25.4371, Review: Discourse Analysis: Gee (2014)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-4371. Mon Nov 03 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.4371, Review: Discourse Analysis: Gee (2014)

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Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 16:41:34
From: Michael Schwartz [m_schwartz2004 at yahoo.com]
Subject: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-662.html

AUTHOR: James Paul Gee
TITLE: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis
SUBTITLE: Theory and Method, 4th Edition
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Michael Schwartz, St. Cloud State University

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

James Gee’s fourth edition of “An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory
and Method” (2014) was much anticipated for those who are familiar with his
earlier editions.  Intended as a textbook for upper undergraduate, graduate
students, and scholars across a wide variety of disciplines, including
linguistics, sociology, communication, education, and anthropology  who are
interested in learning about discourse analysis and how it can inform and
enrich their disciplines, Gee attempts to condense, simplify, and make
accessible and applicable a large and often abstract body of work from
multiple fields of inquiry that claim discourse analysis.  Furthermore, Gee,
as in the previous three editions, argues throughout for essentially a bottom
up approach to the analysis of language-in-use, “situated meaning” rather than
the traditional top-down conception of language, which embodies a belief that
humans are merely players in an a priori system of language as promulgated by
the proponents of Chomsky (1965).  For this, Gee is to be commended.  His
clear and simple examples of how the words “coffee” or “burrito” can mean
quite different things when situated in context demonstrate how much meaning,
by both producer and receiver of language, depends on the everyday situations
and experiences of humans.  Furthermore, that Gee includes in the theory and
method of discourse analysis not just orthographic or spoken forms of language
but also multimodal forms, such as pictures, art, architecture, music, and 
historical documents, is an important contribution to doing and understanding
discourse analysis and how it can empower humans with knowledge about
communication and interactions.

The book is largely a reprint of the third edition with only two entirely new
chapters, “What is Discourse Analysis” -- Chapter 2 and “Conclusion- Proactive
Design”- Chapter 14.  The book is divided into 4 sections, plus a Glossary and
Index: 1) Introduction and Defining Discourse Analysis, 2) Theory and
Definitions, 3) Application, and 4) Conclusion.    

Section 1 includes the Introduction and Chapter 2: “What is Discourse
Analysis” in which Gee defines his interpretation of discourse analysis (DA)
and lays the groundwork for the rest of the book, providing the historical
context for and the various applications for DA across disciplines.  

Chapters 3 through 8, mostly untouched from the 3rd edition, define and
describe the various tools and methods that researchers can and do draw on
when conducting research through a DA lens.  Chapter 3: “Building Tasks”
presents Gee’s vision of the things that we use language for in order to
accomplish day-to-day activities. “We use language to build things in the
world, to engage in world building, and to keep the social world going” (p.
31).  Chapter 4: “Tools of Inquiry and Discourses“ extends Gee’s 7 building
tasks by defining and describing the necessary linguistic tools needed to
dismantle the complex building tasks inherent in any text (spoken or written)
into manageable and analyzable parts, which can then be reassembled in a way
that provides a richer, more contextualized and more nuanced interpretation of
any given stretch of language.

Chapter 5: “Social Languages, Conversations, and Intertextuality” and Chapter
6: “Form-Function Correlations, Situated Meanings, and Figured Worlds”
continue with a sharpened focus on the tools of inquiry.  I particularly find
his description of the different aspects of grammar “the traditional set of
units” and the “conventions” that are used to “create patterns” (p. 67) in
Chapter 5 to be useful, clear, and empowering, adding, as do his other tasks
and tools, to his argument that communication and meaning are co-constructed
via people and the social context in which any specific interaction occurs. 
Likewise, in chapter 6, Gee’s explanation of “figured worlds” is particularly
insightful as this concept, to me, is a central goal of DA work: trying to
understand how a particular person or a group of people filter the words,
phrases, sentences, and/or images they encounter in any given text to construe
their unique meaning of that text or interaction.  Seemingly, Gee agrees as he
devotes an entire chapter, Chapter 7, to the concept of Figured Worlds. 
Figured worlds are historically grounded and layered according to a person’s
individual experiences as well as the experiences of the local and larger
communities in which the person participates. “A figured world is a picture of
a simplified world that captures what is taken to be typical or normal.  What
is taken to be typical or normal, of course, varies by context and by people’s
social and cultural group” (p. 89).

