Secondary Discourse Research Articles

Rhetorical Choices in Facebook Discourse: Constructing Voice and Persona

Abstract This study addresses the need for attention to conflicts surrounding voice in composition studies in conjunction with recent research demonstrating the rhetorically complex array of writing moves in which social network users participate. Together, these areas of inquiry present a need for research into social network users’ rhetorical awareness of writing practices. The article presents a study of one first-year college student’s Facebook activity. I analyze Facebook screenshots and interview data to describe the participant’s construction of voice in writing and of a persona on the social network site. Findings reveal that the participant has gained literacy in Facebook as a secondary Discourse as evidenced by her rhetorical awareness in Facebook activity. The participant demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of rhetorical functions within Facebook by hiding her personal opinion, crafting a persona characterized by non-mainstream interests, and paying attention to readers’ behavior to distribute content they found interesting at times they were most likely to engage with it. I conclude the article by discussing applications for the first-year composition classroom that can be drawn from the study findings and from students’ existing writing practices on social network sites.

Teaching and learning critical literacy at secondary school: the importance of metacognition

ABSTRACTTaking Swedish secondary school students as a point of departure, this article focuses on aspects of teaching and learning critical literacy and specifically on what students identify as argumentative text structure. Challenges connected to teaching critical literacies can be considered quite big, since studies show that students have difficulties in identifying argumentative text structure and that teachers feel insecure about what kind of knowledge is required as well as how to organize teaching of critical literacies. By using Bernstein's notions of horizontal and vertical discourses as well as Gee's notions of primary and secondary Discourses, we describe the interaction between personal, informal discourses and the more formal, academic discourses in the teaching and learning of critical literacies. The empirical material contains observations in two secondary school classrooms as well as written student material from a study focusing reading of argumentative texts. Our result shows that metacognition is a key component of reading instruction that supports the development of secondary Discourse and vertical discourse. Metacognition also facilitates a critical approach to different texts, and is an important aspect of critical literacies perspectives.

‘Poetry is not a special club’: how has an introduction to the secondary Discourse of Spoken Word made poetry a memorable learning experience for young people?

This paper explores the impact of a Spoken Word Education Programme (SWEP hereafter) on young people’s engagement with poetry in a group of schools in London, UK. It does so with reference to the secondary Discourses of school-based learning and the Spoken Word community, an artistic ‘community of practice’ into which they were being inducted. It focuses on what happened when secondary students, already enculturated into school Discourses about learning (in their English lessons especially), learned about new ways of being readers, writers, listeners, and performers through the SWEP Discourse. The paper draws on qualitative data collected during the first three years of programme development to consider how an introduction to the social practices of this artistic community appeared to influence 11–18 year old students’ attitudes to poetry study, discussion, writing, and performance both in school and beyond the parameters of traditional secondary school learning.

Rights through Alliances: Findings from a European Project Tackling Homophobic and Transphobic Bullying in Schools through the Engagement of Families and Young People

This paper draws on findings from a European project, ‘Rights through Alliances: Innovating and Networking Both Within Homes And Schools’ (RAINBOW-HAS), conducted in 2013–15. It built collaboration between six EU countries to analyse and improve the rights of children and youth regarding sexual orientation and gender identity in educational settings. The main focus of discussion derives from a secondary discourse analysis following thematic analyses of the qualitative interviews undertaken with a range of different families, schools and community associations across these European countries, which provide a snapshot of contemporary practice. We discuss the relative silence of social work in challenging homophobic and transphobic bullying, given their potential in promoting family and young people’s engagement.

Analysis of Women’s Image in Iranian TV Commercials Based on Barthes Visual Semiotic

Media affect the lives of people. By producing a particular kind of advertisement or message, media can control and influence people’s opinions and attitudes. In almost all modern societies, one of the major television genres is advertising (Cook, 2005). It not only gives information about services and products, but also builds a secondary discourse about society and power relations. Advertising has an important role in the representation of gender in a society. Thus For this study, five TV commercials broadcasted in Iran by IRIB in 22th May- 21th June 2014 were selected. These advertisements were chosen since they have significance in gender roles. Then in order to study women’s image in Iranian TV commercials, Barthian semiological analysis describing the image on both levels of significance- denotative and connotative level- was utilized. The results demonstrated that the TV advertisements selected in this paper represent gender stereotypes and traditional gender division of labor. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s1p415

