Ron Scollon
Biographic Data
| ID | 99516 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ron Scollon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ron |
| FAMILY NAME | Scollon |
| SIGNATURE | SCOLLON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | City University of Hong Kong |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 484 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Breakthrough into action
We take as axiomatic from Hymes's work that the linguistic structures of oral narrative should be construed not as abstract and ideal but as artifacts of the human mind in action in society, and that the indissoluble tension between structure and creativity should be moved by analysts in the direction of social justice. The problem we faced in an extended set of action projects aimed at reducing discrimination against Alaska Natives was that prob…
Nexus analysis: Refocusing ethnography on action
Nexus analysis takes human action rather than language or culture as its unit of analysis. We take one specific case to illustrate the methodology as well as its continuity with the project of Hymes, and of Boas before him, to take action against racism. A nexus analysis takes the constitution of human social groups and languages as a problem to be examined, shifting the focus away from groups toward action as the prime unit of analysis. This shi…
Food and behavior: A Burkean motive analysis of a quasi-medical text
Kenneth Burke sought to understand the motives writers establish in the textual scenes they create with a ‘grammar of motives’, which positions an action in one of five motives: the act, the agent, the scene, the purpose, and the agency (means). As discourse analysts shift focus from texts to human action in and through texts, Burke's ‘grammar of motives’ returns as a useful tool for the study of the discursive construction of human action. Peopl…
The discourses of food in the world system: Toward a nexus analysis of a world problem
This paper examines the role of discourse analysis in addressing the devastating consequences of the rapid restructuring of food production in the world system. I argue that although this is an issue far too large to encompass within discourse analysis, discourse analysis has much to contribute as part of an interdisciplinary and comprehensive analytical approach. Such an approach, a ‘nexus analysis’, consists of analyzing focal points or nexus w…
Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet
Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World
Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains, to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America …
The Dialogist in a Positivist World: Theory in the Social Sciences and the Humanities at the End of the Twentieth Century
While theory in the social sciences and the humanities in our period has come to be dominated by what might be called a dialogist perspective, following on the thinking of philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Bhaskar, and sociologists and critics from Foucault to Bakhtin, the understanding of all knowledge as discursively produced remains at a considerable distance from the classical hypothetico-deductive discourse of many practitioners of scien…
Mediated Discourse: The nexus of practice
Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice sets out a discursive theory of human action.Language and action are intimately related. The difficult question to answer is how they are related. Mediated Discourse Theory looks into social relationships to see how the use of language is both a form of action in itself and is also indirectly related to all other forms of human action.Through the empirical study of a one year old child learning to exchang…
Generic variability in news stories in Chinese and English: A contrastive discourse study of five days' newspapers
Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction
Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction
(1999). Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 32, No. 1-2, pp. 149-154
Plagiarism
Literate Design in the Discourses of Revolution, Reform, and Transition: Hong Kong and China
In contemporary China, including Hong Kong, literate design from the choice of writing system or romanization to presentational formats articulates an inter-discursivity among three major discourses: the language reforms of the post-Liberation revolutionary discourse, the Dengist reform discourse, and the discourse of the transition of sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to China. Thus literate design represents the polyvocality of utterance in…
Reading as social interaction: The empirical grounding of reading
L'A. s'efforce de montrer que la lecture peut etre concue comme un processus d'interaction sociale et d'en degager le fondement empirique. Il rappelle que l'interaction presuppose une relation entre deux personnes qui se percoivent. Il souligne que le regard joue un role important dans le cadre de la relation pedagogique qui se noue au cours de l'apprentissage de la lecture. Il lie la lecture au phenomene generale de la reconnaissance. Il examine…
English in Intercultural Interaction
Public discourse in Hong Kong and the change of sovereignty
Contrastive Rhetoric, Contrastive Poetics, or Perhaps Something Else
Point of view and citation: Fourteen Chinese and English versions of the ‛same’ news story
