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Kim, Jungyin (Janice). “Using the discourse of cool to participate in alternative school practices.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 40.3 (2014): 117-143. The purpose of this study is to examine the discourse practices associated with so-called “being cool” for African American adolescent males who attend the My Brother’s Keeper program at Malcolm X Academy in Illinois. In this study, I am interested in how the discourse practice of “cool” adolescent African American men factors into their school participation. The study takes on a post-critical notion of discourse as the main theoretical frame, explores issues of culture and its production, and talks about resistance theory and its relationship to the discourse of “being cool.” Results indicate that students through various discourse practices related to “being cool” produce a sub-culture within their school. This sub-culture--the discourse community of the “cool kids”--instigates its own standards for membership that is not interpreted as resistance and opposition but as a discursive construction of an alternative space needed for some students to exist in school. Thus, a discourse like “being cool” allows certain students (e.g. “cool kids”) the opportunity to participate in school using discourse practices known, accepted, and made popular by the students themselves and the broader social world they participate in. (University of Illinois)