Author Archives: Pamela Irwin

Reflections from the CASS student challenge panel member, part 3

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Pamela Irwin, this year’s CASS student challenge panel member, is looking back on her past year of research. This is part 3 of her reflections — need to catch up on the others? Click here to read part 1, or here to read part 2. 

Lately, I have been examining sociolinguistics and its related sub-disciplines as part of my exploration of the synergy between the social sciences (sociology/social gerontology) and language (corpus linguistics) in relation to my research.

My first task was to compare sociolinguistics with the sociology of language. According to the literature, in brief, the focus of sociolinguistics is to ascertain the effect of society on language, whereas the sociology of language is oriented around the influence of language on society.

Even with this conceptual clarification, I still found it quite difficult to assimilate the vertical (layers) and horizontal (scope) dimensions of sociolinguistics and then to differentiate within and between the sociolinguistic sub-specialities. At this stage, it was a relief to discover that some of these social/linguistic links had already been mapped, including sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics (Baker, 2010), critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics (Baker, Gabrielatos, Knosravinik, Krzyzanowski, McEnery & Wodak, 2008), realism and corpus linguistics (Sealey, 2010) and linguistics and ethnography (Rampton, Maybin & Tusting, 2007).

Linguistic ethnography has particular relevance my study’s ethnographic methodology. During my ethnographic fieldwork in rural Australia, I obtained data from multiple sources: historical records, contemporary materials such as local newspapers and community notices, participant interviews and journals, and field notes. As I had naively assumed that all types of data are equally valid, Creese’s (2011) advocacy of a non-hierarchial balance between researcher fieldnotes and interactional data (interviews, conversations) was reassuring.

According to Rampton (2007), a distinctive linguistic ethnography is still evolving and as such, it remains open to wider interpretative approaches. Here, Sealey’s (2007) juxtaposition of linguistic ethnography and realism to address ‘what kinds of language in what circumstances and with what outcome?” (p. 641) makes a valuable contribution to my analytical repertoire. For instance, my findings suggest that the older and late middle-aged women’s life history narratives vary significantly in terms of their depth (reflective/instrumental) and breadth (expansive/constrained). While these differences do not seem to be related to the type of data (written versus spoken accounts), the influence of temporal (age, period, cohort) and situational (rural/urban, ‘local’/newcomer) circumstances on the women’s accounts is less clear. Corpus linguistics provides an objective analytical method of unravelling these complex inter-relationships.

References:

Baker, P. (2010). Sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., Khosravinik, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society, 19(3), 273-306. doi: 10.1177/0957926508088962

Creese, A. (2011). Making local practices globally relevant in researching multilingual education. In F.M. Hult and K.A. King (Eds.). Educational linguistics in practice: Applying the local globally and the global locally. Chapter 3. pp. 41-59 Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Rampton, B. (2007). Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the United Kingdom. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11(5), 584-607. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00341.x

Sealey, A. (2007). Linguistic ethnography in realist perspective. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11(5), 641-660. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00341.x

Sealey, A. (2010). Probabilities and surprises: A realist approach to identifying linguistic and social patterns, with reference to an oral history corpus. Applied linguistics, 31(2), 215-235. doi: 10.1093/applin/amp023

Are you interested in becoming the next student challenge panel member? Apply to attend our free summer school to learn more.

Reflections from the CASS student challenge panel member, part 2

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Pamela Irwin, this year’s CASS student challenge panel member, is looking back on her past year of research. This is part 2 of her reflections — did you miss part 1? Click here to catch up.

As my research is predicated on a realist ontology, I have been concerned that it is at odds with the constructivist perspective adopted by many studies investigating the use of language in society.

Very simplistically, realists believe in the existence of a reality that is external to a person, whereas for constructivists, reality is contingent on language and signification.

Different versions populate both ontologies. Realism is largely associated with the critical realists spearheaded by Bhaskar and Archer. Likewise, constructivism is noted for its variations, such as those associated with the sociocultural and critical constructivists.

As such, I am struggling with ‘if and how’ to reconcile these “incompatible meta-theories” (Chouliaraki, 2002, p. 83). Lichbach (2003) suggests that there are three ways to address this philosophical schism: ‘competitors’ exaggerate the differences between these perspectives, ‘lumpers’ try to synthesise them into one centre, and ‘pragmatists’ roll over and ignore discrepancies. Here, my view aligns with the competitor’s insistence on separate ontologies.

