Part III: Understanding Theory and Issues in the Field Reflection on substantive paper in AL 6600: Discourse Analysis

I enrolled in AL 6600: Seminar in Second/Foreign Language TeachingDiscourse Analysis in my very first semester, Fall 2011. I had absolutely no linguistic background at that point, but I found the idea of breaking apart a conversation and finding what functions each of the individual parts played fascinating. As the semester progressed and we were asked what topic to focus on, I found my natural interest in sarcasm to be a forerunner for a research project to find what functions it can serve in a conversation. This was particularly interesting to me after spending a year in Japan, where sarcasm is not widely accepted as humorous or even comprehensible. I would often sarcastically call myself a tensai or genius after making a simple mistake in my Japanese language use and my Japanese friends eventually explained their confusion, since a genius would not make such a mistake. In my paper, I wanted to show how Americans in particular utilize sarcasm and in what scenarios. The purpose for this was to have concrete data to show English language learners that might not have had any experience with sarcasm and therefore do not know what context it is used in. My paper also involved a literature review of sarcasm as an object of humor; however there was limited research done on the topic. A common insistence I had found in the research consistently pointed to sarcasm and irony as being interchangeable, so there were also references I quoted meant to dispel that idea. I believe that this was one of my stronger contributions to the portfolio. Even though it had only been my first semester and I had been limited by a lack of knowledge in theory, the

research was concise and the data I accumulated to support my claims with real-life examples were specific and relevant. I was told that the paper was strong enough and had enough potential to consider submitting it for publication, however at the time I did not utilize the opportunity for fear that it would affect my time and attention to other courses. I will consider publication of this topic more seriously in the future. As mentioned by my professor in her critiques of this particular research paper, although it was beneficial to mention controversies in literature reviews, I also needed to specify the term I would be using throughout in order not to confuse the reader. I also had a tendency to incorporate anecdotes as main points rather than supportive examples. This was addressed in further edits. A challenge I had with the research paper was, initially, the research. It was exceedingly difficult to catch sarcasm in natural speech, as part of the humor is its unexpectedness. I therefore spent a majority of my time rifling through video clips before finally coming to the conclusion that an entire conversation would have to be recorded and listened to afterwards in order to keep the speech authentic and not force people to use sarcasm simply for the purpose of my paper. It would have defeated the purpose of showing ELLs how sarcasm is used on a day-to-day basis. All in all, despite the amount of work put into the project, the research I did during this paper was a highlight for my time in the MA TESOL program. I would get excited when I discovered a snippet of sarcasm being used seamlessly and really felt as though the topic was not being focused on by current research. When explaining my purpose to Japanese friends, they asked to see the paper because of their trouble with American sarcasm in the past and their desire to understand its various uses, such as the American tendency to call ourselves geniuses when making simple mistakes.