Fourteen versions of the same news story, a Xinhua release about Li Peng's meeting with George Bush, were selected for comparison from eleven Hong Kong newspapers and three from the People's Republic of China (PRC). Four are English language newspapers and the rest Chinese. Comparison of five features including switches in point of view, lamination, ambiguous quotation, bylining of a named reporter, and mention of setting in the lead revealed dif…
Handbills, Tissues, and Condoms: A Site of Engagement for the Construction of Identity in Public Discourse
This study develops an analysis of one site of engagement of public discourse in which identity is socially constructed. Through an analysis of the handing out of handbills in public places, the study argues that such sites of engagement are socially constructed through activities such as handing, a social situation frame in which there are expectations on appropriate behaviors, a regulatory frame of civic responsibility, and a generic frame in w…
Attribution and Power in Hong Kong News Discourse
The attribution of sources is situated within the broader context of social practice. Giving or withholding voice is done through the 'same' linguistic means, but in particular, situated cases, like means may produce significantly different outcomes. Organizing a rich interdiscursivity of practice are three forms of discursive power: (1) the power to command animation or authorship; (2) the power to give or deny voice, and (3) the power to frame …
Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach
Intro -- Intercultural Communication -- Contents -- Figures -- Series Editor's Preface -- Preface to the First Edition -- Preface to the Second Edition -- Preface to the Third Edition -- 1: What Is a Discourse Approach? -- The Problem with -- is a verb -- Discourse -- Discourse systems -- What Is Communication? -- Language is ambiguous by nature -- We must draw inferences about meaning -- Our inferences tend to be f ixed, not tentative -- Our inf…
International English and Chinese Women: Clients or Colleagues in the International Utilitarian Discourse System?”
The move to deculturize the teaching of English by emphasizing practical skills for international business presents itself as a reduction to basic issues in language teaching and in international communication. This move disguises the deeply embedded ideology of the Utilitarian discourse system. As language teaching methodology is coupled with the social placement of Chinese women in Hong Kong in clerical and service roles as opposed to the manag…
From Sentences to Discourses, Ethnography to Ethnographic: Conflicting Trends in Tesol Research
The TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of qualitative and quantitative research. For this issue we asked two researchers to discuss methodological challenges in discourse analysis
Coercive Citation
Plagiarism and ideology: Identity in intercultural discourse
The concept of plagiarism, as used both in considerations of academic writing and in international negotiations over intellectual copyright, assumes a model of communication based on autonomous, rational, individuals who behave as originators of their own discourses. But studies of communication, beginning with Goffman's concepts of production format and footing - and also including the concepts of enactment, social role, face, politeness pragmat…
Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet
Narrative, literacy and face in interethnic communication
Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World
Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains, to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America …
Nexus analysis: Refocusing ethnography on action
Nexus analysis takes human action rather than language or culture as its unit of analysis. We take one specific case to illustrate the methodology as well as its continuity with the project of Hymes, and of Boas before him, to take action against racism. A nexus analysis takes the constitution of human social groups and languages as a problem to be examined, shifting the focus away from groups toward action as the prime unit of analysis. This shi…
Plagiarism and ideology: Identity in intercultural discourse
The concept of plagiarism, as used both in considerations of academic writing and in international negotiations over intellectual copyright, assumes a model of communication based on autonomous, rational, individuals who behave as originators of their own discourses. But studies of communication, beginning with Goffman's concepts of production format and footing - and also including the concepts of enactment, social role, face, politeness pragmat…
Handbills, Tissues, and Condoms: A Site of Engagement for the Construction of Identity in Public Discourse
This study develops an analysis of one site of engagement of public discourse in which identity is socially constructed. Through an analysis of the handing out of handbills in public places, the study argues that such sites of engagement are socially constructed through activities such as handing, a social situation frame in which there are expectations on appropriate behaviors, a regulatory frame of civic responsibility, and a generic frame in w…
The discourses of food in the world system: Toward a nexus analysis of a world problem
This paper examines the role of discourse analysis in addressing the devastating consequences of the rapid restructuring of food production in the world system. I argue that although this is an issue far too large to encompass within discourse analysis, discourse analysis has much to contribute as part of an interdisciplinary and comprehensive analytical approach. Such an approach, a ‘nexus analysis’, consists of analyzing focal points or nexus w…
