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.

My Reflections on Chapters 6-10 of Rapley: Doing conversation, discourse and document analysis.

In reading chapters 6-10 of Rapely, specifically through reading chapter 6, I realized I don't feel comfortable with this overwhelming emphasis on "naturally-occurring" talks. What is bothering me in this regard is that as a discourse researcher, when I enter the field and as I am recommended to focus on emerging patterns in naturally-occurring talk, how could I make sure that the talk is happening on he track that might sort of provide answers to my research question. For instance, for my data analysis project in this course, I am planning to attend a meeting of a group of entrepreneurs in Knoxville to observe and to record their interactions. I am not still clear, what I am going to look for in these interactions and even for example, if I want to investigate entrepreneurial identity, how can I make sure that the interactions and discourses that happen in that specific meeting, guide me towards seeing patterns in terms of entrepreneurial identity. However, I assume that I should go to this meeting with my broad research question in hand but I am not sure if that specific conversation will be helpful to me or not. This is very different with interview sessions when I can purposefully prime interviewees to talk about the topic of importance to me.
    In chapter 7 where Rapely talks about exploring conversations with documents, I am a bit confused. I can see how documents like letters to shareholders have been previously used in management & organization research but the majority of this work  has been conducted via content analysis in which I assume the sequence and various turns of talk is not really important. So, I am still thinking of how documents can be used in conversation analysis in my field of study.
In chapter 10, where Rapley talks about the validity of this type of research, I am not easily justified that taking the several steps recommended by Rapley, will justify the audience that my interpretations are credible and plausible and that they are not just my interpretations in the way I want and prefer to see the world and project it to others.

My reflections on Hutchby & Wooffitt (2008), & Wiggins, et al. (2001)

The first thing that attracted my attention, especially because my mind has been primed on conversation analysis is that there are lots of repeated letters in the names of the authors of the reading of this week, for instance, Wooffitt, Jefferson, Wiggins:). Though this observation doesn't mean anything, It was entertaining to me.

After going through the first three chapters of Hutchby & Wooffitt (2008) about conversation analysis and also, Wiggins, et al. (2001) paper on cognitive and behavioral aspect of individuals' eating behaviors, I found a few commonalities between prescriptions of Hutchby & Wooffitt and the way Wiggins had conducted his research.

CA is the study of talk or a systematic analysis of talk produced in everyday situations of human interactions. This has been captured in Wiggin's study of family conversations at dinner table. As Wiggins has elaborated in his paper, he has based his analysis on  transcribed tape recordings of these naturally-occurring conversations to discover how family members understand and respond to each others turns at talk as is the case when participants (including mum & her daughter) discuss the unfinished plate of food of the daughter. 

As Wiggins argues not only the semantic implications of these talks-in -interactions count but also the activities being negotiated in the talk are also of importance, like the consensus the daughter tries to get to with her mum on the uneatability of the food in her plate as the reason why she hasn't finished the food up. 

 In general, the basic tenet of all CAs is that n the realm of a conversation,  individuals manage to uncover and interpret each others' intentions and intended meanings as the sequences of participants talk unfolds whic attract out attention to why conversations should be captured in naturally- occurring contexts. 

I also heard about a study conducted by an organization scholar in which she'he has captured the emerging patterns in the naturally-occurring conversations between a cloth shop seller and his/her customers which shows how the study of conversations can open its place in management and organization studies.  

My reflections on Chapters 1-5 of Rapley and Luff (2012) paper

The first five chapters of Replay's book was an easy read for me and actually answered to several of my questions about conducting qualitative research.
These include:
 - The book recommends researchers to taking field notes during recruitment of participants to be able to use these notes in the final research report.

- It was really interesting to me that the book says interview questions can be changed over the life-cycle of the project. I remember while I was conducting the interviews for my qualitative research, I was always concerned about asking the same questions from all the interviewees. May be my training in quantitative research has conditioned my mind to get used to consistency of methods, questions, etc.
- I also realized that when qualitative researchers talk about taking notes, these notes could include initial stages prior to recording, interview, etc. during the process and after it.
-  I also learnt that it's good to do some field work in the research site prior to starting any kind of recording, because that helps the researcher to get familiar with the research site and avoid any issues that might come up during the main recording.
- When author talks about transcript, it was interesting for me to know that as a qualitative researcher, I should consider transcripts as the secondary data source and always try to re-engage with my recording. I always thought that when transcripts are developed, there's no need to go back to the original recordings while apparently, this is not the case.
- Taking about  Luff & Heath paper, I became interested to know about the research in management that has sort of used video recording. To my surprise my search in Google Scholar didn't yield any management or entrepreneurship research in which data collection has been conducted through video recording. Even if that is not case, I think the number of management & entrepreneurship research will be very few which sets the ground to use this rich data collection method in this stream of research.



