Month: October 2018

Gee’s Building Tasks for Discourse Analysis

Building Evidence for an Analysis of Science Discourse

 

For each of these seven building tasks, Cripps has modeled one example of a passage and brief explanation. Find your own quotes and do your own explaining.  You are not required/expected to have an example in each of the seven building tasks.

 

Significance

“Once you select a journal to which you wish to submit your manuscript, please FOLLOW THE JOURNAL’S INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS, which can usually be found in each volume of the journal… or easily accessed from the journal’s webpage” (Nair and Nair 13).

 

The author uses all capital letters in a phrase in this sentence to show its significance to the reader.  This phrase instantly stands out to the reader and will likely stick with them due to how much it sticks out on the page.  

 

Practices (activities)

“This article, then, provides an initial exploration of one’s student’s developing rhetorical understanding of texts.  It details a longitudinal study, an extended 4-year examination of one student as she progressed during college, focusing primarily on how student’s views of, and interactions with, disciplinary texts changed through her postsecondary education” (Haas 46).  

 

Instead of simply giving facts to the reader, Haas gives us a study that she partook in.  This study provides the reader with real world evidence that involved Haas working closely with a student named Eliza for her four years in college.

 

Identities

“Have defined the components of “scientific literacy” as not only the mastery of scientific facts and concepts, but an understanding of “the evolving contributions of individual scientists and groups of scientists,… the social communities and historical settings in which scientists work” (Haas 45).  

 

By defining what scientific literacy is and her choice of grammar and words, Haas attempts to build an identity for herself to the reader.  She wants the reader to believe she is qualified to be giving the information that she is giving and the reader should take everything she says serious.   

 

Relationships

“In addition, other studies have suggested that scientists adjust the strength of their claims depending on the audience: Texts meant for scientific insiders hedge qualify claims, while texts for lay persons and other outsiders strip out such qualifiers, making claims seem more certain and less open to question” (Haas 44-45).

 

In this passage, Haas describes that scientists word their claims differently after taking into account who their audience is.  They may use more common language when addressing a wider, public audience while they may use more scientific language when addressing their peers in the field of science.  

 

Politics

“Lack of such insight is evident when authors simply state-often repeat- the results, and make superficial statements such as “this work agrees with the work of author X (some unknown author’s work, published several years earlier)” as though the objective of research was to see if the results agreed with some other author’s (obscure) work published 20 or more years earlier” (Nair and Nair 21).  

 

When the author is using examples of different author’s methods of stating the results for as they are, he does so in a polite manner.  He does not name who the authors are and does not slander their work in the process.

 

Connections

“The section pulls everything together and shows the importance and value of the work and is therefore the most innovative and difficult part of the paper to write” (Nair and Nair 21).  

 

In a scientific paper, one of the most important aspects is the Discussion section where the author will have to interpret their results and reiterate to the reader why they should want to know the information.  The author will have to make numerous connections to show the importance of their work.

Sign Systems & Knowledge

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1.  Hass’ opening statement of her article states that in order to become fully literate in terms of college level reading, a person must learn not only how to just retain information from the text but also understand the context of the text and author.  In her article, Haas talks about a study she conducted on a student over the course of four years.  Over the four years she kept track of the students reading and writing habits.  Haas states, ” Although Eliza (a pseudonym) may have tacitly subscribed to the doctrine of autonomous texts early in her college career, by the time she left college she had come to a greater awareness of the rhetorical, contingent nature of both the activities and discourses she participated in within her chosen field, biology” ( Haas 46).  After conducting her study, Haas comes to the conclusion that throughout her college career, Eliza gradually came to a better understanding of notions of text and how to fully retain everything from a text.  Eliza learns how to make better connections within the text and also how to connect different pieces of text.
2. Early in her article, Haas mentions a myth that pertains to one’s understanding of text after reading it.  She states, ” In general, the belief in autonomous text views written academic texts as discrete, highly explicit, even “timeless” entities functioning without contextual support from author, reader, or culture” (Haas 45).  An autonomous text is independent text that stands by itself.  Haas calls this a myth because it is simply an idea and not a scientific fact yet until proven.  This makes sense to me as I am guilty of simply reading text simply to retain information and not thinking about the deeper context that comes with the text. 
3. Haas’ study of Eliza helps the reader understand that as a college student gradually progresses through their four years, their reading strategies and comprehensions will improve throughout every year.  The major a student chooses to pursue also affects how they interpret text as shown by Eliza.  Haas states, “By her senior year she often viewed texts as multiply connected-to authors and scientists, to other readers, and to historical circumstances-and even demonstrated some understanding of her own connections both to scientific texts (and, by standing of her own connections both to scientific texts (and, by implication, to their authors) and to the objects of her own research” (Haas 69).  Eliza was a Biology major, and during her junior and senior years, she came to a deeper understanding of the text she was reading by thinking about the context behind the text and also of the author.  She was able to make connections in between different texts and also connect them to her own research.  
4. A rhetorical frame is a framework that consists of the three theories that are concerned with how individuals participate in different social acts.  Haas describes this when she explains, “Elements of the rhetorical frame include participants, their relationships and motives, and several layers of context.  For instance, when readers approach a discourse situation, they presumably have some knowledge or representation of the participants, including the identity, knowledge, and background of author and intended readers” (Haas 48).  Using the logic of Haas, a reader usually has some background knowledge on the text he or she is reading and the purpose of it.  The rhetorical frame helps readers understand the motive of the text they are reading.
5. The idea of Discourses as explained by James Gee and rhetorical reading by Christina Haas share many similarities.  When explaining the idea of a rhetorical frame, Haas delves deeper into this concept and its relevance to all readers.  Haas states, “Elements of the rhetorical frame include participants, their relationships and motives, and several layers of context.  For instance, when readers approach a discourse situation, they presumably have some knowledge or representation of the participants, including the identity, knowledge, and background of author and intended readers” (Haas 48).  Using Haas’ logic, we can assume that most readers have a simple, general understanding of the text they read before reading it.  This relates to Gee’s idea of the use of meta-knowledge.  Gee explains, “Metaknowledge is liberation and power, because it leads to the ability to manipulate, to analyze, to resist while advancing” (Gee 13).  A reader can use meta-knowledge that they already have on a text, and use it to fully understand the text they are reading to the best of their knowledge.  The knowledge of the text they have prior can help them in their attempt to fully comprehend the text they are reading.  

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