EXPLORING METHODS OF
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
IN LITERACY RESEARCH December 3, 2010
NRC/LRA, Fort Worth, TX
Amy Vetter, University of South Carolina, Greensboro
Melissa Mosley, The University of Texas at Austin
F. Blake Tenore, Vanderbilt University
Amy Burke, The University of Texas at Austin
Melody Zoch, The University of Texas at Austin
Elizabeth Years Stevens, Syracuse University
A
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1:20-1:25 INTRODUCTION- Amy Vetter
1:25-1:45 FOUR APPROACHES TO DA
Multimodal/Mediated Discourse Analysis
Critical Discourse Analysis
Gee‟s Building Tasks
Conversation Analysis
1:45-1:55 Video
2:00-2:30 Break out
2:30-2:30 Synthesis
2:30-2:50 discussion facilitated by Amy of the slides/questions for further analysis constructed by the group.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES--
MULTIMODALITY
Mediation: all social action is mediated action (Wertsch, 1991, 1998)
All communicational acts are constituted of and through the social (Norris, 2004)
Communication is orchestrated through participants‟ selection and combination of modes (Jewitt, 2009)
The meanings of multimodal resources are social, situated
HOW IS MMDA PRESENT IN LITERACY
RESEARCH/TEACHER EDUCATION RESEARCH?
Literacy
Wohlwend, 2007a,b,c; 2008a,b,c; 2010
Carrington, 2003
Literacy Teacher Education
Rogers & Mosley, 2008
MMDA THEORISTS/RESEARCHERS
Gunther Kress
Robert Hodge
Theo van Leeuwen
Ron Scollon
Sigrid Norris
Karen Wohlwend
Carey Jewitt
Rebecca Rogers
Melissa Mosley
METHODS
Entry point:
Viewing video clip without sound led to an analysis of
body positioning;
Questions: What event is Althea constructing?
What modes of communication/interaction does Althea recruit in the construction of this event?
How does Althea use multiple modes to perform a specific identity (identification) in this moment?
Tools: noticing language, gesture, body positioning,
material use
Organization of data: Chart with columns
PROCESS OF THIS ANALYST
Choices of the analyst:
Watch video without sound/with sound
Analyze each mode independently (Norris)
Interpret modes based on noticings across the 5 minute video
Small Group Task: We will watch the video in smaller segments to look at 5 modes together, then look across those noticings.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
An interdisciplinary theory and method for
examining language and social practices (Rogers,
2004)
Concerned with discourse as an instrument of
social control as well as discourse as an instrument
of the social construction of reality (van Leeuwen,
1993, in Wodak & Meyer, 2001)
Came from the traditions of social theory (Foucault,
Marx, Bourdieu) and critical linguistics (Fowler &
Kress, 1979)
HOW IS CDA PRESENT IN LITERACY
RESEARCH/TEACHER EDUCATION RESEARCH?
Literacy research:
Family literacy (Rogers, 2002, 2004)
Third space and youth literacy (Gutierrez, 2006)
Critical policy analysis (Woodside-Jiron, 2003)
Classroom discourse (Jimenez, Smith, & Martinez-Leon, 2003)
High school readers (Rex, 2001)
Literacy Teacher Education Research
Learning to teach literacy in practicum (Mosley, 2010)
Inservice teachers and critical literacy instruction (Van Sluys, et al., 2006)
Teacher book clubs and racial literacy (Rogers & Mosley, 2008)
MAJOR THEORISTS: CDA IN LITERACY OR
LITERACY TEACHER EDUCATION RESEARCH
James Paul Gee (2004)
Norman Fairclough (1992)
Gunther Kress (2003)
Allan Luke (1995)
Rebecca Rogers (2004)
Hilary Janks (2010)
Leslie Burns & Ernest Morrell (2005)
DATA SOURCES TYPICALLY DRAWN UPON
Transcripts
Interactional classroom discourse
Interviews
Speeches
Written texts
Student artifacts
Curricular documents
Policy (district, state, federal)
OUR PROCESS
① Read transcript and watched video.
② Created idealized lines.
③ Transferred the transcript data into a chart with columns for idealized line number, classroom talk, and analytic notes.
④ Wrote analytic notes
⑤ Added three columns for: discourse, style, and genre
⑥ Refined initial coding (from step 4) into categories of discourse, style, and genre.
