My Thoughts about Discourse Analysis Course - Fall 2013

    This was my first experience of taking a course in Educational Psychology department at UT and it turned out to be a good one. Also, this was my first qualitative research course. Although I learnt a lot in this course, I still have a long way to go until I get a good grasp of what qualitative research is.
    One of my favorite parts of this class was the weekly blogging. It made reading the class materials more interesting  and also motivated me to take notes while I was reading and made me reflect on the material as I was reading them because I knew I had to blog and as it's sort of a public social media, I had to post something that was really worth in terms of exposing my thoughts to the the public. Any ways, this experience was totally new to me and I am thinking of using it in the classes that I will teach in the future.
    Another great thing about this class was that we were supposed to post a draft of our deliverable on BB a few days before the deadline. This was really helpful to me because in case something (e.g. the structure of the project) was not clear to me in some parts, I had the opportunity of taking a look at other students' drafts and get an idea of how other students have approached the project.
    Honestly, even after taking this course, I haven't become a big fan of ATLAS TI. I have used QDA MINER before and I am still not sure what the extra values are that ATLAS offers that are not provided by QDA MINER. One of the very few things that I like about ATLAS is its family manager capability but its anchor setting drove me crazy several times. It is not user-friendly at all and is very confusing and time consuming. In addition, I think CODING in QDA is much more efficient than that of ATLAS. May be my exposure to ATLAS has not been enough; however, I am  more in the dislike mode about it rather than in liking mode.
 I found the session when we watched a section of a movie and applied CA and CDA to it in a group setting very helpful. The group exercise made it easier for me to understand how I should apply each of these methods to data and also helped me tease out the differences of the two techniques.

     In general, I am  excited about what I learnt in this course. When I signed up for this course, I used to consider a paragraph as a number of sentences that are linked together but now, a paragraph means beyond this to me. In other words, I  have learnt about the rich meanings that underlie the structure of sentences in a single paragraph and also  the ways people take turns in naturally-occurring talk. It's amazing that there are so much there even in an unplanned naturally-occurring conversations.
    All this learning has happened in this class and I am truely grateful for Dr. Paulus who led us through out the course.  

My Thoughts on Hutchby & Wooffitt & Potter, et al. (2012)

Reading Chapter 7 of Hutchy et al. was helpful to me because part of the data in my mini-data project for this class is semi-structured interviews and reading this chapter helped me understand what aspects of the interviews I am analyzing, I should pay attention to; like to "state formulations" or if possible to use of insertions of "X" & "Y".
Actually, reading Chapter 8 reminded me of a discussion we had in one of our group activities in this class in which we were talking about the implications of DA and the "so what" of doing such research. What I read in this chapter implies that in such fields as political science, or those majors that deal with people with communication difficulties CA has some important applications in helping to achieve real-world objectives; however, in terms of my field of study - management & organization- I do believe that CA has important implications in cases where peers attempt to establish their power status in peer relationships via use of specific words, or taking specific turns, etc. Also, in terms of entrepreneurial identity which is my area of research, the use of words, their sequence of application by entrepreneurs, etc. can convey critical information about how they identify themselves as "entrepreneurs."

I also found the 8 points explicated in Potter, et al. (2012) about the way interviews are conducted, the role of interviewer, etc. very helpful. They've talked about some points that might seem minor but when actually conducting the interviews, they become critical because they influence the way the interview goes on which definitely impacts the way it is analyzed.

My Thoughts on Lester & Paulus (2011) & Paulus & Lester (2013)

I really enjoyed reading this paper, especially the thoughtful use of students' blogging for this research purpose was quite interesting to me. However, I have two questions:

1. In drafting a paper based on a qualitative research, my co-authors have always asked me to pick some representative quotes of the interviews and put them in the manuscript to make our arguments around the themes of the paper. Lester & Paulus (2011) paper has used two excerpts (Gail's and Hannah's) to make the case. I wonder how authors tend to pick these excerpts? Any guidelines? or any shortcuts that make selection of the most representative excerpt easier?

