Speech analysis under a Bakhtinian approach : contributions to research on physics education

Abstract

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] Since the beginning of the 21st century, the appropriation of the sociocultural perspective by the physics education research community has represented a linguistic turn in the field, pointing out a promising path to overcome the dominance of the “individual paradigm,” both in terms of student learning and initial and continuing teacher training. This approach views science, science education, and research as human social activities embedded in larger sociocultural and institutional contexts, implying a significant theoretical importance to the role of social interaction and the context in which these interactions occur, viewing them as critical to a better understanding of the learning process rather than merely as a secondary role. In this theoretical framework, language plays a fundamental role as a mediator of human action, notably, it is the main system of signs used by humankind. Hence, we recognize the origin of sociocultural perspectives in Lev Vygotsky’s sociohistorical psychology. The neo-Vygotskian James Wertsch proposes a “continuity” of Vygotsky’s theory by emphasizing one of its unexplored assumptions: the characterization of human action as an activity mediated by signs and instruments. In this theoretical construction of a sociocultural approach to human action, the philosophy of language of Mikhail Bakhtin Circle becomes crucial. Data of discursive nature (oral and written speech of the instructor and their pupils, textbooks, or official documents) may be analyzed in physics education research, particularly those focusing on classroom situations (typically didactic interventions). We employed Bakhtinian analysis to avoid the text’s objectivist (positivist) stance and the structural deterministic idea of ideological interpellation suggested by Althusser and endorsed by Pêcheux’s discourse analysis. In order to contribute to a qualitative research technique for discursive data analysis, we explain the Circle’s theory and translate it into possible methodologies for research in physics education. We suggest an “analytical trajectory” based on this as a possible arrangement of the interpretation of discursive data under Bakhtin’s metalinguistic. Finally, we exemplify the use of this analytical trajectory in our research group’s works.