How does talk reflect the person's master identities?Explain

Unit 8 Long Paper Assignment – 50 points
(5-6 pages typed, double space)

At this point in the course, you have become acquainted with the building blocks of talk, as well as several more complex discourse practices. This second analysis paper requires you to bring together everything you have learned thus far. Before you start this assignment, re-familiarize yourself with the Helpful Hints on Writing Papers and Analysis Paper Criteria.

“Analyzing your taped (audio/video) exchange”

Purpose:

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the conversational encounter that you video-taped or audio-taped for the exercise in Unit 5. The main goal of this second analysis paper is to show how talk constructs and reflects people’s identities. This course has introduced you to a variety of concepts and ideas that can help you understand and explain how people’s talk does “identity-work.” For example, you were introduced to the concept of “person-referencing practices.” In important ways, this concept was used to show that how people refer to each other (i.e., names) has implications for master identities, personal identities, interactional identities, as well as relational identities. For this paper you will need to draw on everything you have learned in this course up until now to develop an analysis of the conversation you taped.

Here are the steps to follow to write a strong analysis paper:
Step 1: Watching/Listening to Your Taped Encounter and Transcribing

Part of conducting a good analysis requires that you listen to your data several times (3-4 times is usually a good number). Try to take notes on what you hear and or see people doing with their talk. Begin thinking about the kinds of identities that the participants are producing in their talk. By listening to your conversation several times and taking notes, you’ll be able to pinpoint moments of interest. You might be able to use the moment you transcribed for the assignment in Unit 5, but we’re asking you here to (re)consider the entire conversation and select other moments (1 or 2 more) that will be useful in building your paper’s claim about what type of identity-work is seen in the conversation. Once you’ve identified several interesting moments, transcribe them. Keep in mind that you do not need to transcribe the whole conversation (unless you want to), but you do need to select several instances that will help you craft a good analysis paper. You are also encouraged to jot down word and phrase selections throughout the conversation. A claim, for instance, that a person comes across as a “straight shooter” (a possible personal identity) might be evidenced by identifying the vocabulary that the person selected for a number of potentially sensitive references.

Step 2: Reflect about Discursive Practices

At this point, you should have selected and transcribed several moments of interaction and have a set of notes. Because one important purpose of this paper is to display your understanding of the ideas in this course, you will need to select concepts to incorporate into your analysis. A good way to begin is to browse over the list of discursive practices on page 22 of Tracy (2002). Remember that all of the discursive practices presented throughout this course are tied in some way or another to “identity-work.”
Step 3: Writing Your Paper

The following points below should help you in focusing your analysis:

1. Select and foreground one person to analyze. If you are one of the participants, you may focus on yourself if you like. This step is important because it will help organize your analysis. Put simply, the analytic goal is to examine how the focal participant uses conversational practices to present him/herself, and how the conversational partner’s talk altercasts the focal participant.

2. The key part of this assignment is for you to show how the participants’ discursive practices reflect and build the different types of identities that the focal person has (i.e., appears to be). Attempt to answer questions like the following:

a. How does talk reflect the person’s master identities?
b. What identities are altercasted for the focal person through the partner’s talk?
c. What personal identities are constructed through the focal person and partner’s discourse practices? How is that being done?
d. Which interactional identities are made visible in the talk? How?
e. What relational identities are participants displaying? How is it conversationally done?

3. In the beginning of the paper, provide any contextual information — where the conversation is occurring, a description of the physical space, past conversations or activities, others who are present, and so on — that is needed to make sense of the analysis that you will develop.

4. Final Advice:

a. Remember that the paper’s goal is to develop a coherent argument about the range of identities that the focal person is (appears to be) and how the conversational moves of both parties contribute to those identities. What this means is that you need to give evidence for why you reach particular conclusions. In other words, if you argue that two people are displaying a “friendship,” you need to show how this is done in the particulars of talk. What indications do you have that this is in fact true? A strong paper will provide persuasive discursive evidence for the claims that are made.

b. Remember to provide instances of talk in your paper. However, don’t treat the instances as transparent evidence. Provide an analysis; unpack how the excerpts reveal what you say that they do. For instance, if you assert that someone is a “nonassertive, insecure person,” then, identify the discursive practices that support this stance and explicitly argue why the practices in this particular conversational context are likely to mean what you claim they do.
c. Remember to define course concepts, such as those that are in boldface above, as you introduce them. These definitions may be in your own words or you may quote from Tracy’s book.
5. GOOD LUCK!

NOTE: I AM ATTACHING A LINK OF THE FULL TRANSCRIPTION.. COMMAND-F CHRISTINA ASBURY OR GO THE 2ND 6:40 MINUTE MARKER TO SEE FULL TRANSCRIPTION