Gee's Language and Context

Gee: How to Do Discourse Analysis

Humans are creatures of language (3).

Languages change all the time (4).

Unit 1:  Language and Context

As an ESL teacher, I really enjoyed this reading.  I think that for anyone working with language either with learners or research that this is a nice book to help you understand how we use language and what we do with it.  I think that its important for people to understand the dialects that people have and they manners that they construct their identities.  I will also admit that it is like what you have talked about before in class.  I am one of those people that like to have a plan and I like ‘instructional’ manuals.  As you will see later in my blog, a portion of the reading gave me a little bit of a heart attack.  I’m not even going to lie.  There was also a point in the reading that I thought, ‘Trena has been keeping this from me all along, so that I would have to come to this discovery on my own.’  You’ll see what I mean later.

‘We discourse analysts have to learn to make what we take for granted new and strange. This is why it is sometimes good, when doing discourse analysis, for an insider and outsider to study the same data together (19).’ Gee later goes onto explain that ‘The outsider can help the insider see old things as new and strange again.  The insider can help the outsider use context more deeply to correct judgments about meaning and purposes being pursued (20).’  In class, you have talked about DART and Elizabeth discussed how it has helped her in the analysis of her data.  Is this the role of DART?  Is it helping researchers in a manner similar to ‘The Frame Problem’, which is ‘a way to keep us honest (37).’

An element that I found interesting was the brief discussion on ASL.  ‘American Sign Language counts as “oral language,” even though it is signed, since it is acquired as a native language by some children and used for face-to-face communication (4).’  I understand why Gee says this and I am sure that there is basis for it.  I know that it is it’s own language and it provides a means of communication for those using it.  I just have a hard time counting it has oral language.

As you know me increasingly well at this point, context is important to me.  During the summer, I struggled to understand the role of context in DP studies, but as we have went through this semester I am starting to see how DA addresses context or how it is important in qualitative studies:

Context includes the physical setting in which the communication takes place and everything in it; the bodies, eye gaze, gestures, and movements of those present; what have previously been said and done by those involved in the communication; any shared knowledge those involved have, including shared cultural knowledge (5).

‘There is always the possibility of considering other and additional aspects of the contexts, and these new considerations may change how we interpret the utterance (31).’  Did you know this all along and have been holding back from me so I could learn this aspect from Gee?  For me, context is very important and adds so much to the information that is studied concerning the interactions that people have.  I know you have pointed out before that there are so many everyday interactions that people have in which we don’t have all of the context that we could have, like body language, gestures, etc., such as telephone conversations and yet we somehow manage to understand those we are having a conversation with.  I guess I have just been worrying that when you are trying to study the everyday language or conversations and interactions that people have that it would be very misleading to think you know something about what they are doing with their language if you don’t have a really detailed understanding of the context.  But, then here was the answer.

‘We will always be willing to push context a bit further than we would in everyday life to see if we can falsify our claims about meaning (32).’  Another concern that I have, however, is how is this accomplished with audio recordings.  Is it accomplished by continuing to study multiple sessions, multiple encounters, multiple conversations?

Absolutely loved this example along with the following equation.  ‘Communication and culture are like icebergs.  Only a small “tip” is stated overtly.  A vast amount lies under the surface, not said, but assumed to be known or inferable from the context in which the communication is occurring (8).’

WHAT THE SPEAKER SAYS + CONTEXT = WHAT THE SPEAKER MEANS (11)

‘We can never be completely sure of people’s intentions and purposes.  There is much that goes on in people’s minds that is unconscious(13). ‘ I think this is where the example of Sara and Karen’s project really hits home for me and ties together the idea of insider/outsider, shared culture, and taken for granted information.  If you are apart of the group, it is easy to understand things that are being said, but not said if you know the context that it is being said in.  If you have a shared culture and are an insider, you have knowledge that helps you understand what is not being said.  If you are an outsider, you can help identify elements of taken for granted information that is occurring that you don’t understand and can help the insider see those moments.

