BEHL3023 Language Course Research Report 2023

NOTE: We have set aside some tutorial times for you to go over this and ask questions. You should not
write emails expecting individual answers as we do not have the resources to deal with that, that is why we
have tutorials in the first place. The tutorials before and after the Mid-Study Period Break will be the time for
this. If you skip the tutorials that is up to you, but you will miss out on help doing this research.

For this Research Report we will be looking at two main parts of the course and giving you two
experiences in data collection: (1) two of the forces shaping our talking or writing about the
environment, climate change and environmental change in everyday life, and (2) two functions
for such talk.
The first part involves you in collecting language material from two sources/forces, (1) societal
forces (newspapers) and (2) negotiated R-SR forces (face to face stories told). The second part
of this is to look at the major division we have been covering between people (forces) (1) trying
to persuade (portraying the world) and (2) trying to maintain social relationships by using
discourses. The question is, how much of societal and negotiated discourses are directed at each
of these functions in the samples you collect?
The basic ideas are that discourses are out there happening in the world (1) to portray the world
both for and against there being climate change, environmental problems, etc. There are also
societal and negotiated forces using environmental issues (2) to try and maintain social
relationships, not just to portray the world. Some of this originates from what we are calling
(Videos 1.3 and 3.1 and the Tables in 3.1) societal forces, cultural forces, and negotiated R-SR
forces (face-to-face). Some originates from the two major language use functions of portraying
the world (Videos 2.1, 2.3, 6.1, Weeks 6 & 7) and managing social relationships (Videos 2.1,
2.3, 8.1 and Week 8).
The Forces. Each of these forces shapes our behaviour (or tries to) through very different
processes, and language is used differently by each. The Research Assignment is to sample
some Societal force attempts and some Negotiated R-SR attempts and then analyse and discuss
how they differ. (We will not be looking cultural group attempts at influencing talk about the
environment. That would be interesting but too much.)
The Functions. You will look critically at the two major functions as you collect examples of
both forces and write about which of these functions (portrayal or maintaining social
relationships) you think are occurring in your samples. The answers will not be definitive or
generalizable, of course, but you need to show your understanding of these main course concepts
(1, discourse of societal and of negotiated forces; 2, people using discourse to portray the world
and persuade or to just maintain social relationships).
This requires you to carry out and experience two discourse analysis research methods:
(1) collecting samples of published material (newspapers) about environmental issues, and
 (2) getting samples of people talking (through asking someone about their conversations
with people over three weeks and questioning them about the social contexts for these
conversations).
Both methods are common, and there are examples of both in lectures. If you were doing a full
research project you would collect a lot of examples of each and list them as a ‘corpus’ of
language available to others, but in this report you will only collect a smaller sample of both.
For your methods and the write-up, look at some of these full research report papers to guide
you.
Societal forces and environmental issues
For this sort of data collection, you need to look through the main sources of societal shaping
(see Tables in Video 3.1) but we will focus on newspapers (can be online; not government
marketing brochures or Hansard records although these would have been interesting). There will
be some pro and some against different environmental issues. You could try sampling a few of
each. Or sample different newspapers with known opposite slants on environmental issues.
Collect about 5-6 and they must be submitted (or an image of them) with your Report.
Most material in newspapers might appear to be only portrayals of the world in certain ways, to
convince the public of some angle. However, in the context of societal forces, “talking just to
maintain social relationships” can mean at least two things: selling of the newspaper into the
future (using sensationalism for example), or the named writer trying to get readers to like them
(maybe vote for them?). In these sorts of cases, the newspaper is using environmental issues for
their own marketing functions (or both) to influence the social relationship of writer/newspaper
and reader. This is difficult to discern, yes, but this is what critical discourse analysis is about:
why is this newspaper publishing this material, who and what are at stake, even if they disguise it
