I'm really excited for tonight's class, especially since we are having a visitor, Dr. Thorsten Huth, coming. Having taken a few linguistics classes here, Dr. Huth has built up a cult-like following, so I'm excited to get the chance to talk turkey with him.

If I understood correctly, we were supposed to read Andrea Golato's article, "Studying Compliment
Responses: A Comparison of DCTs and Recordings of Naturally Occurring Talk," for class.

A few notes on Golato, albeit late ones:
The premise of the article is that data has been acquired through trails that misrepresent "real" language experiences, which get rationalized for larger patterns of language (91). 
I like it. It makes a lot of sense. I know in composition studies, we typically look at written practices by students. Sometimes, researchers will ask participants about their motivations or study practices in writing. I can't think of a recent article where a researcher asked a participant to compose on the spot.

In terms of role playing, Golato discusses the situation as being a fake-experience because the participants are unaware of the qualities associated with the role (93).

This situation remind me of a class experience that I had this semester. I'm teaching business writing, and one of the major issues in the course is "getting a job" experience: cover letter, resumes, interviews. I asked my students to participate in an interviewing experience. They rebelled, like guerilla-warfare rebelled. At the crux of the dilemma was (1) they didn't want to do the assignment and (2) they didn't like the idea of interviewing, and thus walking away with an assessment of their classmates. I wasn't surprised by the former; I was surprised by the latter. The crux of the problem came from their concern of playing an interviewer-role. They weren't sure what to do. After hearing about their concern, I tried to correct it. But it was too late. In this scenario, however, I wanted them to simulate the experience, so that a real experience wouldn't scare them. Either way, I'm thinking of re-organizing the assignment to pre-set "employers" and "employees." I'll have to revamp the assignment. But this article gave me food for thought.

Field observations can be skewed if it is only due to memory recall and used across spaces. (95)
I agree that memory can be incomplete. But I don't think we should overlook what researchers remember from events. So events should be recording--audio or video--but memo taking after the event shouldn't be overlooked. Also, as an ethnography, going across spaces is important to consider. But I understand why a CA researcher would want to standardize a space to understand language exchanges. I hold context extremely important to the language usages. If CAers aren't worried about context, a way to form a stasis for analysis is being only going back to the same space. I'm not willing to go wholeheartedly into this evaluation. 

Gee-ze, Louise! or How to Make Unicorn Stew

Ok, alright. I wanted to play nice with Gee's How to Do Discourse Analysis, but the book is trying to turn DA work into a cookbook. But it's not a fancy cookbook that tells me how to make a gourmet meal from a radish, a can of tuna, noddles, and orange juice. Nope, it's one of those crappy cookbooks that tells us how to do the obvious. (Now, don't jump the gun on me because this sounds contradictory to my undying love for Shklovsky's defamiliarization that I discussed last week.) For example, Pippa Middleton wrote an awful party planning book that included tidbits akin to, "breakfast is good in the morning" and "a chicken can be cut into a thigh, drumstick, breast, and wing." And yes, that information is right, and I'm even sure that there are some people who don't know these things. But the Middleton's have gained business savvy for their party planning business--even I know this! They should, in fact, be bringing their A-game, a la Martha Stewart style--not reinventing the basics for us.

This long-drawn out, extended metaphor is exactly my problem I have with Gee: he is known for handling language and communication issues; he has established a recognizable scholarly name in English studies; he has drive more novice English scholars to think critically; but he is talking to readers of this text as if they have never thought to uncover issues of language analysis. And I don't like that this entire book is built upon an assumption of a reader who is completely unaware of close readings. No one is above learning new tools for analysis, but the fact that he can't identify his tools all in unique ways bothers me. The overlapping of his analytical tools seems to imply that we readers aren't going to be bothered by that repetitiveness in writing. I'm all for sign-posting in writing, but don't waste my time recycling partial correlation for other causation. And much like Middleton's cookbook, he really needed a better editor to keep him on the straight on narrow to report the varieties of analysis that can bloom from a certain type of analytical gazing on the data.

