Social semiotic approaches to pedagogic discourse

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Social semiotic approaches to pedagogic discourse

• Workshop
• Kristina Love
• The University of Melbourne

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Overview

• A brief history of classroom discourse analysis
• Transcription and analysis as theory
• The theory of social semiotics
• Social semiotics and the institution of
  schooling the formation of social identities
• Social semiotics and the enacted curriculum
  visible and invisible pedagogies
• Social semiotics and the enacted curriculum in
  cyberspace transformation or reproduction?
• Social semiotics and teacher stance APPRAISAL

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Classroom Discourse Analysis a brief history

• Broadly interactionist (ie not linguistic)
  perspectives
• Flanderss (1970) focus on teacher talk
• Asking questions
• Giving directions
• Accepting feelings etc
• Barnes (1971) impact of patterns of teacher talk
  on student learning
• Eg Teachers use of closed questions required
  one-word answers
• Student learning through small group discussion
• But interpretations often idiosyncratic

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Sample 1

• Teacher directed lesson section
• Write your own transcript of this section
• What does the transcript tell/not tell about the
  interaction?

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Sample 2

• Later in the same lesson
• What are some of the patterns of language use
  here?
• How are they different to those identified in the
  earlier stage?
• How may the earlier discourse patterns have set
  up the learning evident here?

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Linguistic approaches

• An early rank-scale model - Sinclair
  Coulthard (1975)
• Lesson
• Transaction
• Exchange (IRF/ IRE)
• Move
• Act
• Stubbs (1976, 1986)

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• T. Hey Dai. Just stop a minute. If hes killed a
  white person what are they implying?
• S. That if hed killed a black person its not so
  bad.
• T. Its not so important. Who are they saying is
  probably more likely to be a killer?
• S. A black person
• T. A black person! So if youre in the South and
  youre a male and youve killed a white person
  and are black, youre in trouble, big trouble.
  Thank you for reading Dai. Catherine, in your
  hugest voice, please.

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Workshop task

• Divide each turn into a move (Initiating,
  Responding, Evaluating), including non-verbal
  moves.
• Identify the smaller functional units (acts)
  within each move
• Discuss the value of the resulting description
• What else is required of a description of the
  discourse
• above the level of exchange
• below the level of act?

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Above the exchange

• Ethnographic linguistics Mehan (1979) and Cazden
  (1988)
• Concerned with the routines or rules (mostly
  tacit) of classroom social organisation
• Verbal behaviours
• Physical dispositions
• Patterns of movement and interaction
• Speech act theory Gumperz Hymes (1972)
• Patterns of well defined classroom routines
• eg greetings, storytelling
• But still the need for something more?
• Veel transcript (1997)

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T. What distance do you have to measure?S. The
distance.T. Which distance?S. The distance from
the vertex.T. Which vertex?S. (pointing) That
one.T. Can you be more precise?S. The top left
vertex.T. OK. So what do we measure?S. The
distance from the top left vertex.T. Good. To
where?S. The outside of the other shape. T. Im
not sure what you mean. Where on the other
shape?S. The bottom left hand corner.T. OK. And
what do we call that shape?S. The object.T. OK.
So the lines going to S. The bottom left
vertex of the object.T. OK. Put that all
together and tell me what youre measuring, what
distance?S. The distance from the top left
vertex of the image to the bottom left vertex of
the object.
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Below the act

• Ethnomethodology Scheggloff (1972, 1982), Sacks
  (1992), Jefferson (1973)
• Studies human sociality at the micro-level of
  individuals interacting with other, rather than
  starting from a model of an external social
  reality consisting of a set of fixed norms,
  beliefs and values (Gardner, 2000).
• The object of the enquiry is specifically talk,
  viewed as jointly accomplished activity
• Talk emerges moment by moment in highly locally
  organised ways, with speakers and listeners
  showing split second sensitivities to others
  contributions

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CA analytical techniques and focus

