Wesleyan University. He talked about attending church camp as a child and demonstrated his familiarity with Christianese in terms of his testimony and metaphor usage. Yet the way in which Eric told his testimony, talked about God, and used certain metaphors in reference to others positioned him as a peripheral member of the IWU community.

I determined Eric’s peripheral status based on the rhetorical moves he included in his testimony narrative as discussed in chapter 4. He included only Move 1 (personal

background), “I’ve gone to church basically since I was born” (#1, line 2) and Move 2 (process of conversion), “I was pretty young, I think probably about 6. / It was during a children’s lesson during church and they asked if anyone wanted to accept Jesus into their heart and become a Christian, and I did it then” (#1, lines 12 & 14). Eric followed the pattern of a young conversion typical to the IWU community and easily used the Christianese phrase “accept Jesus into their heart,” tapping into the heart metaphor regarding his conversion. Even at this point, he demonstrated a level of competence with the practice of testimony within the community. However, he subsequently positioned himself away from the next stage in the testimony when he described the atmosphere of church camp encouraging students to have moments of rededicating their faith (Move 4). He stated, “It’s usually a quiet moment and it’s all serious, and other people around you are doing it. It just seems like a good easy place if you feel the call / to just accept God” (#1, lines 22 & 24). Yet he never explained that he himself experienced that next step.

In terms of talking about God, Eric made only twelve references to God throughout the four interviews, with four in interview 1, none in interview 2, five in interview 3, and three in interview 4. Of these twelve references, he activated God only twice, both in

instances of negative action. He doubted God’s ability to forgive in some cases: “People say no matter what you’ve done, God can forgive you. Or no matter how you are. I don’t know if that’s totally true or not. I think there are certain things that are maybe unforgivable” (#4, line 56). He went on to say, “If there’s a certain (pause) like sexual orientation or something, if that’s wrong, if that’s something God looks down upon, if then that’s something you continue to identify as, I suppose, is there hope? Is there a chance?” (#4, line 60). While he hinted at the “unforgivable” issue in line 56, he named it in line 60 as “sexual orientation,” and in so doing attributed God’s agency to judging and not forgiving despite his acknowledgment of the community’s message about God’s all-encompassing forgiveness.

Furthermore, Eric passivated God in the other ten references. In each of these instances, he positioned himself to demonstrate his knowledge of community practices but not his own participation in them. For example, he clearly knew the Christianese “accepting Jesus/God/Christ” (#1, lines 14, 24, & 32 respectively) for describing one’s conversion and claimed his own moment in line 14 but included no subsequent moves in his testimony narrative. Later in the year he acknowledged, “I mean, I believe in God and all that, but I’m not very spiritual or religious or whatever you want to call it” (#3, line 36). Even in his statement of belief, he qualified it by positioning himself away from a stronger categorization of being “spiritual or religious”.

For three of the passivated God references, Eric talked about God in terms of Relationship three times in interview 3 only. The first instances concerned his own

relationship with God: “I’ve grown closer to God, I think, a little bit” (#3, line 36). When I probed more and asked what contributed to the shift in his relationship, he mentioned the

positive environment of the university and the exposure to religious concepts but made no reference to any atmosphere metaphors. His second reference seemed more vague: “…if you’re feeling down or whatever, you can turn to God” (#3, line 38). However, it is unclear whether this statement referred to his own state or a general comment for anyone at the university. The final reference he made in interview 3 was a description of IWU community members in the active or core groups using Wenger’s (1998) community of practice levels of engagement graphic mentioned in chapter 3. I asked him how he identified the people in the active and core groups, and he responded, “They’ve probably just been really talkative in their lives and really on fire for God” (#3, line 122). Eric clearly knew the Christianese of this community and could use it appropriately, using the passion metaphor on fire for God, even if he himself did not feel “on fire for God” regarding his relationship.

In terms of metaphor usage, Eric displayed his knowledge of this community practice by employing seventeen metaphors over the four interviews. He drew from seven of the ten semantic fields discussed in chapter 6: network (7), stability (3), agriculture (2), conflict (2), heart (1), atmosphere (1), and passion (1) from the miscellaneous domain. He used many of these metaphors as a way to describe others’ faith experiences rather than his own. For example, he stated, “I’m surrounded by people who are pretty strong in their faith” (#2, line 34). When he talked about the community of practice graphic mentioned in the previous paragraph, he explained, “I’d say the core group are usually the people who are the strongest Christians” (#3, line 106). Like the on fire example above, Eric used strongest to describe the zeal for God expressed by others in the IWU community and not himself.

The metaphors he used to describe his own faith experiences included agriculture and network, yet even with these, he only used two of each about himself. With agriculture, he explained how “the main way that [he had] been growing” was through his theology class (#1, line 146), and later in the year he stated, “I’ve grown closer to God, I think, a little bit”

(#3, line 36). In both of these instances, he distanced himself from this relationship by attributing agency of that growth to his theology class in the first interview and then adds hesitation in the third interview with “I think” and “a little bit.” He recognized the importance of growth in one’s relationship with God in the IWU community and admitted this to a limited degree. Regarding network metaphors, he referenced other people’s connectedness in five of the seven uses and his own connection to others only twice: “I’ve already started to connect to more people because I have more classes with them now…So I feel like I’ve connected a bit more” (#3, line 32). Eric mentioned his commuter status a few times over the year and expressed his desire to be a residential student in his second year at IWU. It seems appropriate then that the majority of his choice of metaphors came from the network domain since he equated connection with being active members of the IWU community (#3, line 114). In the last interview, Eric remarked on overhearing students say they wanted to transfer to a different university and gave this reason: “A lot of times it was because they felt

disconnected. Usually it was because they had no friends or something here” (#4, line 174). Thus, having supportive friends played a key role in the feeling of belonging for Eric, a conclusion that has been noted in numerous studies (Wilcox, Winn, & Fyvie-Gauld, 2005; Magolda & Ebben, 2006; Woodfin, 2012).

Consequently, Eric remained in the peripheral trajectory at IWU with an inward view toward the community (Wenger, 1998, p. 154). He demonstrated his basic competence with the testimony genre, talked minimally about God, and used a sampling of community-

appropriate metaphors in his discourse. In this way, he participated in a limited manner in the community of practice by drawing from the linguistic repertoire of his church upbringing. However, he also positioned himself further away from these resources by not taking full advantage of them, or not using as many or using them as frequently as students in the insider and inbound trajectories did throughout the interviews. Finally, at the time of completion of

this chapter, Eric was a residential student in his third year at IWU and involved in band and Spanish club, both activities in which he participated during his first year. Thus, while Eric stayed on the periphery, he continued to demonstrate his membership in the community.