So I've been thinking a lot about pedagogical books to support teachers' introducing qual studies to their students. And now more than ever, I realize that my focus has been put on the wrong target audience. Rather than trying to create a book on qual-pedagogy, a book needs to be framed for students that scaffolds from their knowledge. I read B. Johnstone's Qualitative Research for Sociolinguists, and I remember being annoyed with how she doesn't explain what types of questions sociolinguists should ask. If the research question is weak, the project is going to have a difficult development. I've always described the research question for a qual project as the paper's thesis statement. So it's important that they are well articulated. So my new question is "how do I break down the report sections (lit review, methods, analysis, etc) for English majors?".

 *****

How to Make Unicorn Stew
Ingredients:
3 carrots
1 onion
a pot of water
some spices
a box of arzo
1 lbs. unicorn chunks

Wait--unicorn stew?!?

How do you make unicorn stew?
You don't.

Gee-whizz, Sholovsky's swell

The first time I picked up some of James Paul Gee's work was in my MA in a class called "Computers and Writing." (This class was amazing, by the way. Tres chic.) It wasn't a primary source for the class, but his commentary on gaming in the classroom was a totally new paradigm that many people haven't considered for the 21st century. (And the work was published in 2008, and the class ran Winter 2009, so it was timely). He showed how video games have stages of learning that readily gets "noobs" to engage in contexts. And we writing teachers should learn from that structure and implement those similar tools in the the writing classroom. The techniques respond to the Millennial-generation, but show has skills are acquired and then advanced in stages with objectives--think Super Mario Brothers advancing to save the princess. Now I'm not a gamer, but that argument is so savvy and smooth, it's just sexy. (Dare I say, maybe, unicorn-sexy?!)

I wasn't familiar with any of other Gee's work--ASU is a big hub for composition/rhetoric, especially in terms of L2 issues--so I was excited to see what he came up with in How to Do Discourse Analysis: a Toolkit. After reading the first two units, I'm not sure how I feel about the book. It's both helpful and annoying, almost akin to Rapley's text: the presentation is unique, but I've also spent a lot of time in this field, so it's not like I haven't read this argument before (time and time again). Gee's perspective is significantly different because he takes a sociolinguistic approach to decode language, really sticking to a issues we have canonized in English: literary and rhetorical constructions. I don't think he earns unicorn points for this method to explain DA, but he definitely gets some happy prancing points for giving a shout out to Viktor Shklovsky. Shklovsky's one of my favorite literary critics because of his essay, "Art as Technique."

Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, an the fear of war... And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stoney. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. 

(Shklovsky, Victor. "Art as Technique." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. ed. David H. Richter. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007: 778.)

I love this quote. It regularly comes up every few semesters in my work because it's so important in remembering that language isn't a tool. It's an art. It's a style. So when Gee included a citation to Shklovsky's work on defamiliarization, a bell went off in my head. Yes! It is exactly the art of defamiliarizing language that qualitative researchers, especially those in DA, need to do. We all know words, grammar, tone, style, etc. But the act of considering the implications of these words from someone else's perspective requires us to think of something quotidienne as unique. I think this is why I gravitate towards styles of phenomenology, but I don't feel like I know enough about it to be totally firm on the stance. But I like the idea of trying to find the art of the daily life.

***

Sorry this is late--my apt. seems to have a busted water pipe and drowning my neighbor's below. I'm worried this may stymie my chances to get to class tomorrow. Here's hoping the problem gets diagnosed ASAP--and it's not my fault!

Questions for Other Researchers

I'm feeling a little out of place asking questions about education dissertations. Invariably, I'm waiting for the "well, it's done this way for ed. majors" answer." And that's fine. I understand there is a disciplinary style for format, focus, and organization for a major writing project, like a dissertation. After reading through Joshua's (awesomely massive!) prospectus, I've decided to stick to questions on the methods. Afterall, learning more about methods is what we are here about.

