Discourse and

Pragmatics

Mediated Discourse Analysis

Review

• Discourse• Language beyond the level of the

sentence/clause• Language ‘in use’• Discourse as a matter of action• We ‘do things’ with discourse• Discourse as a kind of social practice• What’s a ‘social practice’

Traditional Approach

• Look for a text (or conversation) and analyze it

• Take into account the social context (including the actions it is being used to take)

• Problems• Why choose this text?• What’s the text, what’s the context?• Example: Computerized Classrooms

Mediated Discourse Analysis

‘Actions speak louder than words’

WHICH DISCOURSE SHOULD I ANALYZE?

City University is my site of investigation

Meidatied Discourse Analysis

• STARTS WITH ACTION• Rather than looking at the discourse and

trying to figure out its relationship to action• Looks at the actions and asks (if and) how

discourse is being to take them. • First question: What’s going on here? • Identify the key actions • Don’t waste your time studying discourse that

is not linked to key actions

Actions

• Our lives are made up of actions• When we take actions we show

• Who we think we are• Who we think other people are

• All actions are mediated through cultural tools• So the actions we take (and the identities that

go along with them) depend on what kinds of cultural tools are available to us

Mediated Discourse Analysis

ACTION

Actor Other

Mediation

ACTION

Actor OtherCultural

Tools

Cultural Tools

• ‘Technical Tools’• Texts

• Both verbal and visual

• Machines• Objects• Bodies/People

• Semiotic (symbolic) Tools• Languages• Counting systems• Genres, social languages

and other ways of speaking

• Time• Rules• Systems• Social Identity Labels• ‘Communities’• Memories

Affordances and Constraints

• Cultural tools make some kinds of actions more possible and other kinds less possible

• A microphone• Therefore, they make some kinds of identities

more possible and others less possible• Medical charts• Tools accumulate the histories of their

previous use

Buying a cup of Coffee

• List all of the actions involved in buying a cup of coffee at PC or Starbucks

• List the cultural tools (technical and semiotic) that are used to take these actions

• Consider how these tools make some actions more possible and other actions less possible

Actions and Social Practices

• Actions follow other actions and precede other actions

• ‘Chains of action’

Action Action Action Action

Higher Order and Lower Order actions

• Smaller actions go into making larger actions

Action Action Action Action

Higher Order Action

Actions and Social Practices

• Certain sequences are performed over and over again by the same people

• ‘Habitus’ (Bourdieu)

• ‘Community of Practice’ (Lave and Wenger)

Action Action Action Action

Social Practice

Claiming Identity Imputing Identity

ACTION

Actor OtherCultural

ToolsAffordances Constraints

Action Action Action Action

Claiming and Imputing Identity

• Condoms

• Giving condoms to children?

• ‘If he really loves me and I trust him, then he doesn’t have to use it.’

Agency

• Who is responsible for actions• ‘Distributed Agency’

• Social actor• Cultural Tool• Social Practice

• Married? • What’s going on?

• Are you filling out the form• Or is the form filling out you

How we are controlled by mediated actions

• What tools are available to us

• Affordances and constraints

• The pressure of practices

• The funnel of commitment

Availability, Affordances and Constraints

• Different tools available to different people in the interaction

• Different tools make different kinds of action possible

The Pressure of Practice

Claiming Identity Imputing Identity

Actor Other

Action Action Action Action

The Funnel of Commitment

• ‘One thing leads to the other’

• With each successive action, the ‘practice’ becomes more complete

• With each successive action, the chain of actions becomes more difficult to reverse

Claiming Identity Imputing Identity

ACTION

Actor OtherCultural

ToolsAffordances Constraints

Action Action Action Action

Claiming Identity Imputing Identity

ACTION

Actor OtherCultural

ToolsAffordances Constraints

Action Action Action Action

Agency

Agency

Agency

Agency

Tension

• ‘tension between the mediational means as provided in the sociocultural setting and the unique contextualized use of these means in carrying out particular concrete actions’

(Wertsch 1994: 205).

How to Do it

• Consider your site of investigation• What are the actions being taken by people at this

site?• What are the tools available to different actors to take

these actions? • What kinds of actions do these tools make easier/more

difficult?• What kinds of identities are claimed and imputed by

these actions?• How do actions go together to make ‘practices’?• How do practices support interaction orders

(relationships between people)?