Abstract
This book is the second edition of Betsy Rymes’ work, first published in 2009, and extends the theory of discourse analysis and applies it within the pedagogical context. It distinguishes itself from the preceding edition in that a new concept of ‘communicative repertoire’ is introduced and integrated systematically into a methodology for classroom discourse analysis and reflection. Rymes’ overarching purpose, however, remains the same: to apply the theory of discourse analysis to the study of classroom talk and interaction and to equip its audiences – teachers and/or researchers – with the tools of sensitising to notice and understand ‘multiple and diverse ways of speaking and interacting in classrooms’ (p. 15). The book is composed of nine chapters, which can be logically organised into four coherent parts.
The first part consists of Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 1, Rymes proposes reasons for analysing classroom discourse, then clarifies and exemplifies working definitions for some key terms (discourse, discourse analysis, context and classroom discourse analysis). The discussion demonstrates that communicative diversity is pervasive among individuals in a classroom, thus providing the rationale for adopting a communicative repertoire approach. Chapter 2 illustrates how to analyse classroom discourse in light of three dimensions: social (including institutional) context, interactional context and individual agency. Rymes argues that, in analysing any dimension, it is vital to account for ‘each individual’s distinct communicative repertoire’ (p. 10). This provides the analytical framework for the remainder of the book.
In the second part, Chapters 3 and 4, Rymes applies the analytical frames and illustrates the guidelines essential for conducting discourse analysis. Chapter 3 focuses on a detailed description of recording natural classroom interaction and viewing that interaction in ways that could account for the three-dimensionality – the social, interactional and agentive dimensions of classroom discourse analysis – ranging from where to set up a camera to what to make of a recording when later viewing it. Chapter 4 continues with transcribing the talk and action and analysing the transcripts in three dimensions. Transcribing is inevitably an ideological process, as Rymes points out: ‘we are always trimming away context and potential considerations while focusing on certain elements’ (p. 81).
In the third part, Chapters 5–8, Rymes analyses four specific repertoire resources in classroom talk and interaction: turn-taking, contextualisation, narrative and framing. She states in Chapter 5 that questions asked by teachers or students in classrooms can inhibit or facilitate interaction. Therefore, it is essential for teachers to be aware of and understand the traditional and non-traditional turn-taking patterns in classrooms in light of the three dimensions. Chapter 6 provides guidelines for analysing contextualisation cues in classrooms – the paralinguistic or non-linguistic features people use to understand how words are functioning (e.g. tones, intonations and facial expressions). These subtle cues and their meanings may vary greatly across communities and individual repertoires. Chapter 7 explores how narratives constitute classroom discourse and its possible classroom consequences, and offers guidelines for analysing narratives in classroom discourse. In Chapter 8, Rymes examines why framing conventions are part of an individual’s communicative repertoire and stresses the effect of analysing framing in facilitating classroom participation.
The fourth and final part, Chapter 9, concludes the book with a discussion of how the integration of the three-dimensional approach to classroom discourse and an understanding of individual communicative repertoire can inform teachers and researchers about how classroom discourse can engage diverse students in participating in classroom interaction and ultimately facilitate learning.
This book has a range of useful features. First, it draws on data from a wide range of teaching contexts over a relatively long timespan, showing that the approach stands the test of time. Although most examples are from high-school multilingual classrooms, it remains applicable to other levels of monolingual or bilingual classrooms as the diversity of individual communicative repertoire is a ubiquitous phenomenon.
Second, the tool of three-dimensional classroom discourse analysis, serving as the core thread, runs through every stage of the overall analysis of this book. In this way, it shows its explanatory power in revealing the subtlety of individual communicative repertoire and sheds new light on our exploration of classroom talk and interaction.
Third, the book resonates with an anthropological perspective in that the rationale underlying this three-dimensional classroom discourse analysis is to question our taken-for-granted assumptions. Analogous to anthropology, which is the study of different cultural norms, classroom discourse analysis provides the tools needed to study each individual’s communicative repertoires and their reasons in the local but diverse classroom.
Fourth, this insightful book sets out to examine classroom discourse from a macro viewpoint, the three social, interactional and individual dimensions, and presents ‘classroom discourse analysis as a tool to uncover multiple communicative repertoires in a classroom’ (p. 10). This is an excellent complement to the work of those who have conducted classroom discourse analysis from a micro perspective. For example, Walsh (2013) proposed an analytical framework of the self-evaluation of teacher talk (SETT), which consists of four classroom micro-contexts and 13 interactional features (termed interactures), and Sert (2015) employed a conversational analytical approach to investigate the micro-level interactional practices of the second language (L2) classroom in terms of its epistemic, multilingual and multimodal resources.
However, the three-dimensional analytical tool of discourse analysis, like any other analytical tool, is not exhaustive, but can only be exploratory. Nevertheless, this book, with its holistic analysis and reflective questions, serves as an excellent resource for classroom discourse analysis and can be used as both a theoretical monograph and a textbook. I would therefore highly recommend it to those practitioners and researchers who intend to further their understanding of discourse analysis and its application to the analysis of classroom talk and interaction.