⑦ Developed larger categories based on patterns in the codes (from step 5).
CDA BREAKOUT SESSION
With a portion of the transcript we will:
Write analytic notes
Code for discourse, style, and genre
Look for larger patterns among initial codes
GEE‟S METHOD OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS USING
BUILDING TASKS
References in literacy research on teacher identity:
Assaf, L. C. (2005). Exploring identities in a reading
specialization program. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(2),
201-236.
Rainville, K. N., & Jones, S. (2008). Situated identities: Power
and positioning in the work of a literacy coach. The Reading
Teacher, 61(6), 440-448.
Resources for discourse analysis:
Gee, J. P. (1999/2005). An introduction to discourse analysis
theory and method. New York: Routledge.
Gee, J.P. (2011). How to do discourse analysis: A toolkit. New
York: Routledge.
MAJOR THEORIST
James Paul Gee, the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential
Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State
University
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Situated meaning
“Situated” means “grounded in actual practices or
experience” (Gee, 2005, p. 53)
Identity
“The „kind of person‟ one is recognized as „being‟ at a
given time and place” (Gee, 2000, p. 99).
discourse (little “d”)
Language-in-use
Discourse (big “D”)
“…distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing,
feeling, dressing, thinking, and believing” (Gee, 2011, p.
177).
STEPS TAKEN BY THIS ANALYST
Entry points to the analysis
Althea‟s transcript and video analysis
Tools
Gee‟s 27 tools for analyzing discourse: These tools are
used to build a context of language in use, to study
grammatical features, to use the building tasks, and to
draw on theories about language and the world.
Organization of data
I printed and copied 27 copies of the transcript and
Althea's reflection and attempted to try out all 27 of
Gee's tools (one tool per copy). I wrote memos at the
end of each and then look for points of convergence
across the analysis.
PROCESS OF THIS ANALYST
Choices of this analyst
I decided to try to use all of Gee‟s 27 tools which is not
technically required.
I realized that my analysis is limited by my “situated
meaning”.
Small group task
We will engage in a collaborative analysis using Althea‟s
transcript and Gee‟s building task tools.
CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS Amy Vetter
University of North Carolina Greensboro
“Text is the way our taken-for-granted worlds
are discovered” (Schiffron, 1994, p. 278).
WHAT IS CONVERSATION ANALYSIS?
Conversation analysis (CA) is the study of talk in interaction (both verbal and non-verbal in situations of everyday life).
Attempts to describe the orderliness, structure and sequential patterns of interaction, whether institutional or in casual conversation.
Seeks to discover the methods by which members of society produce a sense of social order.
How language both creates and is created by social context.
Microanalytic: No detail of conversation is irrelevant.
CA AND RESEARCH
Michaels (1981): “Sharing time” study (differences in telling stories with diverse students) School appropriate narratives and what that means for
success in literacy classrooms
Cazden (1988) systems of conversation in schools are not universal.
Burbules (1993) states that in a single conversation students will apply different conversational genres to accomplish the work of reasoning.
Students help each other during early literacy lessons, managing multi-party talk (Davidson, 2008).
Students are adept at contributing to whole-class instructional talk driven by complex questions that teachers ask (Baker and Freebody,1993). How students construct knowledge through talk and
interactions.
HISTORY AND MAJOR THEORISTS
Began with sociologists (e.g., Harold Garfinkel) who
developed the approach known as
ethnomethodology
Participants continually engage in interpretive activity
as a way of seeking order and normalcy during the
course of their everyday conduct.
Applied to conversation by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel
Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson.
Detailed examination of recorded conversations so
as to describe the organization of everyday language
use and the social order that it revealed (Hutchby and
Wooffitt, 1998).
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Three basic assumptions that have informed the
work of CA researchers.
(1) interaction is structurally organized
(2) contributions to interaction are contextually oriented
(3) these two properties inhere in the details of
interaction so that no order of detail can be dismissed, a
priori, as disorderly, accidental or irrelevant. (Heritage,
1984: 241)
DATA DRAWN UPON
Transcriptions of recorded, naturally occurring
conversations.
Both casual and institutional
Nonverbal talk is important, thus transcription codes are
utilized during analysis (e.g., Gail Jefferson developed a
transcription system).
