specific task is to do a study of four individuals speaking about their identities, that is, who they think they are, or claim to be. You can find these individuals speaking about their identities in the film Half of Anything,

Description

The Assignment In the assignment for Lesson 3, you write one of the three required major essays for Communication 202. The essay is an example of one type of research that communication scholars do. It is a form of discourse analysis. So for Assignment 3 you will practice the art of discourse analysis as an interpretive method of communication study. This major essay consists of: an introductory paragraph (approx. 50-150 words) four identity claims profiles (see Profiles tab), one for each speaker in the video (250-300 words each) one paragraph comparing and contrasting the four identify claims profiles (approximately 300 words) one concluding paragraph (approximately 250 words) Your Task Your specific task is to do a study of four individuals speaking about their identities, that is, who they think they are, or claim to be. You can find these individuals speaking about their identities in the film Half of Anything, which is an assigned video for you to watch and listen to as part of Lesson 3. The video is 26 minutes long, so you can take a quick look at it and get a pretty good idea of what it is about, in some detail. One thing you will find is that the four individuals who were interviewed for the video say a lot about their sense of who they are, so it is ripe for the picking of identity claims. Your first step in this assignment is to construct a written summary profile of each of the four speakers, a profile of their expressed sense of personal, social, and cultural identities. I provide a descriptive and interpretive framework (see Profiles tab) for you to use in constructing these written summary profiles. Using it will help you do what you are supposed to do in this assignment and it will help you not do too much. Profiles Framework To construct a profile for a speaker in the video, do the following: Make an inventory of the terms, phrases, and comments they express about: (a) communication, (b) themselves, and (c) the social world in which they live. Make an inventory of what you take to be the identity claims the speaker expresses about himself or herself. These are statements that take the form “I am ________.” Sometimes something will look like it might be an identity claim but it is not exactly in the “I am _______” format. I recommend that you include those in your inventory, at least at first. People don’t always express themselves neatly in a researcher’s categories. Use your judgment. Make an inventory of ways the speaker situates an identity claim in a context. For example, suppose the speaker says that at home he feels he is one type of person, or on the job he feels he is a particular type of person. Context can include setting, actual or imagined audience (that is, with whom the speaker is communicating), purpose (that, when a person is pursuing a particular purpose they might feel they are a particular type of person), and time (e.g., “in the past I felt I was like a person X,” “today I feel I am a person Y”) Using the materials you have collected in the inventories described above, write an identity claims profile for the speaker. This identity claims profile should be written in paragraphs and should be 250-300 words. This identity claims profile is what goes into your final essay. You will need to watch “Half of Anything” ( Link:  https://vimeo.com/17388451 ) more than once and it may be helpful to take notes in a grid as the documentary bounces between speakers. Give yourself plenty of room to record your observations. When you have completed the four individual profiles, you should write one or two paragraphs that compare and contrast these four speakers in terms of their expressed sense of identity. When you have completed the individual profiles and the paragraph of comparison and contrast, then write a one paragraph introduction and a one paragraph conclusion to your major essay. What should be in your concluding paragraph? This is your decision to make. Here are some possibilities, but don’t feel that you are restricted to these. Did you find out that the differences across the four profiles were greater than you expected? Or were the four more similar to each other than you expected? Did you find it surprisingly easy, or surprisingly hard, to construct the profiles and, if so, why? Do you now understand something about reading other people’s identity claims than your previously did? Do you think an understanding of someone’s identity claims profile could help you to communicate effectively, or not, and so, why, and if not, why? Perhaps you now agree with the statement, Identity counts, and it can be calculated. If so, you can state that, and why you think it is true. Or perhaps you want to challenge that claim, based on your work on the essay, if so, make that challenge, and say what led you to that conclusion. These are just some possible directions to take for you concluding paragraph. When you are finished, what you will have is an exercise in figuring out four people in terms of their sense of who they are. This will be a considerable accomplishment. General guidelines 1,250 to 1,500 words. You should make extensive use of words and phrases from the video. The quoted material should be should be short quotations that report terms and phrases, not long passages. The essay should demonstrate concretely your mastery of the key analytic terms and concepts: identity and identity claim; meta-communicative terms, phrases, and comments; The essay should be written, with complete sentences, correct spelling, and correct grammar. The essay should make an explicit statement about a lesson it offers as to how to figure out the communication of one’s immediate (or mediated) environment.