Ron Scollon

Handbills, Tissues, and Condoms: A Site of Engagement for the Construction of Identity in Public Discourse

This study develops an analysis of one site of engagement of public discourse in which identity is socially constructed. Through an analysis of the handing out of handbills in public places, the study argues that such sites of engagement are socially constructed through activities such as handing, a social situation frame in which there are expectations on appropriate behaviors, a regulatory frame of civic responsibility, and a generic frame in which the text itself implies a reader or receiver. The study argues that in such sites of engagement identities are imputed, claimed, ratified or contested and that the ascription of identity is, therefore, inherent in the activities at the sites of engagement in which this discourse takes place. Thus public discourse is argued to be inherently constitutive of social identity.

Methodological Challenges in Discourse Analysis: From Sentences to Discourses, Ethnography to Ethnographic: Convicting Trends in TESOL Research

The TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of qualitative and quantitative research. For this issue we asked two researchers to discuss methodological challenges in discourse analysis.

Breakthrough into action

Abstract We take as axiomatic from Hymess work that the linguistic structures of oral narrative should be construed not as abstract and ideal but as artifacts of the human mind in action in society, and that the indissoluble tension between structure and creativity should be moved by analysts in the direction of social justice. The problem we faced in an extended set of action projects aimed at reducing discrimination against Alaska Natives was that problems framed for our attention were often misleading though on the surface clear-cut and reasonable. We began by viewing narrative as a work of social interaction between storyteller and audience in which taboos often dictate indirect statement, and gradually learned to see action as the active punch line. We began to breakthrough into action—acting ourselves in order to learn how people act, what they know and value, how they structure their worlds—using a strategy we now call “nexus analysis.” Taking narrative as the discursive doppelganger of action, we trained educators and medics to perceive and pursue indigenous hunting strategies of carefully surrounding rather than going directly to quarry. We worked through abduction by moving from action to action, becoming directly engaged in processes of social change.

Attribution and Power in Hong Kong News Discourse.

The attribution of sources is situated within the broader context of social practice. Giving or withholding voice is done through the ‘same’ linguistic means, but in particular, situated cases, like means may produce significantly different outcomes. Organizing a rich interdiscursivity of practice are three forms of discursive power: (1) the power to command animation or authorship; (2) the power to give or deny voice, and (3) the power to frame discursive events. All three are found in the news discourse of Hong Kong, in English or in Chinese. What is different between these two discourses is not the exercise of power through discursive means, but the explicit focusing of that power. English or Western journalism tends to highlight the individual voices of the presenter, reporter (through bylining and delegation frames) and newsmaker (through quotation and actualities). Less clearly seen is the social and institutional power behind these voices. In Hong Kong Chinese news, one hears the voices of the news organization. Individual voices of reporters, sub-editors, and newsmakers are backgrounded. In Hong Kong journalistic practice, social and institutional power is discursively brought into the foregound and individual speaker’s or writer’s power is set into the shadows.