In reference to Joshua's prospectus:

• In the transcription section, you mention that you, first, refrain from conventional punctuation, and then, add Jeffersonian transcripts for passages used in the dissertation (34). Since Jeffersonian transcription includes a refined sense of punctuation, where will you explain the implication of that notation? 
• Can you explain the Discursive Action Model (DAM) more (36)? It isolates "Action, Fact and Interest, and Accountability," but can you define and distinguish these categories more for me? Can we create our own analytical model to explain how we identify conceptual ideas from the transcribed text?
• I'm not sure I understand how DP differs from DA, in this context of research. Is it because the topic of investigation is self-reflective by the participant?
• Edwards and Potter get shout-outs all over, does that mean we can find a researcher and keep their methodology paradigm in sight? 

Hmm, can you tell that I'm in the process of writing up my own prospectus and outlining the implications of each chapter. <Sigh>

I have the same types of questions for Elizabeth about her construction of a theory-methodology-methods complex.

Additionally, an update about the progress of the projects would be awesome. 

What we really need is a little bit of Aristotle...and some 20th century rhetoric

Let me preface by saying that this entry will definitely play with rhetoric more than this class is built for. I'm having a hard time engaging with Sacks because, let's face it, I hate the idea of a decontextualized conversation. This scenario just doesn't exist! So while I like some of the characteristics of conversational analysis (CA), it needs a bit of rhetorical love. Unfortunately for Sacks, introducing rhetorical theory essentially means the theoretical death of CA, while also problematizing the role of language in society more. I would argue that rhetoric swirls space, time, and actors. But it's not really just a mix of these ingredients, but the integration of space and actors within time. Grammar allows a sense of time that impacts our space and actors. So CA dies if we revoke the role of one of these qualities. We, researchers, care about rhetorical qualities because they make language and its analysis not a scientific study, but a qualitative one. Linguists (I'm pretty sure) would defend the stance that language is dynamic. So while we can create scientific models for repeated actions, communication is variety. This variety is constructed through layers of rhetorical tools.

Sacks, or rather Hutchby and Wooffitt evoke a rhetorical inquiry into CA in chapter 6 about "Talk in Institutional Settings." The style of talking for set organizations is not dissimilar to private conversation:

"By focusing on the relatively specialized ways in which turn-taking and turn-design are accomplished in institutional settings, conversation analysts show how participants similarly constitute 'non-conversation' interactions b the same process of displaying an orientation to the relevance of specific types of activity" (138). 

There is a systemization to all scopes of communication. This commentary reminded me of Aristotle's definition of topoi. Topoi are conventions for argumentation. Pick an industry (eg baking, politics, flute playing), and we know there are styles that have been practiced and repeated to signify the niche. Language tools like vocabulary, passive v. active sentence structures(science v. humanities), citation styles (MLA v. APA v. Chicago...), etc. are all hallmarks of disciplinized styles for institutional exchanges. English people would call this part of genre studies.

But before topoi, Aristotle explains that we must understanding the contemporariness of the argument. He defines three rhetorical styles that predicates the topoi conventions. The three styles are deliberative, judicial, and epideictic. Each style is associated with a time frame of action relative to the speaker. For example, deliberative speech is used to define future action (eg. should we go to war; how many people to invite to the wedding). Judicial, as the name implies, is for assessments of the past (eg. was it murder or manslaughter, can you steal your own property in the midst of a divorce?). Epideictic is used to assign praise or blame in the present tense (eg. an obituary or national anthem). So we have to understand the timing of the argument to understand its genre tendencies, says Aristotle.

"But wait," you ask, "why should Sacks care about all of this old Greek stuff?" To use a more contemporary metaphor borrowed from Twitter, CA is all about "trending" conversational turns. Chapters 4 and 5 related (semi-cookbook-style) considerations to analyze conversation. (See something happen--add a hashtag to it. See it again? Add another hashtag to it. Etc.) But unlike tweets, conversations have a more implicit exchange of dialogic characteristic. An epideictic speech moves towards an emotional assessment for the now. We see this, for example, in obituaries when people detail the lives of relatives to invoke grief. CA would all this movement the turn-taking. And Aristotle tells us that these patterns are important:

"Thus, one should take coincidences and chance happenings as due to deliberate purpose; for if many similar examples are cited, they will seem to be a sign of virtue and purpose." (On Rhetoric, I. 9. 32, my emphasis).

