Dialects in Schools and Communities

Adger, Carolyn Temple; Wolfram, Walt; Christian, Donna

doi:10.4324/9781410601148

Cited by 129 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…Yet, as many scholars have noted, the continuum of standardness and the very notion of 'Standard English' are socially constructed primarily along the lines of region, class, and ethnicity (Bonfiglio, 2002;Cameron, 1995;Kroskrity, 2000Kroskrity, , 2004Lippi-Green, 1997;Milroy and Milroy, 1999;L. Milroy, 2004;Schieffelin et al, 1998;Silverstein, 1998;Wolfram et al, 1999;Zentella, 1997). Bonfiglio (2002), for example, explores how cotemporaneous historical and social events fostered the development of a doctrine of prescriptivism tinged with xenophobia and racism.…”

Section: Racial and Regional Stereotypes And Categorizations In Everyday Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The presumed value of 'Standard English' remains the basis for the moralistic, prescriptivist language ideology that is rooted in white supremacy and pervades American (as well as British) society (Bonfiglio, 2002;Cameron, 1995;Milroy and Milroy, 1999;L. Milroy, 2004;Schieffelin et al, 1998;Silverstein, 1998;Wolfram et al, 1999).…”

Section: Racial and Regional Stereotypes And Categorizations In Everyday Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

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‘Blacks and bubbas’: Stereotypes, ideology, and categorization processes in restaurant servers' discourse

Mallinson¹,

Brewster

2005

Discourse & Society

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Individuals employ general, cognitively grounded categorization processes to form expectations for interactions with members of other social groups. Such categorizations sometimes surface in the form of racial, ethnic, or other stereotypes. But although much literature describes and/or tests the cognitive nature of stereotyping and categorization, less investigates how stereotypes and categories are formed in casual interaction, through casual discourse. This article analyzes data from 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with restaurant servers to investigate how they categorize customers by drawing on racial stereotypes and stereotypes related to class and/or cultural capital to produce two types of discriminatory discourse: ‘racetalk’ and what we term ‘regiontalk’. Our analyses suggest potential differences in the servers’ processes of categorization according to patron type, which we interpret with regard to the larger context of racism and classism in contemporary U.S. society.

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Section: Racial and Regional Stereotypes And Categorizations In Everyday Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Racial and Regional Stereotypes And Categorizations In Everyday Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Blacks and bubbas’: Stereotypes, ideology, and categorization processes in restaurant servers' discourse

Mallinson¹,

Brewster

2005

Discourse & Society

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“…2. The distinction between a "standard" language and the historical, political, and ideological process of "standardization" is discussed by Milroy and Milroy (1999), Taavitsainen, Melchers, andPahta (1999), andWolfram, Adger, andChristian (1999). Through this process, societal gatekeepers work to suppress the inherent variability of language by authorizing uniformity.…”

Section: Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Right (Write) Start: African American Language and the Discourse of Sounding Right

Dyson

Smitherman

2009

Teachers College Record

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Background Both academic research and educational policy have focused on the diverse language resources of young schoolchildren. African American Language (AAL) in particular has a rich history of scholarship that both documents its historical evolution and sociolinguistic complexity and reveals the persistent lack of knowledge about AAL in our schools and the continuing negative stereotypes about its speakers. Currently, federal funds for early schooling target the literacy learning of low-income children, who are disproportionately children of color; these programs, though, assume, as a literacy “basic,” a singular correct way of using language. The stage is set, then, for communicative disconnects between teachers and children during literacy instruction. Purpose In early literacy studies, such communicative disconnects between teachers and children have been discussed primarily in relation to reading. Our focus is on teacher-student interactions about children's writing, that is, about their efforts to make a voice visible on paper. Writing is a rich context for studying how AAL figures into early literacy teaching and learning. Teachers urge children to listen to how their words sound in order to compose their message. But what sounds “right” to young children will vary for developmental, situational, and, as emphasized herein, sociocultural reasons. We illustrate how, in the course of teacher-student interaction, young children's major resources for learning to write—their very voices—may become a source of problems. Research Design The article draws on data collected in an ethnographic project on child writing in a test-monitored and basics-focused elementary school in a midsized urban school district. Most of the school's children were from low-income homes of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. One important pedagogical site for teaching basic literacy skills in the observed first grade was teacher-led editing conferences, in which the classroom teacher focused on written conventions, including standardized usage. These conferences (and all afternoon activities) were documented over the course of an academic year primarily through observation accompanied by audiotaping and collection of children's products. This article features the writing experiences of one focal child, Tionna. Recommendations We conclude with a consideration of the goals of language arts programs in contemporary times. Certainly, assisting children in extending their communicative repertoire to include the Language of Wider Communication (LWC) is a worthy curricular goal for the school years. At the same time, we question U.S. monolingualism and monodialectalism in a multilingual world demanding communicative flexibility.

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“…State Standards (2010), and most individual state standards for English language arts (ELA) include goals for student learning about the history of and variation within the English language, both research and practice in teaching about the English language appear severely underdeveloped in comparison to research and practice in teaching reading and writing. Though the field of literacy studies has seen decades of calls for scholarship, curriculum, and instruction that address dialect diversity and the relationship between language and power in the United States (Alim, 2005;Brown, 2006;Delpit, 1988;Dyson & Smitherman, 2009;Wolfram, Adger, & Christian, 1999), few empirical studies exist that document students' engagement in classroom activities designed to address these issues (May & Sleeter, 2010). The goal of this article is to respond to these calls by describing what and how a group of high school students learned about language variation, identity, and power through their participation in a small-group, inquiry-based discussion.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, teachers often view bidialectal students as less intelligent and capable than students who only speak SE (Blake & Cutler, 2003). However, sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that AAVE is a logical, rule-governed dialect that includes both grammatical features and nuances of expression not found in SE (Wolfram et al, 1999) and has strong ties to African American culture and identities (Alim & Baugh, 2007). Furthermore, literacy scholars have found that both explicitly acknowledging the value and features of AAVE and building on bidialectal students' knowledge of AAVE enhance students' literacy learning opportunities (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, 2005;Hill, 2009; C. D. Lee, 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning About Language Through Inquiry-Based Discussion

Chisholm

Godley

2011

Journal of Literacy Research

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The field of literacy studies has seen decades of calls for scholarship and instruction that address issues of dialect diversity, identity, and power but few empirical studies that document students’ engagement in classroom activities designed to address these issues. The goal of this article is to describe how three bidialectal African American high school students learned about language variation, identity, and power through their participation in a small-group, inquiry-based discussion. The authors’ description analyzes both the learning opportunities and limitations provided by the design of the inquiry-based discussion and also the content learning about the English language that was evidenced by the students’ talk. The findings suggest that inquiry-based discussions, when driven by carefully worded questions, can lead to robust student learning about language variation and can engage students in authentic disciplinary problem posing.

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Dialects in Schools and Communities

Cited by 129 publications

References 0 publications

‘Blacks and bubbas’: Stereotypes, ideology, and categorization processes in restaurant servers' discourse

‘Blacks and bubbas’: Stereotypes, ideology, and categorization processes in restaurant servers' discourse

The Right (Write) Start: African American Language and the Discourse of Sounding Right

Learning About Language Through Inquiry-Based Discussion

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