Photographic disasters

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious ... The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic. (Eliot 221

Questions of context in studies of talk and interaction—Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis

The questions dealt with in this special issue of Journal of Pragmatics are doubly vexed. The first matter at issue is that the papers I have solicited take on some aspects of the debate within, and between, ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA) – and, by extension, wider approaches to discourse analysis and perhaps even pragmatics as a whole – as to whether and, if so to what extent, contextual particulars are relevant to the analyst’s task in hand; therefore specifying, to some degree, what that task actually is

Editorial: Culture

The original idea for this issue of M/C was for contributors to discuss the many and varying possible meanings of the word "culture" and/or the various uses of the concepts of culture (in general) and cultures (in particular)

Getting on My Nerves: A Memoir

I suffer from trigeminal neuralgia (TN) and have done so for several decades. The condition is intermittent but tends to get worse with age. Sometimes I’ll get a fortnight or so of chronic attacks. Other times, just a few twinges. But when a full attack kicks in, the pain is utterly unbearable. The term ‘suicide disease’ has been bandied about (Sarmah, 2008) and I have a good idea why..

'Here be dragons, here be savages, here be bad plumbing: Australian media representations of sport and terrorism

As 'Propaganda Theorists argue, an examination of key discourses can enhance our understanding of how economic, political and social debate is shaped by mainstream media reporting. In this essay we present content and discourse analysis of Australian media reporting on the nexus of sport and terrorism. Examining newspaper reports over a five-year period, from 1996-2001, which included the 11 September 2001 terrorist tragedy in the United States (9/11), provides useful insights into how public discourse might be influenced with regard to sport and terrorism interrelationships. The results of the media analysis suggest that hegemonic tropes are created around sport and terrorism. The distilled message is one of good and evil, with homilies of sport employed in metaphors for western society and its values. The reactions and responses of sport administrators and athletes to terrorist acts and the threat of terrorism to sport are used to exemplify these ideals, providing newspaper readers a context within which to localize meaning and relevance

Riding the Reciprocal Teaching Bus A teacher’s reflections on nurturing collaborative learning in a school culture obsessed by results

This article examines the author’s interactions with the teaching strategy known as Reciprocal Teaching, sometimes also called Reciprocal Reading, which involves students learning to read collaboratively in small groups. Reciprocal Teaching typically involves students teaching each other by following a rubric of activities that are aimed at primarily improving their comprehension skills. In brief, students read a text in a group and collectively try to understand it, using prescribed procedures. This article scrutinises the original research by Palinscar and Brown (1984) which created the strategy and questions some of its claims. While many other investigations into Reciprocal Teaching have aimed to prove or disprove its efficacy, this enquiry studies the discourses which inform the strategy, arguing that there are problems with its presentation in the original article which have affected subsequent representations of Reciprocal Teaching. The article shows how the author, an English teacher in a large secondary school, taught Reciprocal Teaching to teenagers for a year and argues that the presentation of Reciprocal Teaching he read in a well-regarded teaching handbook caused him to deploy Reciprocal Teaching problematically. It was only when he taught Reciprocal Teaching in a more imaginative fashion that he found greater success

Vibrancy, repetition, movement: Posthuman theories for reconceptualising young children in museums

This paper argues for an expanded field of inquiry to conceptualise young children in museums. Drawing on Murris’ (2016) analysis of childhood constructions, we discuss how cognitive and socio-constructivist models of the child dominate childhood and museum studies. We argue for the potential of Murris’ figure of the posthuman child to reconceptualise children in museums. This perspective offers a greater focus on the potency of objects themselves, and the animacy of the non-human aspects of the museum. It is also underpinned by a theoretical shift from representation to non-representation (Anderson and Harrison, 2010), presenting us with new ways to address questions such as ‘what does that mean?’ when we observe children’s learning in museums. Working with data that has proved resistant to interpretation across a range of research projects, what we call ‘sticky data’, we elaborate on three themes emerging from this reconceptualisation: vibrancy, repetition, and movement

FORUM: Toward a Phenomenology of Interviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43940/1/11422_2005_Article_9001.pd