Discursive Psychology 7.28.13

 Discourse and Social Psychology (p. 94-187) – Potter and Wetherell

Chapter 5 – Self

It is so hard to get past traditional views of the self.  I suppose this is particularly hard for me because of my background in psychology, where both trait and role views of the self are central, and humanistic views of the self are included.  Trait theory is what Paula Deen was relying on when she said that people who were “talking bad about her” didn’t know her and when she told stories about her family. In telling her family stories, she was trying to show her “self” as a static individual who has always been the same and couldn’t possibly hurt others.  This conception of the self is also what the Myers Briggs is attempting to capture with its distinctions between introverts and extraverts, those who sense and those who are intuitive, feelers and thinkers, and judgers and perceivers.   This quote on page 98 about role theory stood out to me … “Like the actor on the stage, a person’s actions are not expressive of a unique personality, but expressive of their role, and most individuals are interchangeable when it comes to role playing.”  I do think people act in certain ways because of the roles they play – for me, those would be grad student, daughter, friend, and consultant, and I think there is some common ground between all those acting within the constraints of those various roles.  I can’t, however, buy the second part of that sentence – that individuals are interchangeable.  I need to think some more about that… I guess my views of the self are most closely connected to the humanistic view of the self – which is summarized on page 100, “There is the role being acted out and there is the actor’s real self, which guides the performance and, in some sense, remains removed and alienated from the part being played.”  This has been my assumption for most of my life, and only with this course and these readings have I begun to consider an alternative view.

There is a lot in Gergen’s view of the self that I can appreciate – I like the terms “language based approaches to the self” and “a discursive model of the self”, as much of what we do and how we interact is through our language.  I agree with every part of this definition from page 102, “There is not ‘one’ self waiting to be discovered or uncovered but a multitude of selves found in the different kinds of linguistic practices articulated now, in the past, historically, and cross culturally.”  

This quote on page 104, also stood out to me – “The methods of conceptualizing the self involved in different linguistic practices have vital consequences for the positioning of people in society; they are not neutral or without impact, they produce senses of the self which may be negative, destructive, oppressive, as well as senses which might change and liberate”.

As I was reading this view of the self, I was reminded of a quote from Montaigne (college freshman philosophy class) – that goes something like this… I do not portray being, I portray passing.  My history is adapted to the moment. I may presently change, not only by fortune, but by intention.  If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

I feel like much of what I have “assumed” to be true is up for debate now. Interesting that the authors talk about the first step in DA is to be able to suspend beliefs and assumptions that we take for granted.  That is a pretty difficult thing to do!

I am really curious about why so much of this research was done in New Zealand (Aotearoa – “land of the long white cloud”) and on the Maori people. Reading Recovery came from New Zealand, and Marie Clay and Courtney Cazden did a great deal of work together in NZ.  I am just so curious about all of these connections.  As I read about the Maori culture, I was reminded of my experiences there when I visited there. Add the movie, Whale Rider, to our growing list – it is all about Maori culture.

Chapter 6 – Categories

I feel like I have talked a great deal in my previous blog posts about the idea of categories/labels in education and how bothered I am by them.  I agree with the authors when they discussed the benefit of categories – we can organize and simplify things, and we have common language to understand and communicate, especially in particular fields.  There are so many things in Reading Recovery that we have particular names for, and “we” RR people understand (but people not familiar with RR wouldn’t understand).  I think I am bothered by categories when it comes to applying them to people. My example last post about the kindergarten teacher and the “autistic” child is a typical one – where a teacher (a very well-meaning teacher) responds to the label and not to the child.   I thought the example on page 117 (with the dots on the tv screen) was a really good one – what you see, how you see, is influenced by the category/label you apply.  Students with learning disabilities in reading are treated in particular ways by teachers.  And often, these ways are not very helpful to their academic growth in reading.

Chapter 7 – from representation to repertoires

I was glad we had read the Gilbert and Mulkey article before reading this chapter.  The chapter was a nice review.  Again, I was reminded of the whole phonics vs. whole language debate in reading, with both camps using some of the features of the contingent repertoire (listed on page 151) to undermine the views of “the other side”.   I happen to be right in the middle on this one – kids need phonics and they need lots of authentic reading and writing to learn to read (and this, I believe is true of all kids – whether you are labeled as LD or not).

