According to Gee, there are seven building tasks of language. They are the following:
1) Significance -"we need to use language to render them significant or to lessen their significance" (p. 32)
"Discourse Analysis Question: How is this piece of language being used to make certain things significant or not and in what ways?"
2) Practices -"a socially recognized and institutionally or culturally supported endeavor that usually involves sequencing or combining actions in certain specified ways"(p. 32)
"What practice (activity) or practices (activities) is this piece of language being used to enact (i.e., get others to recognize as going on)?" (p. 33)
3) Identities - "We use language to get recognized as taking on a certain identity or role, that is, to build an identity here and now" (p. 33)
"What identity or identities is this piece of language being used to enact (i.e., get others to recognize as operative)? What identity or identities is this piece of language attributing to others, and
how does this help the speaker or writer enact his or own identity?" (p. 34)/
4) Relationships - "We use language to signal what sort of relationship we have, want to have, or are trying to have with our listener(s), reader(s), or other people, groups, or institutions about whom we are communicating" (p. 34).
"What sort of relationship or relationships is this piece of language seeking to enact with others (present or not)?" (p. 34)
5) Politics (the distribution of social goods) "We use language to convey a perspective on the nature of the distribution of social goods, that is, to build a perspective on social goods" (p. 34)
"What perspective on social goods is this piece of language communicating (i.e., what is being communicated as to what is taken to be “normal,” “right,” “good,” “correct,” “proper,” “appropriate,” “valuable,” “the ways things are,” “the way things ought to be,” “high status or low status,” “like me or not like me,” and so forth)?" (p. 34-5).
6) Connections - "We use language to render certain things connected or relevant (or not) to other things, that is, to build connections or relevance" (p. 35).
Discourse Analysis Question: How does this piece of language connect or disconnect things; how does it make one thing relevant or irrelevant to another?" (p. 35)
7) Sign Systems and Knowledge - what language is being used, (is it even a "language?") (p. 35)
Discourse Analysis Question: How does this piece of language privilege or disprivilege specifi c sign systems (e.g., Spanish vs. English, technical language vs. everyday language, words vs. images, words vs. equations, etc.) or different ways of knowing and believing or claims to knowledge and belief (e.g., science vs. the humanities; science vs. “commonsense”; biology vs. “creation science”)? (p. 35-6)
References:
Gee, J.P. (2005). An introduction to discourse analysis theory and method. London: Routledge.