in some way. It is your reasoning from your data we will be looking at not whether we think
you are correct or not in your discernment.
The key point for this first collection is that some societal sources (usually with the generic name
of a newspaper or an editor, but with the real writers often anonymous) are (1) trying to persuade
the people of society to change their views or their actions around environmental issues, whether
pro or con, or are (2) trying to make people want to buy that newspaper again or be friendly to
the writer.
Custom-made cultural forces and environmental issues
You will not be collecting material for cultural or custom-made forces (groups who are
constructed by people and use their combined resources to argue or agitate for or against
environmental issues), but you need to be sure you are not accidentally sampling these. This
would include a societal attempt at persuasion, but one specifically aimed only at one group or
another. So, a mining company producing a paid newspaper advertisement specifically aimed at
changing the behaviour and views of Greenpeace members would be an example not to use in
your report. Two people in a face-to-face discussion but one or both speaking as representatives
for a group (for a church or a political group), also does not count here. However, it is difficult
to often tell the differences and newspapers often disguise the source of their material. Once
again, it is your reasoning from your data we will be looking at not whether we think you are
correct or not in your discernment.
Negotiated R-SR forces and environmental issues
For this second data collection you will need to organize one participant (volunteer, informed,
and signing a Consent Form which must be submitted with your final Report) to report to you
over 3 occasions a week apart any face-to-face discussions about current environmental issues
that have occurred in their life. So, you will talk to them on the first occasion about what
mentions of environmental issues or talk about climate change they experienced (face-to-face
from others) during the last few days. Try and get 3-4 examples of different occasions. Some
might be very brief mentions, throw-away comments or jokes, while others might be extended
discussions that took place between people in a group. Just seeing something in the newspaper is
not right; they need to report when someone brought up environmental issues in a conversation
with them or with others, face-to-face.
Then, through your perceptive questioning in the conversational style, get as much social context
as possible of what was going on during those events to see if you can discern whether it was
being talked about because (1) some of those present wanted to convince or persuade the others
(portray the world in their way), or whether it was talk probably aimed at (2) just keeping the
social relationships good or someone seeking status within that group by impressing the others
there. This is also difficult to discern especially when second hand, but good questioning will
help you think it through. Once again, it is your reasoning from your data we will be looking at
not whether we think you are correct or not in your discernment. There might be many angles
for this.
You then should talk to your participant again about a week later and then again another week
after that about whether those topics came up again with those same groups or people, and again,
get the full social contexts of what was taking place with those people.
Like most ‘qualitative’ research, you will not be looking for the answer, but finding out the
range of strategies people use in their language use and how this makes sense in the contexts.
This is not about generalizing to all talk about the environment or to all people or to all societal
forces, but just reporting how the data collected by you seemed to function in their contexts. In
particular, what is different in the uses of languages between societal and negotiated face to face,
and what in their different contexts can help us understand any differences.
Aims
• What is the functioning of writing and talking about environmental issues for societal
forces and for negotiated forces?
• Learning to discern the difference between language from both forces aimed at (1)
portraying the world and talk aimed at just (2) maintaining social relationships
• What are the social properties of writing and talking for societal forces and for negotiated
forces?
 • What are the different forms of writing and talking used for societal forces and for
negotiated forces?
• Why are the different forms like that?
• What are the language properties and ‘linguistic devices’ when writing and talking for
societal forces and for negotiated forces?
• Learn to conduct some ‘conversational method’ interviewing as research for getting
context
• Lean to gather and analyse some written forms of language
• Learn to write up a non-numerical research report

