As I'm in the early stages of analyzing my data, reading Gee Units 1 and 2 this week was perfect timing. There is so much about communication that we take for granted or think about but, as Gee pointed out, don't have time to pursue. I appreciated his advice to think about how things are not said. I've spent time thinking about why a person said something a certain way, but it could be enlightening to consider the ways the didn't say it as well. While I was aware that African Americans use "be" in a way that European Americans tend to not, I had no idea it was considered a durative aspect marker, but it makes a lot of sense. If someone had asked me to analyze it, I probably could have told you it served some purpose, but I don't know that I would have so clearly identified its function. I was especially interested in the term deictics, which Gee mentions. Earlier today I was typing a memo in my data and trying to think of the best way to identify what a student was doing. She was using what is referred to in ASL as the universal pronoun because it is one sign that can be used to represent all personal and collective pronouns (but not possessive). The way the student used it interested me and seemed important beyond the obvious point that she was using a pronoun. Deictics was a new term for me and seemed relevant to my data, so I really enjoyed reading that section. I think final intonation contours are also going to be interesting in my data. Although I use sign language almost daily and have taken ASL courses, analyzing my data will present me with an amazing opportunity to discover the nuances of ASL, one of which I expect to be final intonation contours. As I was reading, I was curious as to whether we will be dividing our data into stanzas and assigning themes to them? I'm a little intimidated by the idea, although it doesn't seem too far out there from what we're doing with memos and themes in our HUs. I noticed his examples focused only on monologues. Can sectioning and labeling data be done using conversation? If so, would the different speakers be used in separated sets of stanzas?
Sure, if you'd like to try using stanzas go for it - but I too am not sure whether or how that would work for shorter turns of talk - they seem geared towards monologues? You could do some searches to see if Gee talks at all about this or if others are using stanzas in other ways.
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