College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, NAU
Anthropology 614, The Ethnography of Communication:
Qualitative Methods in the Study of Language & Social Interaction
Monday 5:30-8 p.m., Fall 2004
Anthropology Seminar Room, Emerald #4, Swing Space
Note: This
syllabus is subject to revision.
Instructor: Professor James M. Wilce, Ph.D.
Office hours: T/Th
11 a.m.- noon. and by appointment.
Office location: Bldg. 98D, Room 101E
Phone and email: 523-2729
or 523-7118; jim.wilce@nau.edu
Course prerequisites: Graduate standing or permission of instructor.
Course description: Presents theoretical models of ³comparative speaking,² treating communicative events as systems of social activity analyzed in relation to cultural contexts. ³The ethnography of communication² has been a dynamic subfocus for research and publication in linguistic anthropology since the mid-60¹s. Naturally-occurring speech events deserve to be studied ethnographically, that is, in the rich context of their occurrence, keeping in mind that the speech shapes the context as much as the context shapes the speaking. In name and substance, the ethnography of communication integrates insights from linguistics and sociocultural anthropology and thus aims at the heart of anthropological concerns. The analysis of linguistic form plays an important role in the ethnography of communication, and this course presents qualitative—particularly semiotic and conversation-analytic—approaches to analysis of the forms used in speech and interaction, through exercises as well as readings. This semester the course has a particular focus on political communication.
Student learning expectations/outcomes: You will end this course with a working knowledge of theory and method in linguistic anthropology and the ethnography of communication, the questions raised therein, and their relevance to your research agendas. You will be expected to complete the readings before coming to class and participate in the seminar discussion, and to lead the discussion on at least one reading per week. (See the guidelines on the last page of the syllabus.) Out-of-class exercises and research experiences, and in-class demonstrations of methods, will expose students to the methodology of linguistic anthropology. In addition to its content-goals, you will learn—by writing a series of short papers—a method of critical/synthetic reading and writing appropriate to 125 pages of challenging readings per week.
Work load over the semester: Note that the load varies a lot over the semester. Week 6 is the most
intense. Read ahead to level it out. No readings are assigned for week 15 when
you orally present your final paper drafts, the week before papers are due. I
have cut the reading load this year from 150 pages per week to an average of
125. Read ahead to even out the load.
Assignments:
1) Students will write five (compared with nine in recent years) 2-3 page critiques of the readings over the semester. See the guidelines for writing these on the last page of the syllabus.
2) Students will also complete exercises in discourse analysis, and be able to make field recordings on audio and video tape (digitized) if your final paper involves new data.
3) Finally, a research paper (about 20 pages) whose topic is worked out in advance with the professor will take up an issue developed in the readings, probably close to one of the weekly topics, and consider it in relation to the student¹s own research interests. For this final project, students are invited but not required to collect original data (audio or video recordings), or at least make fresh analyses of a previously recorded speech event. Keep IRB requirements in mind. If you think your project might involve presenting identifiable people on video or audiotape, review the IRB website, http://www2.nau.edu/ovprg/studentprojects.htm . Some help in editing and repeated viewing of the video for purposes of transcription may be available at various lab facilities.
The paper must be written in the format of a AAA publication, not only in terms of style but content. This means it must include an abstract, a very brief introduction (about a page), a short literature review (about 2-3 pages; not all the literature assigned in this course but the specific literature on the topic of your paper, literature that may include outside sources), a methods section (1 page), a transcript or series of transcript excerpts in the data section (NOT in an appendix) that also includes a Transcription Conventions table, an analysis section (the heart of the paper in which you analyze the transcribed data, and Conclusion and References Cited. Your final paper should meet standards of good writing, clarity, and logic—as will be stressed throughout the semester in relation to the shorter papers. Number your pages. You must use AAA style, including citation and bibliographic style. See, for example, the assigned readings that appeared in American Ethnologist (e.g. Woolard 1985, Graham 1993).
Course Policies: Plagiarism includes all forms of using others¹ words without citation; plagiarism in papers for this course will result in an ³F² for the paper.
