Talk, text, action- a sociomaterial approach to understanding evolving student literacy practices

Speaker: Dr Denise de Pauw,  Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes, Language Centre

Parkinson SR (2.29)

No registration needed, just turn up and feel free to bring your own lunch

This workshop presents an overview of the methodology and methods used in my PhD, an ethnographic study into online job applications and aims to discuss how I operationalised a socio-material framework drawing on New Literacy Studies (e.g. Barton and Hamilton, 2000), Activity Theory (e.g. Leont’ev 1981) and Mediated Discourse Theory (e.g. Scollon, 2001). Language learning is both a social and an internal cognitive process, the exploration of which remains a challenge for researchers who wish to explore it from a critical perspective. Language learning is a clear example of what Prior and Shipka (2003) describe as “literate activity”, which is "situated, embodied, mediated and dispersed" (p.18). Questions posed for the researcher are what data to gather, where to draw boundaries around what is investigated, and how to decide what constitutes “the process of learning” when this is dispersed across time and space. Prior and Shipka argue that "methodologically, private and public acts, meaning and sense, affect and motivation, tools and spaces, all need to be woven together into a single story of productive activity" (p.232) and I present here an opportunity to discuss how methods I used to investigate online jobseeking could be used to explore literate activity in the HE context.

Reference list

Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. 2000. Chapter 1: Literacy practices In: D. Barton, M. Hamilton and R. Ivanič, eds. Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context. London: Routledge, pp.7–15.

Leont’ev, A.N. 1981. The problem of activity in Soviet psychology In: J. V. Wertsch, ed. The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., pp.37–71.

Prior, P. and Shipka, J. 2003. Chronotopic lamination: Tracing the contours of literate activity In: C. Bazerman and D. R. Russell, eds. Writing selves/Writing societies: Research from Activity perspectives [Online]. The WAC Clearinghouse; Mind, Culture, and Activity, pp.181–239. [Accessed 24 April 2021]. Available from: https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/selves-societies/.

Scollon, R. 2001. Chapter 7: Action and text: Towards an integrated understanding of the place of text in social (inter)action, mediated discourse analysis and the problem of social action In: R. Wodak and M. Meyer, eds. Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage Publications, pp.139–183.

This workshop will be recorded. No registration needed and please free to bring your own lunch.