Here Comes Everybody

By looking at speech ‘beyond the level of the sentence’, discourse analysis reveals some of the conventions that underlie it. Speakers use conversational structures to engage listeners, create cohesion,  and facilitate comprehension. As we talk, we subtly adjust the lexis and structures in accordance with roles, status, and context. There’s a lot going on under the surface of your average chat.

Most conversations have a beginning, middle, and an end (with lots of subtle movements in between).  We signpost to each other where we are in the process through appropriate phrases, from, What’s up?, to I’d better be getting back to the office, for example. We indicate turn-taking through pitch, pauses, and discourse markers (well, anyway, right then, ok, etc).

Meanwhile, speaker roles determine why this exchange would  be expected between a doctor and  patient, but not between a commuter and ticket collector at Waterloo Station.

 Thank you so much.

Not at all.

Conversational structures can frame relationship roles and status, as Deborah Tannen has argued for some time. (Framing roles inappropriately can send very odd signals.)

After recording 400 podcasts and 200 mobile lessons (or learning objects) it is very clear to me that each medium is  a new form of discourse with different rules of engagement.

Engagement is a good word here because without it there is very little learning. There are things that work and things that don’t, and content designers definitely work in the R&D department of new media. Clive Shepherd has done a tremendous job in laying the groundwork for this, with his 60 Minute Masters, while people like Tom Kuhlmann , Cammy Bean and others also explore  the subject.

I believe discourse analysis offers helpful insights for the new media instructional designer, by helping to make explicit the structures, strategies, and cohesive devices that work for them. There’s no space here to go into every aspect of this but let’s take a look at roles and relationships as they might be framed in an audio-based learning object.

The first question we ask inevitably concerns the whom:  Whose problem am I solving? and How do we frame the relationsip?  We tend to open lessons with propositions or calls to action to indicate a direct message for the listener and signal their involvement.  It’s important  that we project a sense of authority on the subject but without framing it in a negative way. (Getting the human element right makes a big difference. Contrast the ChinesePod approach with that of a traditional textbook. I think it’s the parasocial dimension that explains ChinesePod’s stunning success.)

There are many other dimensions and many other questions. One project we’re working on is a set of 90 second learning objects for Nokia cellphones. This might sound incredibly short but by boiling the medium down to its essentials and describing the elements of that discourse format, I beleive we are finding ways to make them effective. Questions like How do we organize/structure the conversations? Is there cohesion? How do we convey the movement of the conversation? etc, are all truly relevant when you only have 90 seconds to make something happen. Here is an example of a prototype lesson that targets young Chinese managers on the subject of time management. (It comes with a transcript, plus translation, etc, on the learner’s handset.) 

More on this nascent subject later. In the meantime, you thoughts are requested.

 Ken Carroll