Deep Discourse

When educators actively support student-led classroom discussions, students develop essential critical-thinking, problem-solving, and self-directed learning skills. This book details a framework for implementing student-led classroom discussions that improve student learning, motivation, and engagement across all levels and subject areas.

In this book Peter Smagorinsky and Joel Taxel analyze the ways in which the perennial issue of character education has been articulated in the United States, both historically and in the current character education movement that began in earnest in the 1990s. The goal is to uncover the ideological nature of different conceptions of character education. The authors show how the current discourses are a continuation of discourse streams through which character education and the national purpose have been debated for hundreds of years, most recently in what are known as the Culture Wars--the intense, often passionate debates about morality, culture, and values carried out by politicians, religious groups, social policy foundations, and a wide range of political commentators and citizens, in which the various stakeholders have sought influence over a wide range of social and economic issues, including education. The centerpiece is a discourse analysis of proposals funded by the United States Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). Discourse profiles from sets of states that exhibit two distinct conceptions of character are examined and the documents from particular states are placed in dialogue with the OERI Request for Proposals. One profile reflects the dominant perspective promoted in the U.S., based on an authoritarian view in which young people are indoctrinated into the value system of presumably virtuous adults through didactic instruction. The other reflects the well-established yet currently marginal discourse emphasizing attention to the whole environment in which character is developed and enacted and in which reflection on morality, rather than didactic instruction in morality, is the primary instructional approach. By focusing on these two distinct regions and their conceptions of character, the authors situate the character education movement at the turn of the twenty-first century in the context of historical notions about the nature of character and regional conceptions regarding the nature of societal organization. This enlightening volume is relevant to scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and students across the field of education, particularly those involved in character education, moral development, discourse analysis, history and cultural foundations of education, and related fields, and to the wider public interested in character education.

This text provides specially written profiles of eight key discourse analysts, describing each one's main contribution to the field, and introducing their method of discourse analysis.

The book addresses such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism.

This book revisits discourse analytic practice, analyzing the idea that the field has access to, provides, or even constitutes a ‘toolbox’ of methods. The precise characteristics of this toolbox have remained largely un-theorized, and the author discusses the different sets of tools and their combinations, particularly those that cut across traditional divides, such as those between disciplines or between quantitative and qualitative methods. The author emphasizes the potential value of integrating methods in terms of triangulation and its specific benefits, arguing that current trends in Open Science require Discourse Studies to re-examine its methodological scope and choices, and move beyond token acknowledgements of ‘eclecticism’. In-depth case studies supplement the methodological discussion and demonstrate the challenges and benefits of triangulation. This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in Discourse Studies, particularly those with an interest in combining methods and working across disciplines.

In this groundbreaking collection, scholars within the field of linguistics and beyond offer discourse analyses in multiple languages, contexts, and modes, demonstrating the importance of the diverse perspectives that various approaches to discourse bring to bear on human communication.

Throughout history, numerous scholars and intellectuals have tried to define Confucianism one way or another. Despite their efforts, the voices of those who claim to have found the essence of Confucianism are as much at odds as ever. A Topography of Confucian Discourse analyzes Confucian discussion in diverse historical settings, examining how Confucianism has served the different purposes of biased interpreters and how they have manipulated Confucian discourse. To explore their hidden desires, Lee Seung-hwan critically observes various historical contexts in which people interpreted Confucianism: in the heyday of the Jesuit Missionaries, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the period of Western Imperialism, late twentieth-century postmodern America, Tokugawa Japan, Choson Korea, China, Taiwan, South Korea, as well as Singapore. The author successfully historicizes Confucian discourse, explaining why, against a certain political background, a certain view on Confucianism has to arise. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lee Seung-hwan received his PhD from the University of Hawaii. A professor of philosophy at Korea University, Lee has authored several books including The Sociopolitical Re-illumination of Confucian Thought and The Exchange of E-Mail between the West and the East for 127 Days. Lee has been known as a progressive philosopher of Chinese philosophy and has dealt with the inherent conflicts in liberal political thought. ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR Jaeyoon Song is a PhD candidate at Harvard University and is interested in Chinese intellectual history and philosophy. He is currently working on Song discourse on government, especially the rise of a proto-constitutional debate in Southern Song China.