IRB approval for our projects. As I said in class, I have turned in a proposal to the Kean IRB regarding your projects. This proposal describes what kinds of projects you will do in a general way, provides sample permission forms + debriefing forms (posted to the right) and gives them our class roster. The IRB committee will meet next week and we will know whether we are approved soon after. I expect we will be approved for you to begin collecting data by the middle of October.
Using Swales definition of discourse communities to do research.
You provided your analyses of whether/how the 4 discourse communities we identified in class fit with Swales' definition. Our method was to do an in-depth analysis (the work you did to post your blogs). The "expert" group gave their findings and then the whole class voted to rank how/whether each group met each criterion for a discourse community. These are our findings
|
Swales Features
|
Kean
|
English Writing Maj.
|
Ed maj
|
ENG 3029
|
|
1.
|
2.5
|
4
|
4.5
|
5
|
|
2.
|
3.5
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
|
3.
|
3
|
2
|
1.5
|
4
|
|
4.
|
4.5
|
3.5
|
4.5
|
4
|
|
5.
|
5
|
4.5
|
5
|
5
|
|
6.
|
4.5
|
4.5
|
3.5
|
4
|
|
Overall
|
23
|
20.5
|
22
|
26
|
Blog 5: In our discussion we put out the "theories" that small groups might cohere more readily as discourse communities than big groups. What else might we "theorize' from this data? How would we test those theories? Is there one Swale's categories that this table suggests is more critical for being a discourse community than others - or that groups tend to have trouble achieving? What other data would we need to collect to see if this data is "true" or if the patterns it suggest are useful?
Do these findings agree with your intuitive feeling about which of these groups is a more coherent discourse community? Or do they suggest that there is something wrong with Swales definition?
Again - you do not need to answer every question - but your post does need to develop a discussion that applies what we are learning about doing analysis and about discourse communities.
We spent a very short time at the end of class talking about the ethnographic essay. Your suggestions about how to strengthen this essay were to:
- state the focus more clearly at the beginning of the essay
- use the focus to organize + develop the essay (delete material not relevant to focus)
- the overall organization was mostly good in that each section made the right moves - but the internal organization of the sections needed work. Also, the author needed to delete some material + develop other material.
- write a stronger conclusion that is more specifically connected to the findings and the focus
Language as saying, doing and being.
In the middle of all this talk I gave you a mini-lecture on the terminology linguists use to talk about discourse. This is useful because it gives you some of the names (categories) that language researchers often draw from when they do discourse analysis (analysis of language in use). I asked you to jot down some of the moves you made to create your identity as a student. This is the list you created:
politeness
talkative
quiet
aware of audience
openness
talk about taboo material
raise hand
call out
Language linguists use to talk about these moves include: turn taking or "turns" and floor time. To be continued.
For next class:
Read: Excerpts from Fieldnotes (posted to the right) as pointed out in class. Pay particular attention to the definition of ethnography, the examples of fieldnotes, and the sample jottings.
Blog 5: see above
In class we will talk about taking ethnographic fieldnotes - and if we don't talk to much - you will get your first experience doing ethnography.
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