This seven‐month ethnographic case study elucidated a kindergarten student's navigation through her first formal schooling experience with relation to expressive oral language. Gee's theory of Discourses and methodology of discourse analysis were used to examine expressive oral language in use. Two discursive contexts germane to expressive oral language were observed: Discourse of home and Discourse of school. This study demonstrated the complexity of expressive oral language when a primary Discourse converged with the secondary Discourse of school. Primary data sources included participant observation, audiotaped observations, and field notes, resulting in transcripts and an individual participant dictionary. Critical incidents of oral language samples were analyzed through language‐in‐use discourse analysis focused on the seven building tasks, significance, practices (activities), identities, relationships, politics, connections, and sign systems and knowledge, and six tools of inquiry, social languages, Discourses, Conversations, intertextuality, situated meanings, and figured worlds. Secondary data sources included interviews, document/artifact collection, and a researcher journal, providing detail for rich, descriptive narratives of contexts of her language in use and detailed descriptions of the home and school contexts and the participant in these settings. Data suggest that a kindergarten student's primary Discourse as it pertains to expressive oral language manifests itself in varying ways at the point of juncture with the secondary Discourse of school. Alignment, dominance, discord, and hybridity existed as her primary Discourse and school Discourse converged through expressive oral language. The point of juncture for expressive oral language expanded and limited her discursive abilities in both Discourses.
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