Gee describes Discourses in a few different ways. There is primary and secondary discourses and dominant and non dominant discourses. Primary discourses are the ones that we acquire early in life. “Our primary discourse constitutes our original and home-based sense of identity”. Primary discourses are a foundation for the discourses we develop later in life, these discourses are know as secondary discourses. Secondary discourses are our interactions “with various non-home-based institutions-institutions in the public sphere, beyond the family and immediate kin and peer group”.
Dominant discourses are secondary discourses once mastered at a particular place and time can lead to “the acquisition of social “goods””. On the other hand non-dominant discourses are secondary discourses but the mastery of which “often brings solidarity with a particular social network, but not wider status and social goods in the society at large”. I believe this means that dominant discourses can lead to money, power and status while non dominant leads to living an average life.