I thought “the truth will out device” was really interesting. And, I can think of times when I have heard people use this device as a way to conclude an argument or shut down a discussion – “Well, we are going to due this scripted reading program for a few years and then we will find out.  Time will tell.”  When people do this, it shuts down the discussion of the present and puts off any further debate.  On page 155, the authors say, “The TWOD allows this version to be maintained while at the same time giving the speaker leeway to apply the contingent repertoire to a wide range of persons, events, and even whole scientific fields.”

Chapter 8 – How to analyze discourse

I thought this chapter was great to read before we read the two dissertation proposals for Wednesday.  We will have a framework of sorts to use to think through what Price and Johnston proposed.    I think it will be helpful for me to take a few notes on the various sections and comment as I go.

Stage one: research questions

-          Varied questions asked in DA

-          Discourse is examined for its own sake – not as something that represents something else. 

-          “action oriented medium”

-          “The concern is exclusively with talk and writing itself and how it can be read, not with descriptive acuity”

-          Question – how is discourse put together and what is gained by this construction. “To summarize – our research questions give priority to discourse, in any form, and ask about its construction in relation to its function.”

Stage two: sample selection

-          Labor intensive approach (DA)

-          Reading and rereading

-          Success of a study is not dependent on sample size

-          “The crucial determinant of sample size, however, must be, here as elsewhere, the specific research question.”

(Comment: I am thinking about the article I read for my critique and how he looked at change over time in identity development.  I am wondering if I could look at a child’s Reading Recovery lesson series- 20 weeks max- and look at how some aspect of the teacher/child interaction changes.  Maybe it is the child’s identity, or the child’s independent action, or the language exchanges between teacher and child – more directive and controlled at the beginning, and more child driven at the end.  So many options.).

Stage three:

-          Work with records and documents of interaction (not about the researcher interactions).

-          Transcripts that happen between participants (not researcher generated)

-          “ … you can use people’s own ability to artfully (and very helpfully) poke holes in each others’ positions to reveal their constructed nature.”

-          Need high quality recording device.

Stage four:

-          “interviews have the virtue of allowing the researcher room for active intervention”

-          “enable the researcher to deliberately question an entire sample of people on the same issue, giving greater comparability in responses, and increased simplicity in initial coding”

(I understand this completely…but, if we are after “what naturally occurs”, interviews are not necessarily the best avenue to take.  The researcher is guiding this, and it is not natural.  Of course, neither is putting a tape recorder down and picking up on what people are saying.  There is interference either way to some degree. Interviewing seems to be more imposing.)

-          “the goal of traditional interviews is to obtain or measure consistency in participants’ responses; consistency is valued so highly because it is taken as evidence of a corresponding set of actions or beliefs.”

-          Consistency matters in DA, but not in the same way.  Important if researcher wants to think about patterns of language.

-          “Consistency is often less useful and desirable for analysis than variation in interviews.”

-          Idea of tackling the same topic in more than one way (to see if there is variability)

-          Whole interview should be transcribed – the way the interviewer asks the question is important.

Stage five: transcription

-          “A good transcript is essential for a form of analysis which involves repeated readings of sections of data, and the process of transcription itself can be helpful in forcing the transcriber to closely read a body of discourse.”

-          “Transcription is a constructive and conventional activity.  The transcriber is struggling to make clear decisions about what exactly is said, and then to represent those words in a conventional orthographic system (Stubbs, 1983).

-          Have to think carefully about what info is needed from the transcript, and how analysis will go.

-          Total immobility and panic might be part of the process!

-          (I am wondering about how/when you know to use Jeffersonian transcription…after you have read and analyzed enough that you are beginning to see what is important?)

Stage six:  coding

-          Categories related to research questions of interest.

-          “ … as coding has the pragmatic rather than analytic goal of collecting together instances for examination it should be done as inclusively as possible.”

-          “At this stage in the research we are in the business of producing a body of instances, of trying to set limits to that body.”

Stage seven: analysis

-          Riding a bike, not baking a cake!