Interestingly, a lumper approach is deemed workable in an ontological/epistemological combination. For Chouliaraki (2002, pp. 97-98), this is “a discourse informed by realist elements”, where a constructivist ontology is combined with a realist epistemology to draw out conceptual, analytical and temporal effects. Conversely, Buroway (2003, p.655) “presumes an external ‘real world’ but it is one that we can only know through our constructed relation to it…realist and constructivist approaches provide each other’s corrective.” His sequence (a realist ontology and a constructivist epistemology) aligns with my conceptual position.

I am also intrigued by the potentiality of ‘critical’ as a hinge linking the critical realist and critical constructivist worldviews. (Incidentally, two recent papers address this realist/language divide: Elder-Vass (2013) with his seven classifications of linguistic realism and Lau and Morgan (2013) via discourse theory). When contextualised to my realist/constructivist framework and research data revealing inequalities in power relations and social structures in the rural community, a comparable option for me might be to underpin critical gerontology (ontology) with a critical discourse analysis (epistemology), mediated through corpus linguistics.

References:

Buroway, M. (2003). Revisits: An outline of a theory of reflexive ethnography. American Sociological Review, 68(5), 645-679. Retrieved from: http://jstor.org/stable/1519757

Chouliaraki, L. (2002). ‘The contingency of universality’: Some thoughts on discourse and realism. Social Semiotics, 12(1), 83-114. doi; 10.1080/10350330220130386

Elder-Vass, D. (2013). Debate: Seven ways to be a realist about language. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. doi: 10.1111/jsb.12040

Lau, R.W.K., & Morgan, J. (2013). Integrating discourse, construction and objectivity: A contemporary realist approach. Sociology. doi: 10.1177/003803513491466

Lichbach, M.I. (2003). Is rational choice theory all of social science? Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Return soon to read Pamela’s next installment! Are you interested in becoming the next student challenge panel member? Apply to attend our free summer school to learn more.

Reflections from the CASS student challenge panel member, part 1

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Each year, one student from an outside institution is appointed to ‘challenge‘ CASS with concepts from their own novel research. Pamela Irwin, the 2013/2014 student challenge panel member, is beginning to wrap up her ‘term’, and has put together a series of reflections on the process. Read the first entry below.

I am a mature student with a background in health and higher education, and currently completing my PhD in gerontology. My research centres on the interaction between age, gender and the community in the context of resilience in older women living on their own in rural Australia.

Although ageing is informed by many disciplines, my research route is via the broad domain of social sciences. Serendipitously, a peer review of a journal article was responsible for my formal exposure to linguistics and corpus linguistics. The reviewers indicated that my paper reflected a sociological rather than the requisite social psychology orientation, and while I was aware that my topic crossed these disciplines, I was not fully cognisant of the critical importance of language in differentiating these subtleties. As a result, I enrolled in a corpus linguistic programme designed to improve academic language use, and through the inaugural CASS summer school, I was then able to consolidate, expand and apply this knowledge. This immersion in the world of linguistics stimulated a new and growing interest in the ‘function’ of language in academia and everyday life.

However I soon realised that my grounding in the grammatical structures of the English language was extremely basic. While I could identify the fundamental parts of speech, I could not parse a sentence and any further analysis was well beyond my skill set. Since then, I have been introduced to new concepts (semiosis), terminology (concatenate), techniques (linguistic ‘friendly’ transcribing) and technology (WMatix) amongst others, as well as being challenged to rethink and change some of my preconceived ideas (metaphor).

Here, my understanding of the figures of speech is particularly salient. Resilience, a key theme in my research, tends to have different meanings depending on both the subject and context. An overview of the literature suggests that resilience is often described metaphorically as ‘bouncing back’ in academic and popular psychology, whereas in an Australian setting, resilience is more likely to be associated with an image of ‘the (little) Aussie battler’ (Moore, 2010). In this context, resilience represents perseverance, with the ‘underdog’ battling against all odds to overcome hardship in adverse conditions. By contrast, at a systems (socio-ecological) level, resilience is not yet related to a specific metaphor or image. It is however, closely linked to a related term, ‘panarchy’, that involves a dynamic process of adaptation and transformation.

Thus resilience is defined by a metaphor (a ball), an image (a battler) and a conceptual term (panarchy) in my study. These differences provide a rich ‘landscape’ to uncover with corpus linguistics.

Reference:

Moore, B. (2010). What’s their story? A history of Australian words. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Return soon to read Pamela’s next installment! Are you interested in becoming the next student challenge panel member? Apply to attend our free summer school to learn more.