1.24 Analysis!

ENG 3029 Section 02 Blog. So this is your class blog. Links to your blogs are all posted on the right. So far everything has been the same for both courses so it doesn't matter. But I find that as we get further into the semester, different sections work in slightly different ways and your class definitely needs its own blog.

Paying attention to the ideas in Gee. We started class by making sure everyone had a plan for getting a copy of the text, and by reviewing what you understood as the main points in Gee's reading. I've responded to your emails stating what you learned + what you had questions about and it looks like you are all off to a good start. As we continue through the course = think about how we are using Gee's ideas, and practice using his language.

I set you up for Chapters 3 & 4 by talking a little about the 4 tools he introduces: Discourses, Social Languages, Conversations, and Intertextuality. From my perspective, these are more ideas than tools. At the same time, language researchers certainly do use these ideas to identify and classify what we do when we use language, so I guess, in that way they are tools. Chapter 3 focuses on Discourse, and Chapter 4 covers the other 3 terms.

Analysis: Slowing it down + naming what we do as we think.We started out by making a list of some of the words you used to describe what you do when you do analysis. Some of the terms were breaking into parts, critical thinking, studying, coming to a conclusion and making meanings. These are all good general descriptions for analysis. Our work this morning was to pay close attention to our thinking process so we could name the different "moves" we made as we engaged in analytic process.

You worked in groups to solve a particular "brain teaser." I asked you to pay attention to, and to name the different moves you made as you tried to solve the puzzle = and you did. After each group had worked their way through to an answer (awesome) we made a list of the moves you wrote down as you worked. We then grouped the moves into categories, and the list below is what we came up with.

Analytic process for solving the puzzle.

1. Figure out what problem you are solving (identify the problem)

2. Coding = noticing the features in your data that are significant to your problem
Notice that there were different shapes

Noticed that orientation counted ?

Notice color ?

Codes = names of features significang in your data

2. Catagorizing

Catefories = groups of things with shared features
Name shapes = trying out what counts as being a particular shape

3. Looking for patterns
Counted how many of each shape

Grouping = which shapes occurred together

Lots of local patterns = which shapes ALWAYS went together

4. Posed a local theory
Used what you noticed about6 local patterns to pose a “theory” about how the big pattern is built

5. Tested
Test the local pattern to see if it can make a BIG pattern

6. Use local theory to pose BIG theory (to explain the whole system)

In addition to noticing these steps, we noticed that this process was not linear. As Karl pointed out at the beginning of the exercise - thinking is messy, it doesn't go in a straight line. You cycled through these processes, sometimes jumping from one to another. For example, you might have posed a local theory, found that it didn't "work" and then gone back to identifying features to figure out why the theory didn't work. This new consideration of features then might lead you to different categories. And so on.

As explained in class, the purpose of doing this exercise was for us to analyze(!) analytic process => to identify and name the "features" of analytic process, to put those features into categories, and to pose a theory about relationships among those categories that can "explain" how analysis works. And that's what we did.

For next class:

Read: Gee, Chapter 1 – 4. 
Blog 2: In your own words => define analysis. What is it? How does it work? Describe how you might use analysis to study something about writing that interests you.