• Turn-Taking
• Transitional relevance points
• Overlaps
• Latching
• Pauses (measured in micro-seconds)
• Minimal feedback/Back-channel responses
• Adjacency pairs
• Expansions via insertion sequences
• Preferred and dis-preferred responses
• Preliminaries
• Repairs
• particular types of adjacency pair dealing with
  troubles of hearing, production or understanding
  of talk

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Some titles

• Scheggloff, E. (1982) Discourse as an
  interactional achievement some uses of uh hu
  and other things that come between sentences
• Scheggloff, E. (1980) Preliminaries to
  preliminaries can I ask you a question?
• Gardner, R. (2000) Resources for Delicate
  Manoeuvres learning to disagree (see transcript
  conventions in appendices)

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CA and pedagogy

• Olympic swim race transcript
• Note how the talk is co-constructed, moment by
  moment in highly locally organised ways, with
  speakers showing split second sensitivities to
  others contributions
• Identify these unique accomplishments in each
  situation, rather than bringing beliefs about the
  local and institutional contexts to the analysis
• Conversation analysis and language teaching
  minimal feedback tokens (see article by Rod
  Gardner and transcript p33)

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CA transcription and analysis as theory

• The search for order in talk, which is achieved
  as one of the most important rule-governed
  activities of everyday life.
• A highly empirical approach to analysis, ie
  analyst uses no assumptions or pre-conceptions
  (eg about institutional roles, gender, etc)
• Nothing is dismissed as disorderly, accidental or
  trivial
• The analyst becomes highly familiar with the text
  of the talk before transcribing in microscopic
  detail
• Context refers only to the immediate preceding
  and subsequent talk, not to the wider social
  context (either of situation or culture).

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Social semiotics

• Social practices, like CA, seen as enacted in
  language
• But so too is the construction of various
  ideological positionings ie language is never
  neutral, serving to both realize, and silence, a
  range of values
• Schools in particular work with and construct
  ideological positionings for their pedagogic
  subjects (Bernstein, 1996)

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The early school pedagogic subject

• What is the ideal pedagogic subject under
  construction here?
• What verbal routines support this classroom
  social organisation?
• What physical dispositions (including location
  and movement) support this classroom social
  organisation?

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Systemic Functional Theory

• Halliday, Hasan, Matthiessen, Martin
• Distinctive in at least 3 ways
• The metafunctional organisation of language
• Language as system
• The relationship between text and context

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The metafunctional organisation of language
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Language as a system

• At the lexical level
• eg My progeny is at home
• Entry conditions
• Sets of possible options
• Realizations

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Specify sex
Son, boy
Dont specify sex
Child, brat, darling
Lexical choice, specifying sex
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positive
Specify attitude
negative
neutral attitude
Child, son
Lexical choice, specifying attitude
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At the syntactic level

• Eg Close the door
• Entry conditions - Mood
• Sets of possible options - indicative
  (declarative or interrogative), imperative. If
  interrogative - wh or polar
• Realizations

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Language as polysystemicRegister

• Experiential, Interpersonal and Textual choices
  in one context of situation
• BUILT Unit 1A - cooking
• Field Transitivity, specialised lexis
• Tenor Mood and Modality
• Mode Theme, Reference and Ellipsis

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Text, context and genre

• Spoken and written text
• Context of situation (Malinowski)
• Context of culture
• Genres as staged, goal-driven social activity
  (Martin Christie, 1987)

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Curriculum genres in early primary

• Morning News Genre
• InitiationNomination(Greeting)News
  GivingFinishnClosure
• Teacher direction -gt Student Activity -gt Teacher
  direction
• Christies texts 2.1 page 38

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Curriculum Macro-genres

• Curriculum Genres and macro-genres are staged,
  goal-driven activities devoted to the
  accomplishment of significant educational ends
  they are fundamentally involved in the
  organisation of the discourses of schooling
  (Christie, 2002)

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The curriculum initiation of a macrogenre in Art

• The goal-setting stage
• Compare with the language of the prior initiating
  stage whose purpose is to engage students

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Curriculum development the exploration stage

• Student oral language related to their roles as
  explorers
• Teacher oral language for point of need
  scaffolding and formulating
• Focus on internal and external reference

