Readings Sept. 12

Rapley, T. (2007). Doing conversation, discourse and document analysis. London: Sage. 


Luff, P. & Heath, C. (2012). Some ‘technical challenges’ of video analysis: social actions, objects, material realities and the problems of perspective. Qualitative Research 12, 255-279.

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    For this week's readings, I have organized the summary and particular information of note into a table. (You know I love tables!) 

Chapter	Summary	Of Note
1: Studying Discourse	·  Define discourse analysis as an interest in “how language is used in certain contexts” (p. 2) ·  Social constructionism focuses research on how discourse is produced and negotiated, the everyday talk that creates knowledge and is therefore action, and the historical and social context in which discourse is situated. ·  Overview of the content of the book’s chapters.	Great description of identity/membership category/subject position on page 2-3 (adoptee’s identity of binary “facts”).
2: Generating an archive	·  2 types of data: researcher generated and naturally occurring ·  Documents- after gaining physical access to the documents, note where they were found, and read academic work to find documents that may be relevant to your research. ·  Audio/visual- sometimes naturally occurring data can be very different than that found in a researcher’s lab. Watch for the silent witness (the recording device may change the naturally occurring occurrence). Take your own (as the researcher) actions into account.	Either type of data is still manipulated by the researcher, because both types have to be found, collected, and either used or ignored. Love the idea of the silent witness. I know that I am very aware of recording devices (or observers), and I often adjust my language choices.
3: Ethics and recording ‘data’	·  Shift to research participants instead of subjects. ·  Get informed consent from participants in writing. Make sure they understand the research and process (including how to get out!) Get consent for each type of recording/data usage. ·  Recording in public or other spaces may require the permission of the site’s owner or manager.	Including consent for each type of data usage is not something I had considered before (although I have seen examples of IRBs with multiple data usage.) I realized as I was thinking of my own research, that I might want to use data for different purposes. If so, I need to consider those ahead of time to get consent.
4: The practicalities of recording	·  There are a variety of recording devices. (This chapter is outdated.) ·  For either researcher generated or naturally occurring data collection, the researcher needs to recruit participants, generate topics or know topics that are likely to come into conversations, and record the discourse. ·  Be wary of the silent witness messing with data collection.	In researcher generated interviews or focus groups, the researcher should have a general idea of the topics to discuss (at the least) and keep that theme or issue across interviews or focus groups. (But not worry about using exactly the same questions.) For naturally occurring data, the researcher needs to know basically what the participants are likely to talk about. Without some work on the front end, the researcher might not get any useable data. (Not sure if DP would agree with this.)
5: Transcribing audio and video materials	·  Transcribed audio or video does not capture everything that happens. (Transcriptions are “translations” p. 50.) ·  Researchers delimit what data they collect by their data collection and transcribing choices. Ex: where the camera lens is pointing or how much information to include in transcription (using Jeffersonian or notating gestures). ·  Adding details to your transcription or description of your data changes the texture of the transcript. ·  Compares ways of transcribing audio and video of the politics of a cucumber. ·  Video can capture gaze, touch, gesture, posture, spatial positioning, and other actions.	This chapter contains a lot of practical information that I will come back to when I am transcribing data for class later in the semester. One section that stuck out was the explanation of how to know how long pauses are in conversation (p. 63). I would also include facial expression in the list of what video can capture.

            Overall, the first 5 chapters of Rapley’s book contained practical, applicable information for doing conversation analysis. The comparison between general transcription, Jeffersonian transcription, and video transcription gave me a better idea of what it means to transcribe audio and video and how I may use this in my own research. The Luff and Heath article piggybacked on Rapley’s 5^th chapter by discussing the pro’s and con’s of video analysis.

            I have been considering using a focus group’s conversation for my dissertation data. I think that I would like to use mostly audio recordings, but because there will be quite a few participants, I would like to video the group “to aid in the transcription process” (Rapley, 2007, p. 40). After reading Luff and Heath’s article, I will probably set up two cameras (I’m thinking of using GoPro’s.) using a mid-shot to capture three people at once. I also, think that I will give each participant a copy of the TEAM rubric (which is the topic of conversation) and maybe a scrap sheet of paper so that they can take notes. (I’d ask for those scraps to include with my data.) My current plan is to have a facilitator and to not physically be in the room (or even the school). The facilitator that I have in mind has experience with using GoPro’s and tripods.