Chapters 9: “Discourse Analysis” and 10: “Processing and Organizing Language”
begin pulling the previous seven chapters together with more robust, yet
scaffolded, analyses of DA at work.  Gee does an excellent job of
demonstrating the analytical power of the tools of inquiry.  Throughout these
chapters, Gee frequently reminds readers of these various tools as he takes
readers step-by-step through a text to demonstrate how the building blocks and
tools of inquiry work together to unpack a text within a larger Big “D”
Discourse.  As is true for any empirical work, validity is a major concern
that researchers and scholars must address.   It is perhaps of greater
importance to qualitative researchers because of the overall disposition of
those grounded in quantitative methods to assume DA simply means interpreting
another’s words, or “...that they are just the analyst’s opinion” (p. 141). 
This is where Gee takes readers back to the tools of inquiry and suggests that
the more tools that a DA researcher uses to “triangulate” the analysis, the
greater the validity of the analysis.  In other words, the tools of inquiry
can be employed for doing DA analysis work, as well as to verify the
interpretation.  While Gee’s treatment of validity is good, it is also
somewhat disappointing.  Given the importance of validity, it is a wonder why
there are only a total of two pages or 11 paragraphs devoted to this important
topic.  The fact that the discussion comes at the end of chapter 10, before
the three Sample DA chapters, suggests that the need to address validity is
almost an afterthought, doing little to highlight its significance. 

In  chapters 11, 12, and 13, the Sample Discourse Analyses chapters, Gee
attempts to apply how his theory of DA, using his building tasks and tools of
inquiry, can be used to extrapolate an interpretation of a particular stretch
of text.  These chapters are provided with good intentions, yet in the
previous two editions, I found these chapters to be too abstract to be of use.
 This continues to be the case in the 4th edition.It might be better to pair
each sample with a particular set of tasks and tools at the ends of the
chapters 4, 5, and 6.  At times, Gee does refer readers to the sample chapters
at the end of the book, but I think these references would be more effective
with specific page numbers and targeted questions to help the reader begin to
do discourse analysis with the tools of inquiry.  However, I think there’s a
larger issue at play here: one that speaks to the overall dilemma DA
perpetually struggles with.  Regardless of how much context and how many
“figured world” layers are added, more can always be provided and that “more”
always seems needed to finally provide the epiphany that is sought.  Thus the
three sample chapters do help and Gee is to be commended for attempting the
difficult task of demonstrating the applicability of his tasks and tools in
such a limited space.

Chapter 14 is a welcome addition, and probably the best chapter in the book. 
In summarizing the overarching argument of the book, Gee introduces his
alternative to the traditional view of how meaning is constructed through
words and images.  Rather than mentally storing images, words and their
meanings in our brains for recall in interaction, meaning is co-constructed
and situated in what Gee calls “a proactive design theory.”  Gee defines a
proactive design theory as “... any use of semiotic resources (whether words
or any other sorts of signs) is ... always and everywhere situated.  By this
[it] is meant that the meaning of any word or phrase (or other sort of sign)
is not a general or generic meaning or concept, but is actively ‘assembled on
the spot’ on the ground of practice” (p. 214).  In other words, proactive
design recognizes the creative nature of any and all interactions; and words
and images, while sometimes used in predictable ways, may also be used in
novel, unique, and unexpected ways, stretching the boundaries of their
associated exemplars, or more common iterations.

The fourth edition also has a companion website (www.routledge.com/cw/gee),
which promises to be a welcome supplement to the text.  At the time this
review was written, it contained four tabs:  Questions, Glossary, Journal
Articles, and Feedback.  Currently the Questions tab provides brief
descriptions of frequently asked questions, such as, “What is syntax, what is
discourse analysis, and what is the relationship of discourse analysis to
ethnography?”   Linked to question 3, “what is ‘basic’ or ‘literal’ meaning”
is a useful PDF of exercises that take students step-by-step through the
process of analyzing text in context, giving students practice with the
concept of situated meaning in increasingly more complex texts, both written
and oral.  Hopefully, additional PDFs and links will be provided to supplement
the remaining ten FAQs.  The glossary tab is also quite useful and user
friendly.  A list of the terms Gee uses in the text is provided, and simply
clicking on a term reveals a brief definition/description of the term.  The
journal tab currently only lists three of Gee’s many journal articles, which
are dated at this point: 1999, 2003, and 2009.

