Proceedings of the - British Association for Applied Linguistics

The Impact of Applied Linguistics: Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of BAAL
University of the West of England
Coherent structures and effects
The approach to discourse analysis used in the project, developed through
the project, allowed for the data to be arranged as groups of utterances
called ‘weaves’. These weaves were considered as maintaining the holism
of the discourses and held ‘to have a coherence and a force to them in
common’ (Mills, 1997 writing on Foucault’s identifying of discourses).
Alongside these structures, the representations of the effects of these
discourses were charted as ‘arrays’. These charts or arrays allowed for the
study of the consistencies, diversities and relative positions of the effects of
the discourses as performed by teachers, it was felt.
An analogy was found to be useful for understanding the coherent nature of
the discourses. A simple distinction was made between a jar of sweets and
capillaries in the context of the body, where the former is akin to the
categorising of utterances as similar according to some criteria but isolated
from one another. The latter suggested a closer affinity to the weaves,
whereby utterances share a form of interconnection and force. It was the
charting of the effects of these forces that enabled the presentation of how
participant validation continues the discourses established through the
interviews, enhancing views of impact in turn.
A positioning lens
Through the performance of positioning practices (Davies and Harré,
1990), teachers shape the meanings of aspects of their development (Peters,
2009). In addition:
� breaks with earlier positioning can become the focus of talk – these
became known as ‘epiphany’ moments in the original research and
viewed as a form of critical engagement, providing greater impetus
for change.
� The interweaving of utterances of participant validation with the
weaves showed positioning in these utterances can be in line with
earlier positioning even if utterances explicitly suggest change has
taken place, therefore suggesting how discourse analysis and
positioning theory can enable a richer and deeper view of impact at
a practice level.
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