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My Reflections on chapters 4-6 of Philips and Jorgensen and Rex (2010)

Basically Chapter 4 of the book talks about discursive Psychology (DP). My understanding of DP is that in DP, our ways of understanding and categorizing the world are not universal, but historically and socially specific and contingent and that individuals are not consistent in their talks and they might contradict themselves in terms of what they say. In fact, these consistencies and inconsistencies are used as rhetorical strategies in situated language use (I am not sure what the last sentence mean? So, is the representation of these consistencies and inconsistencies helping researchers in finding specific patterns?)

The other thing that I understood from reading this chapter is that epistemologically  DP is categorized  in the group of social constructionism that argues that attitudes, social groups and identities are social constructs. These social constructs are the outcomes of social interactions among people in their everyday lives. 

Also, DP sees subjective psychological realities as constituted through discourse, defined as situated language use or language use in everyday texts and talk. Discourse is said to construct our “lived reality”.DP sees people as both producers and as products of discourses.

If I want to take a position, I should confess that I am not a big fan of DP when it argues that what people say does not necessarily represent what they mean and what they think of in their minds. I think, except those instances where there's possibility of "social Desirability", in other circumstances, what people say could be representative of the things that are going on in their minds.  

Chapter 5 talks about the similarities and differences among the three approaches that have been previously discussed in chapters 1-3. Reading this chapter helped to sort of make more sense of the topics that I had read in other chapters. But still there are lots of ambiguities for me about the topics covered in this book. For instance, I am not yet sure about what inter-textuality and inter-discursivity mean. 

After all, multi -perspectival research, discussed in this chapter, reminds me of mixed method research. 

Chapter 6 discusses critical social constructionist research. The first thought that crossed my mind after reading a couple of pages of this chapter was why authors of the book decided to discuss social constructionist research as the final chapter. Honestly, I have no idea about it. However, after reading through the chapter, I forgot about this and sort of overwhelmed my mind with the content of the chapter.  

Reading about "hegemony" in this chapter, reminded me of the hegemony of venture capitalists on entrepreneurs who are in need of financial resources.  

Another issue that crossed my mind was that social constructionists argue that taken-for-grantedness  delimits the field of possibilities for thinking and acting. So, in resource-dependence theory (which is a well-grounded theory in strategic management),  firm's dependence on specific resources that are under the control of an entity in the society, creates power for that entity. So, if the mentioned firm wants to reduce the extent of power and influence of the resource controller, it should look for other ways to get access to those resources or look for ways that makes it independent of those resources. This resource dependence logic makes a very good sense. Whoever controls the valuable resources, is entitled to exert power and influence. How does critical research want and can represent this reality in another way?

  One deconstructive argument could be that the power and influence of those who control resources would be meaningless if nobody needs their resources. So, this is a two-way mutual dependence and influence. 

Although I am not familiar with literacy literature, I enjoyed reading Rex (2010) paper. What I liked about the paper is the flow of the topics which attracts the attention of the reader to go on and on. I think, this is a good example of literature review. 

My reflections on Chapter 1-3 of Jorgensen & Philips and Roger's (2005) paper + Ideas for data collection

I read the first two chapters of the book first. The first chapter was an easy read for me. It clarified the concepts of discourse and discourse analysis, and briefly discussed the different approaches to DA including 1) Laclau & Mouffe's  discourse theory; 2) critical DA; 3) D. Psychology and that they all agree that our ways of talking do not neutrally reflect our worlds, identities, etc. but rather play an active role in creating and changing them. Also, they aim to carry out critical research to investigate power relations in society and to formulate possibilities for social change. In other words, similarities across all DA approaches include:

1. They are all based on social constructionism

2. They see knowledge not as an objective truth out there but as the product of our discourses

3. We are historical and cultural beings and that our knowledge of the world is the product of historically situated interchanges among people.

4. There’s a link between knowledge and social action--> Different social understandings of the world lead to different social actions and therefore the social construction of knowledge and truth has social consequences.

Briefly said, in Laclau & Mouffe's D. theory, discourse constructs the social world in meaning and meaning can never be fixed. Discourse is constantly being transformed through contact with discourses. Fairclough’s  critical discourse analysis focuses on investigation of change  and that concrete language use  always draws on earlier discursive structures as already established meanings + Intertextuality: How an individual's text draws on elements and discourses of other texts and finally, discursive psychology stresses on individual both as product of discourse and as producers of discourse in specific contexts of interactions.

