3.9 Analyzing transcripts, Bartholomae & Heath

We started class with some analysis of the "returing adult learner" transcript (posted to the right).  You all knew she was female, and an older adult learner, partly based on the content, but also because of the way she used language.  As a  "typical" returning adult student, she had an agenda for what she wanted to learn and how she wanted to learn it, and she took some initiative in pursuing it.  Some of the gendered features of the talk which you identified were the use of hedges, the interconnected, collaborative ways the two speakers' language fit together (picking up on one another's terms),  finishing each other's questions/answers without direct prompts - all of which the research literature has noted as often associated with female speakers.

Our discussion led us almost immediately into the observation that language features can imply more than one thing. For example, the short answers + seeming evasion of "I guess" and the apparently not fully considered "agreement" with Ch's "saying back could be interpreted as M's lack of investment in the interview.  Yet, taken in light of her openness about being afraid, and the closing (unprompted) addition at the end of Excerpt 1, where M comes up with an answer to a question she at first was not sure how to answer (where she says "I was resisting it") suggests those same language features might also be interpreted as processing, or not having language ready to answer the questions Ch has asked.

This led to discussion of the different kinds of stories which can come up in interviews, John Wayne stories (where the narrator is in control, has things worked out = the dominant discourse in middle class, white, college student talk from the study I mentioned in class), Florence Nightengale stories (where the narrator is useful/helpful = another "tellable" story form comment in that same study), springboard stories, and so on.  In addition to being able to recognize stories which are in the subject's repertoire (and which signal the fact that they have probably been told before), interviewers need to recongnize features of "untellable" stories = material that the narrator does not know what to think about and hasn't processed into a tell-able unit like a story.  I suggested that language features and interactions in Excerpt 1 suggest we were talking about material which the subject had not yet processed.

In the second excerpt, you pointed out stories, and noted they were generally, if not quite JW stories, at least they presented circumstances where things worked out and there was learning/resolution.  You also noted the many things noted here on the board, in Andre's photo.

Good start on this!  There is lots of material on doing conversation/story analysis - and it is a versatile tool for working in writing studies research.


Bartholomae
We started the Bartolomae discussion by identifying the features of academic discourse(s),

features of academic discourse

• words phrases signify certain expected moves (use academic voice)
• organization = deductive, logical (generally not narrative)
• authoritative stance ( mastery over material) but not authoritarian
• provide evidence => research based
• presented as a conversations with other researchers/writers/texts
• based on experience, though not necessarly your particular experience unless = theorized and supported by scholarship/examples/other evidence
• values abstract/generalized/theorized statements (over personal particular, though values particular materials as support/evidence for theorized points)
• demands that the author contribute some nontrivial insight to the conversation (say something new)
• expects the author to take some risks

. . . and along with Maria's excellent discussion of Bartholmae's main points, you looked at the sample texts in the essay as a way to check in on our list of the discursive features of academic writing.  As Maria pointed out, correctness (the fallback position for what many composition classes teach) is NOT the most important feature of academic writing.

Heath
Matt's 7 minute presentation masterfully presented to main points of Heath's essay: its purpose was to deconstruct the orality-literacy dichotomy which named literate "thinking" as superior to the knowledge-making/thinking of orality; it identified literacy and orality not as separate but as interconnected through what she named as "literacy events"; it provided rich, grounded examples of the different kinds of relationships between literacy and orality within particular cultural events, and showed how access to and power over literacy was constructed through discursive moves invested with power and characteristic to particular contexts (this is the example where the bank/employers kept control over documents which participants did not have the discursive moves to demand posession of).  These findings were revolutionary in their time, and changed the way language philosophers, writing teachers, linguists and others think about the role of writing and how it "works" within our lives.

Summing up and reflecting on qualitative methods.
So, yes, we again degnerated to "lightning round" presentation at the end of class, and did not have time for us to spend some time reflecting on the qualitative methods, together, so I have asked you to do some writing about how you might use some of these methods in what you now perceive as your proposed thesis project (see detailed description of this writing below).

For next class:
Read:  Mertens, Ch 9 History and Narrative Study of Lives;  Hawisher & Selfe (2004), pdf; Brandt, pdf; H.Lewis Ulman, “A Brief introduction to the DALN” http://ccdigitalpress.org/stories/chapters/introduction/

and check out the DALN (http://dalnresources.org.ohio-state.edu/contents.html + check out the HOME + selected Literacy Narratives TBA (your choice, Christina)

Write:   Create + email me a document which contains:
1. A one or two sentence statement of the purpose of your study (what you will do + why).
2. A statement of the primary methods you expect to use + what kind of data you expect to gather through the use of each method.
3. What questions each kind of data will answer relevant to your project.

If this listing already includes several methods from the qualitative methods list in Mertens - you are done!  If not, speculate about how you might supplement/enrich your data (and what you might find) through the use of one or more of the methods from the qualitative methods chapter.

In class, we will spend the first half discussing the oral history/live narrative studies; during the second half we talk about your plans for choice of methods for your research proposal (very briefly- since this will be the primary focus of class on March 30 - this discussion will mostly be to check in for questions + set up for work on the proposal) and review for the Midterm.  I will sum up the readings so far in terms of their content, methods, paradimatic assumptions, importance to writing studies, and we will talk through the Midterm exam.