This is how Max feels about Rapley...

I agree, buddy.  I agree.  :-)

I liked Rapley because he helped me start to sorta-kinda-maybe-almost understand what I might be doing when I analyze my data...but I have to admit it that while I was reading, I realized something.  I like recipes.  Not because I like to follow them when I cook--I actually hate those kinds of recipes.  They do not at all help me with cooking and do not make the process any more enjoyable...but that is totally different topic.  I like directions.  I like to be told what to do.  I try to convince myself that I don't need rules...but I do.  Give me a rule, and I'll follow it.  Tell me how to do it right, and I'll do it that way.  I am was am a ballerina, not a modern dancer.  I need my choreography, hours of rehearsal, and someone to tell me what I'm doing wrong, so I can do it right.  DA (okay fine, qualitative research) is so outside of my comfort zone!  

I am very happy and comfortable with my quantitative data.  I'm in Special Education, after all.  There is this part of me that would be happy to stay with my numbers.  But the other part of me knows that that there is no such thing as objectivity and that numbers can't tell the stories.  Anyway...Here are my meandering thoughts on the reading.

I like the explanations and examples of different key features that can be objects of focus in Ch. 6.  (See--recipes.  I like them)  But then it seriously overwhelms me.  Now I am freaking out, because it's like Thanksgiving dinner and I'm trying to follow 10 recipes at the same time.   How is the sequence organized?  How do participants choose words?  How do they position themselves?  And dammit the rolls are burning.  But really.  How do you know which things you want to focus on?  Does you have a research question that guides you to focus on certain features?  Or do you pretend that the data is leading you? 

Much of the features they discussed were things we've talked about, but I liked "structural organization" because it made me realize that while I'm interested in the turn-taking and sequence organization...I'm also really interested in how instructional dialogue is organized structurally.  Another section that stood out to me was the "So What?", where Rapley discussed Kitzinger and Firth's (1999) work in date-rape prevention.  I have said that for years...I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks that prevention education strategies are actually given perpetrators an excuse.  I recently had a conversation with a friend who was talking about girls inappropriate clothing choices on a recent church youth group trip.  I tried to explain my perspective, and it didn't go over so well.  I was trying to say that I think "the church" places all the blame and responsibility on females and doesn't demand that males take responsibility for their own actions.  I guess what I was trying to say to her is that I wasn't bothered so much by what was being said, but by what was not being said.  So apparently I was analyzing some discourse...so I should stop freaking out, cause I probably analyze discourse without knowing it.  

I liked that he included discussion on documents-in-use, because this will probably be helpful to my analysis as the teacher and students use documents during the lesson.  I hadn't really thought about that until I read this chapter.  

In Chapter 8, when he talked about the "hidden role of the analyst"I realized that this is an issue that I have with my work scoring, coding, analyzing, interpreting, etc. student writing.  I like that Rapley says "you need to gain a certain level of members' knowledge . . . of the language and routines of your research site" (p. 104)  This is exactly why I need to step outside of my comfort zone and get comfortable with qualitative research.  His mandate is the exact opposite of the objective crap my field likes to believe in and promote.  I happen to think that the knowledge I have that interferes with my objectivity with looking at student writing is quite valuable, thank you.  :-)  

On p. 106, there are several long quotes from Firth and Kitzinger (1998).  The second one talks about the dangers of decontextualizing data extracts.  I think this is a great reminder, because when we start looking at pulling out fragments and analyzing and looking at specific features, there is the potential to use talk in an inappropriate role to make claims that are not supported by the data when considered in context.  This makes me think of when people use quotes, or lyric excerpts, or quotes to support a point they are making, without really knowing with those things mean.  It's propaganda.  And it works.  But the people who do these things understand the power of language.  They understand that it is language in action.  I mean...not the average person who quotes Robert Frost in an effort to support nonconformity...he or she is likely just confused.  But the advertisers, political advisors, and lawyers who knowingly and intentionally use language in this way.  What's that old cliché?  You can make the data say whatever you want it to say.  I think that's the danger of not being reflexive.  And I think part of being aware of your own biases is making sure that we are considering data extracts in context--both the local context and the larger context that includes the historical trajectory, broader themes, and concepts of power,etc.  