A pluriliteracies approach to content and language integrated learning – mapping learner progressions in knowledge construction and meaning-making

Over the past decades content and language integrated learning (CLIL) research has predominantly focused on the language proficiency of CLIL learners. The results are very promising and show that working language skills in learners, especially reading and listening skills, can be improved through a CLIL programme. Studies focusing on subject learners are still few but they indicate that learners maintain or under certain conditions can improve their subject learning when compared to learners learning in L1. However, more recent studies have raised challenging questions concerning academic language competence which indicate that CLIL instruction may not be reaching its full potential. Unravelling the integrated approach and the inherent interrelationship of using language for progressing knowledge construction and meaning-making needs to be addressed, drawing together linguistic and pedagogic theoretical underpinnings. This article posits that CLIL can pragmatically address the growing educational malaise of functional illiteracy. We reason that progression along the knowledge pathway towards deeper subject understanding requires a greater command of secondary discourse, and mastery of subject-specific literacies. In traditional classrooms, content teachers do not usually focus on the quality of learners’ disciplinary literacy and discourse. In language classrooms, subject-specific literacies are considered irrelevant. We suggest that if ‘literacy’ were at the centre of the learning agenda, regardless of subject disciplines, a fundamental shift towards deeper learning would occur. Therefore, the article addresses two fundamental issues: (i) the role of subject-specific or disciplinary literacies in CLIL and (ii) the iteration of a model building on the existing 4Cs framework, which maps literacy and language progression in CLIL contexts and serves as a guide for evolving classroom practices.

Envisaging agency as discourse hybridity: a Butlerian analysis of secondary classroom discourses

Conceptualised from a range of sociological perspectives, and theorised extensively over the last 50 years, human agency is an integral element to lifelong learning. Poststructural theory with its decentred discursive construction of the learner offers a vibrant conception of classroom dynamics. This paper envisions how learner agency can be performative in the discursive space of a secondary classroom. The research disrupts the notion of a unified subject, a key tenet of sovereign theory that is evident in conceptions of the ‘self-regulated’, ‘self-motivated’, ‘self-efficacious’ student. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler and Bronwyn Davies, the classroom relations in this study are read as both dynamic and interdiscursive. Agency plays out through learners' discourse moves as they act upon and blend discourses to learn in a New Zealand Year 9 science classroom.

Instalacija "K 19" Zlatka Kopljara - upis etičkog koncepta u prostor

Recentno oblikovana, prostorna instalacija „K 19“ likovnog umjetnika Zlatka Kopljara postavljena u urbanoj jezgri Zagreba, smislom je i sadržajem upućena na spomen žrtvama holokausta. Instalacija se sastoji od pet skulptura izrađenih od cigala, prvotno korištenih za gradnju zidova logora u Jasenovcu, a potom za gradnju stambenih objekata nakon rata. Iste su cigle danas, korištene kao materijal za oblikovanje skulptura, postavljenih na standardiziranim postamentima građevinskih Euro-paleta. Slagane u horizontalnim nizovima, tvore vertikalne blokove neujednačenih gornjih bridova, organizirajući pri tom fragmente fiktivne cjeline u polukružni prostorni prsten spomeničkog karaktera. Polazeći od zapažanja da opisani rad određenu povijesnu situaciju dokumentira neprikazivim narativom, nastoji se pokazati kako time nije iznevjerena narav medija u kojem se djelo pokazuje. Teorijska se argumentacija izvodi iz različitih interpretativnih strategija koje se bave sidrenjem kulturnih reprezentacija u djelu, kao da su upis etičkog koncepta u prostor. Ukazuje se na postupke kognitivnog mapiranja u zadanim okvirima moralnih geografija, na spregu kontingencije i konceptualizacije baštinjenja, te na mnemopoetički perspektivizam i intersubjektivni karakter srodnih reprezentacija. Podražavanjem susreta „viđenog i pročitanog“, kao „vidljivog i iskazanog“, nastoji se ukazati na efekte fikcionalizacije i teatralizacije u djelu, koji ne urušavaju aspekte svjedočenja (minule) stvarnosti, već joj pomažu pri-kazati se u komunikaciji sa svijetom. Premda se nedovršene ili urušene zidove skulptura instalacije „K 19“ može interpretirati u kontekstu čitavog niza „promjenjivih atmosfera svjetova umjetnosti“, u zaključku se ukazuje da je sam autor, pripisujući svojstva formi, uspješno strukturirao sadržaj svoga djela, učinivši neprikazivo vidljivim.

