Hutchby & Wooffitt...

Disclaimer:  This blog was written under the influence of a respiratory viral infection with a secondary respiratory bacterial infection and on day 7 with fever…

Early on in the reading for this week, Hutchby and Wooffitt were discussing talk in institutional settings and mentioned a couple of things that we have talked about before, such as the three-part list and question-answer sequences. They go on to discuss how CA in relation to its usage in institutional settings. ‘The distinctiveness of the wing of CA that is concerned with institutional interaction is found, therefore, in its willingness to explore the connections between talk and its social contexts’ (138).  A little bit later, they also mention that ‘A central feature of CA is a focus on the turn by turn unfolding of talk-in-interaction’ (138).  This stood out for me, because the work that I am doing for this class is focused on talk that is occurring in the institutional setting of school.  The audio recording that I am submitting with my transcript tomorrow is a recording of my inclusion time in a kindergarten classroom.  There are elements in the recording of the teacher interacting with the whole group for a phonics lesson, interacting with table groups of students to help with problems, and interacting with the inclusion teacher about the students.  One quote that found in this section that was especially pertinent in the work that I have done so far this semester is ‘Turn-type pre-allocation means that participants are normatively constrained in the types of turns that they may take according to their institutional roles’ (141). It was very relevant for the instruction that was being given to students during that recordings whole group portion. They had to participate in a VERY structured, scripted phonics lesson and there is a very clear distinction between the teacher role and the student role in the lesson, especially when followed to the letter like it is on most days.  This also made me think about its relationship to the structured interview.  ‘In the structured interview, CA can tell us about some of the important consequences when everyday conversational conventions have to be abandoned because of the need to administer all questions in the same order and with the same wording’ (181).  I think that if one were to record the classroom interactions between teachers and students during these scripted lessons it would be interesting to see what CA could tell us about these interactions and the instruction being given to students.

The following quote that I took from the reading on news interviews relates to conversations that we had in DP this summer.  ‘In their role as questioners, interviewers are required to avoid stating their views or opinions on the news’…’ethos of neutrality’ (144).  This really isn’t the case anymore, is it?  I mean, we like to think that we watch the news and the reporters are doing just that.  They are reporting the news.  However, as we learned in DP, simply how they choose to refer to something shows a stance even if unintentional, i.e. whether they say Treyvon Martin Case or Zimmerman Case.  There is also the case of the all the different networks…Fox, NBC, CNN, ABC, etc.  They very much have political agendas and they may not ‘state their agendas’, but their opinion is present in how they choose to call things, how they discuss things, what they choose to cover, how they word their questions, etc.  I think you even said that this was partly due to the fact that news reporters were not longer journalist but instead were celebrities.

Another element that I found relevant considering the work that I do as a teacher concerned the discussion on children’s talk in the presence of a teacher and when the child was with peers.  The authors stated that ‘Only by examining in detail the children’s talk and interaction in the absence of the teacher do we come to an understanding that there is, in fact, a different set of moral models at work for them, as well as how that moral code is instantiated in practice’ (197).  The same could be said of children’s talk in the presence of parents compared to their talk in other settings.  Either way, I would love to do a study that examined looking at the talk of ESL children in different settings, i.e. dramatic play areas, whole group settings, small group settings, ESL pull-out rooms, specials, etc.

‘CDA maintains that there are other factors, external to the situation the speakers are in, and of which the speakers may not be aware, that impact on the production of the talk’ (211).  This statement was taken from the discussion on its comparison with CA and some critiques or views on their uses.  I have to say that from this statement there is a lot of truth, at least for me.  In my transcript, you will hear the teacher referring to her teacher observation and the fact that she was able to get accountable talk in during the observation.  Without knowledge of the current movement in education CCSS or knowledge of the school setting and its push for all teachers to be using accountable talk in instruction, this would be a question mark for the researcher.  Either way there are outside factors that have affected the talk that occurred in that lesson. 

Pg. 213 Sacks discussion on the importance of going second in an argument, because you can build on and/or squash the other person’s view… this was just great.