Subject Position and Discourse Analysis - Essay Example

Position and Dis Analysis According to Davies and Harre in 1990, position includes a range and place for persons inside the structure of rights for the people that use the said range. When a person takes up a position as his own, that individual will view the world around him or her from that position in terms of such storylines images, concepts and metaphors that are relevant inside the specific discursive practice that such person is positioned. There are many contradictory discursive practices that a person can be in at any moment. (Casmir,1997) Subject positioning boy/girl, mother/son, husband/wife and others interaction. The discursive practices then must distribute these situations. Also, the person Peter Smith is male and at the same time white and a student and a California resident and has blond hair and is presently using a white shirt and fat and the like. The Person Peter Smith is in seven situations all at the same time. Subject positioning is the constant shifting from one position to another because a person has many subject positions in one discourse. A person, in a small group gathering, could be the mother to a daughter, an Asian woman to a white man, a fat person to a slim one, a Florida resident to a Virginian and the like. Discourses are then constructed to fit the given situation or position a person is in. The defining in positive of one position will generate the "other" position automatically. The woman position means there is a man position. Fraser said that Hegemony is the "discursive face of power".(Bingham,1994) In a hospital situation, when a patient is being interviewed by the doctor, the doctor tries to get as much information regarding the medical history of the patient. The patient, not knowing a medical jargon, will try to explain, in a subject position of patient/doctor, her complete medical history. People will look at a pregnant woman and they will understand her body language and give her advices (Davies and Harre, 1990). ACCOUNTIVE. This is the first stage in Housen's five stage of development. The viewer crosses the threshold of the concrete work of art. The person is in the subject position of storyteller where such person observes and makes conclusions based on what that person sees, touches, smells, and other related associations. (Hein,1998) In a storytelling situation, When a person speaks of his or her personal pains in a love relationship, the listener sympathizes with the speaker because they both feel the same situation. Van Langehove and Harre describes this as the giving of ACCOUNTS (accountive) of other people's behavior. PERFORMATIVE. This occurs when the student PERFORMS. This is evident in the social and communicative skills that a person makes in front of a real live audience. Prosody is an integral part of the reading process. Teachers aid the students, in the growing years, to gain the competency need for communication using verbal PERFORMANCE to be beneficial to both the reader and the listener. According to Miller, Steiner & Larson in 1996, the integrated language arts & reading program as well as the reading and writing lessons are authentic activities that can be incorporated into content areas such as science. (Bucher,2003) Performance positioning can also be greatly enhanced with the use of Prosody. This is language put to music. Prosody uses patterns of pitch, rhythm, and loudness that a person uses creates native sounding and emphatic speech. (Wennerstrom,2001) When a person does an activity together with the other person this is called performance positioning. Discourse analysis only discusses the details or micro of what message a person communicates. Whereas, subject positioning is more macro. It takes into consideration the economy, business and the entire environment when the communication was sent from the speaker to the listener. Subject positioning is better than discourse analysis because discourse analysis explains the effect of what has already been written or said. Whereas subject positioning is the remedying of the situation by changing the present uncomfortable subject position to a much better subject position that will be more beneficial. Another reason is that discourse analysis deals only with the micro meaning of the communication. This means the grammar or sentence structure of the communication piece. According to Davies and Harre in 1990, subject positioning uses as a framework for exploring the ways where the visibility of a person a person's individual health condition is connected to socially made subjectivities which affect the individual's information getting behavior. By implementing a position means the use of discursive practices that explains the relationship between two or more persons. A pregnant woman's expanding abdomen gives subject positioning information to others that she is pregnant. Analysis. Positioning Analysis Level -- The David and Goliath Story. A script is made for Story X and Story Y as two versions of the film David and Goliath. STORYTELLING. The characters are David and Goliath. The characters are grammatically made that will send us back thru time in the dessert of Old testament times. The wordings and grammar goes: Narrator: Slowly David goes back and forth sizing up Goliath. A strange and scary sound emanates from the crowd as the giant proudly looks down at David and laughed. Nobody would gather enough strength to take up Goliath's challenge to face him. You dare to fight me Goliath Sarcastically yelled. The audience of the film then exhibit an air of anger at Goliath and then felt that David's bravery touched them by making them physically part of the story. POSITION ANALYSIS uses narratives as actions. They reveal the meaning of every communicated speech or letter that that the listener gets is the same as the meaning that the speaker or narrator intends to be the meaning of. It is the how of what is said. In accountive positioning, the listeners will think they are in the shoes of David. In analyzing positions, literature is use to discover how social researchers analyze the subject position. A simple theory will be very complex to some people. When a person tells a story, the audience then makes a connection with the speaker either as husband/wife, teacher/student, brother/sister and the like. BRITT'S SUBJECT POSITION CRITICAL CARE STORY In question 1, the nurse (Britt) is playing the role of a mother. This is the orientation that the nurses, doctors(Groenewegen, 2001) and other medical workers are trained to do. She tries, like mothers, to give the child comfortable. In question 2, Line 1 states that the nurse(Coombs, 2004), in mother subject position (SP), was bottle feeding the child in small amounts and nothing settled him. The mother's major daily duty is to feed her child. Line 2 goes "He was still in the Isolette for temperature control." She, as mother Subject position (SP), is very concerned with keeping the child in the most comfortable position. The line 3says that the child was taking small amounts orally but nothing was settling