Philosophy in Baton Rouge

Hello from Louisiana! I have been struggling with some of the philosophic assumptions embedded in discursive psychology and social constructivism. This makes for an interesting experience in a course based firmly in those ontological and epistemological principles. I find that I have needed to "talk through" these issues with myself, in the form of "notes to self" in the margins of our texts and readings, and in dialogue with others, in multiple forms. What does it say about my struggle with understanding that we create reality through our talk in action coupled with my own need for "talk" (in the forms just mentioned) to make sense of it all? It sounds like a hypocritical position!

In an effort to make sense of it all, my approach has been to focus on the trees in the forest. I have created a list of textual devices to use in analysis of texts. These are the terms used in our readings that explain how to do discourse analysis and in the studies that have applied these analyses. It is beginning to look like a glossary of terms for beginning discourse students and I am currently at around sixty terms that are used in this work. I plan to attach that document to this blog site as soon as I feel it is complete. Some of my classmates may find it useful as they navigate this new world. As a budding qualitative researcher, I have focused on the vocabulary of discourse analysis as "what stands out for me" when I read texts. An earlier post demonstrated my grapple with the assumptions that underlie such concepts as how talk can "make possible" new positions and new identities. There is power in talk that uses such language.

I have been focusing on the agency that is implied, both implicitly and explicitly, in discourse analysis. Agency is an area that I have been researching and dialoging about all semester. Jessica Lester and I began a dialogue around the achievement gap and educational excellence over a year ago and turned it into a research project for MSERA this year. We were joined by another member of our research team, Tiffany Dellard, to create a mediated, co-constructed narrative study of educational excellence through our differing philosophical positions. Tiffany and I will be presenting the paper that evolved from this work later this morning, but for the purposes of this discussion I would like to mention that agency is everything for me in both the paper that we will present and in my struggles with DA. The issues for me run in a circular and illogical fashion. In DA, we assert that reality and individual and group identities are created through our talk. We then say that the talk creates the capacity for new beliefs, new roles, new possibilities that did not exist before the talk. Perhaps it is the old chicken and egg dilemma that has me puzzled. Does the talk allow the new possibilities or does something within the speaker occur that is confirmed through the talk? We sometimes "talk things over" with another to clarify our thinking, but does this talk actually create the thinking? Dr. Paulus, I think there is an idea in the synapses..... Where am I wrong?