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Discourse analysis across events
Discourse analysis is a research method that provides systematic evidence about social processes through the detailed examination of speech, writing, and other signs. This book describes an approach to discourse analysis drawn primarily from the field of linguistic anthropology (Agha, 2007; Duranti, 1997; Silverstein, 1976, 2003)āa discipline that studies language use in social and cultural contextsāalthough we also borrow concepts from related fields. Our approach makes two significant contributions. First, we clearly delineate a linguistic anthropological method for doing discourse analysis, offering transparent procedures and illustrations. Second, we extend discourse analysis beyond the speech event, showing how to study the pathways that linguistic forms, utterances, cultural models, individuals, and groups travel across events.
Recent theoretical and empirical work has made it clear that many important social processes can only be understood if we move beyond single speech events to analyze pathways across linked events (Agha, 2007; Agha & Wortham, 2005; Wortham, 2012). Learning, for example, involves systematic changes in behavior from one event to the next. A learner has experiences in one or more events and then behaves differently in subsequent events. In socialization, to take another example, a novice experiences events characteristic of a group and then participates more competently in subsequent events. No matter how sophisticated our analyses of discrete events, we cannot offer empirically adequate analyses of processes like learning and socialization unless we study pathways across linked events, because such processes are inherently cross-event. In order for discourse analysis to be a useful method for studying processes like learning and socialization, it must uncover how people, signs, knowledge, dispositions, and tools travel from one event to another and facilitate behavior in subsequent events. This book presents the first systematic methodological approach to doing discourse analysis of linked events.
An example
Consider the following example, taken from a ninth-grade combined English and history classroom in an urban American school. The two teachers are discussing Aristotleās Politics with 18 studentsā6 boys and 12 girls, mostly African American. See Wortham (2006) for more information on this classroom. The class is exploring Aristotleās account of human nature, specifically the question of what distinguishes humans from animals. In the passage they have read, Aristotle says: āhe who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be beast or godā (Aristotle, Politics, 1253a, line 29). This implies that an individual who lives outside society is more like an animal than a human. Teachers and students discuss what criterion Aristotle would have used to distinguish humans from ābeasts.ā
Right before segment 1, one teacher has tentatively proposed a criterion: humans have goals and animals do not. A student, Tyisha, objects. (Transcription conventions are in Appendices A and B; āTYIā is Tyisha; āT/Bā is Mrs. Bailey, one of the two teachers running this classroom discussion.)
Segment 1: Tyishaās cat as a beast
525 | TYI: | Mrs. Bailey? I- I have to disagree |
| | ((class laughter)) |
| T/B: | can I- can I finish this before you disagree, okay. the idea that heās putting
out here is that they- they have goals, and that they can in discussion decide
the best way to accomplish their goal. now, Tyisha whatās your |
530 | | disagreement? |
| TYI: | becau(hh)- because if a- like- if my- okay, if my cat want to- um you
know to get to the top of something, you know, he might sit there and be ((3
unintelligible syllables)) and heāll sit there and try every day. and then finally
he will do it, that was the goal to try and get up there. he had a goal. |
535 | T/B: | okay (1.0) heās got a [goal but |
| ST: | [was his goal really necessary? ((laughter from class)) |
| T/B: | letās- letās- letās take what- (3.0) letās take what your catās doing that
every day he sees that- counter that he wants to get on, and every day when
he passes that counter he tries to get up there. thatās a goal. okay[= |
540 | ST: | [yeah. |
| T/B: | =how is that different than your goal, the goal that you might have
had last night when you had this reading, or-
((some chattering)) |
| TYI: | ĖI donāt knowĖ |
In the first line (525), Tyisha states explicitly what type of action she is performing: disagreement. Such an explicit statement can be useful, as it offers discourse analysts guidance in interpreting the event. Discourse analysis would be easy if analysts could rely on peopleās explicit descriptions of what they are doing. This cannot suffice as a methodological approach, however, for two reasons. First, speakers sometimes lie, speak ironically, or make mistakes. Maybe Tyisha is correct that this event is a disagreement, but perhaps not. Second, speakers do not typically provide explicit interpretations of their discourse. Most of the time, both participants and analysts must interpret implicit messages and infer what type of action is occurring.
Our approach to discourse analysis depends centrally on a distinction between what Jakobson (1957) called a narrated event and an āevent of speakingā or narrating event (we place important technical terms in italics when introducing and defining them). The narrated event is what is being talked about, while the narrating event is the activity of talking about it. Narrated content includes more than just narratives. Jakobson uses ānarrated eventā to refer to any denoted content, and we use ānarrating eventā to refer to any discursive interact...