These turns are important because it relates some information about the speaker's role. And here again, is where CA gets KO'd by rhetoric. CA doesn't seem to stop and question who people are, it only cares that they said something to someone else who responded. But a purposeful conversation gets directed by someone who knows what's going on and knows how to discuss the issue to the people. It's not about a speaker's intention, but about their skills. I think one must consider the skill set of a conversationalist to understand how the discussion unfolds. Many teachers have "classic" tales of woe when students came to class unprepared and the lesson goes wry because the skills are not balanced in the context. Sure, CA will show how a stasis gets uncovered, but knowing the backstory helps the analysis.

I'm sorry if this commentary seems disjointed, but it felt satisfying.

Not Rapley, but another book

I usually don't wait until the 11th hour to post my blog, but I was having a particularly hard time thinking of something to say other than, "meh" about Rapley's Doing Conversation book. I sat on this book for a week--and I even went out trying to find some other interesting subject to post on, but nothing was very inspiring. I kept wanting to write about Rapley, even though the world is filled with words to think about and play with. All of this starting from an exigent point to write a post that reflected my actual excitement and interest on DA. I wouldn't be able to do that if I wrote a summary/reflection on Rapley's text. His book just didn't say anything new to me. He brings up some great points, but the end motto was, "language offers us a variety of insights." <sigh> Call me a "erudite humanist curmudgeon," but I would not have invested so much of my young adulthood in an English program if I didn't think language has varieties, which then offers us space for exploration. Acknowledging variations is part of our rhetorician's credo...that is, if we had one, but we couldn't agree on how/what/when to say anything. Bazinga!--a little rhetorical pun for you.

Ok, so my point: Rapley's work is good...if you haven't read it before. And really, after a while, these "intro to data collection/mining/crafting" books all say it. So I'm not giving him a high-five for it, out-right.

Thus in search of something to spark interest, I turned to a group who keep me jazzed and happy: my fellow 631 peers and their blogs. I visited a couple of pages, and Jackie's blog spoke the most to me because of our similiar experiences. In her commentary, she discusses her experience teaching ENG 102, which includes a qualitative research unit. The shared experience of managing the class, while simultaneously trying to better our understanding of this methodological approach got me thinking: where are the books informing us to become qualitative research teachers?

I feel very fortunate that I completed my MA specifically in composition/rhetoric pedagogy, with a subculture that focused on the "unfamiliar genre project." This experience pushed me to think about how to relate issues of writing, especially when people don't understand the style in which to write. I used to be terrified of writing classes--because of its seemingly subjective evaluation--but that really isn't the case. There are heuristics and standards to classify and define writing, as long as you make sure you have corroborating it with the appropriate audience, context, and exigence. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that writing is easy, or teaching is easy. But there are ways to create evaluation and assessment features, which allow people to learn, practice, and develop these skills.

So where are the pedagogical books for qualitative research? I think I'd like to read one of those because it would require an author to detail the rhetorical situation of a learning experience that produces a specific style of writing. And that's a new topic that I would like to ingest. I understand that qualitative research is difficult to contain because, as researchers, we are trying to take a societal temperature. That means a lot thermometers for a variety of orifices; definitely not for the faint of heart. So writers, like Rapley, share their stories of collecting data because it shows us moments of how those "temperatures" are acquired, processed, and interpreted. I know I developed my dissertation theory from another researcher's work, even though she was discussing a totally different group, religion, presence, etc. Her work inspired me. But I get hung up that I'm asking the wrong questions, in the wrong way. I think I want a qual-research-ped book because it would allow me to understand the evaluative criteria used to assess projects. I don't need to hear about varieties of language, but evaluative models on research.

