Week 3  Meaning and Context Sessions

3.1 Exploring Language Concepts--Meaning and Context

a.  Listen to PowerPoint/Breeze lecture on meaning and context.  It includes information about the context of Heath's study.

b. Before you start Heath’s chapter, “Oral Traditions,” look first at Roadville text  IV on p. 151 and Trackton text VIII on p. 181 of her chapter. Reading Assignment

c. Read all of "Oral Traditions" (on electronic reserve);

d. Post new understandings and questions about language concepts to the language concept discussion board.

e. Read two other posts and add a response.

3.2 Applying Language Concepts to Literature

Agenda:

a.  Read Doyle, "Woman" to Ch. 7, focusing on chapters 3 and 7. noting what shared knowledge you bring, as a reader, that allows you to interpret these sudden shifts in narrative context. Reading Assignment

b. Listen to the audio of chapters 3 and 7, adding to your notes any way in which the audio evokes the shared knowledge you bring. (This audiofile won't be posted by IT until Tuesday am.)

C. Post your observations to the Doyle discussion

d. Read Flannery O'Connor, "The River" (on electronic reserves). See Reading assignment

e. Use Worksheet 3.2 to analyze "The River"

f.  Post some of the understandings that arise from your analysis to the literature blog on O'Connor.

3.3 Doing Language Research

a. Gloss your transcribed conversation, looking for clusters of related words and identifying semantic fields.  What shared knowledge is created explicitly in the conversation, and what is assumed to be already shared? (See Guidelines 3.3 below and p. 282 of the L&L guide, as well as "Glossing in MSWord")

b. Post what you've found—the clusters of words and semantic fields you’ve identified, what you’ve discovered about shared knowledge, and any necessary background information re. context that participants in our class might need to understand this excerpt as you do—to your research journal.

c. Read and respond to the posts of two of your classmates, adding any further observations that you can add or questions you have about these exchanges. As an outsider, do you need additional information about context, about knowledge that seems to be shared in the conversation but that you don't share?