him. The nurse, as mother SP, feels that the lack of nutrients will decrease the child's physical resistance to infection and sickness. What is mentioned in the fourth line is "not even the sucking". Nurse Britt, as mother SB is concerned with feeding the child. In question 3 where the nurse Britt calls the doctor, master or king SB, to examine the baby. He feels that, at this position, he feels his opinion must be followed without question. This disobedience is tantamount to insubordination. Other subject positions that the "king SB" doctor is in is that on line 5 his sentence " he's day 3 after his operation" puts him as a doctor. The statement on line 6 "he hasn't needed pain relief before and he won't in be in pain now" putt's him in another position, judge SB. He DECIDES that the child did not needed pain relief before therefore he will not need any pain relief now. Therefore the case should now be closed. The statement on line seven goes "He's hunger". He is now speaking in another position. This time he speaks in a father SB. According to line 5 to 7 the doctor speculates that since the child did not need relief before, therefore it follows, logically, that the child will not feel the pain now. In answer to question 4, a turn is constructed by the meaning of the words of the story. He talks as most doctors talk in this Britt story. In line 5, He talks authoritatively, Judge SB. The father image crops up on turn seven when he say's the child is hungry. In question 5, the implications of the doctor's subject position for Britt when she disagrees with the doctor is explained below as follows: As a doctor, the nurse must follow without question the instructions of the doctor. This right of the doctor is assured because of the many advance years of medical study (it also includes many years of actual clinical practice.) If the nurse disagrees or disobeys the doctor's instructions, she will, in a worst case scenario, be fired for insubordination. We will now examine the most important part of the story - that is where Britt challenges the doctor's authority on lines 12-20 In question six, we will now examine the Britt's turn on lines twelve to fourteen. The nurse named Britt in the lines twelve to fourteen has questioned the "intelligence" of the doctor's observation and recommendation. The possible consequences of nurse Britt's challenging the doctors' order has the following unfolding of events. Britt's action on line twelve shows that she is in the subject position of a mother. As a mother, she is worried because on line six she pleads with the doctor that the child is distressed -arching, The is also virtually writhing in pain and that the one of the symptoms of the pain is the child's throwing, distressed arching and writhing virtually. The nurse is now in the position of a rebel in line seven. This is usually the case of teenagers. Part of growing up is when the teenagers feel that they do not want to obey their parents. They feel that they are now growing to adulthood and nearing the independence age of eighteen. One position is that the nurse is acting like a teenager that displays a rebellious nature. The nurse in line fourteen feels that as a mother, she sympathizes with the child and wants to give the child the best support and help her could muster. In question 7, The other nurses' silence, nurse SP, is because they are not allowed to question the doctor's orders. If the nurses will take the side of and help Britt, they fear that they will be terminated for insubordination. The examination of the consequences of Britt's actions in lines 21-28 ( in answer to question 8) shows that she been reduced, reluctantly, to the yes woman SB. She must act as a mindless, feeling less, heartless person. She will be penalized for disobedience. Storytelling has been one of the best ways to temper the misunderstanding between persons in different subject positions. It is in storytelling that we can help people be more "normalized or, to make it more bluntly, to simmer down from a volatile predicament. When the stories of actual situations are unfolded before an audience, some or most of the attentive audience listeners can feel emphatic with the person in the story. The inaction of the other nurses of not staying beside or helping Britt when she "scolded" by the doctor is really very disheartening to Britt. But in real life, this is what happens in more than 80% of businesses, schools and other situations. A critical conclusion The general problem in subject positioning is when the meaning that the subject positioned person intended the receiver of such message misunderstands the message. Discourse analysis overlooks the macro point of view that is covered by subject positioning. The concentration of discourse analysis is generally on the grammar and sentence structure. Therefore, subject positioning helps much by improving on discourse analysis by incorporating the macro factors. Every message is related to the environment and the world around the speaker. By understanding the relationships between the speaker and the listener, then the message can be better understood as to what the speaker intended the message to be. The first step in any subject position discourse is to determine the relationship between the speaker and the listener. This could be father/son, teach/student, Manager, Employee. Some of the general problems with subject positioning is that different persons will look at the same situation and give different names, interpretations or positions. One person will interpret the speaker and listener's position by interpreting the speaker as mother. Another listener will look at the speaker as a white woman, another person listening to the conversation will interpret the message as coming from a sister or brother. The listener may interpret the speaker as a child talking to a mother and not showing a bit of respect. Discourse analysis complements what subject position has done. Discourse analysis deals with the micro part ( interpretation of meanings of sentences or words that travels from speaker to listener whereas Subject positioning deals with the macro part of the analysis. Britt, in the mother SB, tries to give comfort and feed the child. The doctor, as master SP, Feels he must be obeyed without question. BIBLIOGRAPHY Venturelli, S., Liberalizing the European Media: Politics, Regulation, and the Public Shere, Oxford University. Place of Publication,1998 Bingham, S., Conceptualizing Sexual Harassment as Discursive Practice, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, 1994 Hein, G., Learning in the Museum, Routledge, London, 1998. Page Number: iii. Bucher, K., & Fleener, C., Linking Reading, Science and Fiction Books, Childhood Education, Volume: 80. Issue: 2, 2003 Wennerstrom, A., The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001 Groenewegen., Physicians and Political Economy: Six Studies of the Work of Doctor-Economists, Publisher: Routledge, London, 2001 Coombs, M., Power & Conflict between Doctors and Nurses: Breaking through the Inner Circle in Clinical Care, Routledge, London, 2004 Read More