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• 1. T. Alright, are you going to be able to
  actually make it?
• 2. S. No, we were stuck while we were doing the
  front one. Because, we couldnt pull it up.
• 3. T. Okay, right, good.
• 4. S. Look, we have this behind here and then we
  go Woo !!.
• 5. T. Alright, good. Okay, now, you need to
  describe in words on your paper how that
  actually works.
• 6. S. Well, when you pull that up, thats
  connected to that and it comes up.
• 7. T. James, are you listening so that you can
  write down what theyre saying?
• 8. S. Yeah
• 9. S. Well, theyre joined together ... it was
  pull the top James you dont pull the bottom,
  the top.
• 10. T. Have you all agreed on the way it works?
• 11. S. Yeah, when you pull this and it comes up
  
• 12. S. this is attached
• 13. S. and in the middle of the tower, its
  joined behind, theres a bit of paper so when
  you pull that it comes up and then it goes Waa
  !
• 14. T. Alright, just read me what youve got.
• 15. S. Um, when you pull the top, top object it
  pulls the bottom object upwards because its
  attached behind the thing.
• 16. T. Would somebody who just walked into this
  room, if they read that, would that actually help
  them to would they know what youre talking
  about?
• 17. S. No.
• 18. S. If they pull the fox up the ladder
• 19. S. How about if you say behind the tower,
  theyre joined by

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Curriculum Closure the presentation stage

• Note
• Students more confident use of technical
  terminology
• Students language less dependent on the context
• ie more written-like in its use of internal
  reference and complete sentences (cf Veel)

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Field in the senior Art classroom

• Note the increased technicality and abstraction
  used in this Year 12 Visual Communication
  classroom

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Identifying abstraction

• 1. T. Solution to what?
• 2. S. To the problem being given.
• 3. T. Problem, solution. Somewhere in between
  here, this sort of stuff might happen (pointing
  to words on board - 'ideas', 'drawing with a
  specific purpose'). It might happen here. Or it
  might happen here. If we go along a continuum.
  Although it's rarely like that. We're not just
  talking about things are we? Anyone? I mean, you
  can't just go out and buy a dozen ideas.
• 4. S. It's a process.
• 5. Yep, a process (writes this on board).
  Alright, it's really, really important to get
  hold of that idea. We're not talking about a
  thing, we're talking about a process. So if we're
  going to talk about what designers do, we're not
  talking so much about a product. We're talking
  about a process. And that sheet that I gave you,
  there's various sorts of titles, like Art
  Designer, Graphic Designer, Fashion Designer,
  Interior Designer, Furniture Designer.

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Register in upper secondary

• Field increased language demands
• technical language (eg continuum)
• abstraction (eg product and process)
• nominalisation (eg design problem)
• Tenor a different authoritative relationship
• Contact
• Distance
• Affect
• Mode
• Use of more written-like spoken language
• modes ancilliary to the spoken

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Methodology and SFL theory of human social
behaviour

• Genre makes explicit the relationship between
  language and context
• Genre provides a principled basis for making
  selections of classroom text for analysis and
  interpretation
• Commitment to collect and analyse the whole
  text, not just mine the data
• Allows examination of how the whole genre unfolds
  logogenetically
• And allows principled comparisons between
  curriculum genres, including those across year
  levels

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Methodological Principles Selection of episodes

• Located in the Curriculum development stage of a
  Health and Physical education curriculum
  macrogenre
• Focus on the nature of teacher scaffolding in a
  multimodal context

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Other Curriculum Macrogenres

• Upper Secondary English
• Whole Class Text Response Discussions
• Foundational readingDeveloping
  ResponseConsolidatin Response
• David and Susan visible and invisible pedagogies

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Online discussions

• Social semiotics and the enacted curriculum in
  cyberspace transformation or reproduction?
• Lunchtime presentation

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Social semiotics and teacher stance

• Using APPRAISAL to track the evaluative stances
  in teachers planning discourse
• Love Arkoudis, 2006