Blog 3 (9/5)

Chapters 3-6 contain a lot of interesting ideas and perspectives. The idea that a person's self-esteem is directly tied to how they feel about the group with which they identify is intriguing. At first, I whole-heartedly disagreed with this idea, but now I think it actually makes a lot of sense. Take high school students for example. So much of their self-worth is related to which clique they're in and on which rung of the social ladder it's on. What's also interesting is the amount of time teachers (and other adults) spend preaching to kids to not base their self-worth on the groups of which they consider themselves members. One key point in the argument is that identities are not fixed but rather constantly changing. Of course, I argue that they are all valuable and their value will never change to which they roll their eyes. I definitely agree more with the idea that "the self is made up of multiple, discursively constituted identities" (p. 109). We have different identities in different contexts, and hopefully each of those identities contributes positively toward self-worth. I worry Billig's theory is presumptuous. I believe we could hypothesize what another person suggests, but I don't agree that we could consistently identify the unsaid in any kind of scientific manner. Learning that there are intercultural students that show that North American children discriminate between groups when most other cultures do not is shameful.  It is interesting to consider that "some readers might see an inconsistency where others see a stringent argument" (p. 172). I find this interesting because I've heard people argue over such situations; these arguments tend to end with the second person claiming the first is unintelligent and the first person claiming the second is arrogant. If only we could force ourselves to consider the other person's perceptions as valuable, especially when they are in conflict with our own perceptions. This idea goes along with the idea that "people do not see reality properly because ideologies distort their world-view" (p. 179). Sometimes we are blind to the value of other people's perceptions because of our own idealogies.  Of course, this quote also begs the questions: If our ideologies distort reality, then how can anyone know what reality is? And, if we cannot identify reality, how do we know we are distorting it? One other comment that I found interesting was on page 206:

"Just because knowledge production is political, does not mean that it cannot have scientific value." I hadn't really considered that something labeled political could not also be scientific, or at least of value to the scientific community. There are interesting implications in the statement. On the surface, it seems contradictory because I would assume all knowledge production could have scientific value, but on a more subliminal level, it seems to indicate that the fields of politics and science are in conflict with one another.

In terms of analytical strategies, comparison seems like the most obvious strategy, while substitution and multivocality are the most interesting. Substitution isn't something I think of as often as multivocality, but I think there is a lot I could learn from looking at a text using those strategies. I still don't fully understand the purpose for using the exaggeration of detail strategy.

As the authors continue to explain the different approaches to DA, I am beginning to understand things a little more clearly. I can most easily understand the DP poststructuralist approach because prior to reading this book I believed we use discourse "to construct our lived reality," at least to an extent (p.103). Within DP poststructuralism, I find myself relating most to the strand in the middle where both of the extreme perspectives meet. It makes sense to me that discourse can shape and alter our perceptions of ourselves and our world, in turn leading to social consequences, and that speech and interaction create and develop our social organization. It makes sense that we are both products of discourse and that we use discourse to achieve social outcomes. Because I can relate to this approach the easiest, it seems likely I would choose it for an analytical framework; however, it makes a lot of sense to include the other approaches to have a wider range of perspectives and implications.

Just when I thought I was starting to understand...

The first section on reflexivity was a little confusing confusing, but upon reading the end of Chapter 6 is starting to make a little more sense.

The article helped me to see how researchers use DA to analyze data. The reflection that teachers were celebrating middle class students' literacy while labeling students from less affluent homes as behind is incredibly sad, yet as an English teacher I've seen it many times. Instead of labeling kids as behind or wrong, wouldn't it be so much more empowering to value their language and teach them to treat formal English as a second language (or as a classroom or academic literacy)?

In terms of my data, I'm wondering whether it would be better to record my own students interacting with me or record another teacher interacting with his/her students? Also, I remember Dr. Paulus mentioned we need verbal consent, but if we are recording minors will we need written consent from parents/guardians?