christie chapters 1 and 2 jill

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Classroom Discourse Analysis

By Christie, Frances

Chs. 1 and 2 Selections/OverviewNotes by Jill McCarthy

Overview

(Excerpts from back of text): Christie places her model of discourse analysis in the classroom,

beginning with early childhood (ch. 2) and early literacy teaching and learning (ch. 3). She uses SFL

theory and associated genre theory to view classroom episodes as curriculum genres andcurriculum macrogenres. She further organizes pedagogic discourse into two registers: the

regulative and the instructional. The regulative register pertains to the goals and directions of the

discourse while the instructional register has to do with the content or knowledge of instruction.

The former draws on various fields of experience and knowledge from beyond the school. Overall,schools emerge as major sites of symbolic control in a culture.

Ch. 1 Selections

1. Introduction and connections to the theoretical framework: making a case for applying criticaldiscourse analysis to schooling: Christie maps her work to connections mostly to SF linguistic theory

while incorporating Bernsteins sociological theories as well. Thus, she intends to view classroomactivity as structured experience, with associated notions of classroom work as social practice.

The theme of structured experience (p. 3) has a history in classroom discourse analysis, startinwith Flanders and perhaps popularized with the move, IRE. In Christies approach, for

example, IRE would be looked at within a larger context of the total sequences of classroom

talk before making judgments about one pattern, in this case, IRE (p. 4-5).

Christie reminds the reader of the influence of ethnography and conversational analysis as

well, with their impact of linguistic and sociolinguistic research, all pointing to a greatlyenhanced interest in the role of language in the social construction of experience. (p. 7)Along with this integration has come a sense of the construction of various ideological

positioning in language. (p. 7) Christie proceeds to link theory to Fairclough, Gee, Lemke,

and Wells.

2.The relevance of SF theory to classroom discourse analysis (p. 11). Christie intends to

focus on a) the metafunctional organization of all languages, b) the uses of the notion of

system, and c) the claims made by SF theory regarding the relationship of language/textand context (leading to the related terms of register and genre). Specifically:

a) metafunctions are ideational (includes experiential and logical), interpersonal, and

textual, that is, for ideational: aspects of the grammar directly involved inrepresentation of the world and its experiences, both the outer world of action and

the inner world of if consciousness, reflection, imagination (p. 12), realized

through transitivity and lexis. For interpersonal: aspects of grammar in which therelationship of the interlocutors is realized (eg. mood, modality, person). For the

textual metafunction: aspects of grammar that assist in organizing language as a

message, such as theme, information and cohesion.

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b) Notion of system. Language as a meaning system, how language choices indicate

meanings. Choices include transitivity (process types of verbal groups, participant roles

of nominal groups, circumstances of prep phrases or adverbial groups) For transitivity,each of the process types is further elaborated into a range of types: material, mental,

behavioral, verbal, relational, existential (see p. 13-14). Other choices include theme in

the textual metafunction; mood, modality in the interpersonal metafunction.

(Note to self) Why are process types and participant roles helpful? They are measures of the

experiential content found in classoom texts (p. 14). Process types can be located in the 2 registersdescribed by Christie: regulative or instructional. The interplay of the 2 registerstell a great deal

of the kinds of meanings being made as well as the extent to which, and the ways in which, students

are learning. (p. 15)

p.s. Metaphor in systemic theory. 2 kinds of grammatical metaphor: ideational and interpersonal.

They occur when the usualrealization of a meaning is given a noncongruent expression. (p. 19)

Grammatical metaphor leads to denser language, maybe adult language or language of writing.

Interpersonal metaphor is often found in teacher talk, for example, when a command is phrased as afriendly question. Such language emphasizes teacher authority while hiding teacher identity (p. 20).

(Note to self) The use of metaphor reflects the transition from early childhood classroom talk

(congruent in the ideational sense) to more metaphorical, both in the ideational and

interpersonal senses.Ideational metaphor becomes an issue in teaching the various

instructional fields of late primary and secondary education. (p. 20)

c. Text, context and genre (the 3rd SF feature used by Christie). The language choices

particular to any context are choices in register. 3 variables are involved in register choices: thefield of activity (what is going on), the tenor of the relationships of the participants, and the mode

of delivery and organization of the message. These 3 variables are linked to metafunctions:

fieldexperiential meanings tenorinterpersonal meanings mode textual meanings

A genre is a staged purposive activity undertaken to accomplish some goal/sthey have thecharacter due to the context of the culture in which they are found (p. 21).

Relationship between register and genre, while debated, is seen by Christie as: Classroomactivity is to be understood as constituting curriculum genresin turn, these constitute larger

unities of macrogenres. Both are staged, goal-driven activities, devoted to the accomplishment

of significant educational ends. (p. 22)

Christies stated purpose is to follow how classroom genre unfolds, through its various elements

of structure and phasesto analyse and explain how the pedagogic discourse of schooling work,

how access to forms of knowledge is made available, and how such forms are variouslydistributed to persons in a culture (p. 24)

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Further, pedagogic discourse operates by taking forms of knowledge from elsewhere and

relocates these for the purposes of the initiation of others. Pedagogic discourse, then, is

embedded in the regulative discourse (p. 24).

Ch. 2 Early childhood: first steps in becoming a pedagogic subject

Christie highlights the morning news activity to demonstrate the weak boundaries of early

childhood curriculum related to valid educational knowledge and the knowledge of home

and family. The ideology of self-expression and using language for learning underscore themorning news activity, as this activity initiates the young into the knowledge and culture of

schooling. However, Christie proposes that the expectations of meanings to be made during

morning news are not equally available to all. She argues that morning news as a curriculum

genre overrides the individual meaning orientations of the learners, that it is the developmentof language competence that is the actual goal.

In this genre, the teacher controls the regulative register as the children practice good manners,

and may take control through an interviewing format if the child who is sharing is notperforming adequately. Yet the teacher is not available to intervene in the pedagogic register.

(p. 63)

Christie also proposes that evaluation is not clear either, so that the measures of success remain

part of the hidden curriculum of early schooling (p. 55) Finally, she notes that because childrencome from different meaning orientations, depending on family background, it might be

beneficial to build sharing time on shared experiences in which the teacher and the children are

creating, recreating, rehearsing, and ultimately being evaluated.

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christie chapters 1 and 2 jill

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