daronloo

In my post yesterday, I wrote about the confusion I had regarding the concept of 'narratives'.  I'm glad I got confused because it motivated me to read more on the subject. I returned to Laboskey and Lyons (2002) and read through the first five chapters, again.  I first read this book earlier this year and I must say, I missed a lot of details then!  While reading, I reflected back on what I wrote previously.  This process helped me realize that what I have been concerned with (yesterday) is the 'form' of which a narrative should be in.  This is a concern to me because there are many who still perceive narratives in the form of a story, where you have sections which set the context of the story, sections which introduce the development of the plot, sections which introduce the characters, etc.  We are so accustomed to looking at 'narratives' in the story-type genre, which typically appear in one smooth, uninterrupted, cohesive form (unlike a conversation...

One crucial aspect that I need to address in my PhD study is justifying why my data is called 'narrative'.  My PhD study aims to analyze native-type English speaking teachers' discursive positioning of Self and Others as teachers of culture.  I plan to engage these participants in a conversation about their view of themselves as teachers of culture in their language teaching profession.  But would these conversations I have with these teachers be considered 'narratives'?   The scholars who formally introduced positioning theory in the world of discourse analysis were L. van Langenhove and R. Harre (1999).  They suggested that positions can be extracted from any types of discourse events, may it be a conversation, a monologue, an autobiographical text, or even emails.  Now, here comes the problem.  The terms that these scholars have used (you must have noticed by now that I am not using their surnames, forgive me but their names are just so fo...

I began my discussion on Positioning Theory on June 3 by mentioning the liberation of different facets of society.  What does this liberation mean?  What does it entail?  How and why does it happen? I am revisiting this matter because of the encouragement of a close friend.  Perhaps a second reason for this revisitation is because of my morning musings watching Anderson Cooper deliver breaking news. In his whole career, Mr. Cooper, bless his soul, has given the world ample coverage of international conflicts.  In the past weeks, the focus has been on Syria and Turkey.  Thankfully, CNN is not only interested in violent conflicts.  This morning, the international community's attention was diverted to yet another social issue, that is, a controversial gay healing center and its subsequent closure.  At a quick glance, these conflicts may be incomparable.  However, upon closer scrutiny, one unifying link that one may find is not necessarily wi...

It's been a few years since TESOL hit the forty mark.  The issues, though, is still very relevant to the present situation.  There are at least two main takeaways for me from Canagajarah's (2006) article.  First, the notion on metanarratives and descriptivism.  Second, the critical aspect of language teaching and learning.  Since starting my PhD, I have been fortunate to have at least one classmate whom I have academic disputes with.  Several weeks back, he brought up the subject of prescriptivism and descriptivism, as they were related to his PhD thesis.  What I learned from him was that, in spite of our efforts to be descriptive in our approaches to teaching a language, we end up prescribing the description.  Canagarajah (2006) echoes this concern in his discussion on TESOL's metanarratives.  Throughout the history of language teaching, language educators have been documenting processes and decisions involved in their pedagogic practic...

Positioning Theory aims at providing an analytical framework to study the ontology of sociology in terms of identity and individuation.  Instead of looking at social relations through space and time, Positioning Theory proposes an alternate reference - by considering persons and conversations.  Persons, or discourse participants, construct stories about themselves by discourse which have social acts comprehensible to other discourse participants.  These stories contain positions, which tell of the discourse participant's moral or personal attributes.  Positions in discourse may not come naturally.  At times, a discourse participant who may impose dominance may compel other discourse participants to challenge this imposition.  Types of positioning include first- and second-order positioning, performative and accountive positioning, moral and personal positioning, self and other positioning, and finally, tacit and intentional positioning. First- and Second-...

The postmodern era celebrates the liberation of different facets of society.  Conservative modes of social classifications, such as essentialism, is deconstructed and abandoned for social constructivist world views, where the attributes of a singular persondhood is no longer deterministic.  Interest in the 'personhood', and how it constructs meaning in the social realm gave rise to several theoretical understandings, such as Neoliberalism, Positioning Theory, and so forth.  Positioning Theory acknowledges the fluidity of the 'personhood'.  As in identity studies, positioning theory recognizes that a person may assume different positions in a social (semiotic) act.  Specifically, Positioning Theory is interested in uncovering subject positions held by a person in a discursive act.  This discursive act, or interaction, involves discourse participants who affirms or refutes "personal attributes [...] such rights, duties, and obligations" (p. 2).  As a m...