STEPS TAKEN: (REFER TO HANDOUT)
Adjacency pairs: Organized patterns of stable, recurrent actions that provide for and reflect order within conversation. They provide a normative framework for actions that is accountably implemented. They provide an environment in which inferences about relevance can be assigned across utterances and which meaning can be specified. Also reflect local nature of conversational structure. Question/answer; invitation/acceptance; Order/compliance
Preferred/Dispreferred: What happens when someone does or doesn‟t answer, accept, or comply.
Repair: Organization describes how parties in conversation deal with problems in speaking, hearing, or understanding (e.g. interruption). Repair is classified by who initiates repair (self or other) and by who resolves the problem (self or other) as well as by how it unfolds within a turn or a sequence of turns.
STEPS TAKEN
Transition Relevant Place: The floor is open for
speaker bids (speaker change). These can be
indicated by pauses, terminal pitch, utterance
syntax etc.
Next position: Speaker selects next speaker, next
speaker self-selects, or current speaker continues
Treatment of silence (lapse, gap, or pause)
PROCESS OF ANALYST: POSITIONAL IDENTITY
What does turn-taking, repairs, etc. say about how
she positioned herself as teacher at that moment?
About how she positioned her students?
About how students positioned her.
IF YOU WORKSHOP WITH THE CA GROUP, YOU
WILL…
Examine text using questions from CA (Johnstone,
2002).
Examine positional identities using text as evidence
(Davies & Harre, 1990).
Refer to chart on handout for more details.
Themes MMDA
CDA Gee CA
Teacher‟s Role
(Self-Positioning)
•Teacher is “between” the
students and the
knowledge
•Teacher focused on
finishing rather than
engaged in the moment
Banking model of
schooling
•Teacher as leader,
politeness, self as
expert
•Teacher is in
charge/has authority
•Teacher is focused
on building knowledge
through lines of
questioning
•Strives to be
recognized as a
person who…
•Content-driven
teacher identity
e.g. listener to
students
•Teacher-centered
identity
e.g. focused on her
plan
Students as… •Active (when there‟s a
concept to identify and
create a shared
identification with)
•Inactive (in relation to
what content that she
has to communicate and
record for them
Part of the same
culture
Receiving knowledge
•Having background
knowledge
•Sharing cultural
meanings with
teacher
•Acknowledges
comments that make
connections
•Ridicules comments
that are used to gain
social status or
engage in ways not in
her “plan” but on topic
Text as Holding information (the
board)
Subject of attention
(board, lesson plan)
Text as authority (how
you find the meaning
in text)
•Part of the Discourse
practices of high
school classrooms
n/a
Construction of
Culture;
•Position her + students
in opposition to African
culture
•Shared conceptions of
culture are assumed and
reinforced by gesture
•Culture is customs
that are ordered,
named, and rule-
oriented
•People are
separated by cultures
•Generalizations are
made about culture
•Only in terms of topic
shifts can we identify
what topics are
introduced, changed,
or maintained
MMDA
CDA Gee CA
Examples
of Tools
•Posture/body
position in
relation to
students
•Gesture
•Eye gaze
•Materials
e.g.
Who she is
engaging with;
the types of
gesture and
what it means
Genre
•Explaining
•Interjections
•Hypothetical
questions
•Ask questions
Discourse
•See table 1
e.g. text as
authority
Style
•See table 1
e.g.
positioning
•Authority
•Topics/gram
mar of
questions
•Directives
•Patterns of
Interaction
•Open/closed
questions
•Adjacent
pairs e.g. IRE
•Overlaps
•Transition
•Turn order
•New topics
•Distribution
of turns
•Repair
AFFORDANCES
MMDA: Scollon (2001) wrote that mediated discourse
analysis (not discussed in this session) takes the
emphasis from the social issue (in CDA) to an emphasis
on the social action (event)
CDA linked social issue to the social event, unveiling
connections between conceptions of culture, positioning,
and discursive tools
Gee‟s method helps us to build these layers of meaning
about context by posing questions that relate to the
grammar and meanings “hidden” in the discourse
CA looks carefully at the turns-at-talk and the function of
those without asking questions about context,
relationships, or “hidden” understandings
PUZZLES
Deconstructive/reconstructive discourse analysis: In
what ways can each of these analyses become
reconstructive?
What moments do each analyst reveal that are
entry points for teacher educators, facilitators, or
researchers?
What is productive and unproductive about viewing
the same data source using different
theoretical/methodological lenses?