2. I still have this issue with discourse analysis about convincing readers about authors' interpretations. For instance, in content analysis, word frequencies could be used as an evidence to strengthen authors' arguments. Is  there a similar mechanism in DA or DP or only "trust" between authors and readers make authors' arguments convincing.

As I was reading through both papers, I found the following analytic steps discussed  in the papers helpful in managing my tomorrow data session:

1. Read the texts out loud
2. recording the individual and joint reflections about those sections within the texts that were initially found most intriguing.

In my mini-data analysis project, I also intend to build on the questions asked by the authors in Lester & Paulus (2011) & Paulus & Lester (2013) to develop my DA method:

1. What are entrepreneurs accomplishing within their chats?
2. How are they constructing their discourse in order to achieve this?
3. What discourse resources are being used to perform these tasks? (e.g. surprise displays, "I don't know", extreme surprise displays ( I never knew).

My Thoughts about our First Data Session

Due to some technical difficulties for transferring N's file to our individual's laptops, we decided to move from the class to the hallway to listen to her audio all together. We all, found this very helpful. Because it helped us to stay in the same pace and whenever, we had any comments or question, N would stop the audio to answer our questions or to listen to our comments. Good strategy that she pursued was that she asked us to listen to previously selected parts of the audio in which she has any questions or any doubts.
As we were all from different majors, we brought very different views about her audio to the table which were also interesting to N. I think, this group exercise, help us see what others might see in the text while we might have ignored it or we might have seen it in a very different way.

My Reflections on Units 1 & 2 of Gee: How to do discourse analysis: A toolkit

Unit 1. Language and Language Acquisition


The importance of context in DA: Physical setting in which the communication takes place & everything in it,  body gestures, shared cultural knowledge.
To do DA, we have to see what is old & taken for granted as if it were brand-new. Actually, we should see all the assumption & info speakers leave unsaid, because communication & culture are like icebergs.
- What the speaker says + context = What the speaker mean
-Tools for DA: 1)"fill in gap" is when the listener uses what is said & the context in which it was said t fill or complete what the speaker has said; 2) "Making strange tool"; 3) "the subject tool: why speakers have chosen a specific subject and  what they are saying about it; 4) the "frame problem" (what we know about the context can be true but too limited) that includes falsification; 5) the "doing & not saying tool" (for any conversation, ask not only what the speaker is saying but what he/she is trying to do); 6) the vocabulary tool ask what sorts of words are being used in terms of Germanic words or Latinate ones and how this contributes to the purpose of communicating); 7) the "why this way and not that way" tool ( ask why the speaker built & designed with grammar in the way in which he/sh did and not in some other way; ask how else this could have been said and what the speaker was trying to mean); 8) the "integration" tool (ask how clauses were integrated or packaged into utterances or sentences); 10) the "topic & themes" tool (ask what the topic & theme is for each clause?); 11) the "stanza tool" (look for stanzas and how they cluster into larger blocks of information)  
_ As a strategy to be used in "making strange" tool, having an "insider" which is familiar with the context and an "outsider" who is not, helps to overcome taken-for-granted-ness.
The idea that "context is infinite" make me scared if once I want to pursue DA research because this reminds me of the many ways that infinity in context can lead to different interpretations of the phenomena by different
 people. This makes my research as "something difficult to capture" and makes me stressed.
In page 36, Gee argues that due to falsification that happens as we get more varied data about the context, there's this possibility that another researcher, later re-study our data and question our claims. Gee calls this " Empirical enterprise". This is interesting to me because as far as I've learned in quantitative research, if two different researchers empirically examine the same data, or in other words, replicate the research, they are expected to come to almost the same findings and that shows the robustness of the methods they've used but that's not the case in DA, because DA is all about interpretations.
Also, the frame problem tool which is considered as a tool for DA analysts and which underlines that "if looking at more context does not change what we think the language means, then we can be satisfied , at least for the time being, that our research is on the right track, reminds me of "saturation" in data collection in qualitative research. I have no idea if they are related but this similarity occurred to me.
This also pose this question in my mind that are DA researchers, by using the above-mentioned tools, are seeking to make their interpretations of the discourses more homogeneous or this is not necessarily the case?

