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Breakthrough into action
Abstract
We take as axiomatic from Hymes's work that the linguistic structures of oral narrative should be construed not as abstract and ideal but as artifacts of the human mind in action in society, and that the indissoluble tension between structure and creativity should be moved by analysts in the direction of social justice. The problem the faced in an extended set of action projects aimed at reducing discrimination against Alaska Natives was that problems framed for our attention were often misleading though on the surface clear-cut and reasonable. We began by viewing narrative as a work of social interaction between storyteller and audience in which taboos often dictate indirect statement, and gradually learned to see action as the active punch line. We began to breakthrough into action-acting ourselves in order to learn how people act, what they know and value, how they structure their worlds-using a strategy the now call "nexus analysis." Taking narrative as the discursive doppelganger of action, we trained educators and medics to perceive and pursue indigenous hunting strategies of carefully surrounding rather than going directly to quarry. We worked through abduction by moving from action to action, becoming directly engaged in processes of social change.
... Many times, an ELPA will take action to resolve a quick issue, but each task is understood to be accumulative undertaken to manage and improve the program, and ultimately the students' experience. Those who do NA often choose to study practical matters and practical problems that individuals need to solve aligning well with the daily expectations and pressures an ELPA often feels to get things done and deliver (Jones, 2012;Scollon & Scollon, 2004, 2009. In practical terms this could be any type of action -from ordering supplies to demonstrating student performance to supervisors. ...
Spring 2020 ushered a new set of educational challenges for English language program administrators (ELPAs) ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to social and racial injustices experienced by staff, faculty, and learners. Recognizing the lack of materials to support ELPA professional development, this article introduces the theoretical and methodological approach of Nexus Analysis as a possible approach for administrators when navigating complex educational ecosystems. Along with a review of literature that describes the role of ELPAs and their associated duties, this article positions the actions of language program administration, which range from policy creation to ordering supplies, as mediated by outside factors on the societal, community, and individual scale. Following this, the Nexus Analysis methodological approach of engagement, navigation, and change is reviewed and generalized to educational settings. To conclude, past research studies that have used Nexus Analysis are reviewed with the aim to connect with familiar ELPA management scenarios and practical considerations unique to our current time in history. Keywords: English language program management, English language program administrators, Nexus Analysis
... Regarding what a text is, our point of departure derives from discourse theories, implying that texts are simultaneously mediating meaning and being mediated through social practices of meaning making (Norris & Jones, 2005;Scollon, 2001;Scollon & Scollon, 2009). Thus, discourse is simultaneously represented in practice and reproduced by it, and it is constantly and collectively produced and transferred through time and place by mediating tools and actions (Scollon, 2001). ...
This article builds upon a systematic review of 53 articles in international research journals and makes three main contributions. First, it develops a method for identifying motives, values, and assumptions in research by analysing segments of text in journal articles. Second, it represents a reflective account of research within the field of mathematics education. Third, it captures the ongoing directions of intentionalities inherent in the diverse field of special education mathematics and, thereby, some of the characteristics of the core issues in this field. Three directions of intentionalities were identified: towards teachers and teaching competence, towards enhanced mathematical achievement, and towards every student’s learning. The results indicate that each direction has specific limitations and potentials. In order to improve special education mathematics, we recommend that researchers and practitioners remain broadly informed and involved in all three directions of intentionalities.
... Yet they systematically insisted on the ethnographic basis of their work (e.g. Scollon & Scollon, 2009). And this paper will argue that their work contains very useful, even momentous, interventions in ethnographic theory and method. ...
... The research design of this study draws on nexus analysis, developed by Ron and Suzie Wong Scollon (2004Scollon ( , 2007Scollon ( , 2009. It is based on the traditions and methodological tools developed in critical discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, interactional sociolinguistics and narrative approaches ( Hult, 2010;Lane, 2014, p. 17;Pietikäinen, 2010;Scollon & Scollon, 2004). ...
Cleaning is often the survival employment that migrants can get in their new home country. Ideally, the workplace can be a site for integration and language learning. This article explores how two migrants working as cleaners in Finland narrate their work-related Finnish language learning trajectories. The research is designed by applying nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), which focuses on social action in the intersection of interaction order, participants’ life experiences, and discourses in place. The social action in focus here is investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which means a commitment to developing language skills to achieve one’s aspirations. The article also analyses how language learners position themselves and are positioned by others, because positioning affects access to meaningful learning opportunities. Positioning analysis by Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008) in a small stories approach is applied to analyse the key participants’ oral narratives told in the context of ethnographic research interviews. Follow-up interviews conducted a year later are analysed to show how positioning changes over time. The study illustrates that investment in work-related language learning is meaningful when occupational development and language learning can be purposefully combined. However, migrants are positioned as a potential workforce in low-level jobs and their expertise is often ignored, which means that investments in language learning might not pay off in career development. Supporting educated migrants in finding appropriate employment would facilitate goal-oriented language learning.
... Yet, they systematically insisted on the ethnographic basis of their work (e.g. Scollon & Wong Scollon, 2009). And this chapter will argue that their work contains very useful, even momentous interventions in ethnographic theory and method. ...