Making progress... :-)

Luff and Heath seemed like a lot of common sense, but it was also good to read that other people struggle with these decisions!  I've been dealing with some "technical challenges" with classroom observation video equipment for the last month.  I was extremely excited that the classroom I am using for my DA project was FINALLY able to record this week after lots of days and hours of work getting the equipment up and running.  Then on Friday I went to download the teacher's instruction from the week...  And my angles were...uh..."not ideal".  In this particular classroom there are 2 cameras mounted on the front and back walls of the classroom.  This allows one camera to capture the students from the front, while the other camera captures the students from the back along with the teacher and the instructional aides she is using.  But...I set the camera angles based on observations I had done in her classroom.  It's always difficult to determine how I can get the best data.  I like to get the big picture of what's happening in the room, but I also like to be zoomed in enough to see signs, facial expressions, and other non-manual communication clearly.  I thought I had them set well.  The teacher camera angle was set to include (from left to right) the flip chart easel the teacher uses for planning, the interactive whiteboard where the writing is displayed, and the teacher computer where the teacher often sits to add to the class co-construction.  So turns out, the teacher likes to stand to the left of the easel...often!  So she's off screen for a large portion of the videos.  Awesome.  I set the system up for the teacher to adjust the angles herself with very little effort, but she didn't check it prior to record.  So I'm left with lots of footage that will be difficult to analyze...because I can only hear her.  Luff and Heath talk about how the angles impact the perspective and analysis.  The give great examples of this, but I think in a situation where communication is predominately manual this impact may be even more pronounced.  

While reading all these chapters and articles on transcription, I've really been thinking about the task of recording sign language on paper.  First of all, I really need to look for some resources on this.  Right now I don't know if I'm planning to write an "English" transcription or keep it in ASL by using "glossing"  (writing the signs in English words using all caps).  I know how to gloss in theory.  I've even done it a lot.  But I'm not really trained in it.  I learned ASL through immersion, not through ASL, interpreting, or Linguistics classes...so I'm not really "qualified".  (I actually think that if I were to do a study that I was ever planning to publish, I would likely work together with a person trained in ASL linguistics...but anyway...)  I'm assuming there are some generally accepted approaches to recording manual communication...although, like all things in deaf ed, it's probably an extremely controversial topic.  I'd like to see how other researchers have approaches recording ASL, especially those things which we refer to as "non-manual markers" (facial expressions, mouth movements, etc.)   How have they been recorded.  I think sign intensity could easily be recorded in a way that is similar to inflection codes in Jeffersonian transcription.  So...about this whole Jeffersonian thing.  I don't hate it.  I kind of really like it.  I just think it will likely need to be adapted to record manual communication.  So since we have to pullout fragments to do in Jeffersonian, would it be acceptable for mine to be a slightly different adapted version of Jeffersonian?  Again...I need to look for resources on what others have done.  I don't expect you to have any idea...but I am asking in terms of the assignment.  

Beyond the general practice of recording manual communication, I've been thinking of my unique situation.  At the school where I am recording classroom discourse, the instructional policy mandates that teachers utilize "simultaneous communication, or simcom.  This means the teachers (and some students) both speak and sign while communicating.  And this means there are two completely different messages being sent simultaneously.  All participants and/or observers have different levels of access to each of these messages.  I keep trying to determine how I want to approach this.  Basically, I need to determine if I'm going to include spoken communication in my analysis.  Jefferson (2004) says "Why put all that stuff in?  Well, as they say, because it's there" (p. 16).  I think that's my hangup with this.  I don't want to completely ignore messages that are there.  There are times when parts of the discourse are only delivered auditorily...but those messages aren't available to everyone.  Decisions on how to handle this could really impact the analysis and findings.  How exactly could this be indicated, would I put the sign language over the English to show that it's happening at the same time?  It could, I think, be interesting even to look at times with these messages (auditory and visual) may even be in conflict with one another.  But...I think, because this is a learning experience, I'll likely focus on all of the communication that is visually accessible.  Let's keep this simple(-ish?)  This brings me back to the footage I have of last week.  I can hear the teacher, but I often can't see her...so I suppose I'll have to throw out that footage, fix the angles, and try to get better footage this week.  

