Discourse Analysis and Foreign Language Teacher Education
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
Teacher agency
Case study 2: Sam
Valuing discourse analysis
Sam tended to positively value those aspects of his exposure to expertise in DA that he perceived to be in line with (a) structuralist principles of linguistic inquiry, (b) his commitment to scientific objectivity, and (c) the deductive method of scientific investigation. By the same token, Sam appeared to de-value those discourse analytical approaches to language that he considered to be unprincipled or difficult to categorize. His differing evaluation of DA was construed linguistically in the text of his reaction journal by his polemic use of (a) categorical assertions, (b) particular lexical items, and (c) portions of the appraisal system in English (White, 2002). Each of these features is discussed in turn in the following paragraphs.
Simpson (1993, p. 49) explains that the categorical assertion is one of the strongest possible linguistic means of intensifying epistemic modality or a speaker’s commitment to the perceived truth of an utterance. Instead of using hedges such as ‘perhaps’, ‘possibly’, and ‘for the most part’ in his reflections on the new material that he was encountering in the seminar, Sam routinely expressed his reactions to DA in the form of categorical assertions. For example, Sam used a series of categorical assertions to express his reactions to what he calls “the functionalist approach” to FL teaching: “The idea of trying to teach language from the top down seems quite absurd... I would say that it is not really possible to teach language in this manner because that would disallow the breaking down of language into “chunks”, which is what foreign language teaching is about. This fact is most evident when one considers how tests are created; they are pieced together from various chunks of grammar and vocabulary. I cannot imagine a written test that is not created in this way.” Although Sam does hedge his assertions in the first two sentences of this excerpt with the verb “seems” and the phrase “not really”, his view on the nature of FL teaching is expressed in unqualified fashion. Foreign language teaching is about breaking down language into those clearly delineated chunks that have been ascertained by applying the principles of scientific investigation to an admissible data set. Indeed, Sam’s comments at this juncture in his journal may be metonymic of “the extent to which nearly all institutionalized and proceduralized manifestations of foreign language learning and teaching are intricately enmeshed in and dependent on the validity of formalist approaches” to language (Byrnes, 2002, p. 27). In the next sentence of this excerpt, Sam used the indicative mood in an unmodified declarative sentence in order to state that FL tests consist of a battery of presumably discrete-point questions about vocabulary and grammar. His commitment to the truth of this bald assertion is underscored in the final sentence where he used the emphatic modal verb ‘cannot’ to negate the possibility that alternative forms of language testing could exist.
My interpretation of Sam’s structurally oriented conceptualization of FL teaching is bolstered by his comment that he “didn’t have much to say” during a classroom discussion on the teaching of culture in the FL classroom. He wrote: “All in all I find the whole discussion about culture...to be quite mundane.” Unlike the teaching of grammatical structure, which, according to Sam, is rooted theoretically in the scholarship of such linguists as Noam Chomsky (see Kramsch, 2000a, p. 313), he did not appear to consider that the teaching of culture could be grounded similarly in a variety of both theoretical and empirical arguments when he remarked that “these matters should be left up to the individual instructor.”
The third sentence of Sam’s statement on the nature of FL teaching (This fact is most evident when one considers how tests are created) illustrates his polemic use of particular lexical items. He consistently designated those discourse analytic theories and constructs that were sympathetic to his own point of view as ‘facts’ (see Halliday, 1994, pp. 264-268). In this particular case, he referred to his own statement that FL teaching is about constituent analysis as a fact. In the quote cited as a lead-in, Sam remarks that “the general confusion within the field of linguistics...has arisen due to the fact that the number of linguistic terms has increased in the past few decades to a ridiculous number” (italics added). He categorically asserts that there is ‘general confusion’ in the field of linguistics, then he attributes this confusion to the ‘fact’ that linguists are creating too many terms (see G. Cook, 1994, p. 20, for a similar view). Fran, in contrast to Sam, did not use the word ‘fact’ in the course of her reaction journal.