Superdiversity has rendered familiar places, groups and practices extraordinarily complex, and the traditional tools of analysis need rethinking. In this book, Jan Blommaert investigates his own neighbourhood in Antwerp, Belgium, from a complexity perspective. Using an innovative approach to linguistic landscaping, he demonstrates how multilingual signs can be read as chronicles documenting the complex histories of a place. The book can be read in many ways: as a theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of linguistic landscape; as one of the first monographs which addresses the sociolinguistics of superdiversity; or as a revision of some of the fundamental assumptions of social science through the use of chaos and complexity theory as an inspiration for understanding the structures of contemporary social life.
... In other words, in these scenes visitors are not only negotiating moral themes and norms, but constantly also their positionality and relations visà-vis the media institution, which they address in moral terms. Visitors arriving at the CIF are informed that ''Expression and debate are 9 Commending Hymes ' (1975) work, Scollon and Scollon (2009) note a shift in moral discourse, from ''conceptualization of classical Greek and Latin literature as if it had been miraculously burned onto stone tablets to a conceptualization of such literature as likewise having its roots in the oral performances of humans living their lives" (p. 278). ...
Recent studies of moral discourse and argumentation highlight the pervasiveness of morality in everyday life, and how the public sphere is shaped by moral ‘stuff’: speech acts, narratives, accounts and the like. By taking a discourse analytic orientation, this article joins this line of research, and delineates the situated and interactional nature of moral argumentations and rhetoric. The article focuses on the role moral discourse plays in the formation of the public sphere, as conceptualized by Habermas, and specifically on moral discourse (co-)produced by museums and by their visitors. As cultural public institutions, museums play an important role in shaping the public sphere both thematically (topically) and materially (communication technologies and materialities of display and participation). In recent years, museums have shifted to more interactive modes of operation, where visitors are invited to participate in the public sphere by producing discourse in situ. This study explores museum questions and visitors responses in a large Jewish cultural/heritage museum in the Unites States. The study first looks at the museum apparatuses, through which discourse is publicly invited, produced and presented, to then study visitors’ responses as moral discourse. The analysis critically highlights the dramatic quality inherent to moral scenes, and depicts and discusses how visitors’ texts selectively address the moral Actor, Action and Motive as parts of the social moral drama they evaluate.
... Yet, as the renewed interest in Hymes' contributions to the analysis of oral narrative has demonstrated (e.g. Blommaert 2009a, b;Collins 2009;Rampton 2009;Sarangi 2009;Scollon and Scollon 2009;Warriner 2007a), it is important to recognize the ways that "everyday narrative voices-irrespective of the content matter-constitute a form of empowerment as we appreciate the role of the listener in the production of situated performances in culture-specific ways" (Sarangi 2009, p. 240). ...
This chapter explores how definitions of communicative competence might be expanded, refined, and investigated by analyzing
the roles of creativity, regimentation, and poetic structure in autobiographical narrative. Assuming that the “creative manipulations
of cultural rules” that English Language Learners accomplish often go unrecognized in practice, the analysis demonstrates
the need for teachers of English language learners to recognize and build on the multiple aesthetic resources that adult learners
of English bring with them to the language learning endeavor. The analysis reveals dynamic connections between language in
use, social identity, teaching practices, and learning processes. It also contributes to our understanding of how a narrator’s
choices facilitate her/his emergent and growing competencies as a language learner, contributing citizen, and engaged participant
in local communities of practice. The chapter thus illustrates how Educational Linguistics as an intellectual endeavor is
not only grounded in history with a constant set of questions and concerns but, also, responsive to recent developments in
theory, method, and practice.
Deaf sign language signers are often regarded as having limited resources with which to learn languages. Such a view can be identified as an authoritative discourse. However, recent empirical studies on communication-practices among signers do not support such a view. These studies show that abundant multilingual and multimodal resources exist for signers with which to learn languages. This chapter demonstrates, through a case study of ‘Hanna’, how a deaf Finnish Sign Language signer becomes aware of the conflict between a dominant, authoritative discourse and the everyday actions she takes with English language. This rupture of the taken-for-grantedness during an interview shapes the way Hanna positions herself as an English language learner. Further, the research presented in this chapter argues that such moments of self-revelation offer possibilities for the emergence of reverse discourses that may question and replace dominant discourses.
In Ukraine, the Russian and Ukrainian languages have historically alternated in policy and practice in their official status and social prestige. As in many areas of the world, English is emerging in Ukraine as a language of economic value, social prestige, and education though it is not a language of wider communication. The goal of the research was to explore the ecology of language at a university which is implementing English as a medium of instruction in all subjects for multiple groups of students in Dnipropetrovs&rsquok, Ukraine. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted over the 2010-2011 academic year to answer the following questions: 1) What are the discourses about English language instruction at the university? 2) What is the day-to-day reality of English language instruction at the university? 3) How are English and English-language classroom practices situated in or reflective of the larger language ecology of the university? and 4) How is English language education practically and discursively connected with: Ukrainian language policy, international education policy, and goals of economic development or integration, especially integration with the European Union? Data were interpreted through the lenses of ethnography of communication, discourse analysis, and Conversation Analysis (CA).