I enjoyed reading Wiggins et al.  Not because of the topic...I actually found that to be somewhat annoying...but because it was helpful to see an example.  :-)  I know I've read articles that have used DA and CA before, but I wasn't "reading them like a researcher", so I didn't really pay attention to their methods.  Their explanation of their analytic procedure was helpful because I've been thinking the whole time--so when I go to analyze this data I'm collecting, what exactly will I be doing?  One of the 3 sentences I highlighted in this section said, "The data corpus was examined with a concern for the constructive and action-orientated nature of the participants' talk; how the participants themselves made sense of, and orientated towards, each other's utterances" (p. 8).   It was a really short section, but it very clearly explained exactly what they had done and how the next section would be set up.  While I wasn't overly interested in their topic, reading this example made me look forward to reading the articles for my lit review so I can see examples of DA in action, in my field.  

Trying to Catch Up...

So...I've gotten a little very behind.  Attempting to catch up from the last 2 weeks.  I started first with the books...

Rapley.  I like him.  His book is easy to read.  Very conversational.  I needed that.  I felt like I understood social constructionism, but then when we talked about it in class a few weeks ago, I wasn't so sure anymore.  His explanations in Ch. 1 were helpful in getting me back on track.  Love this quote: "Put simply, our understanding of things, concepts or ideas that we might take for granted like 'sexuality', 'madness' or 'instincts' is not somehow natural  or pre-given but rather is the product of human actions and interactions, human history, society and culture." (p. 4).  His key points for this chapter are great take aways from a lot of what we have discussed thus far this semester.  I've been really unsure of what kind of document(s) I want to use for analysis.  I think this is partially because I wasn't sure what kinds of documents could be used.  The way he talks about using data to build an archive was helpful to me.  I also liked how he listed lots of examples.  I really liked the example of looking at newspaper headlines.  Not because I plan to do this for any reason, but because it helped me understand that a part of a whole could be examined (if that makes any sense.)  But even after reading this section, I still don't really know what kind of text-based data source I want to analyze.  I wanted it to be connected in some way to the videotape of a classroom, but I can't really figure out how to do that.  I guess I could do the school's website or the teacher's daily instruction log...  His descriptions of collective A/V data made me pretty happy about my choice.  I'm using a video of a class during writing instruction.  This classroom has videocameras mounted on two walls in the classroom.  Writing instruction is recorded daily so the students are desensitized to the recording.  I'm pretty confident that the language captured will be as close to "naturally occurring" as possible.  I really liked Ch. 5.  Why?  Because I honestly knew nothing about transcribing A/V materials.  Where was this chapter before I did an entire study using interviews with beginning deaf educators in Intro to Qual?  I know that some of the techniques for transcribing discussed in this text and in Conversation Analysis are specific to this methodology, but even knowing the techniques Rapley used in just the basic transcript (pps. 53-54) really would have helped tremendously.  I felt like there was so much that I wasn't capturing because I didn't know about these procedures.  I collected some great data, but if I had known a better way to transcribe and analyze it, my study would have been better...  Anyway, I really liked his discussion about determining what level of detail to transcribe.  It was helpful for me to think about.  His sections on "working with video-based data" and "transcribing images" were especially helpful to me because of the participants with whom I tend to work and the types of data I tend to collect.  (How many times have I used helpful in the paragraph?)  Having worked at a school for students with sensory impairments for several years, I'm familiar with adding closed captions and descriptive audio.  I have had to do both on multiple occasions.  I couldn't help but think that a detailed transcript should basically be a combination of these two accommodations.  I think conceptualizing transcription in this way will help me to determine the amount of detail to include.