Point of view and citation: Fourteen Chinese and English versions of the ‛same’ news story
Fourteen versions of the same news story, a Xinhua release about Li Peng's meeting with George Bush, were selected for comparison from eleven Hong Kong newspapers and three from the People's Republic of China (PRC). Four are English language newspapers and the rest Chinese. Comparison of five features including switches in point of view, lamination, ambiguous quotation, bylining of a named reporter, and mention of setting in the lead revealed dif…
Topic confusion in English-Asian discourse
Most communication between Asians and Westerners takes place in English. This misleads us into believing that little translation work is required for East and West to understand each other. Nevertheless, when speakers of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese use English there is a tendency for them to introduce topics in ways which are unexpected from the point of view of English-speaking Westerners. The Asian inductive, or delayed, introduction of topic…
Breakthrough into action
We take as axiomatic from Hymes's work that the linguistic structures of oral narrative should be construed not as abstract and ideal but as artifacts of the human mind in action in society, and that the indissoluble tension between structure and creativity should be moved by analysts in the direction of social justice. The problem we faced in an extended set of action projects aimed at reducing discrimination against Alaska Natives was that prob…
Generic variability in news stories in Chinese and English: A contrastive discourse study of five days' newspapers
As a matter of fact: The changing ideology of authorship and responsibility in discourse
One of the most troubling aspects of non-native writing in English is the attribution of authorship. Taking a writing conference, an MA thesis and a transcript of a new story as illustrations, it is argued that in academic writing the facts presented are inseparable from who is taken to have presented those facts. Because academic writing is as much the construction of an authorial self as the presentation of fact, the attention of English teache…
The Dialogist in a Positivist World: Theory in the Social Sciences and the Humanities at the End of the Twentieth Century
While theory in the social sciences and the humanities in our period has come to be dominated by what might be called a dialogist perspective, following on the thinking of philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Bhaskar, and sociologists and critics from Foucault to Bakhtin, the understanding of all knowledge as discursively produced remains at a considerable distance from the classical hypothetico-deductive discourse of many practitioners of scien…
Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction
(1999). Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 32, No. 1-2, pp. 149-154
Plagiarism
Contrastive Rhetoric, Contrastive Poetics, or Perhaps Something Else
Attribution and Power in Hong Kong News Discourse
The attribution of sources is situated within the broader context of social practice. Giving or withholding voice is done through the 'same' linguistic means, but in particular, situated cases, like means may produce significantly different outcomes. Organizing a rich interdiscursivity of practice are three forms of discursive power: (1) the power to command animation or authorship; (2) the power to give or deny voice, and (3) the power to frame …
Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach
Intro -- Intercultural Communication -- Contents -- Figures -- Series Editor's Preface -- Preface to the First Edition -- Preface to the Second Edition -- Preface to the Third Edition -- 1: What Is a Discourse Approach? -- The Problem with -- is a verb -- Discourse -- Discourse systems -- What Is Communication? -- Language is ambiguous by nature -- We must draw inferences about meaning -- Our inferences tend to be f ixed, not tentative -- Our inf…
Language dilemmas in Alaska
Narrative, literacy and face in interethnic communication
Language dilemmas in Alaska
The Social Construction of Literacy
Obituary. Fang Kuei Li (1902–1987)
Topic confusion in English-Asian discourse
Most communication between Asians and Westerners takes place in English. This misleads us into believing that little translation work is required for East and West to understand each other. Nevertheless, when speakers of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese use English there is a tendency for them to introduce topics in ways which are unexpected from the point of view of English-speaking Westerners. The Asian inductive, or delayed, introduction of topic…
As a matter of fact: The changing ideology of authorship and responsibility in discourse
One of the most troubling aspects of non-native writing in English is the attribution of authorship. Taking a writing conference, an MA thesis and a transcript of a new story as illustrations, it is argued that in academic writing the facts presented are inseparable from who is taken to have presented those facts. Because academic writing is as much the construction of an authorial self as the presentation of fact, the attention of English teache…
International English and Chinese Women: Clients or Colleagues in the International Utilitarian Discourse System?”
