Discourse analysis of language intervention

Abstract

Qualitative studies have produced new but fragmentary observations of the discourse of clinical lessons. This paper surveys these findings and integrates them around the principles of conversational discourse and discourse analysis. The picture which emerges is that training lessons are patterned within and across levels of conversational discourse. Social, verbal, and nonverbal components of clinician—child interaction are organized hierarchically for the purposes of eliciting correct linguistic responses. Clinical discourse research is discussed with reference to questions of clinical validity and practicality. Five learning hypotheses are also suggested.

On the occurrence of okay i n therapy

“…Taken together, these differential distributions and functions seem to reflect role differences where (1) the children act compliant and (2) the therapist not only regulates the pacing of therapy activities, deciding when it is time to move to a new phase or activity in the lesson, (3) she also evaluates the child's comments throughout the lesson. These findings are in keeping with other descriptions of adult-centred approaches to intervention (Muma, 1978;Panagos, Bobkoff and Scott, 1986;Prutting, Bagshaw, Goldstein, Juskowitz and Umen, 1978). As is suggested elsewhere (see Kovarsky, 1989; in press), an analysis of the distributions and functions of okay, along with other forms (now, so, well, and oh), may be useful in distinguishing between adult-and child-centred notions of intervention.…”

Clinician elicitation strategies and child participation. Comparing two methods of phonological intervention

“…The duration of the sessions varied between 22 and 39 min (mean 29 min). In order to select appropriate sections of the entire intervention session for subsequent analyses, an initial analysis of the overall structure was made according to Panagos et al (32). The rst and completed activity within the remedial phase was selected from all ten recordings.…”

“…Another approach in intervention research has been to analyse the overall structure of the intervention session, and, in particular, to scrutinise how the actual remediation takes place. Panagos et al (32) found that the entire intervention session could be divided into three parts, one introductory phase, the main phase containing the actual intervention, the so called remedial phase, and, nally, the concluding phase. The remedial phase is further subdivided into remedial sequences where the clinician tries to elicit a correct response from the child.…”

The nonverbal component of clinical lessons

“…Although some progress has been made in the investigation of the discourse of clinical lessons (Panagos, Bobkoff and Scott, 1986), little is known about the nonverbal component (but see Bobkoff, 1982;Bobkoff and Panagos, 1986;Schubert and Mercer, 1975). This gap in research activity is surprising, considering recent work in language acquisition which points to the prominent role of nonverbal learning in the formation of linguistic systems (Foster, 1985;Garvey, 1984;Moerk, 1977).…”

“…A starting point is current descriptive accounts of the verbal components of clinical exchange (Bobkoff, 1982;Kovarsky, in press; Letts, 1985;Panagos et al , 1986;Prutting, Bagshaw, Goldstein, Juskowitz and Umen, 1978). The clinician plans and initiates a highly structured lesson integrating contextual, task, topical, sequential, and nonverbal elements.…”