Attendance— You are required to attend each class having read the assigned readings and being ready to discuss them. Your grade will reflect your participation and you cannot participate in seminar if you are not present. Remember, the quality of any seminar depends mostly on how well participants prepare prior to coming to class. This involves not only reading the assigned materials but also thinking critically about the issues that they raise. Please attend every week; the seminar format requires it. If you anticipate being away, please notify me in advance for the sake of the smooth functioning of the seminar.
Grading system
Grades will be assigned for participation and writing on a 100 point total:
|
1) Participation |
30 points |
|
|
Grading Scale: |
|
2) Assignments |
30 points |
|
|
90+ =A |
|
3) Research |
40 points |
|
|
80+ =B |
|
a) |
Presentation |
(10) |
|
70+ =C |
|
b) |
Paper |
(30) |
|
|
TEXTS
REQUIRED READINGS: (note: The format of citations to be read is not standard, not AAA
style, etc. It is greatly modified to save space. Your final papers need to use
AAA style consistently, including in references).
ARTICLES: Readings on webreserve (Cline¹s website—go to course reserves and search for ANT614).
BOOKS
1) Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. (LA)
2) Duranti, Alessandro, ed. .2001 Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell. (RDR)
3) Hanks, William F. 1996. Language
and communicative practices (Critical
Essays in Anthropology No. 1, John
Comaroff, Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Bloch, eds.). Boulder, CO: Westview. (LCP)
4) Schieffelin, Bambi B.; Woolard, Kathryn A.; Kroskrity, Paul, eds. 1998. Language ideologies : Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press. (ID)
5) Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban, eds. 1996 Natural histories of discourse. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. (NHD)
6) Silverstein, Michael. 2003 Talking Politics :The Substance of Style from Abe to ³W². Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press (distributed by University of Chicago). (TP)
RECOMMENDED (also available on regular reserve behind desk at Cline)
7) Duranti, Alessandro and Charles
Goodwin, eds. 1992. Rethinking context: Language as an interactive
phenomenon. (Studies in the Social and
Cultural Foundations of Language, No. 11). Cambridge: Cambridge University. (RC)
8) Kroskrity, Paul, ed. 2000. Regimes of Language. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
9) Tedlock, Dennis, and Bruce Mannheim. 1995. The Dialogic Emergence
of Culture. Champaign/Urbana: University of
Illinois. (Dialogic)
10) Urban, Gregory. 2001.
Metaculture: How Culture Moves through the World. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press (but we¹ll only read one chapter).
Wk. 1, 8/25; Preview and overview of the course; getting
to know one another; introduction to semiotics and its relevance for all
sciences and humanities; a linguistic anthropology perspective on advertising
and contemporary cultures of communication
Recommended:
Goffman, Erving. 1976, Gender display. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 3(2):69-77. Web
Kendon, Adam. 1990. Behavioral
Foundations for the Process of Frame-Attunement in Face-to-Face Interaction. In Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in
Focused Encounters. Pp. 239-262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Web
Williamson, Judith 1978. Signs
Address Somebody. In Decoding
Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. J. Williamson, ed. Pp.
40-70. London: Marion Boyars. Web
8+23+30=61
Wk. 2, 9/6 Organizing perspectives: Theory and Method I (asking, learning, observing);
Semiotic perspectives; What is linguistic anthropology?
LABOR DAY Read the following for discussion Week 3 and
for papers due then
Briggs, Charles. 1984. Learning How to Ask: Native Metacommunicative Competence and the Incompetence of Field Workers. Language in Society 13: 1-28. Web
Hanks, LCP pp. 1-20,
39-65
LA ch 1 (1-22)
Urban, Greg 1996. Semiotics. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Pp. 406-407, Vol. ?: Oxford
University Press. Web.
Cultural and archeology students choose:
Either: Silverstein, Michael. The Limits of Awareness (RDR, pp. 382-401.
Or Preucel, Robert W., and Alexander A. Bauer. 2001. Archeological Pragmatics. Norwegian Archaeological Review 34(2):85-96.