But the night is closing down, and so must I. Definitely things to think about--including a book hunt in the library and on Amazon. Trena, any title suggestions?!?

Here Lies Sacks, the Fairest Unicorn of Them All

Trena warned us in class that we'd either love or hate Conversation Analysis, and I can understand how people can respond to CA like that. But I've been known (and sometimes "accused," I should say) of being too "hard" on texts, so I'll approach this week's post with a bit of English composition theory by Peter Elbow. Elbow argues that we should be critical of a text in two polemic ways: as a believer and as a doubter. In this way, critiques are situated with both positive and negative commentary. Nothing is ever totally a waste of writing or a waste of reading. As a composition teacher, it's a good policy to read student papers with this lens, so I'll try it with CA.

Believing commentary:

I absolutely think it's phenomenal that we have a methodology that focuses on the act of transcription. It's such an underrated skill for qualitative research because novice or intermediate researchers are so caught up on learning how to conduct qualitative projects, from setting up research questions to analyzing data, that they forget the details. One of those details that gets buried is the act of transcribing. If the data is the primary source used to respond and answer the research questions, transcription should be done with some precision and accuracy. I like that Hutchby and Wooffitt highlight that, "transcription is done by the analyst him or herself. Transcription thereby becomes an integral part of analysis, since in repeatedly listening to the tape one begins to hear and to focus on phenomena that may subsequently form part of an analytic account" (71). Yes! It's the very act of engage with one medium--a recording--and turning it into another one--a written document--that requires systemization by the researcher.

If we pay attention to the style of word exchange, then it's only fitting that we create vocabulary to detail conversations. Sack's (and Hutchby and Wooffitt's) coding of conversational hallmarks was pretty awesome. I especially liked the discussion on "turn-taking" because I never thought of binding a conversation in the now. Limiting a conversation to its time means every utterance is possible. So the fact that we only get one conversation per time implies that the conversation is important since we only have one chance at it.

Doubting commentary:

But at the same time, saying that the conversation is only now? Nope, that doesn't fit. That means there's no background to our speakers. But the very literacy capabilities of a speaker plays into the conversation. Frankly, my experiences impact where I go, with whom I speak, and on what topics I discuss.

Additionally, I find his methodology utterly self-serving. He wasn't sure that this would actually lead anywhere, but it did fuel his research goals. Maybe it's Hutchby and Wooffitt's fault, but it seems that Sacks' was a bit arrogant about why people should utilize CA.

Moreover, his theory does not lie in either linguistics or sociology. I'm more familiar with the former than latter, but not by that much. I find it problematic that he can't build a methodology that reacts to a disciplinary field. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that we should, or even have to, organize under these disciplinary categorizes. (I mean, I am a College of Arts and Science student running wild in a College of Ed class.) The reason, however, that these disciplinary standards are referred to is because it sets up a contextual frame for which concepts are issued, and then debated. Everyone talks about identity, but the ways in which we assign "identity" and the conversations around is are unique. This uniqueness isn't without merit since it ensures that our audience can actually engage in the conversation. Another 20th century rhetorician established the metaphor of "entering the parlor": the idea is that when one enters a dinner party, you listen to hear conversations then engage with your stance. Not that you just enter a room, and start hurling opinions, regardless of what is being said.

Biggest Question: 

I'm not sure I like entirety of CA. It has some hinky standards that mess with my definitions of parole. But I'm having a hard time discerning how the analysis in CA is different from DA? There's an example in the book that analyzed a speaker's choice of words (37). The analyst (I think it's Sacks' work) says that it's important the speaker started to "girl," but then changed to say "chick." But isn't the change that happened based on the speaker's sense of langue? I'm not sure how the CA-analyst can make any judgments on a speaker's choices. So apart from the transcription, what's the difference in the analysis between CA and DA?