-          No mechanical process.

-          “… the results of studies of discourse are warranted, and critically examined, in a way that is novel to psychology.”

-          “The skills required are developed as one tries to make sense of transcript and identify the organizational features of documents”

-          Have to read and reread. 

-          “Often it is only after long hours struggling with the data and many false starts that a systematic patterning emerges.”

-          Don’t read for gist, read for specifics – the detail in passages.

-          Phase 1 – search for pattern in the data.  Both in the form of variability (differences in content or form of accounts) and consistency (features shared by accounts).

-          Phase 2 – concern with function and consequence

-          “The basic theoretical thrust of discourse analysis is the argument that people’s talk fulfills many functions and has varying effects”

-          Phase 2 is about forming hypothesis about these functions and searching for linguistic evidence.

-          (This sounds so RR to me.  You go over and over and over how a kid/teacher did something, and you form a tentative theory about what is going on. Not about the general, it is about the particular in the interaction and in the words between teacher and child).

Stage eight: validation

-          Can validate the findings of DA in a number of ways – 4 main ones listed…

1)      Coherence – analysis focuses on how discourse works together and how the structure produces effects and functions.  Exceptions are relevant.  “Cases that lie outside the explanatory framework of a theory are almost always more informative than those that lie within, and often dredge up important problems.”

2)      Participants’ orientation – interested in … “distinctions participants actually make in their interactions and which have important implications for their practice.”  What do participants see as consistent and different – that is what is important.

3)      New problems – looking at “linguistic resources” that make things happen.  Solve problems, but also create problems. “The existence of new problems, and solutions, provides further confirmation that linguistic resources are being used as hypothesized.

4)      Fruitfulness – “an analytic scheme to make sense of new kinds of discourse and to generate novel explanations”

These techniques allow for stringent examination of claims.

Stage nine: the report

-          Want to write in such a way that the reader can critique your interpretations.

-          “Thus a representative set of examples form the area of interest must be included along with a detailed interpretation which links analytic claims to specific parts or aspects of the extracts.”

-          “In this sense discourse analysis could be said to be more rigorous than experimental reports as it is often impossible to independently check the analysis in these cases.”

-          Analytic section will be longer.  Extracts from the transcripts will be included – as well as detailed interpretations.

-          “In discourse analysis the extracts are not characterizations or illustrations of the data, they are examples of the data itself.”

-          Do a rough draft of analysis and discussion early.

-          “Discourse analysis involves fluid movement between the different stages, with coding, analysis, validation and writing each leading back to earlier phases and ultimately to the talk and writing which were the original point of departure.”

Stage ten: application

-          “It is implied that a discipline concerned with language and its function will perhaps be of abstract interest but no practical use.”

-          Atkinson’s CA work on political rhetoric – helps people be more aware and critical.

-          Open up a dialogue

-          “The main point is that application is very much on the agenda and should not be relegated to an optional extra.”

Conclusions

-          No method to discourse analysis in the way we traditionally think of an experimental method

-          Broad theoretical framework – about the nature of discourse and its role in social life, “along with a set of suggestions about how discourse can best be studied and how others can be convinced findings are genuine”

Chapter 9 – Controversial topics and future directions

“Our focus is exclusively on discourse itself: how it is constructed, its functions, and the consequences which arise from different discursive organization.  In this sense, discourse analysis is a radically non-cognitive form of social psychology.”

-          Language of self and mental life is public (through talk) and there for analysis.

-          “Much of the phenomenon of the mind is intersubjectively constituted as the person speaks, writes, reminisces, talks to others and so on.” (internal workings of the mind are a non-issue….because you have public info to analyze).

-          “Understanding is assessed by public criteria and practical tests.”

(This made me think of how we view reading comprehension.  What kids reveal in their writing and in their speaking about a book is their comprehension.)

Future directions

Examination of complex texts (children’s stories – what are the ‘stories’ of struggling readers?

Rhetoric – use of language to persuade (is RR training an act of ‘persuasion” – to get teachers to buy into a way of interacting with kids to teach reading?)

Concerns in the area of ideology

Advantageous that discourse is everywhere!