27+19+26+21+19+2=114
Wk. 3, 9/13; Organizing perspectives: Theory and Method II (contextualizing)
(Thanks to Candy Goodwin from
whose 2002 syllabus for ³614² I have borrowed the following): FIRST PROJECT DUE: Get together a group of 2-3 people for
the assignment. In a short 2 page essay contrast the way in which a product is
presented for two differing audiences; they can be differing in gender,
ethnicity, or social class (or combinations of these features). It would be
great if we could have some cross cultural ads for similar products, though be
sure the ad includes people so we can deal with frame attunement (Kendon) and
gender display (Goffman). Find an ad for a product that could be neutral (i.e.,
an electric toothbrush, scotch, computers, cars, airlines or a faucet—but
preferably not MILK!—overdone!) whose presentation differs according to the
audience to whom it is addressed and discuss how the text and use of space, and
in particular body positioning and adornment in the ad are relevant to that
targeted audience. Indicate the sources of your ads. In other words, for the
same product use two different ads and compare the presentation of gender,
ethnicity, or social class used in association with the product. Since the
assignment is intended to get people to look at the body, proxemics, and
gesture in relation to written text, try to get ads where you can analyze
different presentations of self. Williamson, Goffman, Kendon, and Berger might
help inform your discussion. Include the ads in your paper and bring it to
class to put up on the pad-cam. We need to
be able to see them as a group as you do your presentation.
New reading for
today¹s seminar:
Goodwin, Charles and Alessandro Duranti. 1992. Rethinking Context: An Introduction. In RC, 1-42.
Hymes, Dell. 1972. Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds.) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication., pp. 35-71. New York: Holt. Reprinted: Basil Blackwell. Web
LA, ch. 4 (84-121)
LCP 31-34, 229-247 (Ch. 10, Elements of Communicative Practice)
41+36+37+3+18=135
Wk. 4, 9/20; Language structure and linguistic relativity (Methods: structuralist analysis, fine-grained transcription)
Paper two: (Before even THINKING about starting this
paper, carefully read the instructions at the end of the syllabus). Specific
instructions for this paper: Respond to the readings for weeks 2-4. What is
Œpragmatics¹ and what is Œmetapragmatics¹? Describe a naturally occurring
metapragmatic utterance from Briggs. Why are some pragmatic devices harder to
access in explicit metapragmatic discourse?
LA, chs. 3 (51-83) 5-6 (122-213)
RDR (Whorf, The
Relation of Š 363-381)
32+91+18=141
Wk. 5, 9/27; Verbal art and performance (Method: Analysis of performance and voice) Form
small groups again for project #2
Bauman, Richard. Verbal Art as Performance (RDR 165-188).
Either Bauman, Richard and Charles Briggs. 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology, pp. 59-88. Web
Or
(for Josh Hunt) Keane, Webb. 2004 Language
and Religion. In A Companion to
Linguistic Anthropology. A. Duranti, ed. Pp. 431-448. Malden, MA.: Blackwell.
Hill, Jane H. 1995 The Voices of Don Gabriel: Responsibility and Self in a Modern Mexicano Narrative. Dialogic, pp. 97-147. Web.
Wiget, Andrew.
Telling the tale: A performance analysis of a Hopi coyote story. In Recovering
the Word, pp. 297-336. Web
23+29+50+39=141
Wk. 6, 10/4; Speech events, structure, and conversation;
speech act/performativity theory; circulation of discourse across event-time
and space (Methods: Conversation analysis;
Ethnographies of the circulation of discourse).
Project #3 due: In groups of two or three, prepare a
presentation and (individually written, different but interlocking) 3 page
papers on The Circulation of ŒText.¹ As
Œtexts¹ you can find something on your own or study one of the following as a
succession of text-events in which these mini-texts were circulated: 1) ³girlie-men², 2) ³let¹s rock and
roll,² 3) ³we the people,² 4) ³free at last,² ³I have a dream² (note: MLK Œwarmed up¹ to the famous version of the
speech over several weeks of lesser known speeches), and 5) ³Let America Become
America Again² (from the 1930¹s to 2004). You are welcome to use
web-based discourse to trace the circulation of any of these. Analyze your
chosen ³interdiscursive chain² using the readings on circulation in week 6.
