The purpose of this paper is to continue to develop your ability to make inductive, discourse analytic claims. Use the following guidelines to format your paper, including these same sections and headings.
Sections, with headers in bold, centered:
Introduction
Context Description
Identifying & Interpreting Discourse Practices
Reflection
Introduction. (1 paragraph)
This section can be written after you have completed all of the others and know what you are saying in the paper. In a brief paragraph, explain to the reader the main purpose, organization, and findings of your paper. Ideally, youll also tell them why this work is interesting or important to have done. Set the reader up to know what theyre looking at. Write this section after you’ve completed the rest of the paper so you can actually introduce what you’ve written!
Context description. (1-2 paragraphs)
Briefly introduce the exchange by describing (1) the circumstances that prompted the emails exchanged; (2) what is going on in the exchange; (3) and who the participants are, including identities that may be particularly relevant to understanding their relationship in this exchange. You can change names to protect participants, although one of the participants should be you. The context description should set the stage for your analysis by identifying the face threat that you will be analyzing. Remember, this means taking into account the interactional level of meaning happening across the utterances, not only the content. Whether something “counts” as a face threat depends on your existing relationship and previous interactions with a person, which shape how you understand what is happening in this interaction.
Identifying & interpreting discourse practices. (3-4 paragraphs)
Select at least 3 clear discourse practices that you think are the most interesting and consequential for making an argument about how the participants manage the face threat within the interaction. This means that you will not discuss every single discourse practice you can identify. Instead, you will discuss three that seem particularly consequential for interpreting this interaction directly related to the face-threat.
When you use a term from class materials, you need to explain it and cite it.
Make an analytic claim connecting the discourse practices you identified as managing face concerns and makes an argument about what they mean for how the participants construct, challenge, or present identities in interaction (i.e., identities contribute to upholding different aspects of face). Therefore, your interpretation may include claims about how these specific discourse practices do identity work to establish or challenge a particular personal, relational, or master identity.
Your paper will present the discourse practices that the participants use to manage the face threat using course terminology of solidarity, competency, and autonomy faces. In your paper you should bring in specific quotes from the email exchange (that is, present discursive evidence) and then use course concepts to label them as practices. Again, you should discuss at least three different specific discourse practices.
Reflection (2-3 paragraphs)
After analyzing your discourse, adopt a rhetorical perspective and reflect on your choices in this exchange, your goals for future interactions with this person or similar situations, and what discourse practices you might use in order to accomplish these goals.
To do this, propose 1-2 other options for communication actions that you could have pursued to address this situation and argue for which option you would now select. If you had to do it again, would you make the same choices? Did your discourse practices accomplish your desired identity goals? Did you have multiple goals that you were trying to manage?
Analyze your exchange: begin by identifying discourse practices within the interaction, including: specific speech acts (complaint, criticism, account, etc.), membership terms, forms of personal address, frame, and more. This identification should also consider what cultural practices are active within the interaction, including interpersonal ideologies and cultural norms for personal address, the email genre, and more. Then think about the language of identity-work including: solidarity face, competency face, autonomy face, self-presentation, and altercasting.
When you use a term from class materials, you need to explain it and cite it.
Just to get you thinking, here are some questions to consider as you look for discourse practices:
Is there a greeting? Are first names, last names or titles involved? Nicknames?
Is the language formal? Punctuated correctly? Is there slang used?
Does the message solicit a response? Why or why not?
In what ways does the e-mail attempt to clarify meaning by the use of symbols (i.e., emojis, CAPS, emoticons)?
What are the cultural or value assumptions at work? That is, what is unspoken but assumed?
Are there inside jokes or other references that can only be understood by members in a particular speech community?
How do you notice face as a joint interactional accomplishment?
Remember: This paper is all about managing face threat. So you need to identify what about the talk is potentially face threatening and how it is managed (for example, repaired). The discourse practices you bring in are things that caused the face threat and/or tools you used to mitigate (repair) the face threat
Background information:
This is a conversation between me and my ex-girlfriend. A couple of days before this she was spam-calling me and texting me about how I did not text her ‘Sorry’ because it was her brother’s birthday who passed away. These messages included her being rude to me. The messages in the attached file are her saying sorry and trying to make amends.
