Discourse in the teaching of Linguistics

Past Event Summary

The seminar explored the role of discourse in the teaching of Linguistics in a variety of modes and contexts. It asked:

• How discourse analysis can be used in teaching grammatical theory and, conversely, how grammatical knowledge can be put into practice in the discourse classroom.
• How the linguistic skills taught on language description units can be used to investigate the relationship between language, culture and social identity
• How a discourse model of communicative events can shape the teaching of literature, media and culture in an intercultural curriculum.
• How work on texts can give students experience of really doing linguistic research and of applying and testing concepts from their reading.
• How 'voice' is discursively manifested and interpreted in texts from a range of genres and the implications for translation and the notion of linguistic identity.

The day featured the following case study presentations:

10.15 - 10.50	'Discourse and translation' John Joseph (University of Edinburgh)
10.50 - 11.20	"Discourse analysis and the teaching of grammar: from theory to practice" Catherine Emmott (University of Glasgow)
11.20 - 11.40	Coffee
11.40 - 12.15	'Discourse and grammaticalisation' Miriam Meyerhoff (University of Edinburgh)
12.15 - 12.50	'Investigating English: Language, culture and social identity' Richard Badger (University of Stirling)
12.50 - 13.45	Lunch
13.45 - 14.20	'Discourse and intercultural language education (ELT)' John Corbett (University of Glasgow)
14.20 - 14.55	'Theoretical syntax and textual data' Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh)
14.55 - 15.30	'Teaching students to handle data' Cathy Sotillo (University of Edinburgh)

Abstracts

Catherine Emmott, University of Glasgow
Discourse Analysis and the Teaching of Grammar: From Theory to Practice

This talk examines how discourse analysis can be used in teaching grammatical theory and, conversely, how grammatical knowledge can be put into practice in the discourse classroom. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss our teaching of "discourse and grammar" to undergraduates at the University of Glasgow. I will describe how we use corpus data to illustrate and sometimes question traditional grammatical categorisation in our grammar teaching. I will also show how we teach students to analyse grammatical patterning in extended texts in our discourse courses.

The second part of the talk provides a case study of a course component I taught to postgraduates at the Institute of Linguistics OTS, University of Utrecht, last year on "reference theory and text coherence", as part of a more general course on "grammar and text coherence". This course component examined discourse-based theories of reference, using corpus material to test and sometimes challenge these theories. We are now using this approach as a model for designing a new postgraduate option in "discourse and grammar" for our M.Phil. in English Language at the University of Glasgow.

Overall, the talk will highlight theoretical issues, such as how the many different notions of "discourse" amongst discourse analysts have an impact on curriculum design. Also, I will look at the practical problem of placing this rapidly-developing area of study within the established curriculum.

Richard Badger, University of Stirling
'Investigating English: Language, culture and social identity'

Students on our language description units sometimes comment that they do not see how the linguistic skills which we try to give them can be applied. This unit was developed, partly as a way of dealing with this comment, to simultaneously present a range of linguistic frameworks and tools and use these frameworks and tools to investigate the relationship between language, culture and social identity The unit draws substantially on linguistic theory equipping students with the tools and frameworks (especially conversation analysis, genre analysis and systemic functional grammar) for investigating identity in a variety of written and spoken texts. The unit is structured so as to provide a comprehensive introduction to specific frameworks, before applying them to particular texts and institutional genres.

We begin with an introduction to systemic-functional grammar and genre analysis, using media texts as our object of analysis. We then use conversational analysis as way of illustrating patterns of spoken interaction and the role of language in constructing gender identity.The second half of the unit describes patterns of discourse that occur in institutional settings in which participants arguably have unequal access to power. The contexts in question are those of Education, Medicine and Law.

John Corbett, University of Glasgow
'Discourse and intercultural language education (ELT)'

This talk focuses on the use of discourse analysis in intercultural language education, specifically English Language Teaching. The session will explore topics such as the influence on ELT of recent developments in genre analysis of text and speech, and how a discourse model of communicative events can shape the teaching of literature, media and culture in an intercultural curriculum.

Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh
Theoretical syntax and textual data

In this talk I will describe an undergraduate linguistics course that I have recently taught. This is a fourth year honours course in syntax; topics vary from year to year. At this stage in their studies the students should be getting to the point where they can read (some of) the literature in the field, and one of the aims of this course has been to introduce them to this literature with (initially at least) some guidance. Another aim of the course is to get them to the point where they can analyse syntactic data for themselves. It has often proved hard, however, to marry these aims.

This year the topic for the course was "verb movement," in particular focusing on two phenomena that are relevant to the history of English, as well as to comparisons between relatively well-studied European languages: (1) whether finite verbs occur to the left or right of sentence adverbs and negatives (cf the development in English from "James went not" to "James did not go"); (2) the verb second (V2) phenomenon (lost from declaratives in English, although retained in questions and "negative inversion").

The work for the course consisted of discussion of a number of relevant readings from the Principles & Parameters literature on this topic. In addition however all the students were required to go through an (electronic) text that we obtained in two different languages to find data that could be used as the basis for a paper on this topic. These data were from Danish and Faroese, neither of which were languages known to the students. In addition, the exact facts concerning verb movement in Faroese have not been established in the literature. Thus there was a possibility that the work done in this class could actually be a contribution to work in this area.

It was my hope that this work on the texts would give the students experience of really doing linguistic research and of applying and testing concepts from their reading. In the talk I will evaluate how successful I (and the student) believe this was, and what the advantages and disadvantages of this approach turned out to be.

John E. Joseph (University of Edinburgh)
Discourse Analysis and Translation

The search for an adequate theory of translation has traditionally started from an assumption that single comprehensive theoretical model might account for the whole gamut of translational practice. But there is ample reason for asking whether the various genres in which translation takes place might not require distinct theoretical models, to take account of fundamental differences in normative expectations about the presence or absence of authorial 'voice', and the differences in the configuration of the linguistic sign that these expectations entail.

We shall look at texts from a range of genres to see how 'voice' is discursively manifested and interpreted, and shall examine the implications for translation in each case. Also briefly discussed will be how this concept of voice relates to linguistic identity.