This document discusses institutional talk and interaction in educational contexts. It summarizes two readings on this topic. The first reading discusses how talk facilitates learning but can also maintain power dynamics in university tutorials. The second reading examines how power and identity are constructed through interaction, and are not fixed but dynamic. It suggests power and identity need to be analyzed through discourse. The document then outlines topics to be covered in an upcoming sociology course that relate to these ideas, such as dramaturgy, rudeness, accomplishing identity, and the social order in talk.
3. SUMMARY OF READING 1
Benwell, Bethan, and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2002.
Constructing discussion tasks in university
tutorials: shifting dynamics and identities.
Discourse Studies vol. 4, no. 4: pp. 429-453.
4. TALK IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS
Talking facilitates learning, promoting a theory of
learning and cognition that emphasizes language as
the mediator of higher mental processes (see
Piaget, 1970; Vygotsky, 1978). (p. 429)
Talk is therefore treated as a medium for the
conveying of information, with varying degrees of
effectiveness, from a speaker to a listener
(Maybin, 1994: 132), in a transmission model of
learning. (p. 430)
5. SUMMARY OF READING 2
Mayes, Patricia. 2010. The discursive
construction of identity and power in the critical
classroom: Implications for applied critical
theories. Discourse and Society vol. 21, no. 2: pp.
189-210.
6. POWER
The findings suggest that applied critical theories
are often too simplistic, assuming that power can
be straightforwardly transferred from the
powerful to the powerless. (p. 189)
Heritage (1997) suggests that power may be
understood in terms of asymmetries that arise
through interaction in institutional settings. (p.
194)
7. IDENTITY
In the past identity was seen as a fixed, stable
property of the individual psyche (Bucholtz and
Hall, 2005). (p. 194)
Identity is dynamic, intersubjective, constructed
moment by moment through social
interaction, and, at the same time, subject to existing
ideologies and perceived social constraints. It also
suggests that identities are best investigated by
examining how participants use language in context
(Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Widdicombe and
Wooffitt, 1995; Edley and Wetherell, 1997; Antaki and
Widdicombe, 1998; Wetherell, 1998;
Widdicombe, 1998; Coupland, 2001; Bucholtz and
Hall, 2005). (p. 195)
8. RELATIONSHIP OF THEM
Recent work in conversation analysis suggests
that power can be analyzed as a dynamic
construct that is realized as social identities are
constructed through interaction. (p. 194)
The important link between power and identity
in this framework is the emphasis on how both of
these social constructs come into play through
discursive action. (p. 194)
9. SOC250
Talk a catalyst? OR Learning itself?
Asymmetrical vs. Symmetrical
Guided vs. Controlled Discussion
3 Part formulation:
Ask question
Respond to question
Evaluate response to question
10. CONNECTING THE DOTS
Dramaturgy (wk 5)
Frontstage and backstage
Rudeness (wk 10)
speech as performative
Pragmatics
11. CONNECTING THE DOTS
Accomplishing sociocultural identity in talk (wk 8)
Discourse markers
The social and moral order in talk (wk 7)
Telling the code
Ethnomethodology (wk 6)
12. INSTITUTIONALIZED SETTINGS
Community service settings that facilitate its
residents with access to education, legal, and
health services.
I want to expand this definition to include places
of employment, churches and services such as
Centrelink.