Just as Sam was inclined to designate those aspects of DA that are theoretically and methodologically compatible with structuralism as ‘facts’, he tended to introduce his opinions about this approach with the word ‘believe’. As might be noted by Fowler (1996, p. 88), this word is a prominent collocate of the terminology of prayer; thus, Sam’s use of it lends his opinions a dogmatic, quasi-religious tone. Such a register ties his interpretations to the divine and amplifies their perceived naturalness. To illustrate, consider Sam’s statement concerning the efficacy of Jakobson’s (1961) notion of foregrounding in the analysis of “poetry and other constructed texts”: “I believe language at all levels, also at the discourse level, can be better analyzed and interpreted and described with the help of such terms as foregrounding.” Sam’s commitment to the ‘truth’ of this utterance is underscored with his use of the lexical absolute ‘all’ in “language at all levels” and his repetitive use of paratactic coordination in the phrase “analyzed and interpreted and described”.
Affect and appreciation, two types of attitudinal appraisal (White, 2002), constitute the final linguistic devices that Sam deployed in a systematic fashion in order to express his differential evaluation of expertise in DA. While evaluation refers to the psychological phenomenon of “how...interlocutors are feeling, the judgments they make, and the value they place on the various phenomena of their experience”, appraisal indicates “the semantic resources [interlocutors use] to negotiate emotions, judgments, and valuations” (Martin, 2000, p. 144). Affect is the semantic resource used to convey emotional responses. Appreciation designates the semantic resource used to express the ‘aesthetic’ quality of natural phenomena and the products of human behavior (such as linguistic theories and descriptive constructs).
On the whole, Sam made slightly more positive appraisals than negative ones, 59 to 48, respectively. Almost without exception, however, he positively appraised those readings and theories that he perceived to resonate with structuralist approaches to the study of language, while he negatively appraised what he referred to as ‘functionalist’ ones. His systematic dichotomization is illustrated particularly well in example (2) below, which occurred immediately after his comment on the “ridiculous” proliferation of terms in current linguistic scholarship.
(2) And only has the number of terms skyrocketed (9) but also the meaning attached to such terms varies from linguist to linguist...From this realization I can extend my criticism (30) of the plethora of confusing (35) and ambiguous (37) terms in linguistics to the field of discourse analysis. It seems to me that of amongst the various fields within linguistics that discourse analysis is going to be most susceptible (67) to an overabundance (70) of terminology. Since current trends in discourse analysis seem to emphasize the functionalist perspective there will be no limit to the number of terms that discourse analysts come up with (100). The top down approach takes all variables into account and due to the sheer (114) unlimited (115) quantity of variables, there will be no end (123) to the different approaches and to the different terms within these approaches. This is in opposition to Chomskian syntax (142). Chomsky starts with the smallest units of syntax, he names them and sees how they combine to form greater constituents and those he names also...The unlimited potential for the creation of terminology should be viewed as one of the greatest threats (184) to the field of discourse analysis.
Sam opened this excerpt by using the verb ‘skyrocket’ to describe the perceived increase in linguistic terms. In English, this word is often used to indicate an increase in prices, inflation, or crime and therefore carries with it a negative connotation which, by association, is transferred to the presumed increase in linguistic terms. At word 30, Sam explicitly stated that he is criticizing or evaluating disparagingly what he views to be a “plethora” of linguistic terms. He then negatively appreciated this perceived terminological surplus as “confusing” and “ambiguous” at words 35 and 37. Its negative nature was further amplified at word 67 when Sam used the medical term “susceptible” to construe DA as an endangered victim of the problematic and parasitic plethora. In the next lines, Sam asserted a causal relationship between the threatening “overabundance” (word 70) of linguistic terminology and functional approaches to language, among which he included DA as a whole. At words 98-100, Sam used the verb “come up with” to suggest that the methodology that functionalists employ in order to create new terms is akin to conjuring. Farther down the adverb “sheer”, the adjective “unlimited”, and the idiomatic phrase “there will be no end” heighten the disordered and disorderly quality that Sam ascribed to terminological plurality. With the sharp categorical assertion that ends with word 142, Sam cut the textual string of negative appraisals and introduced what he believed to offer a more ‘scientific’ solution: Chomskyan syntax. Finally, with the use of the phrase “greatest threats” at word 184, Sam called into question the viability of the field of DA as a scholarly discipline based on “the infinite number of variables” that may be subject to analysis.