Sorry--one more question: the first time I heard about CA it was in terms of second language acquisition. It made sense to me that these teachers try to focus and pinpoint how, and if, their students have made it to a native or native-like speaking standard. But doesn't CA automatically discredit speaker's ability because that's part of the CA? I think I'm missing something here. Also, is that ethical to use CA in a non-native speaker's moment, since it discredits contextual factors? 

Hmmmm. I need a cookie. 

*****

Hutchby, Ian, and Robin Woffitt. Conversation Analysis. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008. Print.

Meh. Meh? Meh! Qualitative Introduction

Tim Rapley's Doing Conversation, Discourse and Document Analysis was productive and unproductive. I feel like I am always reading introductory books on qualitative research. So a lot of the information that he presented in chapters 1-4 was repeated in other texts on research. For example, he puts out the need for qualitative research when comparing two statements: "Freedom fighter kills politician," and "Terrorist kills politician." The terminology one would choses contextualizes her social ideologies. [Meh.] I know that already. But I'm not sure why it's part of the introduction to a methods book. If someone wants to "do conversation," don't they already know that word choice is a huge consideration? [Meh?] But a little contextual credit goes to Rapley, especially as I review the chapter to post on the anniversary of 9/11. Our society has changed its stance on using these words, and it has become part of our national voice. One point for Rapley for using a good contextual example to prove words matter. [Meh!] (But I don't think I have ever heard American soldiers being referred to as "freedom fighters," while I have readily heard the US media call foreign parties "terrorists." Are these two terms part of a binary pair? I always thought it was soldier/terrorist.) So Rapley introduces a standard issue--albeit one that needs to be included here--with a kick ass example. Thus my confused title remains for the post. I'm not sure if I'm bored or happy with the text.

One subject that was pretty nifty was in chapter 5 on the Jeffersonian transcription styles. A researcher includes additional markers in a transcription to implicate tempo, style, stress, and tone in the speaker's voice. In general, I found that I transcribe slowly. We're talking one hour to listen to a sound bite, write it down, listen to it again, fix it, listen to it again, fix it, listen to it again, then maybe move on. I'm not sure if I'm super slow at it, a little too OCD and trying to get everything down, or missing some great tip to go faster. But it's hard to be upset about the time when I'm confident about the transcription once it's done.

Additionally, I never thought about video transcription. Rapley definitely got a "Meh!" on that commentary. I've never done a project that required a video file, so it never occurred to me to include taped cues. One question I have is how to include all the video cues within the audio transcription. I know my OCD is going to kick in to make sure everything is aligned. Hmm.

Agendas, Theories, and Methodologies: Tree, Venn, or Constellation Model

Last week in class, I tried to ask a question about the connection of a researcher's agenda to her theory and method paradigm. Unfortunately, I didn't explain it well, so it came off a bit stupid (and probably random). Lucky for me, the reading this weekend from Jorgenson and Phillips' Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method brought the issue back to bat.

My original question, revised: in post-structuralism--and really, I should be saying Derridian deconstruction--"il n'y a pas de texte [there is nothing outside of the text]." The stance creates a unique moment in creating the contextual space of a discursive moment. Based on the intertextuality of the articulations, the scene that develops is only of the "now": who is there and what is said in that space. That's a great axiom for discourse analysts (trying to finish a dissertation) to incorporate, since it limits the ethnographic detail needed to learn the articulated varieties. So if someone were claiming a post-structural theoretical backing, it sheds light to her methods, but what about her agenda for research? In the same way that discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis differ in their stance to right injustices, doesn't a person's agenda have to match their theory, and thus additionally their methods? My ultimate question: what is the relationship between a researcher's agenda, theory, and method? The title to this blog post implies that I'm looking to create a visual model to metaphorize this issue, but that's only because I like visuals. With that said, how would a visual model look to represent these point situating the researcher's ethos: tree diagram, venn diagram, or constellation model? I understand that I'm limiting the available representations, but that's only because I can see one of these styles working to explain this model.

