Discourse Processes Questions in Time

This article was downloaded by: [University of Wisconsin - Madison] On: 24 July 2014, At: 10:33 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Discourse Processes Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hdsp20 Questions in Time: Investigating the Structure and Dynamics of Unfolding Classroom Discourse Martin Nystrand , Lawrence L. Wu , Adam Gamoran , Susie Zeiser & Daniel A. Long Published online: 08 Jun 2010. To cite this article: Martin Nystrand , Lawrence L. Wu , Adam Gamoran , Susie Zeiser & Daniel A. Long (2003) Questions in Time: Investigating the Structure and Dynamics of Unfolding Classroom Discourse, Discourse Processes, 35:2, 135-198, DOI: 10.1207/ S15326950DP3502_3 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15326950DP3502_3 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Questions in Time: Investigating the Structure and Dynamics of Unfolding Classroom Discourse Martin Nystrand Department of English The University of Wisconsin–Madison National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement Lawrence L. Wu and Adam Gamoran Department of Sociology The University of Wisconsin–Madison National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement Susie Zeiser National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement Daniel A. Long Department of Sociology The University of Wisconsin–Madison National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin - Madison] at 10:33 24 July 2014 In the 1st-ever use of event-history analysis to investigate discourse processes quanti- tatively, this study recasts understanding of discourse in terms of the (a) antecedents and (b) consequences of discourse participant “moves” as they (c) affect the inertia of the discourse and accordingly structure unfolding discourse processes. The method is used to compute the probabilities of the effects of particular discourse moves on subsequent discourse patterns and to measure and systematically contrast static Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Martin Nystrand, The National Re- search Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA), Wisconsin Center for Education Re- search, 1025 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706. E-mail: [email protected] 136 NYSTRAND ET AL. (macrosocial) and dynamic (microsocial) conditions prompting and sustaining dialogic discourse. Theoretically, the authors draw on Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin’s epistemological distinctions between monologic and dialogic discourse to identify pedagogically rich sequences of teacher–student interaction as dialogic spells and discussion, which the authors’ previous work has shown to contribute to achievement. Empirically, the authors examine data collected in hundreds of obser- vations of more than 200 8th- and 9th-grade English and social studies classrooms in 25 Midwestern middle and high schools, including detailed coding of more than 33,000 teachers and student questions. Results show that authentic teacher questions, uptake, and student questions function as dialogic bids with student questions show- ing an especially large effect. Discourse event history analysis is a powerful tool for investigating the structure of unfolding discourse. Since Saussure (1959/1915), a central problem for discourse theory has been grappling with the heterogeneity of discourse as it unfolds in time. Saussure sought to sidestep the whole problem by bracketing la parole and focusing on la langue, a construct geared, in a seminal move often cited as the foundation of mod- ern linguistics, to extricating language from seemingly intractable problems of time and context. Yet linguistics’focus on la langue has famously done nothing for studies of la parole except to perpetuate Saussure’s characterization of it as hetero- geneous and unsystematic—impossible as a serious problem for any scientific analysis seeking valid propositions and hypotheses about discourse in some general, nomothetic sense. Many initiatives have addressed this issue. Especially noteworthy, of course, have been ethnomethodology and conversation analysis documenting language in interaction co-constructed “on the fly” by the conversants and appropriately understood by the conversants only in the context of its emergence (Goodwin, 1979, 1981; Heritage & Roth, 1995; Jefferson, 1974; Sacks, Schlegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1984). Leaving behind efforts to investigate discourse by explicating an underlying structure of the sort that sentence grammarians uncover, sociolinguists and ethnomethodologists, including Cicourel (1973) and Garfinkel (1967), pro- posed concepts like the et cetera principle, reciprocity of phenomenal perspectives, indexicality, and reflexivity to conceptualize situated discourse in everyday interaction (cf. Nystrand, Greene, & Wiemelt, 1993, p. 320). Discourse—language in Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin - Madison] at 10:33 24 July 2014 time—is more adequately understood as structured by the conversants, particularly as they each reciprocally factor the intentions of the other into their interactions. As Schutz (1962) put it, it is “assumed that the sector of the world taken for granted by me is also taken for granted by you, [and] even more, that it is taken for granted by ‘Us’” (1967, p. 12). Or, as Brazil (1985), writing about discourse phonology in conversation, argued, “The most general characterization of the [proclaiming–refer- ring]systemisnot,infact,intextualtermsbutinsocialterms.Inmakingthereferring choice, the speaker invokes the togetherness aspect of the conversational relation- ship, speaking as it were for the ‘we’ who are the participants” (pp. 67–68). QUESTIONS IN TIME 137 From this perspective, discourse begins as an initial calibration of conversants’ intentions and expectations vis-à-vis the topic and genre of their interaction, and the conversants’ensuing interaction is largely structured by their evolving perspectives on the topic and the discourse itself. Therefore, when one person begins a conversation by asking, “You know that x I’m always talking about?” the purpose of this question is not to quiz the speaker’s conversant but rather and merely to es- tablish a common topic and starting point for the conversation. For Rommetveit (1974), the result of this initial calibration of conversants is a temporarily shared social reality (or TSSR), and the discourse itself is to be understood, he argued, as a progressive modification and/or expansion of this social reality. Each modification and/or expansion, typically accomplished through the introduction and contextualization of new information, defines a subsequent TSSR (roughly speaking, there are about as many TSSRs in a discourse as there are introductions and contextualizations of new information). Whereas such a conceptualization perhaps represents the state of the art in discourse analysis and has done much to account for countless case studies, their na- ture as case studies makes it difficult to use their methods to investigate the general character and dynamics of discourse, such as how discourse in particular contexts tends to start and end, or the effects of defined contextual factors such as demogra- phy, power relations between conversants, institutional settings, and so on as they generally impact discourse processes, not just individual cases. In this article, we report the first-ever discourse event-history analysis to deal with these issues. Event-history analysis is a quantitative methodology used to investigate shifts in events or the status of individuals. It has been used, as we explain later, in sociology to assess the consequences of precipitating events in marriage and divorce, job mobility, teenage pregnancy, and infant mortality; and in political science to assess changes in city government, political timing, and the political effects of economic crises. Its power, demonstrated in our study, resides in its capa- bility to systematically analyze

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