WHAT TEACHERS SAY WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Findings
Cognitive elements
Representations of discourse and discourse analysis
Whereas mapping of “affective investment”, for example, was carried out through the identification of markers of Appraisal in STs’ talk, there is no sole phenomenon associated with cognitive elements. A particular representation may be identified on the basis of implicit assumptions, as in the following fragment:
I work at a public school, but I teach only elementary school, so I have no opportunity to work with discourse (...) because my students in 5th grade they are immature, “unprepared” and when I teach them in 8th grade, the last grade in elementary school, they have had no previous preparation”.
The resulting relationship underlined above carries the implicit assumption that previous preparation is required if one wants do discourse analysis, a representation which features in other subjects’ talk and in both focus groups:
Obviously, I do not succeed in putting into practice everything I learned because (...) students are not prepared, they come from first grade without any notion of anything, ...
The notion that DA is applicable only if students have had previous knowledge of the target language is closely linked with (or perhaps dependent upon) another notion that sees language as a series of separate components, hierarchically organized (phonology, syntax, semantics, discourse), with discourse as a higher-level component:
I don’t know where I read that discourse, discourse analysis, would be the highest level [component], the top level [stage] in learning a language, but very few people study this, incidentally hardly anybody studies this....
If language is seen as comprising separate elements, and not as an organic system, whose different dimensions are inextricably intertwined, then doing DA presupposes previous work on lower-level components. In this sense, our research subjects often draw a distinction between grammar and discourse:
So we have to ask [other teachers to give students grammar in 1st grade], so that when they get to 2nd grade, they have already studied grammar before, they have to give [them] grammar, so I can’t change this.
In spite of the misconception which sees work in DA as requiring previous exposure to “grammar”, participants seem to be aware of the distinction between sentence grammars and discourse grammars:
I believe that discourse, that is, working with texts in the classroom, with the use of our knowledge, is combined with ESP, because the two disciplines are tools [if we want to] use texts in the classroom.
This ST introduces a particular representation of “discourse” (that is, working with texts in the classroom), based on the notion that discourse is language above sentence level. The association with ESP, which is based on the theoretical premise that students’ attention should be drawn to the texts they are required to read in their specific areas of interest, reinforces the notion that discourse is language above sentence level. Another ST reveals a similar conceptualization of discourse as language above sentence level, but goes beyond that when she introduces the issue of generic aspects of texts:
Now in second grade, I work with texts, and I found that [DA] helped me a little with respect to... it showed me what grammar is relevant to the text [I am working on].
In the fragment above, the notion that DA “shows [us] what grammar is relevant to [a] text” suggests awareness that different texts (or genres) function in different ways and thus draw on different grammatical resources. Part of the study of DA, for this ST then, presupposes the study of the generic aspects of a text.
To conclude the discussion of representations of discourse, the following excerpts are introduced in an attempt to draw attention to how participants are aware of the nature of discourse as interaction, and as language in use, or authentic language:
So I think that discourse, for example, helped me not to work those dialogues that are made up of questions and answers only, questions and answers, but to try to change, to see that a dialogue is good or the dialogue is not good, to show [it] as interaction really, in conversation, not just questions and answers, but as it is in a real dialogue. So this I think helped me.
While discussing practical procedures adopted in her classes, this informant indicates that she encourages students to go beyond the analysis of the grammatical features of question-and-answer pairs, so as to cover the functional features of question-answer pairing as interactive units. In the next fragment, attention is drawn to the nature of discourse as language in use:
Another thing that I think was clear to us was the use of authentic material: authentic texts, texts from magazines, from newspapers, (...)
In this excerpt, the ST demonstrates awareness that studying discourse requires attention to the features that characterize authentic texts, that is, language used on a specific social occasion to carry out a specific social function. In the fragment below, the notion of language in use is expressed by way of a contrast between “real English” and the English found in pedagogic materials:
It is an opportunity for us to use written material from newspapers, from magazines, of course depending on the level of our students, instead of using pedagogic material and fooling the student who will think that [he or she] is dealing with English.
The contrast drawn by the ST suggests that she is aware of the occurrence of made-up examples in a great number of pedagogical books.