This is quite the most terrifying thing that I have ever read in one of your classes.  ‘We seek to make a claim and then see if we or others can falsify it.  If it is falsified, we learn something.  The field, as a whole, moves forward. We look to our colleagues to help us by trying to falsify our claims (29).’  Oh my gosh.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have learned more from the mistakes in my life than I have learned from instances being right.  As a novice researcher, everything that I do feels wrong and feels off track.  However, Gee is saying that we need to shoot for manners in which we can be questioned and refine what we have done.  I feel as if I am always wrong. I feel as if you are always going to be able to falsify my claims unless I stick to the known. But then, how am I going to grow as a researcher if I do that?

Unit 2: Saying, Doing, and Designing

Anything we say performs some sort of action (44).

Each way of combining words has a meaning (50).

I think that this points to the manipulation element of human discourse that we have discussed before.  ‘In our everyday lives, even when we are conveying information to someone, we are also trying to do other things as well.  Not only do we use language to do many things, but any one utterance is often meant simultaneously to carry out more than one action (42).’  I guess I am still having a hard time with this, because so much of what we say is unconscious.  We don’t think about it.  We say it.  It is why we get in trouble so much with our speech.  We respond.  The grammar aspect of unit to helped me to see the basic elements of what we are doing with our language.  We use a noun and verb together to convey a thought.  We select the subject and object of our sentence and thus something has been done with our language.  Again, are we, as researchers, saying that our participants accomplished this or that with their language even though we don’t actually know if this was their intent.  ‘It is always useful to ask of any communication: What is the speaker trying to DO and not just what is the speaker trying to SAY (42)?’  How do you ever know that what you think the speaker is trying to do is what they are trying to?  I do think that I have a pretty good example of this though.  When I was sixteen, I got my first car and it was back in the day of cheap gas.  We had absolutely nothing to do, so we would cruise town.  I had a little Ford Escort.  One night while riding around with my best friend she made the following comment, ‘This car sure has a great heater.’ I responded with a side ways smile and scrunched forehead something like, ‘Ugh, yeah. I guess.’  A few minutes later, my best friend started pushing random buttons and ripping off layers of clothes.  She was burning up.  Instead of asking to turn the heater off, she made a comment that I totally missed the point of.  Almost 20 years later, I am still like, ‘Why didn’t she just ask to turn off the heater?’

‘Each design choice you make about building language structures determines certain aspects of what you mean; we have already seen that some meaning is determined, not by what you say, but by the context in which you say it. (51).’ For this, Gee gave the example of using the terms beef vs. cow and how one implies and object and the other implies a living being.  This made me think of our discussions in DP about how the media chooses to refer to things and how most of the time they can be traced to the agenda of the network.  I think that it would be interesting to look at just the headlines right now that pertain to the government shutdown and whether there seems to be a slant this or that way depending on which network was covering the story.

The Why This Way and Not That Way Tool tells us always to ask why something was said the way it was and not some other way.  One way to operate with this tool is to ask yourself the ways in which any data you are analyzing could have been said differently.  Then ask why it was said the way it was and not the other ways (62).

‘The picture you form in your mind is determined, as we know, not just by what was said, but by the context in which it was said (72).’ I know that this is specifically tied to research from Gee’s perspective and the language that individuals use.  This was interesting and for me it can be tied to the education reform right now that involves students working to provide ‘text-based’ evidence and not bring in their own background knowledge, but how can we possibly expect students to do this. Who we are determines what language does in our interactions. All language has an action and context matters. I would think background knowledge would be a huge piece of the ‘context’.

Random Notes of Interest for Me

Each person learns a certain variety—called a “dialect”—of their native language, the variety their ancestors have passed down to them (2). Dialects can vary in terms of vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation (2). Dialects can vary by region, social class, and by cultural group (2).

To do discourse analysis on our own languages in our own culture requires a special skill.  We have to make things new and strange that we usually see as completely “normal” and “natural” (6).

In order to do things with language, including informing, we use grammar to build and design structures and meanings (48). 

Using language is all about making choices about what and how to build (design choices) so that we can mean what we want to mean (52).

Tier 1-3 words (53) huge concept in education that keeps getting played around with in how the concept is labeled, but with each reform it ends up being the same thing with a different name.

Whenever we speak or write, we always and simultaneously build one of seven things or seven areas of “reality”:

• Significance
• Activities
• Identities
• Relationships
• Politics (distribution of goods)
• Connections
• Sign Systems and Knowledge (88-91)