Textual Analysis
Spring 2005 Tuesday 9-12 Phelps 2536
Professor Charles Bazerman
Phelps 2313 Office Hours: by appt.
(805) 893-7543
bazerman@education.ucsb.edu
This course in qualitative methodology considers the variety of analytical means for looking at texts used in the classroom, school administration, and educational research and their implications for educational practice. We will consider methods of analyzing content, linguistic form and its function, intertextuality, genre and text organization, rhetoric, and the role of texts within activity systems. Underlying our examination of all these techniques will be a consideration of what questions these techniques are designed to answer and what kinds of problems would lead us to pose and answer those questions through the use of specific analytic techniques. That is, we will continually ask "What is this method good for and when would we want to use it?" To foster this discussion, all participants will be responsible for reading all the required articles. Additionally, students will each present one of the supplementary readings in a handout of one page or less and an oral presentation lasting no longer than five minutes.
We will also work on the practice of textual analysis, using materials and techniques directly related to research problems class members are engaged in. Each student will early on identify specific materials and problems he or she is interested in working with throughout the term. Each student should from the beginning of the term gather in a folder a selection of representative materials related to the research site and problem and should regularly bring the materials to class for in-class analysis and discussion.
Final requirements will include a portfolio of intermediate assignments and a final project presentation and paper. The text for the course is Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior. What Texts Do and How They Do It . Erlbaum. 2004. This should be available at the campus store. A reader of articles is available at Associated Students Printing outside the Multi-Cultural Center.
Weekly Schedule of topics and readings
Week 1 (3/31) What we can find out about texts. How analysis is different than reading: The natural attitude versus the analytic stance.
REQ. Bazerman and Prior, Introduction
Week 2 (4/7) What Texts Talk About: Content Analysis
REQ. Ch. 1. Tom Huckin, "Content Analysis: What Texts Talk About."
SUPP. Paul Atkinson and Amanda Coffey. "Analyzing Documentary Realities." Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. ed. David Silverman. Sage, 1997. pp. 45-62.
SUPP. Carol Berkenkotter and Doris Ravotas. "Genre as Tool in the Transmission of Practice Over Time and Across Professional Boundaries." Mind, Culture and Activity 4:4 (1997). pp. 256-274.
REQ. Ch. 2. Philip Eubanks, "Poetics and Narrativity: How Texts Tell Stories "
REQ. Ch. 6. Anne Frances Wysocki "The Multiple Media of Texts"
Week 4 (4/21) What the Language Does: Linguistic Analysis
REQ. Ch. 3. Ellen Barton, "Linguistic Discourse Analysis"
REQ. Ch. 5. Marcia Z. Buell Code-shifting and Second Language Writing:: How Multiple Codes Are Combined in a Text
SUPP. Glenn F. Stillar. Analyzing Everyday Texts. Sage, 1998. Pp. 14-57.
SUPP. M.A.K. Halliday. "On the Language of Physical Science." Writing Science. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. Pp. 54-68.
Week 5 (4/28) How Texts Rely on Other Texts: Intertextuality.
REQ. Ch. 4. Charles Bazerman "Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts"
SUPP. Charles Bazerman. The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines. 5th ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1995. Chapter 6.
SUPP: Amy Devitt. "Intertextuality in Tax Accounting." Textual Dynamics of the Professions. eds., C. Bazerman and J. Paradis. University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. pp. 191-215.
SUPP. Charles Bazerman. "Intertextual Self Fashioning." Constructing Experience. Southern Illinois University Press, 1994. pp. 194-214
Week 6 (5/5) How Texts Influence Readers: Rhetorical Analysis
REQ. Ch. 10. Jack Selzer, "Rhetorical Analysis: How Texts Persuade Readers."
SUPP. Charles Bazerman, "Nuclear Information: One Rhetorical Moment in the Construction of the Information Age." Written Communication 18:3 (July 2001): 259-295.
Week 7 (5/12) Talk and Text, Writing Processes
REQ. Ch.7. Paul Prior, "Tracing Process: How Texts Come into Being"
REQ. Ch. 8. Kevin Leander and Paul Prior, "Speaking and Writing"
SUPP. Heidi Swarts, Linda Flower, and John Hayes. "Designing Protocol Studies of the Writing Process: An Introduction." New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian Bridwell. Guilford, 1984. pp. 53-71.
SUPP. Margaret Syverson, "Next Time We're Not Giving Steve Our Essay to Read." The Wealth of Reality. Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. Pp. 75-125.
SUPP. Lester Faigley and Stephen Witte. "Measuring the Effects of Revision on Text Structure." New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian Bridwell. Guilford, 1984. pp. 95-108.
Week 8 (5/19) How texts mediate systems of activities: Genre, Speech Acts, and Activity Systems
REQ. Ch. 11 Charles Bazerman, "Doing Things With Texts: Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems.
SUPP. A.D. Van Nostrand. Fundable Knowledge . Erlbaum, 1997. pp. 141-193..