In chapter 2. Gee emphasizes on the observation that by speaking, we are always DOING things & not just saying things or communicating. In this regards, we use grammar to build and design structures & meanings. This is interesting to me and helps me understand why conversation analysis can contribute to our understanding of the phenomena.

My question in chapter 2, is regarding the 8th tool of DA which is the "vocabulary" tool. Is it really necessary for a DA researcher to be able to distinguish between English words with German roots relative to those of Latinate root. This requires a good knowledge of linguistics that might not be found in every DA researchers' tool kit!

My Reflections & Questions on Price dissertation proposal,Gabriel & Lester paper and Johnston's proposal

My Reflections on Price's Dissertation Proposal

Price seeks to explore the discursive practice of students receiving special education services, caregivers, educational staff, school leaders and some other stakeholders participating in IEP meetings in order to better understand how planning is constructed and negotiated through naturally occurring talk in an institutional setting.
I enjoyed reading the reflexivity statement and how the author's direct experience as an educator and also the sibling of an adult with disabilities, might affect her interpretations.

The following are my questions regarding the research method used in this research:
1. Author has articulated in several places in the proposal that the participants include students, educators, parents, teachers and school managers. I wonder if it would be really possible to capture the main body of transitions through focusing on the interactions and talks of these many individuals in a context. Isn't it difficult to capture the patterns that show up in the discourse of all these people in individual meetings?


2. I wonder what "legal pads" are where in page 48. author has named them as an instrument for keeping track of his/her writings of observational notes?

3. In the data analysis section (Page. 48), author has talked about his/her selectivity of "what to transcribe beyond exact participant words". I am not sure what this means? Does it mean that the researcher is looking for those "turns in talks" that Hutchby and Wooffitt (2008) talk about that is sort of beyond the words that are used by the participants in their conversation or does it mean something else?


4. In discussing the analytical implications of the research journal, the author talks about "scrutinizing my own discourse for differing and competing versions ..... that pushes towards an unfamiliar and the uncomfortable" (P. 49). My question is whose discourse is the author focusing on? The participants' discourse, his/her own discourse about the participants' discourse or both? also, it's not clear to me why this reflexivity is uncomfortable and unfamiliar?

MَََARGINAL NOTE: I think it's so cool that you are transcribing your own observational notes to compare and supplement the transcriptions of the actual utterances within recordings (P. 52).

5. Researcher has explicated this in different sections of the proposal that his/her unit of analysis is discourse and not participants and that it's not of high interest for the research purpose to be aware of the participants' characteristics and that their talks is what that matters the most which is DP approach. My question is that isn't it true that what we say (converse) is largely influenced by who we are in terms of our gender, race, nationality, etc. So, I think, ignoring participants' demographic profiles is likely to limit the trustworthiness of the findings of this research which I think should be mentioned in the "limitations of the research".

6. While reading through the proposal, I kept thinking about if the use of different data sources is a strategy for triangulation. Then In page 54, author talks about "variability" in DA work rather than "triangulation". It would be great if she/he talks about why this is variability and not triangulation.


My questions about "A discourse analysis of the Los Angeles Times"
This paper examines policy narrative centered on teacher evaluation and effectiveness. In other words, it seeks to explore how media- Los Angeles Times- has worked its way  to shape VAM which is a teacher evaluation and effectiveness methodology through discourse analysis.

I am interested in how important is the repeated reading of the texts, transcripts, etc. in producing reliable findings because both pieces have emphasized on that.
I like the idea of keeping an "audit trail" that permits outside researchers to review and become familiar with researchers' decision making process.