Hutchby & Wooffitt.  We've done a lot of reading so far this semester, but the whole time, I've been wondering exactly why I thought I was interested in Discourse Analysis and why I thought it would be helpful to my research.  The introduction helped me start to figure this out.  In the introduction, H & B say that CA is relevant to enthnography of communication, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.  As a linguistics person, I could visualize how CA could be used in of these areas...and see them as 3 separate areas.  I think because I'm interested in all 3 of these areas of linguistics the lines start to blur and I start confusing myself.  I think all along I thought that I was interested in discourse analysis, but what I really am most interested in is conversation analysis, which is a tool of discourse analysis.  "At the most basic level, conversation analysis is the study of talk.  To put it in slightly more complex terms, it is the systematic analysis of the talk produced in everyday situations of human interaction:  talk-interaction" (p. 11).  Yep.  That is what I want to study--talk.  But...part of my problem is that I'm also interested in language.  As we've been reading and talking this semester, I kept thinking about this and trying to figure out how to separate these two things.  I'm pretty sure the last paragraph on p. 12. was written just for me.  (I'm including it at the bottom of this post so I can read it again periodically, when my brain starts blending language and talk-in-interaction again.)  Basically this chapter really started to challenge my thinking about language/talk/talk-in-interaction--especially the last key point in Sacks' 'wild' possibility (Also included at the bottom of this post).  This point really does challenge a lot of the ideas that I have held as a person whose done a lot of work in sociolinguistics.  As I read through the discussion on conversational structures in chapter 2, I wondered if there are any differences with the nature of turn-taking with signed-language-interaction or how non-manual markers might be best indicated in conversation analysis.  I really liked the way data and transcription were described in Ch. 3.   --"The transcript is seen as a 'representation' of the data; while the tape itself is viewed as a 'reproduction' of a determinate social event" (p. 70).   The way the chapter was set up (description, followed by example) made it much easier to start to see how these symbols are used to transcribe in CA.  But it did make the idea of transcribing sign language, increasingly more daunting!  If spoken language transcription is this complex... yikes!  :-)  (I know you said there is a way to code on the video so we don't have to transcribe, and I may try that out for this project.  But I definitely still see the value in transcription and know I will need to develop this skill for future work.)  Note to self:  Work on converting the video to a file that is compatible with Atlas.ti.  :-)

"In relation to this, there is a further significance in saying that CA is the study not just of talk, but of talking-in-interaction.  On one level, talk involves language.  In fact it might be said that talk is the verbal instantiation of language.  But CA is only marginally interested in language as such; its actual object of study is the interactional organization of social activities.  CA is a radical departure from other forms of linguistically oriented analysis in that the production of utterances, and more particularly the sense they obtain, is seen not in terms of the structure of language, but first and foremost as a practical social accomplishment.  That is, words used in talk are not studied as semantic units, but as products or objects which are designed and used in terms of the activities being negotiated in the talk; as requests, proposals, accusations, complaints, and so on.  Moreover, the accomplishment of order, and of sense, or coherence, in talk-in-interaction is seen as inextricably tied to the local circumstances in which utterances are produced"  (p. 12)


Three key points of Sacks' 'wild' possibility:

• "Utterances may be viewed as objects which speakers use to accomplish particular things in their interactions with others" (p. 17)
• "Talk can be seen as methodic" (p. 18)
• "Talk-in-interaction can be treated as an object of analysis in its own right, rather than simply as a window through which we can view other social processes or broader sociological variables" (p. 19).  

