Date: 12-Oct-2004 From: Susan Barker <Susan.Barkererlbaum.com> Subject: Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, Shuart-Faris
Title: Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events
Subtitle: A Microethnographic Perspective
Published: 2004
Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
http://www.erlbaum.com/
Author: David Bloome
Author: Stephanie Power Carter
Author: Beth Morton Christian
Author: Sheila Otto
Author: Nora Shuart-Faris
Hardback: ISBN: 0805848584 Pages: 288 Price: U.S. $ 69.95
Paperback: ISBN: 0805853200 Pages: 288 Price: U.S. $ 34.50
Abstract:
The authors present a social linguistic/social interactional approach to
the discourse analysis of classroom language and literacy events. Building
on recent theories in interactional sociolinguistics, literary theory,
social anthropology, critical discourse analysis, and the New Literacy
Studies, they describe a microethnographic approach to discourse analysis
that provides a reflexive and recursive research process that continually
questions what counts as knowledge in and of the interactions among
teachers and students. The approach combines attention to how people use
language and other systems of communication in constructing classroom
events with attention to social, cultural, and political processes. The
focus of attention is on actual people acting and reacting to each other,
creating and recreating the worlds in which they live. One contribution of
the microethnographic approach is to highlight the conception of people as
complex, multi-dimensional actors who together use what is given by
culture, language, social, and economic capital to create new meanings,
social relationships and possibilities, and to recreate culture and
language. The approach presented by the authors does not separate
methodological, theoretical, and epistemological issues. Instead, they
argue that research always involves a dialectical relationship among the
object of the research, the theoretical frameworks and methodologies
driving the research, and the situations within which the research is being
conducted.
Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy
Events: A Microethnographic Perspective:
*introduces key constructs and the intellectual and disciplinary
foundations of the microethnographic approach;
*addresses the use of this approach to gain insight into three often
discussed issues in research on classroom literacy events--classroom
literacy events as cultural action, the social construction of identity,
and power relations in and through classroom literacy events;
*presents transcripts of classroom literacy events to illustrate how
theoretical constructs, the research issue, the research site, methods,
research techniques, and previous studies of discourse analysis come
together to constitute a discourse analysis; and
*discusses the complexity of "locating" microethnographic discourse
analysis studies within the field of literacy studies and within broader
intellectual movements.
This volume is of broad interest and will be widely welcomed by scholars
and students in the field language and literacy studies, educational
researchers focusing on analysis of classroom discourse, educational
sociolinguists, and sociologists and anthropologists focusing on
face-to-face interaction and language use.
Linguistic Field(s):
Anthropological Linguistics
Discourse Analysis
Sociolinguistics
linguistlist.org>