Re: unit of analysis

Ken Goodman (kgoodman who-is-at u.arizona.edu)
Fri, 18 Sep 1998 10:53:08 -0700

The unit of analysis has been a major issue in linguistics and
particularly in reading research. For Chomsky and his school the unit of
analysis has always been the sentence. For Halliday and the systemic
group the text is the minimal unit for analysis (which not preclude
analysing texts on its several levels. In literacy research there are
long traditions of regarding the word as the unit of analysis and of
course phonics advocates want to focu on letter-sound relationships.

Each choice, of course, stems from key tenets of the beliefs about
lnaguage, oral and written, each group holds. But it also becomes a
constraint on the research design and the interpretation of the results.
In reading research which focusses on the word as a unit findings are
limited to words and has little value in learning how people make sense
of texts. But such research is taken to support the word-focus that
underlies the design and interpretation of the findings.

There is always a temptation in language research including literacy
research to reduce the focus to small units, often in isolation from
authentic texts. Much of that pressure comes from inappropriate
experimental designs.

Ken Goodman

-- 
Kenneth S. Goodman, Professor, Language, Reading & Culture
504 College of Education, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ     
         fax 520 7456895                      phone 520 6217868

These are mean times- and in the mean time We need to Learn to Live Under Water