In chapter one where they talk about the differences across the three approaches, authors distinguish between different types of "social practice" including economic logic and discursive practice. This made a question mark in my mind because up to this page, my understanding of the book implied that everything including economic logic is a kind of discourse whereas the book said something different. However, in a few pages further, I realized that assuming everything as a “discourse” is related to Laclau & Mouffe’s and not necessarily to all the three approaches.  

In chapter two, where Laclau & Mouffe’s discourse theory is discussed, I have an easy read to a point of the book in which they talk about “representation & contingency” and from that point on, I was sort of confused and my mind was hanging out from one concept to the other without really being able to distinguish between them. I tried hard to keep myself motivated for persisting to read when my eyes caught the example about that girl who has talked about how she left her religious beliefs to be able to hold the new identity that involved loving her atheist boyfriend which was both interesting to me and it made some of the concepts more clear.

However, what I like about discourse theory is that it assumes social phenomena are never finished or total and that meaning can never be fixed. This reminded me of the piece I read about Miley Cyrus’s video in which according to a critique she has tried to highlight the cliché beauty and sexiness of her whiteness by putting herself in the middle of a circle of women of other colors. According to a critique, she has offended the beauty of black women but who knows what her original intentions have been. Nobody knows. To me this cliques with the incompleteness of social phenomena.

I think the authors have done a good job in crystal clearing the definitions of relevant terms in DT such as nodal points, articulation, floating signifiers, expressions, etc. To me, these words seem very fancy but authors have provided readers with good examples to clarify the meanings.

I actually found lots of overlap between chapter 3 of the book and Roger’s (2005) paper because the focal point in chapter 3 and the paper is critical discourse analysis. While chapter 3, goes into detail of what constitutes CDA, Roger’s (2005) paper, discusses the previous applications of CDA in education research. To be honest, by the time I got to the middle of chapter 3, I was almost lost by various terms and the amount of new information that authors attempts to throw at readers. At this point, I tried to keep calm and get whatever I understand from this chapter instead of fighting with myself into what each and every term used in this chapter means. So, in general, my understanding of chapter 3 is that CDA, is both a theory and method that doesn’t consider all social practices as discourse, instead it specifies discourse as semiotic systems such as language and images Also, apparently, CDA provides theories and methods for the empirical study of relations between discourse and social and cultural developments in different social domains. However, I really like that part of CDA that listen to the voices of never-heard or marginalized classes in the society and tries to make some changes in this regard to improve their situation and free them from the hegemony of the most powerful.

Out of curiosity, I looked up for the applications of CDA in organizational research and to my surprise my search ended up to a few.

For instance, in one of them CDA has been used to distinguish between distinctive discourse types that are initiated by media in mergers & Acquisitions across Finnish banks (Vaara & Tienari, 2009). For the research purposes, the authors have used media texts including news covered in newspapers, content analyzing the texts and extracting themes out of the news texts.

The focus of CDA in organizational research has been on organizational change (Fairclough, 2005) with mostly focusing on written texts like corporate reports, news covered by the media, letters to shareholders, etc.

My ideas for data collection:

I read about this research which has been initiated in University of Manchester a month ago. This is the link the research:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/04/29/mrs-dalloway-in-new-york-documenting-how-people-talk-to-themselves-in-their-heads/

which is about how people talk to themselves in their heads. I hope I can do a discourse analysis on the three videos (each is 13 minutes long) for my class project.

For my text analysis, I would like to focus on the vision and mission statements of a few organizations to see if I can find any patterns across them. 

My Reflections on Mercer's Words & Minds

I enjoyed reading Mercer's book for two reasons: 1) as I am a phd student in Organization & Strategy, I could connect different topics covered in the book with the topic areas of interest in organization and management; 2) as a non-native English speaker who lives in an English-speaking country, many of the cases that were brought up in the book regarding the role of language as "culture", conflicts that might occur due to misunderstandings across communicators, etc. sounded very familiar to me.