Alperstein, Neil M. 1990. The Verbal Content of TV Advertising and Its Circulation in Everyday Life. The Journal of Advertising 19(2):15-22. Web
Goodwin, Charles. 1979. The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In Everyday language, G. Psathas (ed.), pp. 97-121. New York: Irvington. Web
LA ch. 7, Speaking as Social Action, 214-243
LA ch. 8, Conversational Exchanges 244-280
NHD intro 1-17
Urban, Greg. 2001. Metaculture, chapter 3, This Nation Will Rise Up, pp. 92-144.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Web
Wortham, Stanton. 2002. Curriculum as a resource for identity development. American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, 2002. 38 pp. Web
Recommended:
Lee, Benjamin, and Edward LiPuma. 2002. Cultures of
Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity. Public Culture 14(1):191-213. Web
Wilce, James M. in press. Traditional laments and postmodern regrets: The circulation of discourse in metacultural context. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (special issue, Discourse across speech events: Intertextuality and interdiscursivity in social life). Web
24+29+36 +17+52+38=186
Wk. 7, 10/11; Language socialization (a method and theory unto itself)
Clancy, Patricia
1986. The Acquisition of Communicative Style in Japanese. In Language
Socialization Across Cultures. Edited by B.
B. Schieffelin and E. Ochs, pp. 251-272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Web
Ochs, Elinor, and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 1984. Language Acquisition and Socialization: Three Developmental Stories and Their Implications. (RDR 263-301)
Ochs, Elinor, and Carolyn Taylor. The ³Father Knows Best² Dynamic in Dinnertime Narratives. (RDR 431-449)
Philips, Susan. Participant structures and communicative competence. (RDR 318-342).
21+38+18+24=101
Wk. 8, 10/18; Language, history, and identity (Method: Analyzing code-switching)
Kroskrity, Paul 1993. An Evolving Ethnicity Among the Arizona Tewa: Toward a Repertoire of Identity. In Language, History, and Identity: Ethnolinguistic Studies of the Arizona Tewa. Pp 177-212. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Web
Rampton, Ben
1995 Language Crossing and the Problematisation of Ethnicity and
Socialisation. Pragmatics 5(4):485-513.
Woolard, Kathryn A. 2004.
Codeswitching. In Companion to
Linguistic Anthropology. A. Duranti, ed. Malden: Blackwell. pp. 73-94. Web
35+12+25+21=93
Recommended:
LCP, ch. 12, 268-306
Blom, Jan-Petter and John J. Gumperz. 1972. Social meaning in linguistic structures: Code-switching in Norway. From Directions in sociolinguistics, 407-34. Web
Wk. 9, 10/25; Phenomenologies of language; the self, bodies, and medicine (Methods: Analyzing intertextual and intercontextual relations [Cicourel, Kuipers]; video and ³stance²)
Paper 4 due: Weeks 5-8 reading critique. Follow instructions at the end of the syllabus. Covering the four topics in one paper doesn¹t mean a lot of integrating across the four. Focus first on commonalities and differences among perspectives within one week. Compare authors (NOT the authors they, in turn, cite). If you have space left afterwards, you could address themes that cross-cut the four weeks.
Video in class
LCP chs. 6, 11 (118-139, 248-267)
Cicourel, Aaron V. 1992. The interpenetration of communicative contexts: Examples from medical encounters. In RC, 291-310. Traditional reserves
Duranti, Alessandro 1992 Language and bodies in social space: Samoan greetings. American Anthropologist 94:657-691. Web
Goodwin, Charles 2003. Pointing as Situated Practice. In Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet. S. Kita, ed. Pp. 217-246. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. (OR 2000. Practices of Color Classification. Mind, Culture, and Activity 7(1-2): 2-37. Web. (Note: Both of these study archaeological fieldworkers using the tools of linguistic anthropology and CA).