SUPP. Aviva Freedman and Graham Smart. "Navigating the Current of Economic Policy." Mind, Culture and Activity 4:4. (1997) pp. 238-255.
SUPP. Others to be added.
Week 9 (5/26) Texts in Schools: Growth and Assessment
REQ: James Williams. "Assessing Writing." Preparing to Teach Writing. Erlbaum, 1998. pp. 258-295.
REQ. Ch 9 George Kamberelis and Lenora de la Luna. "Children's Writing: How Textual Forms, Contextual Forces, and Textual Politics Co-Emerge"
SUPP: Charles Cooper et al. "Studying the Writing Abilities of a University Freshman Class." New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian Bridwell. Guilford, 1984. pp. 19-52.
SUPP. Peter Medway. Writing and Design in Architectural Education." Transitions: Writing in Academic and Workplace Settings. Ed. Dias and Pare. Hampton, 1999. Pp. 89-128
Week 10. (6/2) Projects
Spring 2003
For each week choose a short text (a page, more or less) that lends itself to one of the forms of analysis to be discussed that day. Then make a page or more of preliminary analytical observations about the text using that week's method. Note the variants for weeks 7-9.
Bring four to five copies of the text and your comments, to be shared with your discussion group, and an additional copy for me. After class, revise your comments for your portfolio.
Week 2 (4/7) What Texts Talk About: Content Analysis
Week 4 (4/21) What the Language Does: Linguistic Analysis
Week 5 (4/28) How Texts Rely on Other Texts: Intertextuality.
Week 6 (5/5) How Texts Influence Readers: Rhetorical Analysis
Week 7 Talk and Text, Writing Processes (5/12) Eavesdrop on a group of people reading, writing, or discussing a text together. Document a brief part of the discussion and if possible gain a copy of the text. You may tape record and transcribe, write observation notes at the time, write an after the fact set of ethnographic field notes, or any other method of documentation you can think of. Analyze the documented process, and make some observations.
Week 8 (5/19) How texts mediate systems of activities: Genre, Speech Acts, and Activity Systems In a situation you are regularly part of identify and describe the genres of written communication, identify who writes and who reads such documents in what typical circumstances, and present typical patterns of sequence and flow. You may want to use graphic displays to map out the genres' relations and the organization of the activity system.
Week 9 (5/26) Texts in Schools: Growth and Assessment. Bring in a piece of student writing. Discuss the features that would be salient for institutional evaluation and those that would be salient for evaluating growth.
Week 10 (6/2) Hand in Portfolio of assignments.
Also present and hand in final project, focus and method to be negotiated with me.
Reader Education 221 G Textual Analysis
Professor Charles Bazerman
Paul Atkinson and Amanda Coffey. "Analyzing Documentary Realities." Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. ed. David Silverman. Sage, 1997. pp. 45-62.
Carol Berkenkotter and Doris Ravotas. "Genre as Tool in the Transmission of Practice Over Time and Across Professional Boundaries." Mind, Culture and Activity 4:4 (1997). pp. 256-274.
Glenn F. Stillar. Analyzing Everyday Texts. Sage, 1998. Pp. 14-57.
M.A.K. Halliday. "On the Language of Physical Science." Writing Science. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. Pp. 54-68.
Charles Bazerman. The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines. 5th ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1995. Chapter 6.
Amy Devitt. "Intertextuality in Tax Accounting." Textual Dynamics of the Professions. eds., C. Bazerman and J. Paradis. University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. pp. 336-357.
Charles Bazerman. "Intertextual Self Fashioning." Constructing Experience. Southern Illinois University press 1994. pp. 194-214.
Charles Bazerman. "Nuclear Information: One Rhetorical Moment in the Construction of the Information Age." Written Communication 18:3 (July 2001): 259-295.
Heidi Swarts, Linda Flower, and John Hayes. "Designing Protocol Studies of the Writing Process: An Introduction." New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian Bridwell. Guilford, 1984. pp. 53-71.
Margaret Syverson, "Next Time We're Not Giving Steve Our Essay to Read." The Wealth of Reality. Southern illinois university press, 1999. Pp. 75-125.
Lester Faigley and Stephen Witte. Measuring the Effects of Revision on Text Structure. New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian Bridwell. Guilford, 1984. pp. 95-108.
A.D. Van Nostrand. Fundable Knowledge . Erlbaum, 1997. pp. 141-193..
Aviva Freedman and Graham Smart. "Navigating the Current of Economic Policy." Mind, Culture and Activity 4:4. (1997) pp. 238-255.
James Williams. "Assessing Writing." Preparing to Teach Writing. Erlbaum, 1998. pp. 258-295.
Charles Cooper et al. "Studying the Writing Abilities of a University Freshman Class." New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian Bridwell. Guilford, 1984. pp. 19-52.
Peter Medway. "Writing and Design in Architectural Education." Transitions: Writing in Academic and Workplace Settings. Ed. Dias and Pare. Hampton, 1999. Pp. 89-128.