   The main idea presented in chapter 1 is that language is a tool for thinking together and making sense of the experience, as nicely referred to by Mercer as "inter-thinking". This is something of crucial importance in organization literature because, almost everything in organizations go around communication, exchange of information and negotiation of meaning which all involve interpretation. A piece of information disseminated in a meeting, does not necessarily invoke the same interpretations in the meeting participants and this might cause problems afterwards. So a big challenge in organizational settings is to convey information to members in a way that at least invoke similar interpretations in members which is easy to say but hard to execute.
This even becomes harder when participants try to influence each other and compete with each other in controlling the flow and outcomes of information exchanges. This has been nicely elaborated by Mercer in Chapter 4 when he talks about persuasion, control and influence.
The main idea discussed in chapter 4 is that shared knowledge and understanding is achieved through conflict and debate as well as through cooperation. This is also a controversial topic in organization literature especially in areas of negotiation, power and influence. Organizational behavior text books are filled with prescriptions presented by organizational scholars about the processes of negotiation, winning the negotiations, compromising some advantages in negotiations and conflict resolution techniques. A point of contrast that I can see between what I read in Mercer's book and what I know about organizational literature is that negotiations in organizations do not necessarily end up to "shared knowledge and understanding" because there are many instances in which the more powerful party - which is usually the one with more valuable resources- dominates the weaker party to come to some reconciliations or even to accept  its loss and this does not necessarily involve the development of shared knowledge and understanding. 
         While I was reading Mercer's chapter 2 in which he talks about the importance of "context" as necessary for understanding, I recalled many instances in organizations where people use communication techniques regardless of the context and how problematic it could be. Also, in this chapter, Mercer talks about "shared knowledge" as a a "context" which reminds me of all the research in organization and management that addresses the challenges posed when employees from various organizational departments try to communicate with each other with the same "technical jargon" used in their departments and how this makes misunderstandings (Marschan- Piekkari, et al., 1999). This people ignore the fact that they are using their department context - specialized language- to communicate with people who don't know that language and this is problematic and makes them seem as if they are not on the same page. Another point brought up in chapter 2 that resonates with what occurs in organizational settings is the use of  gestures and drawings in conjunction with language to convey meaning. That's very true. We are always expected to behave in a certain way in organizations which is indicative of the importance of gestures and also, every organization has a "chart" that develops a shared understanding in organizational members in terms of their positions in the organizational hierarchy, the line of authority, etc. This chart is nothing more than a bunch of boxes and arrows; however, they together have a vital role in organizations. 
           I loved this part of Mercer's book in chapter 3 in which he argues that we have to take calculated risk about how much “context”- shared knowledge- to provide. This leads me to think that communication is all about the "risk" and "language" is a tool we use to bear the risk. Some techniques introduced in Mercer's book about the ways to more thoughtfully bear this risk  - this is just my interpretation- are elicitation, recaps, repetition, reformulation and exhortation. 

   An interesting point presented in chapter 4, is the prevalence of "metaphors" as providers of the frames of reference for sharing thoughts among human beings. Organizations have been metaphorically described as machines, brains, cultures, organisms, psychic prisons and instruments of domination (Morgan, 1997). 

      The main idea presented in Mercer's chapter 5 is how language for collective thinking depends on shared continuing activities of established groups with common interests and goals. In this chapter he talks in detail about communities of practice which were used to be a hot topic in organizational literature in 2000s. As wisely elaborated by Mercer, members of communities can organize language into particular, specialized tools- the genres- that make up the repertoires of the discourses of the communities. This is relevant to communities of practice within and across organizations (Brown & Duguid, 1991). These genres differ from one community of practice to the other. For instance, the community of practice developed across a group of firms in a high-tech industry might be dominated with "product innovation" genres where as in a community of practice including NGOs, the dominant genre might be human well-being.  

In addition, in this chapter Mercer argues that language enables members to construct an identity for their group and to develop roles and identities for themselves within it. Th identity clashes in organizations is another topic of controversy because organizational members are usually members of more than one community within and across the firm. Any of these communities has its own language and identity and bearing all these identities and languages at the same time for one individual is challenging (Wenger, 1998). 

       And finally, chapter 6 of Mercer's book reminds me of myself when he argues that in societies, young people are expected to discover or infer important cultural knowledge for themselves or to live their social lives without it. I think to some extent, new comers to a society are very similar to "young people" in that they should figure out the majority of cultural knowledge on their own which is adventurous but at the same challenging. I would never forget the feeling of embarrassment and detachment when I was sitting on a dinner table with some American friends. They kept talking about the movies and TV shows that were popular in their teens and I, feeling like a "stranger" in their conversations,  was thinking: "Should I watch ALL these movies and TV shows to be able to be part of their conversations?". 

References:

Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation.Organization science, 2(1), 40-57.

Marschan-Piekkari, R., Welch, D., & Welch, L. (1999). In the shadow: the impact of language on structure, power and communication in the multinational.International Business Review, 8(4), 421-440.

Morgan, G. (1997). Images of Organization. NY: SAGE Publications. 

 Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge university press.