A. McHoul

The organization of repair in classroom talk

This article is a conversation-analytic investigation of the forms of organization that allow specific items of classroom discourse – words, phrases, up to whole turns at talk – to be altered by subsequent items. Central to the article is an analytic distinction between self-correction and other-correction, that is, between repair sequences in which the speaker of the initial item (the “trouble source”) makes the correction and instances in which this is performed by one of her or his interlocutors (cf. Jefferson 1974; Schegloff et al. 1977). The classroom case is analytically interesting both for its own sake and also on account of research speculations that other-correction should be more frequent in adult-child talk than in other genres of conversation. However, in order to provide an analysis of the problem sensitive to the particularities of the classroom, it is necessary to look not merely at corrections, but at the larger repair trajectories in which they occur. These trajectories consist of corrections plus their prior initiations, the latter being means by which speakers mark out some item as requiring correction. Once the social identities of teacher and student are mapped against self-and other-forms of initiation and correction, it is possible to discern some of the structural preferences of classroom discourse along the general axis of repair. The materials are taken from geography lessons in Australian high school classrooms. (Repair and correction, question and answer, clue-giving, expansion sequences, modulation, classroom discourse, everyday language use, Australian English, conversation analysis, sociology of education).

An initial investigation of the usability of fictional conversation for doing conversation analysis

This paper proposes that fictional conversations be taken seriously as objects for conversation analysis. It also goes some small way towards exemplifying such an analysis. However, the field of ethnomethodology/ conversation analysis has not been exactly quick to embrace literary materials to date, and it has been especially neglectful of fictional (literary and dramatic) dialogue. Again seriously: one may wonder why this has been the case.

Discourse as language and politics: An introduction to the philology of political culture in Australia

Despite a number of different attempts to identify a mutual body of ‘research interests’, ‘methods’, ‘materials’ and ‘levels of analysis’ by Van Dijk (1985) and others (e.g., Brown and Yule (1983) Stubbs (1983) Coulthard (1985)) what counts as discourse analysis remains problematic. This is complicated by a further consideration of the broader distinction between these and other Anglo-American approaches and continental European approaches to discourse (Lecourt (1975) Macdonell (1986)) a distinction which has a number of interesting parallels with that between the two forms of semiotics associated with the two sides of the Atlantic. In the Anglo-American tradition there have been urgent attempts to search out a sub-disciplinary identity and unity for discourse analysis, its “common core” (Stalpers (1988: 88)). Foundational figures have been recognised; key moments in the history of the sub-discipline have been named; texts have been selected for the canon. Yet, on this side of things, questions about whether and how a “new (sub)discipline” has “come into existence” (Stalpers (1988: 87)) about “disciplinary maturity” ~ like many efforts in other disciplines to explicate a common core of theory, object and method ~ begin from particular unproblematicised assumptions about discourse and its analysis. Moreover, these assumptions quite often include the idea that discourse analysis should ‘naturally’ exist in some particularly close relation to linguistics, as though the latter itself were not fraught with rifts as to its proper object and method (Stalpers (I 988: 88-89)). Methodological reflection on discourse analysis, in such cases, is in danger of becoming nothing more or less than a subset of methodological reflection on linguistics. Along with the contributors to the present volume, we see severe problems with such an attempt to establish disciplinary unity and singularity in the field. Our purpose

What can psychological terms actually do? (Or: If Sigmund calls, tell him it didn't work)

In this paper we describe some counter-psychological approaches to psychological terms such as ‘thinking’, ‘understanding’, ‘intending’ and so on. We draw on the work of Coulter, Ryle, Sacks and Wittgenstein in order to do this and, initially, to sketch out some general convergences between pragmatics, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. From here we go on to rehearse two analyses by Harvey Sacks; the first focusing on a single utterance (“I just had a thought”) and the second on a more extensive case of “inference making”. Because this leads us to doubt the often-assumed view that psychological terms have meaning by referring to mental states, we end with the question of ordinary, everyday practices of ‘referring to mental states’—an issue marking a potential difference between some Wittgensteinian scholars and discursive psychology.

Ghost: Do Not Forget; This Visitation / Is But to Whet Thy Almost Blunted Purpose Culture, Psychology and ‘Being Human’

After a brief inspection of some cases where people apparently ‘mis-identify’ others, we draw some initial and tentative conclusions about ways of thinking about ‘who people are’. We then move on to look at underlying assumptions in psychology about this very question; with these assumptions considered under the rubric of psychology’s ‘model of being human’. Locating problems with this model on the basis of its affinity with Kantian thought, we conclude that what it misses is an understanding of cultural order as the primary medium for human existence. Against this, we propose instead—via Harvey Sacks in particular and ethnomethodological thinking in general—that to be in the world is always to be in the cultural world. Consequently, what persons can do and be is never a form of governance or control by fixed rules; rather, it is always already an orientation to publicly known and material forms of cultural order. We end by speculating on the general consequences of such a re-formulated ‘model of being human’ for a paradigm of psychology yet to come.

How can ethnomethodology be Heideggerian

The purpose of this paper is to begin to try to understand the extent to which ethnomethodology (EM) might be informed by some concepts and ideas from the work of the philosopher Martin Heidegger. This is done in two parts. The first looks at Heideggers later work and compares his conception of the ontological difference with Garfinkels work on the difference between EM and formal sociological analysis (FA). The second part turns to Heideggers earlier work (around Being and Time) and works through a number of affinities between the analysis of Dasein and ethnomethodological versions of everydayness.

Writing, Sexism and Schooling: A Discourse‐analytic investigation of some recent documents on sexism and education in Queensland

Abstract Queensland, somewhat belatedly by comparison with other States (Taylor, 1982), has recently taken up ‘sexism in schooling’ as a problem for official treatment. In the course of so doing, the Education Department has produced a number of widely distributed texts, most notably a Departmental Policy Statement. The purpose of the present paper is to examine textual production and effectivity in this context. In particular, it is argued that the production of such texts is highly constrained, especially by prior and precedential texts. In effect, there can be no ‘fresh starts’ under such intertextual conditions. These constraints on the conditions of textual production of ‘anti‐sexist’ policy, it is argued, generate policy texts fraught with contradictions. Recent work in discourse analysis is used to describe those contradictions. Further, the question is raised as to whether such policy documents are indeed anti‐sexist in their effectivity or whether, by transforming, incorporating and neutralising ...

Helping the Self

To carry a concealed weapon here in Texas, a person must pay a

The politics of text and commentary

140 application fee, have no history of major crime or mental illness, demonstrate an understanding of use-of-force laws and pass a shooting proficiency test with a .38 caliber revolver or a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun. And one other thing: the applicant must be in touch with his or her inner child. -Reported in the New York Times, 8 November 1995

Interpreting understanding context

This paper addresses the politics of the relations between texts in situations where one text offers commentary on another.