It was found that English is a source of prestige and achievement for the university, and is an attempt to recruit students by offering a &ldquoEuropean&rdquo level of education. Using English as a medium of instruction poses the challenge of finding teachers and textbooks and requires adjustments to classroom management, but also affords opportunities to learn academic content and language. Russian is the predominant native language used to support learning in EFL and English-medium classes. Ukrainian appears to be most prevalent in the written domains of use regardless of the medium of instruction, and in formal spoken situations. Russian was a predominant spoken language. English occupies spaces that Russian or Ukrainian do not, but is not seen as a threat to Russian or Ukrainian because it is a foreign language. Additional languages are used in and out of class in more limited ways, but are seen as equally important as English, Russian and Ukrainian for securing an economic future.
Peak oil and global warming have both been vilified and then vindicated. When the small community of Haines, Alaska, dependent for food, fuel and social services on the increasingly less viable fossil fuel economy, began noticing deficits in early 2007, its Borough Assembly engaged the volunteer Haines Energy Task Force to research and make recommendations on alternative energy sources for heating and transportation, local food production and harvesting of subsistence resources, social services and economic change. As a long-term resident and property owner, I found myself in a zone of identification (Burke 1950) as part of a nexus of practice (NOP) of citizens thinking about the future of reduced and alternative energy consumption and taking action toward bringing about the envisioned future. As part of this NOP, my analysis constituted social action by transforming the NOP in engaging the NOP, the opening move in a nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004: 9). This paper is an account of the ways and extent to which the task force was able to bring about change in the community. It is not a nexus analysis as such but a summary report.
Bilinguals often face the challenge of negotiating a range of insider/outsider subject positions when interacting in transnational
and intercultural settings. This article takes up the concept of symbolic competence, the awareness of socially situated symbolic
resources and the ability to use them to shape interactional contexts, to examine how the author, a Swedish–English bilingual,
manages this negotiation. Drawing on principles of the ethnography of communication in concert with the complementary discourse
analytic perspective of nexus analysis, ethnographic vignettes are analyzed to explore strategic language choices the author
made during specific speech situations in Sweden. It is shown that the concealment of linguistic abilities, or covert bilingualism,
served as a resource to support the symbolic competence needed to facilitate the presentation of self during social encounters
while mitigating the ambiguity of being simultaneously insider and outsider.
This article examines the collective language shift from Swedish to Ukrainian in the Swedish-ethnic community of Gammalsvenskby, Ukraine. The Gammalsvenskby language shift is used to argue that language shift is such a complex social practice that it cannot be satisfactorily explained by the use of preconceived, deductive analytical frameworks. The argument is probed through a study of selected themes in the life story interviews of 16 last-generation Swedish-speakers, making use of the framework of nexus analysis. The study shows that the different kinds of discourses involved in the Gammalsvenskby language shift have resulted in a complex network of interrelated processes of change on various levels. These processes are so intertwined and have had such different scalar effects, that they cannot be simply grouped as factors which are classed as either micro or macro.I artikeln studeras det kollektiva språkbytet från svenska till ukrainska i den svensketniska gruppen i Gammalsvenskby (Ukraina) för att visa att språkbyte är en så komplex social praktik att på förhand uppställda deduktiva analysmatriser inte kan förklara den på ett tillfredsställande sätt. Detta argument utforskas med nexusanalys som referensram genom en studie av några utvalda teman i levnadsberättelser av 16 personer ur den sista svensktalande generationen. Studien visar att de olika slags diskurser som var inblandade i språkbytet i Gammalsvenskby resulterade i ett komplext nät av sammanlänkade förändringsprocesser på olika nivåer. Dessa processer var så sammanflätade och hade så olika skalära effekter, att det inte förefaller meningsfullt att gruppera dem som faktorer som kan hänföras till separata mikro- och makronivåer. [Swedish]
The work of the Scollons contains a number of conceptual developments that open new pathways towards a maturely theorized ethnography. Two such developments are discussed in this paper: the emphasis on the body, and the emphasis on space. Both developments show how the Scollons connected synchronic events with historical patterns of becoming. Their notion of the 'historical body' sees the body as enskilled through trajectories of learning and acquisition, and their notion of space sees space as demarcating and normative. This connection between synchrony and history enables ethnography to transcend the problem of atemporality and anecdotism.
Nexus analysis takes human action rather than language or culture as its unit of analysis. We take one specific case to illustrate the methodology as well as its continuity with the project of Hymes, and of Boas before him, to take action against racism. A nexus analysis takes the constitution of human social groups and languages as a problem to be examined, shifting the focus away from groups toward action as the prime unit of analysis. This shift disrupts power relations between ethnographer as participant and observer and those observed who are now participants and observers in partnership, with consequences concerning when, where, and with whom ethnography can be done, consequences for the security of subjects as well as national security. We begin where inequality is perceived and analyze the actions that bring that about, our analysis itself being a form of action.