The move to deculturize the teaching of English by emphasizing practical skills for international business presents itself as a reduction to basic issues in language teaching and in international communication. This move disguises the deeply embedded ideology of the Utilitarian discourse system. As language teaching methodology is coupled with the social placement of Chinese women in Hong Kong in clerical and service roles as opposed to the manag…
From Sentences to Discourses, Ethnography to Ethnographic: Conflicting Trends in Tesol Research
The TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of qualitative and quantitative research. For this issue we asked two researchers to discuss methodological challenges in discourse analysis
Coercive Citation
Plagiarism and ideology: Identity in intercultural discourse
The concept of plagiarism, as used both in considerations of academic writing and in international negotiations over intellectual copyright, assumes a model of communication based on autonomous, rational, individuals who behave as originators of their own discourses. But studies of communication, beginning with Goffman's concepts of production format and footing - and also including the concepts of enactment, social role, face, politeness pragmat…
Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach
Intro -- Intercultural Communication -- Contents -- Figures -- Series Editor's Preface -- Preface to the First Edition -- Preface to the Second Edition -- Preface to the Third Edition -- 1: What Is a Discourse Approach? -- The Problem with -- is a verb -- Discourse -- Discourse systems -- What Is Communication? -- Language is ambiguous by nature -- We must draw inferences about meaning -- Our inferences tend to be f ixed, not tentative -- Our inf…
Public discourse in Hong Kong and the change of sovereignty
Contrastive Rhetoric, Contrastive Poetics, or Perhaps Something Else
Point of view and citation: Fourteen Chinese and English versions of the ‛same’ news story
Fourteen versions of the same news story, a Xinhua release about Li Peng's meeting with George Bush, were selected for comparison from eleven Hong Kong newspapers and three from the People's Republic of China (PRC). Four are English language newspapers and the rest Chinese. Comparison of five features including switches in point of view, lamination, ambiguous quotation, bylining of a named reporter, and mention of setting in the lead revealed dif…
Handbills, Tissues, and Condoms: A Site of Engagement for the Construction of Identity in Public Discourse
This study develops an analysis of one site of engagement of public discourse in which identity is socially constructed. Through an analysis of the handing out of handbills in public places, the study argues that such sites of engagement are socially constructed through activities such as handing, a social situation frame in which there are expectations on appropriate behaviors, a regulatory frame of civic responsibility, and a generic frame in w…
Attribution and Power in Hong Kong News Discourse
The attribution of sources is situated within the broader context of social practice. Giving or withholding voice is done through the 'same' linguistic means, but in particular, situated cases, like means may produce significantly different outcomes. Organizing a rich interdiscursivity of practice are three forms of discursive power: (1) the power to command animation or authorship; (2) the power to give or deny voice, and (3) the power to frame …
Literate Design in the Discourses of Revolution, Reform, and Transition: Hong Kong and China
In contemporary China, including Hong Kong, literate design from the choice of writing system or romanization to presentational formats articulates an inter-discursivity among three major discourses: the language reforms of the post-Liberation revolutionary discourse, the Dengist reform discourse, and the discourse of the transition of sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to China. Thus literate design represents the polyvocality of utterance in…
Reading as social interaction: The empirical grounding of reading
L'A. s'efforce de montrer que la lecture peut etre concue comme un processus d'interaction sociale et d'en degager le fondement empirique. Il rappelle que l'interaction presuppose une relation entre deux personnes qui se percoivent. Il souligne que le regard joue un role important dans le cadre de la relation pedagogique qui se noue au cours de l'apprentissage de la lecture. Il lie la lecture au phenomene generale de la reconnaissance. Il examine…
English in Intercultural Interaction
Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction
Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction
(1999). Mediated Discourse and Social Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 32, No. 1-2, pp. 149-154
Plagiarism
Generic variability in news stories in Chinese and English: A contrastive discourse study of five days' newspapers
Mediated Discourse: The nexus of practice
Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice sets out a discursive theory of human action.Language and action are intimately related. The difficult question to answer is how they are related. Mediated Discourse Theory looks into social relationships to see how the use of language is both a form of action in itself and is also indirectly related to all other forms of human action.Through the empirical study of a one year old child learning to exchang…
Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World
Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains, to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America …
Sociology (26 works) · Linguistics (20 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Political science (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 works) · Law (7 works)