10.20 Discourse Analysis Again!

We spent today's class going through the chat transcripts in light of the new handouts on story selection, language analysis, and how to (re)present the transcript you are analyzing in your essay.  If you have additional questions - you can lurk around your classmates blogs to see how they are applying these concepts - or schedule a conference with me.

Although I originally envisioned this project as a group project, the class preference seemed to be that you write individual papers.   So that is what we will do - and the credit allotted to the group project will be for your individual DA essay + presentation.

For Monday
Blog 11:  Choose the transcript (pick from among the gamer, adult learner, chat room transcripts) you want to use for your essay (see assignment sheet posted to the right) and do the following to set up your essay.
1.  State your focus:  what your analysis will "show" => the question you will answer/explore.

This needs to be focused as opposed to general.  For example, "what are the power relationships in the chat stories?" = too general.  "How do cultural assumptions about the "print" generation, and the "internet" generation affect they way A & S talk to each other = and what does the influence of these assumptions on conversation mean about the kind of  "truth" interviewers can learn across generation?" = a good question with both a specific focus & a more general point.

2.  List the points your discussion will make to support your focus.

3.  Indicate features of the language + parts of the transcript you will use to support your points.

In terms of how to find your focus => you will probably need to spend some time analyzing the transcript (like we did in class) in order to discover what you have to say.  So in some sense you will have to work on the post backwards = beginning with observation & analysis, thinking about what your observations show - and finally thinking about how your different observations work together to make an overall point.

In class:
We will workshop these "plans" and set you up to write the draft.

On Thursday, we will begin work on visual analysis.   I will be giving feedback to blogs + posting the revised schedule for the remaining research methods over the weekend (hopefully by Sunday night).

Have a good weekend!