Book review: Dennis Tay, Time Series Analysis of Discourse: Method and Case Studies

Abstract

authentic examples of recently published research articles and discussed in a critical way. In other words, the authors develop arguments about these methodological alternatives, rather than just describing them. It is noteworthy that this book is not intended to be an exhaustive and complete guidance to research into classroom discourse. It focuses solely on some comparatively recent analytical frameworks but excludes many other alternative methods such as interaction analysis. The exemplified themes, as discussed in the second part of this book, are also rather limited and exclude some other relatively recent themes pertinent to classroom discourse study such as classroom interactional competence (Walsh, 2013) or communicative repertoire (Alexander, 2018; Rymes, 2016). Therefore, novice researchers who would like to get a general view of the overall landscape in conducting a classroom discourse analysis may also need to turn to such other books as a more comprehensive guide. Having said that, we need to bear in mind that due to the dynamic nature and internal complexity of classroom interaction (Seedhouse, 2015), no one approach is sufficient to tell the whole story. Nevertheless, these approaches are complementary in one way or another. Each has its advantage in illuminating some distinctive features of classroom discourse. As such, this book may give us insight into the varying ways of revealing particular features of classroom discourse and thus worth a special recommendation.