19+19+19+34+(29 or 35)=120 or 126
Recommended:
Wilce, James M. 2004. Stance and the Distancing of Language Theories From Body and Emotion. Paper to be presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings. Web
Wk. 10, 11/1; Linguistic ideologies (Method: comparing structures, actions, and
consciousness)
ID, pp. 3-27, 51-67, 87-162 =24+16+65=105
OR ID 163-188, 211-270 (=25+59=84) +Hill, Jane. 1985. The grammar of consciousness and the consciousness of grammar. Reprinted in The Matrix of Language, D. Brenneis and R.K.S. Macaulay, eds. Boulder: Westview. Pp. 307-324 Web
105+17=122, or 84+17=101
Wk. 11, 11/8; Language,
power, and political discourse (Methods:
Ethnographic methods, matched guise [Woolard], semiotics and voice)
Duranti, Alessandro 2003. The Voice of the Audience in
Contemporary American Political Discourse. Georgetown University Round Table on
Language and Linguistics, 2001: Linguistics, Language and the Real World:
Discourse and Beyond, Georgetown University, 2001, pp. 114-134. Georgetown
University Press.
Hill, Jane (RDR 450-464)
Hill, Jane H. 2002. ³Expert Rhetorics² in Advocacy for Endangered Languages: Who is Listening, and What Do They Hear? Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12(2):119-133. Web
TP pp. 1-132
Woolard,
Kathryn. 1985. Language variation and cultural hegemony: Toward an integration
of sociolinguistic and social theory. American Ethnologist 12: 738-48. Web
20+14+14+10+132 (but keep in minds those pages have about 75-100 words vs. 300 words per page in an article [my guess])=190pp, (roughly the equivalent of 130 pp.)
Recommended:
Graham, Laura. 1993. A public sphere in Amazonia? The depersonalized collaborative construction of discourse in Xavante. American Ethnologist 20/4: 717-41. Web
Wk. 12, 11/15; Interethnic communication, hybridity, and
modernity
Basso, Keith.
1979. Portraits of the Whiteman, pp.
37-64. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University. Web
Doostdar,
Alireza
2004 "The Vulgar Spirit of
Blogging": On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan.
American Anthropologist 106(4):651-662.
Gumperz, John.1996. The Linguistic and Cultural Relativity of Conversational Inference. In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. J. Gumperz and S. Levinson, eds. Pp. 375-406. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jacquemet, Marco. 2003. Transidiomatic Practices: Language in the Age of Globalization. Paper presented at the 8th Meeting of the International Pragmatics Association, Toronto, 2003. 19 pp.
Robbins, Joel. 2002. God is Nothing But Talk: Modernity, Language and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society. American Anthropologist 103(4):901-912. Web
Schieffelin, Bambi B. 2002. Marking time: The dichotomizing discourse of multiple temporalities. Current Anthropology 43(Supplement):S5-17. Web
Scollon, Ron and
Suzanne B. K. Scollon. 1982. Athapaskan-English interethnic communication. In Narrative,
literacy, and face in interethnic communication, 11-37. Norwood, NJ: ABLEX. Web
Wk. 13, 11/22; Language and gender (Method: quantitative
analysis of variation [Sidnell])
Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992. Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461-90. Web
Gal, Susan. 1989. Between speech and silence: The problematics of research on language and gender. IPrA Papers in Pragmatics 3(1):1-38.
Sidnell, Jack.
1999. Gender and Pronominal Variation in an Indo-Guyanese Creole-Speaking
Community. Language in Society
28:367-399. Web
Trechter, Sarah 1999. Contextualizing the Exotic Few: Gender Dichotomies in Lakhota. In Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse. M. Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, and L.A. Sutton, eds. Pp. 101-119. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Web
29+37+32+18=116
Recommended additional resource:
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2003. Language
and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paper 5 due: Weeks 9-14 readings, about 5 pages. See
instructions for week 9 and at end of syllabus, but also this—by now you
have some ideas as to how linguistic anthropology might be applied. What are the promises and
pitfalls of applied linguistic anthropology that the readings might hint at?