Reading "Across Approaches" brought this growing conceptual issue to hand because of the various styles of interpretive research. The author's explain that Fairclough posits two analytical dimensions: (1) the event and (2) the theory that drives the method; Laclau and Mouffe stand between articulation and discourse (140-41). But this all stems from the genesis of a research question. Research questions start organically: someone sees something and questions it. We are coming face-to-face with a bias/agenda driven issue. That researcher then compiles a lit review, reviews theories, or falls back on her expertise, assembles her theory-method concoction. Moreover, the "Analytical Tools" section is shaped by the researcher's initial sighting of the issue, and then her stance on it. Because of this, there has to be an equal tripart consideration of framing a qualitative project.

But I think this falls apart because a researcher's agenda isn't constrained by a boundary based on time. Or at least it shouldn't. If a researcher based her stance on a case or concept, it sounds an awfully lot like positivism. Which no post-structuralist is going to sign up for. Ever. They'd rather poke their eye out. So while I'm sure of that, I'm no longer sure of this posting. I had the proverbial wheels spinning, but maybe they were spinning out of control.

And now I can't build the model I wanted so badly at the beginning of this post.

Here's to another week of theoretical ramblings...

Jorgensen and Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method

Ugh, Jorgenson and Phillips' Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method "Chapter 2" was exhausting. I like to think that I can handle theory reading, but this chapter went slowly for me. The layered vocabulary terms turned into a slurry, and I ended up having to slow down my reading to make sure I understood each term, individually, to understand the greater formation of the theoretical framework. After last week's (slight) debacle of reading Mercer as a rhetorician and not as...whatever his intended target audience member, I thought to temper my bias to understand Jorgenson and Phillips' stance. I know, I know--we can't believe in discourse analysis if we think we can "turn off" our bias--so maybe I should say that I wanted to give them as much space as possible for them to explain their answers, and then overlay it with my own paradigm. But just when I think that's a viable option, "Chapter 2" adds another authorial complexity by summarizing Laclau and Mouffe's critical stance, so I'm not sure whose bias was more impeding progress: Jorgenson and Phillips or mine? But I digress...

Chapter 2 begins by situating Laclau and Mouffe's theory as one that "combin[es] and modif[ies] two major theoretical traditions, Marxism and structuralism," but then classifies their theory as a "single poststructuralist theory in which the whole field is understood as a web of processes in which meaning is created" (25). I've work regularly with poststructural theories--especially deconstruction--so I was happy to be on familiar ground. However, the terminology of these theoretical frames did make me question from what disciplinary tradition were Laclau and Mouffe coming, since it could imply how the theoretical structure is actually situated. A friend of my was joking how all disciplines uses the word "discourse," but we all have our own definition of what that actually means; and we haven't even begun to problematize "analysis." Nevertheless, from my quick internet search, it looks like Laclau and Mouffe are coming from a political science background. So it wasn't surprising to see the commentary on social structure and hegemony. Personally, I really really enjoyed the detailed commentary on words as part of the construction of truths since it acts as the most molecular entity we can use to investigate discursive fields.

Laclau and Mouffe use the post-structural axiom of a temporary closure of meaning to open varieties of understanding. So just because someone says something, doesn't mean it is applicable (ie. the example of "football" in medical history). It is the articulation of signs which builds truths, rather than build rhetorical fallacies. So at this point, I start to question the conceptual idea of truth, and moreover, the subjects who are involved in the articulated exchange. We have a model in rhetoric called "the rhetorical situation," which arranges the rhetor, the audience, and the message upon a contextual field. But the presence of truth, or maybe it's actually power, (and Foucault, regardless of terminology) enter the situation to participate in the articulation. I think a discussion of this topic needs to be approached because the term(s) bring into a sense of time to the situation. If discursive moments are unbounded by a past or future, and only exist in the "now" or "present," how can we claim any social impact? More generally, how can we date or mark the beginning and/or end of a discursive moment? I need to think more about this, but it felt like the commentary allows discursivity to be a "now" moments, when it really may not be. I see this problem materializing in literary analysis, where we are told to write about the text in the present, but how do we deal with a narration that happened or will happen.

