Abstract
In this book, Rodney Jones produces an impressive analysis of spoken discourse as multi-modally embodied tools for communication. Examining various layers of spoken discourse, Jones investigates how mediated discourse analysis contributes to the construction and deconstruction of meaning by locating actions within the social and cultural contexts of their design and enactment. Composed of eight chapters from a perspective of ‘mediated discourse analysis’, the book offers thought-provoking insights into how people use spoken discourse to survive as socialized agents in regard to rapport management, identity construction and community membership maintenance.
In Chapter 1, Jones successfully illustrates both the practical and the ethical challenges of current spoken discourse studies. Since the prototypical model of conversation always misses the ‘complex configuration of participation’ (p. 15) as well as the complicated ‘layeredness of context’ (p. 16), Jones rightly highlights his central claim that spoken discourse will never be comprehensively studied without taking ‘mediatedness’ (p. 17) into consideration.
Chapter 2 is devoted to an interdisciplinary survey of the different schools that have contributed to spoken discourse analysis and the essential methodological procedures employed by these disciplines, which outlines a fine-grained ‘dialogical’ perspective on spoken discourse studies while directing its focus to the relationship between spoken discourse, interaction and context. Functionally, this chapter manifests how Jones will make his study uniquely different and original in a disciplinary and historical context.
In Chapter 3, Jones provides a survey of the ‘toolbox’ available to language users for their engagement in spoken discourse. It is worth a special mention that the term ‘technologization’ (p. 78) is coined to frame Jones’ approach to spoken discourse, highlighting the core ambition of the book to act as an enlightening guideline for the analysis of increasingly mediated discourse in the era of web 2.0.
In Chapter 4, mediated action is specifically investigated as the unit of analysis within Jones’ framework, where he explores how discourse is deemed a mediational means of action rather than a kind of action itself. In this sense, this chapter acts as a link between the methodological concerns of the initial chapters and what emerge as the central concerns of the book in the ensuing chapters.
In Chapter 5, Jones addresses the issue of how people manage to do things cooperatively through mediated interaction. While setting out explicitly to map the different ways of participating in interactions as ‘ratified participants’ (p. 127), Jones simultaneously demonstrates how mediated discourse brings about particular construction of interpersonal meaning and concomitant mode of engagement within a certain set of affordances and constraints.
In Chapter 6, the issues of social identity construction and negotiation in spoken discourse are examined in detail. Jones effectively shows how socially constructed identities are explored as interpersonal resources for relationship management and activity engagement. Moreover, he successfully underscores the centrality of ‘mediatedness’ of spoken discourse in contextualizing identities and theorizing core concepts including ‘discourse’ and ‘identity’.
Chapter 7 focuses on how social groups, communities and institutions become resources for spoken discourse in performing certain social actions. To this end, Jones highlights the key role played by boundaries of discourse as central to the construction, maintenance and change of relationships in a collective and institutional context.
As a source for conclusion and implications, the final chapter is as productive and proactive as the title suggests: ‘Answerability and the future of talk’ offers a practical guide to move beyond a blind acceptance of the prototypical mode of conversation and, in Jones’ words, ‘being a good analyst of spoken discourse requires that we become adept at “circumferencing (Burke, 1969)”’ (p. 196).
There is much to be praised in this monograph. Since nowadays discourse is interactively understood as all forms of meaningful semiotic human activity which are considered ‘in connection with social, cultural and historical patterns and development of use’ (Blommaert, 2005: 3), the focus of discourse analysis today has shifted towards the role of multi-modal mediatedness in discourse production and comprehension. In this sense, the book is a contribution to the interactional turn in the field of discourse studies.
The book is rich with numerous enlightening ideas, cases and theoretical reflection and engagement. Its contribution is clearly excellent in the context of the introduction of a mediated perspective on spoken discourse and its interactionally ‘technologized’ embodiments. While the theoretical approaches belong to mediated discourse analysis, the methodological veins are interdisciplinarily varied, from discourse analysis to computer-mediated communication and conversation analysis to cultural pragmatics.
Jones’ writing is engaging, and his choice of cases provides a sense of what it is to experience vividly the various contexts he relates while shedding light on the importance of ‘mediatedness’ for spoken discourse studies. The book is very appealing in its easy alternation as an introductory or advanced reference with interdisciplinary ingredients, while at the same time serving as an accessible entrée into nuanced critiques of spoken discourse studies.
Despite its conceptual and empirical richness, readers may prefer to read more about the meanings of ‘mediation’ and ‘participation’, both as topics and as contexts, particularly given the recent engagement with notions of ‘participation’ and related notions in contemporary online and offline mediated genres and the increased interest of discourse studies in mediated technologies such as twitter or YouTube. Also, more explicit engagement with ‘identity’ would have been welcome throughout the book, particularly with how the meaning of ‘identity’ itself might be changing in connection with shifts towards poststructuralist perspectives on identity co-construction mediated through new technologies in spoken discourses. Therefore it is for future researchers to explore these issues along the lines Jones has developed, with more cases from different languages and cultures in order to understand more fully the complexity of spoken discourses in the context of technologization and globalization.