Discourse Analysis

9.8.13

 

Doing Conversation, Discourse, and Document Analysis – Tim Rapley – Chapters 1-5

 

What a breath of fresh air this text is!  So much of what I read was familiar – a review of all of my qualitative research classes, but Rapley has a way of saying things in a unique way and enhancing my comprehension of what was already on the way to understanding.   For example, we have read over and over in the DP class and this class about how events are both historically and culturally situated.  Rapley offers some great examples to bring these concepts into focus.  To help the notion of historically situated come into focus, Rapley gives the example of how audience behavior has changed between 1880s and the current day – and offers various factors that contributed to that change (p. 16).   To explain the idea of conceptually situated events (p. 20), he talks about how individuals behave differently depending upon where they are – how we tell stories differently depending upon who we are around.

                The chapter on ethics was mostly familiar as well.  But, there was one thing that Rapley suggested that I don’t believe we have discussed in any of my qual classes.   On page 29, Rapley talks about how you should give participants a way to contact you after the event so that if they changed their minds they could ask you to destroy the recording (if they were interviewed etc.).  I imagine former participants could find me if they wanted, but I know I wasn’t explicit in saying, “This is my contact information if you change your mind.”

                I was reminded of a situation in one of my research projects on the bottom of 29, top of 30.   While I was observing, one of the participants began to talk about the sexual molestation of a relative.  This topic was not the focus of my research and was shared only because the teachers I was observing were receiving training on child sex abuse.  In the middle of the observation, I made the decision to stop recording field notes because I didn’t want to jeopardize the relationship I have with the person who was disclosing and the other participants in the group.  It was an awkward situation though, and I wasn’t really sure what to do.  I just didn’t feel comfortable recording that sensitive information that wasn’t really relevant to my research topic – other than the fact that the participants know one another well enough to share that kind of information.

                When I read The Art of Case Study, by Stake when I had advanced qual, I was surprised that Stake didn’t think audio recording was necessary.  He felt recording reflections after an interview or observation (and taking field notes during the encounter) was sufficient.  For me, that isn’t the case.  I agree with Rapley when he says (on page 39), “I always try to audiotape, for some very pragmatic reasons: I want to interact with the participants….the tape provides me with a much more detailed record of the verbal interaction than any amount of note-taking or reflection could offer.”

                In chapter 5, I thought Rapley really stressed the importance of going back to the primary source (the actual recorded event) and not relying on a secondary source (the transcript).  There were many times he addressed this issue….

-          P. 50 – “What is key to remember is that you base your analysis on the recoding and your field notes.”

-          P. 59 – “I personally do not like doing any analysis from just transcripts alone.  I find them rather flat reproductions of interactions as you can easily be ‘misled’ about just what is it that is going on and miss the nuances that you gain from hearing a specific tone or voice or pace of speech.”

-          P. 59 – “Through re-listening to your recordings you constantly re-engage with just what it is that is going on at specific moments in that encounter.”

-          P. 64- “The transcript is always secondary, a memory device.”

-          P. 70 – “A finished transcript should never be the starting point of your analytic work; it is in and through repeated listening or watching your recordings and in and through the ongoing process of transcription that your analysis should be based.”

The last quote is particularly significant….the act of doing the transcription is actually the vehicle for analysis.  Doing the transcript allows you to interact with the data and forces you to listen and be present with the information.    I think I learn so much when I transcribe, and why I would hesitate to “send out” the recordings to be transcribed by someone else.

 

Some ‘technical challenges’ of video analysis: social actions, objects, material realities and the problems of perspective – Paul Huff and Christian Heath

 

                In this article, the authors talk about the methodological concerns of videotaping and video analysis, particularly about selecting the camera angle.   For my project in this class, I am going to look at a videotaped interaction between a child and me when he was in Reading Recovery and receiving one to one lessons.  I used to video tape this little boy often, because he had significant speech difficulties and I found him hard to teach because I couldn’t always understand what he was trying to say.  I selected the angle for the video tape because I wanted to see him and hear him and see where I was missing what he was trying to communicate.  I didn’t select the camera angle for a research purpose – other than the authentic one, which was to understand him so that I could teach him.  Only now am I using the video for analysis and that is for secondary reasons.   If I wanted to publish my analysis, I could address this choice as part of my reflexivity statement – sharing with readers the context of the creating of the video recording.

                This paragraph seems to summarize the difficulties I will face when I begin my analysis – “… choosing where, what and when to film, how to categorize and transcribe the data that are collected; how to select fragments to analyses from a corpus; how to develop an analysis that resonates with the collected materials and how to present analyses to audiences or in conventional research publications” (p. 257).

                I thought this was a great definition of “multi-modal analysis” which I have read a number of times but hasn’t been as explicitly defined – “the repeated scrutiny at extraordinary levels of detail of how talk and visual conduct in the material environment” (p. 256).

                The discussion of the mid-shot convention was interesting, and I could see it being useful in some situations.  In thinking of my possible dissertation topic - Reading Recovery Teacher Leader professional development, I can see how selecting this camera angle would be appropriate.  Though I might not have all of the teacher leaders in range, I could look specifically at a smaller group of teacher leaders.   But, I think much would be lost, as the interaction is among the entire group of teacher leaders.  It might be more appropriate to forgo the video all together and just do audio taping of everyone.   I still have time to consider this, but I am glad to have read this article now, as it will inform my decision as I get closer to the time.

                On page 273, Luff and Heath say, “Video can provide unprecedented access to a domain and can provide an invaluable resource that can be subjected to repeated scrutiny not only by the researcher but also by colleagues.  A convention has emerged for video data collection that seems to support this kind of research activity, particularly the analysis of focused interaction.”  I agree with this statement and can see how looking at student/teacher interaction in Reading Recovery (one-to-one) might be more appropriate for video analysis.   This is something that happens all the time in RR – teachers video tape their lessons with kids in order to get better at teaching them.  They do their own “analysis” and “research” – of what they say, of what the kid says, of how the ‘talk’ influences the students literacy processing.  Videotaping in this setting is typical, and both teacher and student get used to the camera and don’t act any differently than if the camera weren’t present.   I can see video being very useful to look at these interactions.