EVALUATION

There are a few things about the text that deserve to be called into question,
some of which are the responsibility of the author, though others are more the
responsibility of the editor and publisher.  At times I find Gee’s writing
style to be annoying.  He attempts to set a conversational tone with the
reader, as if we were sitting around the fireplace in his personal study,
contemplating the situated meaning of humanity’s great questions.  Yet, the
parenthetical, extended nominalizations, and intrasentential sidebars, though
well intended, are distracting at times.  Chapter 14 is my favorite chapter in
this edition. In addition to introducing the concept of “proactive design
theory,” the chapter flows with lucidness and clarity.  I attribute this to
Gee’s straightforward language and the reduction of his conversational style
sidebars.  

I must also take issue with Gee’s conflation of discourse analysis and
conversation analysis.  This is perhaps the biggest fault  with Gee’s approach
to DA.  Like Gee, I tend to think of DA, rooted in sociology and anthropology,
as the umbrella framework that supports and informs a host of sub-genres
including but not limited to narrative analysis, critical discourse analysis
(CDA), speech act theory, corpus linguistics, and conversational analysis
(CA).  Gee states, “Discourse is the sequence of sentences. It is the ways in
which sentences connect and related to each other across time in speech or
writing.  As we speak or write we choose what words and phrases we will put
into or ‘package into’ sentences” (p. 18).  To me, this is the work of CA
researchers, who specifically and adamantly claim that they are interested in
understanding the internal architecture of conversation (Grice, 1975; Lerner,
2004; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, Koshik, Jacoby, &
Olsher, 2002; Seedhouse, 2004); whereas DA, which may rely on the work of CA,
is driven by understanding how “why that now” is understood and acted upon in
socially situated contexts.  Gee gets away with conflating these two related
but very distinct methods of inquiry through his disclaimer in the
introduction, “No set of research tools and no theory belong to a single
person, no matter how much academic styles and our own egos sometimes tempt us
to write that way.  I have freely begged, borrowed, and patched together. If
there is any quality to my work it is primarily in the ‘taste’ with which I
have raided others’ stores and in the way I have adapted and mixed together
the ingredients and, thereby, made the soup” (p. 11).  Yet, I would like for
him to at least acknowledge CA as a legitimate and historically grounded
research method that is driven by specific questions quite distinct from those
that DA analysts ask. 

The fourth edition, like the third, is often promoted with Gee’s companion
text, “How To Do Discourse Analysis: A Tool Kit.”  It would be nice if the
links to the two texts were made more intentional, such as references to
particular chapters or sections from the “How To” text to the Introduction
text.  Providing a Discussion and Problems section at the end of each chapter
in the Introduction to DA text and linking these directly to sections in the
How To do DA text would make the companion texts truly companions.

Finally, I have some notes to the editor.  Throughout the book, there are
numerous and frequent typographical errors, missing, additional, or
incorrectly used words, making it not only annoying but also difficult at
times to maintain cohesiveness.  More careful proofreading and copy editing
would be a much-appreciated improvement, particularly for a text that is
intended to be an introduction for beginning researchers. Careless editing
sends a message that attention to detail is unimportant, a direct
contradiction to the message that Gee himself iterates when doing any kind of
research, DA or not.

 REFERENCES

Chomsky, N. (1965). “Aspects of the theory of syntax”. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.

Gee, J. P. (2014). “An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method
(4th ed.)”. New York, USA: Routledge, Taylor, and Francis Group.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. “Syntax and semantics”, 3, 41-58.

Lerner, G. H. (Ed.). (2004). “Conversation analysis: Studies from the first
generation”. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for
the organization of turn taking for conversation. “Language”, 50(4), 696-735. 

Schegloff, E., Koshik, I., Jacoby, S., & Olsher, D. (2002). Conversation
analysis and applied linguistics. Annual review of applied linguistics, 22,
3-31. 

Seedhouse, P. (2004). Conversational analysis methodology. In P. Seedhouse
(Ed.), The interactional architecture of the language classroom: A
conversational analysis perspective (pp. 1-54). Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Michael Schwartz is currently an Assistant Professor in the MA-TESL program at
St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud Minnesota, USA and the Director of the
Intensive English Center.  He teaches courses in Discourse Analysis and World
Englishes.  His interests include second language acquisition, second language
writing, and international education.  He earned his Ph. D. in Educational
Linguistics from the University of New Mexico.








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