Discourse Analysis
Weekly Syllabus, Winter 2004
Faculty: Susan Fiksdal, Lab II 2247, 867-6329, fiksdals@evergreen.edu

Texts:
Gide, André. The Immoralist
Johnstone, Barbara. Discourse Analysis
Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By
Chamoiseau, Patrick. Solibo Magnificent

The reading and assignment noted each week is due that week. No late work will be accepted. If you are absent, you may submit your work by email.

Week One, Jan. 6, 2004 Gide’s The Immoralist. Workshop on written discourse.

Week Two, Jan 13, 2004 Read Chapters 1 & 2 of Johnstone. Do exercise 2.2, p. 32. Use a text you are working on in your French language class or a paragraph from L’Immoraliste. Be as precise as you can in your analysis, thinking about syntax (structure), meaning (connotation and denotation) and write 1-2 paragraphs. Attach a copy of the French text you have chosen. Choose one other exercise in Chapter 2 and write a response (maximum one page).

Week Three, Jan. 20, 2004 Read Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By. Record a 15 to 30 minute conversation or interview, naturally occurring or from television or radio. Write a two-page paper listing and analyzing the metaphors the speakers used. Refer to Lakoff and Johnson for this analysis and discuss how the metaphors highlight or obscure meaning.

Week Four, Jan 27, 2004 Read Chapter 3 of Johnstone. Record a 30 minute conversation. This can be from the radio or television or it can be naturally occurring. Choose a 5 minute portion (or portions that add up to this amount) of this discourse to transcribe closely and analyze. If you choose a narrative, use the Labov and Waletzky model (pp. 84-7); otherwise, try to determine how turns are allocated. Who gets the floor and how? Would you say the turn-taking follows Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson’s model (pp.94-5)? How does repair occur?

Week Five, Feb. 3, 2004 Read Chapter 4 & 5 in Johnstone and Lindenfeld’s Verbal Interaction at French Urban Markteplaces (link on web page). Write a 2-page paper on the connections you find between the concepts discussed in Johnstone and Lindenfeld.

Week Six, Feb. 10, 2004 Read Chapters 5 & 6 of Johnstone, and read the short articles by Paul Ten Have and Cynthia Campbell and Scott Wickman (co-authors) on this URL: http://www.media-culture.org.au/archive.html#chat. After reading these articles, enter a chat room and take note of planned vs. unplanned discourse features (p. 184 in Johnstone) and Tannen’s list of interpersonal involvement features (p.190 in Johnstone). Write a 2-page paper on your findings. Print out the chat room data and attach it to your paper. Work on making connections with the other reading for this week and previous reading.

Week Seven, Feb. 17, 2004 Read Chapters 7 & 8 of Johnstone. Choose a political speech, preferably recorded from television or radio, transcribe and analyze a 2-5 minute portion of it using the notion of contextualization cues, style, verbal art, and/or metaphor. (Chapter 7 is key for this analysis.)

Week Eight, Feb 24, 2004 Read Solibo. Write a 3-4 page paper examining the discourse in the novel and analyzing the characters.

Week Nine, Mar. 2, 2004 Work on Discourse Analysis papers. We will choose a discourse feature to study in common, and you will each choose a source for your analysis: naturally occurring talk, prerecorded (television or radio), the Internet, or other media. Your purpose in doing the work will be to analyze and interpret patterns in speech. You will use Chapter 8 in Johnstone in framing your work, so we will have a discussion on that chapter for 30 minutes first thing.

Week Ten, Mar. 9, 2004 Final Discourse Analysis presentations and papers due.