Competency discourses: an analysis of secondary and tertiary assessments

Analysis of a sample of assessment tasks used in New Zealand first-year clinical and final-year secondary school Biology and Chemistry National Certificate of Educational Achievement summative assessments was conducted to assess whether similarities and differences existed in secondary and tertiary competency discourses. Findings suggested significant differences in language-in-use, especially in the psychomotor and affective domains of learning, reflecting different themes and ideologies. The suggested implication was a lack of preparedness for tertiary clinical learning that focuses on performance-based assessment of the affective and psychomotor domains.

On developing academic literacy in the mother tongue for epistemological access: the role of isiZulu as the LoLT in a South African University

This paper reports on a study that examined the extent to which the development of academic literacy in isiZulu, an indigenous language spoken across all the nine provinces in South Africa, enhances opportunities for epistemological access. The focus is in relation to a pilot study of a Bachelor of Education Honours module that uses isiZulu as the Language of Learning and Teaching. New Literacy Studies is used to examine the extent to which an understanding of the nature of literacy as no longer so much on the acquisition of language skills, but as social practice, can develop academic literacy in isiZulu and enhance episte­mological access. The paper confronts the questions about whose literacy counts?, and why, and engages in ‘a discursive politics of knowledge production, asking what counts as knowledge, who is allowed to author it, whose interests does it serve, how and by whom is it contested?’ (Baynham, M., & Prinsloo, M. [2001]. New directions in literacy research. Language and Education, 15, pp. 84–85). Case Study as a research design, Narrative Style interview technique and documentary evidence as research instruments, were used as a useful means to collect, conceptualise and organise data. Findings suggest that meaningful and successful engagement with the development of isiZulu, so that it becomes part of the academy, will depend entirely on implementing strategies to develop its academic discourse, the secondary discourse after the primary discourse of the home.

Community clip show: Examining the recursive collaboration between producers and viewers of a postmodern sitcom

Abstract In the new media landscape, exclusive communication within a TV show’s creative team or amongst its fans is no longer sufficient to maintain the continuation of the programme. Instead, a community arises through the collaboration of those behind the scenes and those in front of the screens. By utilizing interactive technologies, showrunners and audiences have redefined notions of media consumption and mass media. An illustrative case is NBC’s postmodern sitcom, Community (Harmon, 2009–). The show features metadiscourse on media production, responds to viewers’ feedback and preferred narratives and shares the creation of meaning with the audience. As a result, the show has developed an ardent following because viewers feel their concerns are directly addressed by the show’s creative team. Further, their contributions challenge the conventional belief that fan interpretations are merely secondary discourse to the primary television text, as Community fans’ works have helped shape the televised narrative. One episode, Season 2’s ‘Paradigms of Human Memory’, deals with the creators’ and viewers’ mutual conceptualization of time and reality encapsulated in the series.

Fluid Layering: Reimagining digital literary archives through dynamic, user-generated content

This article promotes a theoretical evolution in the conceptualisation and operation of digital literary archives via NewRadial, a prototype archive application that models the following distinction: Whereas a digital edition continues to function as a primary source, the root of a secondary discourse field much like its print-based predecessor, the digital archive should be reconceived as a broader, active, dynamic public record, an information commons that substantiates a foundational collection of primary texts with a continuous aggregation of critical contexts and conversations that grow from that foundation.

