Purpose
The purpose of this course is
(a) to familiarize students with the various forms of analysis of communication (because all data involve communication); and
(b) for students to produce a (near) publishable quality paper on a specified topic ("The meaning of 'meaning'.")
Philosophy
All research involving human beings involves communication. Being able to analyze communication therefore is a primary issue in the process of becoming a research. It is through your own analyses that you will see the relevance of the descriptions found in the textbook. I believe – with Vygotsky – that all higher psychological functions are social relations first. What you will know about analysis and writing will be a relation between us. Throughout this course, we engage in two types of activities: (a) reading and talking (about) major analytic methods and (b) learning to use these methods by producing an analysis of (near) publishable quality. These two activities stand in a dialectical and reflexive relation that constitutes each of the two
Process
In this course, we will read and discuss the course text, which exemplifies major approaches to the analysis of communication. We will utilize these approaches in the production of analyses
For each meeting, students will read assigned chapters from the textbook. From the beginning, students will work toward producing the analysis that will constitute their major assignment.
Tentative Outline
A tentative outline is available online, easily reachable from my home page (www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth). The outline may be modified to meet specific and changing needs of the students and instructor. Specific and detailed lesson outlines and additional information will be made in an ongoing manner. [Tentative and Developing Outline] All materials will be made available electronically. There will be no hand-outs.
Textbook and Readings
The text for this course is Roth, W.-M and Hsu, P-L., Analyzing Communication (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2010). (ISBN 978-94-6091-089-0 paperback). The students will do additional readings that are required as theoretical background in the production of their course assignment.
Participation
There are four types of participation. First,
–
students will
read the assigned chapters from the textbook;
– the students actively contribute to the class discussions;
– the students will continuously engage in data analysis and cumulative (process) writing; students will be presenting from their continuing analysis. (Students may ask for feedback throughout the course to assure students will be able to produce a text of the highest quality possible;
– from the process writing, students will produce a major assignment in which they present their analysis. The assignment text that the student submits must reflect the precise journal and audience for which the analysis is intended.
Course Grade
The course grade is made up of class participation (20%) -- as measured by the quality of the students' comments to the readings that they are requested to make during each lesson -- and major assignment (80%) (see below).
Appointments
Appointments are made by special arrangement organized sufficiently in advance. You may find it more convenient to write an email, which in most cases, deals with many issues. Also email me at least a day or two advance for any special appointment (mroth at uvic dot ca). You may also arrange for an iCHAT (AOL) or Skype video-mediated meeting, which means you do not even have to leave where you are working at the moment.
Assignment Resources
Students are to find background readings that contextualize their own particular analysis. For example, a student who does a feminist analysis of the data sources provided will contextualize her/his analysis in the appropriate feminist (sociological, cultural studies) literature.
Assignment Description
In this assignment, you show the extent to which you have become competent in data analysis and in the presentation of the analysis in the context of a scholarly text (introduction, analysis, discussion, conclusion). The text should have the structure of an article for a specific journal (a copy of an article of the journal that you emulate must be submitted as well.
Problematic
One of the most influential language philosophers of our times writes about the concept meaning: "That the philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of a langauge more primitive than ours"
(Wittgenstein, 1958, ¶2 [p. 3]). Yet almost every article in the qualitative social sciences operates with the concept. Yet if we use concepts without precisely knowing where they come from and how they are used, we literally do not know what we are doing (Bourdieu, 1992). In pragmatic philosophy, there is therefore a sense that we do not need meaning in a theory of meaning, in the same way that there is no place in science ideas and there is no place for knowledge in a theory of knowledge (Quine, 1987).
Task
Your task is to pick a high-quality journal of your choice (from ISI Web of Science or A* and A categories of the Australian Research Council [for education disciplines] [for all others go here] or an A journal from the European journal assessment exercise [ERIH]) and conduct an analysis of an entire volume of the use of the term "meaning". (You may have to do 2 volumes, if there are too few articles to be analyzed. You should have at least 30). You write a paper tentatively entitled "What is the meaning of 'meaning'" as if you intended to submit it to the journal that you are analyzing. Here some specifications of your paper, which should
– address its audience in style, discourse, etc.;
– is structured like the papers in the journal of your choice (your final submission should have 1 copy of the article), containing introduction and statement of the problem, description of method (including selection of articles etc.);
– provides a full analysis of the 'meaning' of ''meaning'' as the term is used in the journal of your choice;
– has in-text references and reference section in the style of the journal (most often, this will be APA);
– includes an Appendix in which all articles included in the analysis are listed with full citation and a full listing of quotes with page numbers where the term 'meaning' occurs. (A good approach would be to make an EXCEL table containing all relevant information.
References
Bourdieu, P. (1992). The practice of reflexive sociology (The Paris workshop). In P. Bourdieu & L. J. D. Wacquant, An invitation to reflexive sociology (pp. 216–260). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Quine, W. V. (1987). Quiddities: An intermittently philosophical dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1994). Philosophical investigations (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan.
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to write a text that would make a peer-reviewed research article in a specified journal. The length of the resulting text is upwards of 5,000 words. Your text provides evidence that you have read additional materials, which you reference appropriately in the style of the journal you are targeting. In general, your paper should have all the parts that a typical article in that journal has; and it should show evidence that you have developed competence in writing in the scholarly genre.
Evaluation Criteria
Any creative work is inherently difficult to evaluate. I know from the peer review process that an article may be rejected by one (or more) reviewer and be unconditionally accepted or accepted with minor revisions by another (or more) reviewers. Above all, an article has to be convincing and has to have a logical structure. A sample assignment that received an A+ can be found [here]. The articles by N.I. McRae (2009), L.J. Starr (2009), and V.M. Collyer (2009) also are the results of a course assignment (EDCI 600).
- Collyer, V.M. (2009). Influence of interlocutor/reader on utterance in reflective writing and interview. Cultural Studies of Science Education. DOI:10.1007/s11422-009-9234-1
- McRae, N.I. (2009). Linking experiences with emotions and the development of interpretive repertoires. Cultural Studies of Science Education. DOI:10.1007/s11422-009-9226-1
- Starr, L.J. (2009). Does anyone really know anything? An exploration of constructivist meaning and identity in the tension between scientific and relious knowledge. Cultural Studies of Science Education. DOI: 10.1007/s11422-009-9227-0
(To find those articles, click here)
A typical evaluation grid that a journal such as the Canadian Journal of Education would use looks like this:
Excellent |
Very Good |
Good |
Poor |
|
1. Contribution to advancement of knowledge in education |
... | ... | ... | ... |
2. Originality |
... | ... | ... | ... |
3. Method |
... | ... | ... | ... |
a. Central question |
... | ... | ... | ... |
b. Theoretical framework |
... | ... | ... | ... |
c. Data analysis |
... | ... | ... | ... |
d. Interpretation |
... | ... | ... | ... |
e. Substantiation |
... | ... | ... | ... |
4. Structure of the argument |
... | ... | ... | ... |
5. Conclusion |
... | ... | ... | ... |
6. References (APA 5th style) |
... | ... | ... | ... |
Submission
Your assignment is due April 4, 2011, that is, on the Monday after class ends. The assignment is to be submitted electronically to my email (mroth at uvic dot ca) in DOC or DOCX (Word) format.