Too Much Language Analysis for One Week

Just keep swimming.   I'm trying to remember a conversation that I've had recently that wasn't about language and discourse...  And I almost can't remember.  I'm in the middle of a 3 day training (for work) on the Structural Analysis of Written Language (SAWL), a tool for monitoring the development of written English.  We spent the morning talking about Chomsky and his kernel sentences and "key trigger verbs" and their semantic and syntactic features, and in the afternoon we began coding written language samples.  It was a lot of good information and an interesting, re-conceptualized approach to grammar that I'm interested in learning about.  But so much of what we are being trained to do has to do with measuring written language in numbers and percentages (of t-units, flawed t-units, etc.)  It's hard for me to look at language in such completely different ways for such different purposes simultaneously.   (Langue?  Parole?  Tous les deux?  Je pense que j'ai besoin d'une petite siesta...)  It's good...because this is exactly why I wanted to take this course...but it also makes me a little dizzy!  Just keep swimming...just keep swimming...

Discursive Psychology.  I'm pretty sure I had no idea what discursive psychology was before reading this.  At first I was reading along and thought--I like this.  It just makes sense to me.  On the first night of class, Hollie said something about how she didn't realize that not everyone thought that way, because it just made sense to her (that the message sent isn't always the message received).  That's almost how I felt about this...of course our attitudes, social groups, and identities are social constructed...if they were tied to mental states or processes wouldn't they be much more resistant to change and much less likely to be influenced by environment.  When I look back on the major changes in my own attitudes and identities and it's clear to me that those changes were social constructed.  I really liked on page 122 when they said, "The production of meaning, and hence identity construction, are constrained by the rage of discursive resources which are available to individuals by virtue of their social and cultural position and status."  That makes total sense to me.  This summer I remember reading something in Sociolinguistics about how we have to have language before we can have thoughts.  I have to admit that this is something that is tough for me to grasp.  In deaf ed, we are often claiming the opposite (In fact, I heard the opposite in our SAWL training today..."They have thoughts, they just don't have the language to express them."  So while I think I essentially agree it's still a tough concept for me to wrap my brain around.  That quote was helpful to me because it articulated why it is that I do agree that language gives birth to thought.  I think my favorite thing about DP (in comparison to Laclau and Mouffe) is that it analyzes discourse as situated social practice.  (Cause really that's where L & M lose me.)  When they start discussing the 3 strands of DP, they refer back to Figure 1.2 (p. 20).  Where was that when I was actually reading Chapter 1?  (But really...why do I always skip over the graphics...you'd never know I was a reading teacher...I do not at all practice what I preach!)  Anyway...I found it to be very helpful.  Pretty sure I'll go back to that a few times this semester.   So clearly...I liked this chapter.  I like DP  (probably would have enjoyed that class this summer!)...but then I read, "Discursive psychology thus locates certain social practices outside of discourse, although it does not distinguish as sharply between discursive and non-discursive practices as does critical discourse analysis"  (p. 103).   And I thought--hold up...this is the same issue I had with CDA.  I don't understand this distinction.  To me, it's all discourse.  (This is where I do agree with you, Laclau & Mouffe!)  I wasn't clear (okay, I'm still not) on what it is that they locate outside of discourse...but this statement bothered me.

Across the Approaches.  This chapter got me a little confused because I was still trying to figure out what DP considers to be "discourse".  I feel like they aren't saying that certain social practices aren't discourse. but they are saying that certain social practices may not be the focus of a given examination because discourse is given different boundaries depending on the context and research question.   However, if such practices were to be the focus, other theories could be used to explain how those non-discursive practices that are indeed part of discourse but have not yet been translated into a given discourse analytical perspective.  If that's what they're saying, then I'm not so bothered by this demarcation.  If that's not what they're saying...well then I might be even more confused...  :-)  This chapter was helpful in that it started to help me understand how these 3 approaches could be used in analysis.  I liked that examples in this chapter (and the others) because it helps me start to understand how DA can be used to answer research questions...but I think I'm looking forward to doing my mini lit review, because I need to understand what kinds of questions researchers are using DA to answer, especially in my field.