Überlegungen zum pädagogischen Fachbegriff „Literacy“ für das Deutschlernen in Taiwan1

This project aims at exploring the concept of “literacy” in the context of German learning in Taiwan in order to clarify the significance of how the competence of critical cross-cultural communication to be embedded in the curriculum. Literacy is a term derives from the American context. The German context tends to regard it as a pedagogic term for reading, narrating and writing culture. In the context of traditional four-skill language training (reading, listening, writing and speaking), “literacy” implies not only the necessity of acquiring various contents including political, economic, social issues or the advance in science, but also the ability of conveying abstract ideas. In this sense, literacy refers to what Gee (1991) defines as secondary discourses, for which a socio-cultural perspective can be employed in a content-oriented and genre-based curriculum where social practice is emphasized. This curriculum leads to the possibility that language could be treated as culture (Kramsch 1995) and a third place (Kramsch 2009) could hence be critically created between the self and the other with the redefined concept of literacy for repositioning the identity of German learners in Taiwan.

Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women's Literacies. Erica AbramsLocklear. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011.

Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women's Literacies. Erica Abrams Locklear. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011.Literacy, most commonly thought of as the ability to read and write, is generally considered to be necessary and desirable. Erica Abrams Locklear complicates both the definition and perception of literacy in her study of Appalachian women's stories. Looking at fiction and autobiography, Locklear considers the literacy stories of four Appalachian authors - Harriette Simpson Arnow, Linda Scott DeRosier, Denise Giardina, and Lee Smith - to highlight how, For Appalachian women, the transformative powers of education, and more specifically literacy, are no doubt empowering, but they can also be perilous, concluding that [gaining new technical, social, and cultural literacies, especially ones that might not be shared by those in the learner's home community, almost always comes at a (2). This price is often the sacrifice of relationships with the individual's community of origin.Locklear builds on the work of James Paul Gee who asserts that Discourses are ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities, as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes and then defines literacy as mastery of a secondary Discourse (5-6). This definition is the crux of Locklear's argument as she examines how the acquisition of a secondary literacy is far more complicated than we tend to believe.When literacy becomes more than simple reading and writing, but instead is understood as fluency with a different cultural subjectivity, it becomes a far more complex phenomenon. As the title of her work suggests, literacies empower, but also expose negative implications. As all of the writers and characters Locklear studied reveal, their new literacy makes them suspect to their own communities. Many of the women are accused of not knowing their rightful place in society. The assumption is that by acquiring a second literacy, you are acknowledging the inadequacy of your own culture. In addition, the new perspectives that come with literacy cause the women to see their original communities differently. In other words, they both perceive and are perceived differently.Locklear also addresses perception when she discusses mainstream society's problematic views of Appalachian literacy. She cites many studies, documentaries, and other texts that reinforce stereotypes that Appalachians are both unintelligent and unable to read and write. Both Locklear and the authors she studies separate the two assumptions and then challenge them by presenting a more complex portrayal, showing not only how limiting the stereotypes surrounding the region are, but also how a second literacy can have as many negative effects as positive ones. …

‘Labyrinthine Pathways and Bright Rings of Light’: Hoffmann's Aesthetics of Music in Performance

E.T.A. Hoffmann's discussions of performance, largely ignored in the current literature, proclaim a key aspect of his aesthetics: performance should transport its listeners to that ‘other world’ of the music itself. To underline the point, Hoffmann resorts to elaborate metaphor, most strikingly in the essay on Beethoven's Piano Trios op. 70. In seeking to understand this aspect of Hoffmann's aesthetics, I briefly situate his ideas in the context of early nineteenth-century aesthetics. However, his accounts of transcendent listening correlate with modern theories of absorbed attention and, more generally, inform current debates concerning the relationships between performance, listening, and the secondary discourses of musical exegesis. Does knowledge about music always or necessarily promote deep listening? In considering such questions, I turn to the philosophical accounts of audiencing in Gadamer and Adorno. Adorno in particular is aware of the limits of conceptualisation and the need to acknowledge the power of music to transcend what we can say about it. There are many problems with Hoffmann's aesthetics, but I argue that these do not invalidate his central argument, which is also Adorno's: that the finest music is not a discourse wholly accessible to conceptualization, for the latter may at times detract from the deeper listening experience. I illustrate the point by considering the pre-war recording of Beethoven's op. 135 quartet by the Busch Quartet, arguing that this recording achieves its longevity not by complying with Beethoven's score but by adopting strategies that draw its listeners into its own magical arena.