Collins, James 1996. Socialization to Text: Structure and Contradiction in Schooled Literacy. NHD 203-228.
Friedman, Jonathan
2003 Globalizing Languages: Ideologies and
Realities of the Contemporary Global System. American Anthropologist
105(4):744-752.
Heath, Shirley Brice. What No Bedtime Story Means (RDR 318-342).
Hinton, Leanne 2001 Language Revitalization: An Overview. In The Green Book: Language Revitalization in Practice. K. Hale and L. Hinton, eds. Pp. 3-18. San Diego: Academic Press. Web
Mehan, Hugh 1996. The Construction of an LD Student: A Case Study in the Politics of Representation. NHD 253-276.
Schieffelin, B. B. 2000.
Introducing Kaluli Literacy: A Chronology of Influences. In Regimes of
Language. Edited by P. Kroskrity, pp.
293-327. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Web
Read either Scribner & Cole or Duranti
& Ochs (to be coordinated in class, Wk. 13):
Scribner, S. & Cole, M. 1981b. Unpackaging literacy. In M. F. Whiteman (ed.) Writing , volume 1, pp. 71-87. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Web
Duranti,
Alessandro and Elinor Ochs. 1986. Literacy instruction in a Samoan village. In
B. Schieffelin and P. Gilmore (eds.) The acquisition of literacy:
Ethnographic perspectives, 213-32. Norwood, NJ: ABLEX. Web
25+24+15+23+34=114+ either 16 or 19
Recommended:
Nettle, Daniel, and
Suzanne Romaine 2000. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World¹s
Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. Selection to be announced. Traditional reserves at Cline
Wk. 15, 12/6;
Your presentations
Wk. 16 Final papers due December 15 by noon.
Guidelines for
weekly written and oral presentations
Guidelines for
the Three Papers on the Readings
These 4 page critiques will be your way of integrating and responding to the readings assigned for the week on which the papers are due (the papers are prospective, not retrospective). Again, the aim of these papers is to help you integrate and think critically about the readings as a whole. Never!!! write ³one paragraph per reading² as an method of organizing the paper. Rather, integrate—form paragraphs according to topics you perceive cutting across the readings. Sometimes it will be appropriate in your papers to cumulatively draw on the various perspectives of authors you read over the course of the semester. You should prepare for this paper (and for the seminar) by writing a one-sentence précis of each author¹s argument (so, e.g., four précis sentences for four authors) and then finding themes that crosscut. Your papers should touch on the main contribution of each reading to our understanding of the week¹s (or semester¹s) theme, not on supporting points (subarguments or data). Find differences between authors and take sides, arguing that one perspective is more logical and/or better supported (with evidence) than another. Again, organize each paragraph of every paper by a theme, not by an author. I am looking for evidence that you have gone beyond parroting to be able to compare and contrast perspectives. Write concisely. Do not quote at all. Obviously you need to accurately represent the gist of each author, and to do so you might need to cite a page # for a specific idea. In fact, whenever you get a particular idea from a particular author, try to nail down the page where that idea is best represented and cite it in anthropological citation style (author¹s last name date: page) e.g. (Einstein 1941: 243).
Leading discussions
1. Each class session will consist of a group discussion based on a collection of readings. You are required to attend each class having read the assigned readings and being ready to discuss them. You will find it helpful to take notes on the readings and bring them with you to class.
2. You will be responsible for co-facilitating some of the class discussions. Each required reading will be assigned to at least one student who will be expected to lead the discussion on it. In preparing for the discussions you will facilitate, write a one-sentence précis of the argument, cutting out everything but what the author is trying to persuade us to see. Keep in mind that we are discussing several readings relating to a theme; so look for common or contrasting threads that run through each week¹s readings, common questions that those readings address as a unit. Formulate 2-3 questions on ³your² reading that help us see the contrasting approaches of the authors to a similar phenomenon. Never ask questions whose answers must be looked up on a particular page. Instead, let your questions point us to the major points or memorable arguments the author makes.