1. Researchers have used 9 extracts to show how media shapes the discourse around teaching evaluations. My question is that how did the researchers decided about the number of extracts that is sufficient to lead them to the patterns they were looking for in the extracts. Are there saturation thresholds in this type of research?
2. This research is all about the interpretations of the researchers? Are there any possibilities that they enrich their interpretation by conducting content analysis across the extracts or if this type of research doesn't validate methods such as content analysis?

My reflections and questions about Johnston's dissertation proposal

This research aims to propose a DA to uncover how teachers' identity is negotiated at the beginning of their careers.
1. Is there any specific reason why the researcher has used Inqscribe for transcription instead of Atlas?

2. One thing that struck me in this type of research and also the two other research is that as researcher's selection of the texts/transcriptions that he/she thinks will be helpful to the analysis, plays an important role in where the research would go, I wonder if there is anything  like inter-rater reliability that could be done according to the selection of texts/transcription that would go to the analysis phase. After all, it is possible that a good part of data is neglected by a specific researcher whereas another researcher might be able to extract some interesting patterns out of the same ignored data.

My reflection on chapters 4-6 of Hutchby & Wooffitt

As I was reading the beginning of chapter 4  in which the authors talk about the three steps in conducting analysis on conversations, I was sort of reminded of the similarities that exist across CA and dancing (I am a big fan of dancing :)). According to the authors, at first, you should find a possibly interesting phenomenon in the data. It relates to me like finding a good piece of music among a bunch of CDs. According to the authors, the second step involves being attentive to particular turns in the talks, and being able to describe particular occurrences in the data, which to me is like, listening to that piece of music and at the same time, allowing your body to move with  the turns and highs and lows of that music (this free-lance body movements could end up to a nice dance). The third step according to the authors requires a return to the data to see if other occurrences in the data could be described with this account, which to me sounds like, trying to come up with some finely-figured body movements that are fit with the music and also sort of  familiar to the dancer from his/her previous experience.
The insistence of the authors on coming up with a way of being able to integrate the "deviant cases" in the general descriptions of the data is sort of at odds with what critical thinkers believe. Based on my perception, critical thinkers, believe that trying to stuff deviant cases - like minors- in general and broad categories, tends to marginalize them which is happening in the example given from Schegloff in Chapter 4. My question is that why should we find a way  to describe that one deviant phone call in the general category of the rest of the "typical" phone calls. Doing that might confound some interesting phenomenon that might be going on around that deviant phone call.
Another interesting point in chapter 4, was its emphasis on the importance of "culture" as a context in which the conversation is going on. This reminds me of last week's controversy news  about the telephone talk that occurred between Obama and the Iranian president, Rouhani, after 30 years of no contacts between the two countries and also the negotiations that happened between the Iranian foreign minister and that of the other countries in NY. As the aftermath of these important political events, many media interpretations showed up  here and there- thankfully, I have access to both English & Farsi news- each trying to interpret in their own ways the words spoken by each of these public figures, the sequence of their talks, the turns in their conversations and even their body gestures towards each others. In some instances, the interpretations of the Iranian media was dramatically different from that of the western countries which controlling for media biases- that always exist- demonstrates how these factors are differently seen and observed in different cultural contexts.
Apparently, what links chapter 4 and 5 is that those generalizeable patterns found in the large number of conversation collections, could be put into test in single-case analysis which is the topic covered in chapter 5. Also, I assume that the mini-data analysis project which we are supposed to do for this course, is an instance of the single-case CA, highlighted in chapter 5.
I think, the discussions presented in chapter 6 in terms of the role of context (formal vs. informal) in turn-taking patterns is very relevant but I am not still sure, what the authors mean by "bricolage" in this context.
We use this term in entrepreneurship research, pointing to activities undertaken by entrepreneurs relying on their resources at hand, in stead of seeking new resources. May be that's the reason, I am not still sure about the meaning of bricolage in CA.