In their own words: nurses’ discourses of cleanliness from the Rehoboth Mission

For nurses of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cleanliness was often seen as a virtue next to godliness. For missionary nurses, this analogy took on multiple meanings. This study focuses on discourses of cleanliness at one site of missionary nursing in the early twentieth century: the Rehoboth Mission and its hospital, which provided health-care to the Navajo in the southwestern USA from 1903 to 1965. Data sources included denominational publications, institutional records, correspondence, questionnaires and interviews of the Dutch-American missionary nurses who practiced at the Rehoboth Mission. Discourse analysis was conducted on references to cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in these texts. Secondary discourses of embodiment in daily practice, initiation and assimilation, caring, ignorance, environmental factors and gendered work were identified and analyzed. The study interrogates the whiteness of the nurses' dominant culture and sheds light on nurses' relationships with normative discursive frames that reflect and perpetuate inequalities, discredit non-dominant practices, and leave little room for competing discourses. It also illustrates a blurring of religion and health-care, and the need for a reflective and informed stance as a basis for cultural competence.

Educating Rita as a ‘Discourses and Literacies’ Pedagogical Text

This article discusses a project designed to engage preservice teachers in a process of reconceptualizing the traditional, autonomous views of literacy that they held upon entering the teacher preparation program and acquiring a sociocultural view of multi-literacies. The context of this project is that of a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. Through a series of activities as part of a secondary English theory and methods course, students were introduced to a sociolinguistic theory of “Discourses and Literacies”; they examined their own literacy experiences in terms of primary and secondary discourses and literacies; they analyzed the film Educating Rita in great depth for its representation of the essential elements of a theory of “Discourses and Literacies” (i.e., primary discourses, secondary discourses, learning, acquisition, bi-Discoursal situations, and more); and then over a period of many weeks of observations they analyzed the kind of Literacy Discourse that was constructed in classrooms that they were observing in. Finally, the students critically reflected on the transformation of their views of literacy as a result of the Discourses and Literacies project.

Beyond Silence: Giving Voice To Kure Mothers of Japanese-Australian Children

Within the complex process of historical production, silence is created, imposed and fostered. Encountering the existence of a cast of hitherto silent actors within history, therefore, is wholly unsurprising. This article draws focus to a cohort of Japanese women who have been excluded from conventional interpretations. Indeed, the experiences of the Kure women who bore children fathered by Australian servicemen during the occupation have been consistently marginalised to the periphery of existing scholarship on this period. By applying a gendered perspective to the analysis of a selection of previously unexamined newspaper articles, this article will demonstrate that a meaningful history can be written for those excluded from primary or secondary discourse. This article will show that these women do possess a historically significant past through revealing that they were active participants in the post-war period who influenced the conduct of the military operation. Most importantly, this article will confront some of the imposed barriers of silence through analysing certain aspects of the women’s experiences within limited available material. This examination will illuminate prevalent local attitudes towards women involved in relationships with foreign servicemen and the predominance of the socially and culturally derived construct of the feminine role.

Narrating Socialization: Linda Scott DeRosier’s Memoirs

Linda Scott DeRosier’s autobiographical accounts of literacy attainment in Creeker: A Woman’s Journey and Songs of Life and Grace reveal that entrance into a secondary discourse community via literacy can bring both pleasure and pain. Analyzing the identity negotiations DeRosier encounters reveals that although she experiences a sense of loss as a result of continued formal education, such schooling also makes possible the creation of her memoirs, which help overturn stereotypes connecting Appalachia with illiteracy.

"Maar Dat is Niet de Opdracht"

Learning is entering the discourse of a community of knowledgeable peers. However, in Dutch secondary education student discourse during autonomous working does not reflect the discourse of the community of the subject, but it reflects the discourse of the community of the school: the discourse of how to be a good student. Because both the teacher's verbal behavior and the formulation of the task strongly focus on procedural aspects like how to proceed in completing the task correctly, students mainly interact about the procedure of the task. They even perceive correct completion of higher importance than understanding the content of the task. And although students interact much more about the task during seatwork than both teachers and students had expected and they often know how to solve a task, they do not know why their answer is correct. Students are working very hard doing it wrong to do it right.