What to do for this Research Report?

We suggest that you read the background material and ask questions in tutorials before
the 2-Week Break, and then carry out the conversations and newspaper scans during the
2-Week Break, and write up your analysis and report before the end of Study Period so
you can ask further questions in your tutorials. Some of you might vary this depending
upon your own life contexts and exigencies.

1. Scan some newspapers and find out what you can about the societal, political or social
contexts for those newspapers. Find articles or editorials or special features related to the
environment and issues such as climate change.
2. Ask someone to be a volunteer participant. Give them the Participant Information Sheet to
read and then sign a Consent Form if they are willing. You will need to submit this Consent
Form with your final Project. Make sure the person is not coerced into participating. If they
seem unsure, just ask someone else. This is a core feature of research ethics. The participant
must be informed and voluntary.
3. The participant should not be doing psychology courses and not in BEHL2006 or BEHL3023.
They could be any age but perhaps find people about your own age or that of most of the class.
Do not ask close friends or family.
4. You will meet this person three times, each time one week apart (roughly) and have a
‘conversational talk’ (Guerin, Leugi & Thain, 2018). This should be face-to-face and not online
in any form. Do not use real names in your notes or report, make up pseudonyms for your
participants and the people they talk about.
5. You will set up in a mutually agreeable place to talk, and the participant should tell you the
stories they have heard or said face-to-face in the last week relating to the environment. These
are stories or comments told face-to-face in groups or pairs of people, not online stories or
something they read. This will require some prompting probably, so perhaps go through each of
the last few days and ask about when and where they met up with people and whether the
conversations had any environmental storytelling. Remember that we are not analysing the
stories, (are they true?) but their function in social context. Your task will be to make sense of
each story told to you in terms of how it was functioning or was meant to function in the
particular social contexts. The contexts might include the occasion for storytelling, the people
present, or their brief history together.
6. You will chat to the participant two more times, the later ones about one week after the one
before. The conversational interview should get from them a little of their history with the
persons present at the storytelling (the contexts for knowing them), and then what happened after
the story was told, the reactions and responses from others, and whether that story re-appeared in
the two weeks afterwards? Of particular interest is to track any stories or events following a
storytelling over the two weeks. Was the environment story told again, were there outcomes or
fallout from the story, did people comment about the story later, etc?
7. You are allowed to audio-record them (no videos) with their permission, as this allows you to
give your attention to listening and questioning rather than writing (see the Consent Form). We
normally use our phones now in research. You should then make notes from the recordings
afterwards but there is no need to transcribe every word for this research (this is research about
environmental storytelling not a discourse analysis of their stories). When making notes, I
usually put time marks occasionally in my notes so I can go back to that spot easily. Also, some
phone replay software allows you to re-wind the digital recording by 15 seconds which is useful
when making notes from a recording. Be sure to get any quotes of their stories or comments
verbatim if you intend to quote them in your report.
8. You will then use what you have found from the newspapers and the recordings to write up
some parts of a Research Report on a provided Template (we will provide some already written).
Notes: You cannot ask them directly using the words of this course since these words will not
make sense (resources, society, forces, context, stranger relationships, discourse, etc.), so find
ways to ask in regular language and informally. This is nothing like a questionnaire, you should
be exploring the social properties of telling those environment stories for complexities, not trying
to get the simplest answer. So, use what you have learned from tutorial classes to find good but
roundabout ways to ask for the social contexts and discursive histories. You do not have to ask
in any particular order and let them do most of the talking. Listening to their stories as anecdotes
is good rather than you talking too much, to illustrate what they mean so it is not all abstract.
You might also wish to write down a few exact quotes to use, to covey what they said better.
Just use exact quotes but transcribe in an easy form (Video 2.2). A fictitious example:
“so you know, I think she told that story because she was angry with Bill who was in that
group at the time, and seemed to want to show it by telling a bad story about his disregard
of the environment…”
Be sure to get any quotes of the people’s or newspapers stories verbatim (exactly) if you intend
to quote them in your report. [Hint: quotes are not included in the word count and make the
report way more interesting.]
Remember that for this sort of research we are NOT expecting everyone to be the same, nor that
all the stories or functions will be similar. People have very varied lives (as you do) and we are
trying to explore and demonstrate the range of ways people work or manage their relationships
using stories. So do not try to force an ‘average’ story, nor make them artificially seem like they
are all the same. That is antithetical to this type of research. People have a myriad of ways they
run their lives and their social relationships with stories, and your job is to faithfully reflect how
the stories you found might have functioned in those social relationships.
Write-up
Things you will want to address in your Results & Discussion section and Conclusions:
• What are the social properties of presenting a written environmental piece to a whole
society? (SA)
• What sorts of language features, strategies or ‘devices’ (the word sociolinguists use) are
in the written environmental societal pieces you collected? (LA)
• What are the social properties of using language to present environmental views face to
face with someone? (SA)
• What sorts of language features, strategies or ‘devices’ are in the environmental
conversation you were told? (LA)
• How do the different features of the two data collection material differ, and how might
you account for this? (DA)
Do not forget to illustrate with (verbatim) quotes.
Write up format (also submit your two signed Consent Forms, recording of the conversation,
and societal data; images are best of the first and last of these.) You will shortly get a Template
to use for this, with some parts already written. Write your Report using this Template file and
submit.
Title (up to 20 words)
Introduction (this will be written for you on the Template provided.)
Research Question (one only, 20 words maximum). This is not like a hypothesis in
quantitative research. It should reflect what are you exploring, not what results you
are expecting to get.
Methodology (up to 500 words: 100 words on the societal data collection,100 words on
ethics, and 300 words on the participant and the procedure for them. Use your own
subheadings)
Results and Discussion (up to 1200 words excluding quotes). Use four subheadings for
this section.
Language features found in the societal language materials
Language features found in the conversation materials
The two functions in the societal language materials
The two functions in the conversation language materials
 Conclusions (up to 500 words. How do the features of the two data collection materials
differ, and how might you account for this?) How do your Results relate to your Research
Question?
References (no marks but there will be only 1-2 references. Do not add superfluous references,
this is not a review and the Introduction will already be written for you. Some points for doing
correctly)

Guerin, B., Leugi, G. B., & Thain, A. (2018). Attempting to overcome problems shared by both
qualitative and quantitative methodologies: Two hybrid procedures to encourage diverse
research. The Australian Community Psychologist, 29, 74-90.

Notice a difference to most quantitative research. In most qualitative sorts of research, it makes
no sense to give results separately from discussing them. (It would actually just be a list of
quotes with nothing else.) So, unlike most quantitative research, the Results and Discussion
sections are almost always combined in research publications, and a conclusion section finishes
by writing what you have now found out about your Research Question. This is not what you
have been taught for reporting quantitative research, but it the norm for publishing qualitative
research.
This sort of research also is not worried about generalization. Report what you have found from
your participants and society materials and how their contexts shape their social properties. Do
not try to claim that everyone in the world does what you found.

To submit online:

1. The Research Report Template with your sections filled in (provided soon)
2. Images of your newspaper materials
3. Three MP3 or MP4 recordings of your conversations with your participant.
4. An image of your participant’s Consent Form signed