Really long sidenote that has a lot more to do with my thinking about the research I'm doing for my job than DA:  (Really you should skip this...It's just me trying to figure out what in the world I'm thinking about the SAWL, which is a completely different way of analyzing language...Writing helps me think!)  The linguist in me got super distracted in chapter 5 (as well as, throughout the book) when the authors were using words that reveal something to me about them (rubbish sorting, flatmates, etc.)  Clearly, I know what these words mean...but I think it's interesting because those words told me something about the authors (even before we discussed their backgrounds). Recently I was talking to my friend Candice on Skype.  Her family recently moved to Alabama from England.  We typically talk while her children are napping, but her 3-year-old was awake so I got to chat with him.  I was astounded at how obvious it was that they had been living in England.  By his language, one would have thought he was British!   It's interesting to me, because Candice and her husband are both American, and Candice is a stay at home mom.  Yet, somehow in their interactions in public he has picked up on these language features through social interaction.  He learned that it is more effective to use the discourse of the people around him.  Both Candice and I were born in Germany.  There are Beta tapes of us at Joseph's age speaking German to one another.  Neither of us remembers enough to hold a conversation in German now.  We came back to the states and quickly realized that the language used around us was very different and that German really didn't help us communicate with others.  We wondered together about how long it would take for Joseph to lose his British language and start speaking with a Southern twang.  His parole will begin to change, because his langue will, and vice versa.  The visible changes that will occur in his language features will also be tied to more tacit changes in his identities and attitudes.  It's so obvious to see how discourse changes according to the context when there are surface level differences are overt.  But I think that context influences subtle differences (those beneath the surface), too.  I realized today that this is my major issue with the SAWL.  It is intended to analyze language out of context.  But I really think that there is really no point in looking at language without context.  (Sorry, L & M.) So while I like the SAWL...much more than sentence patterns which I just can't get behind at all...I'm sort of stuck on whether or not I think it's useful for analyzing student language.  I think it has potential...but I would like to still look at the context.  Which I guess goes back to epistemological differences.  The SAWL is trying to be objective.  I'm not.  So maybe there is something about DP (outside of DA even) that could be helpful to me in looking at deaf students' language in a different way.  The ways I know feel too reductionist, to decontextualized, too inadequate...

Discourse Analysis in Literacy.  I definitely need to look into a lot of these articles.  Some for my mini lit review.  Some just because.  But what I found surprising is how many of these articles I have read (especially those about identity and shifting roles)...and I never realized that they used DA.  Probably because I'd never even heard of DA until near the end of my second Masters.  And then there's the whole idea that I didn't read like a researcher until a year ago, because I had sworn I was never going to be a researcher.  God and his sense of humor...  Some of the studies they mentioned and the questions that the included studies address were helpful to me in thinking about how DA might be used in deaf ed in general.  When I was reading about how Dworin and Bomer (2008) us DA to critique Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty, my first thought was:  I need to read that.  But then I thought about how DA could be used to critique other written texts--like laws and policies in special education or websites for various power-holding groups in deaf ed (AG Bell comes to mind...)  When I was reading about the articles that used DA to as "What counts as literacy?" I wondered how DA could be used to look at "What counts as ASL?"  I was observing in a class last week and the teacher was trying to explicitly teach some things about ASL that I viewed as misconceptions.  It got me thinking about how our ideas of what constitutes ASL had been formed.  Who decides?  What counts?  And then whenever I read about identity formation of any kind, I start thinking about Deaf with a capital D.  I always say that Deafness is a social construct.  But what is it?  How is it constructed?  And by whom?  One of the studies that stood out to me most was Mariage (2000).  (Quote:  "The study contributed to clams that when literacy events create conditions that give children who are commonly considered deficient access and ownership of their learning it can lead to increases in achievement of students" p. 107)  I use the research of Englert and Mariage a lot for my work in writing instruction and classroom discourse.  I'm sure I've read this before.  But I want to read it again, for new reasons.  I really think that it gets at one of the things I am most interested in when it comes to classroom discourse and struggling readers/writers...how classroom discourse can contribute to their achievement.