Fin. I'm going to stop here because this either makes sense or I've reinvented the wheel.

Long term assignments:

For my mini-literature review, I'd like to look for articles detailing issues of national identity. I've already found some great articles, so I'm excited about this topic.

For my data source, I'm interested in using Pres. Obama's speech in Cairo "To the Muslim World" as an institutional discourse moment (4 June 2009). I'm not sure if that's too dated. For a textual base discourse, I'd like to use newspaper articles from the New York Times on the speech. If that proves to be limited, I might broaden it to issues of national identity, especially as it pertains to Muslims.

Introducing: Bushra, Mercer, and Rhetoric

My name is Bushra Malaibari and I'm a PhD student in the Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics (RWL) division in the English Department. I came to UTK with a BA in Chemistry and Literature (Honors) and an MA in Written Communications (Teaching First Year Composition in Higher Ed). I usually teach composition classes, and my scholarly work is focused in rhetoric and rhetorical theory. Even if people don't know the scholarly definition of  "rhetoric," most people can correctly assume that it has to do with communicating. So it's not surprising that I like words enough to want to make a professional career of it; and I especially like words that are spoken (even though written words are also pretty great). Nevertheless, one of my favorite reactions I get after introducing myself to non-rhetoricians is people thinking I know everything about grammar and public speaking. Nothing could be further from the truth! Pursuing scholarly endeavors in rhetoric is fascinating to me because it is all about varieties of exchange. Every person has their own style to present their ideas, but somehow large groups of people can get together and have a conversation. So instead of thinking that I'm a rhetorician because I know absolutely how to use words, I like to think that I'm a rhetorician because I know that there is no one way to trade words. And I'm definitely ready to hear how others use, exchange, and understand words.

With that short introduction, I have to say that Mercer's Words & Mind: How We Use Language to Think Together was not necessarily my ideal introduction to language exchange because it mitigates the rhetorics of languages that catalyzes its users to action. Mercer relied heavily on linguistic theories to justify his take on language. But linguistics--or at least some disciplines within linguistics--can diminish the telos of language. He explains his exigence for this text on language at the end of first chapter: "there is something of special important that language enables us to do, which although vital for our everyday lives, is rarely held up for special consideration in research on language and thinking. It is that language provides us with a means for thinking together, for jointly creating knowledge and understanding" (14-15, original emphasis). My poor, little heart skipped a beat at this claim because it's the field of rhetoric that observes the combustion of language and thinking to create knowledge and understanding.

Moreover, the conceptual introduction of "rhetoric" is not until chapter 4 (chapter 4!!), where it is limited to archaic and pop-culture definitions. First, Mercer uses an extremely abbreviated definition of rhetoric as "persuasive language" and rounds it out with "persuasion and argument as inherently dubious or aberrant activities" (73). Surely, this definition isn't out-and-out wrong, but he conflates canonical texts with contemporary society and ignores 20th century work on rhetoric, which makes me sad. I have to include that Aristotle's definition ("persuasion") is not that truncated, but it also includes pages of commentary afterwards on the moral fiber of the rhetor. Aristotle focuses his definitions on people who are engaged in truth. And it is within this motivation for exchanges of "truths" that persuasion occurs since truths are subjective. So while I love the conceptual idea that I can call liars and conmen "bad rhetors," it is within the 20th century that rhetoric and rhetorical theorist start consider the implications of communicative exchanges based on dogma, tyranny, and other nefarious activities that conflict with other people's truths.

But this is not to say that Mercer's text is without merit: there are explanations and examples of some dense concepts and topics given in a seemingly casual way. The development of issues on language practices allows readers to quickly engage in the text, without getting overwhelmed by the topics. (This book would have been profoundly helpful in keeping terms clear in my mind in previous classes.) And the book's organization was nicely arranged to first set the stage of language exchanges, and then investigate those concepts within micro to macro spaces, without apparent redundancy or repetition. It definitely works as an introduction to language practices for qualitative researchers. 

Mercer, Neil. Words & Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2000.