On the functional analysis of social class differences in modes of speech

Williams, Frederick; Naremore, Rita C.

doi:10.1080/03637756909375613

Cited by 52 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Wells and Robinson, for example, have recast the Bernstein tradition's distinction between elaborated and restricted codes as more properly reflecting different speaker orientations, one concerned with the representational content of utterances and one concerned with role relations between participants (1982, p. 46). Williams and Naremore (1969) and Tannen (1982) have made a similar sort of distinction, describing the contrast as one between a message orientation on the one hand, and a listenerspeaker orientation on the other. Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 02:44 07 February 2015 284 HEMPH1LL While these later formulations represent an advance over the original theory of codes, they fail to account for data like those presented above.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Topic development, syntax, and social class

Hemphill

1989

Discourse Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Topic development, syntax, and social class

Hemphill

1989

Discourse Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Since Bernstein, many others have studied SES differences in language use. Williams & Naremore (1969) found that low-SES children's language was more context-centred while middle-SES children made greater use of topiccentred speech and made less reference to context. In examining SES differences in how language functions for children as a social tool, Tough (1977) found that middle-SES children used language more for predicting and for projecting beyond the immediate context while low-SES children used language more often to secure attention for personal needs and to monitor their own actions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

A developmental study of low- and middle-class children's responses to wh-questions

Gullo

1982

First Language

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Qualitative and developmental differences in low-and middlesocioeconomic status (SES) preschoolers' responses to wh -questions were investigated. Sixty low-SES and 60 middle-SES children between the ages 3;6 and 5;2 participated in the study. Findings indicate that the order of acquisition of wh -words was different between low-and middle-SES children relative to the development of why constructs. Low-SES children were also shown to employ a different answering strategy to questions where the answer is not known. Results indicate that among incorrect response patterns for where, when, how, or why questions, significantly more low-SES children responded with what answers.Examination of correct responses revealed that low-SES children gave significantly more responses to where, when, how, and why questions at a level indicating a minimal or restricted understanding of what was being asked.

show abstract

“…By limiting the relevant literature to variation in children's speech, a large body of research dealing with the 'input' language of caretakers is not treated at all. In addition, studies which have produced speech alteration as a result of varying degrees of familiarity (Garvey and Hogan, 1973) and power (Brown and Gilman, 1960;Williams and Naremore, 1968) will not be considered. The focus here is on the range of the child's linguistic variation as a function of social context.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Variation in the requesting behavior of bilingual children

Walters¹

1981

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The sociolinguistic research to be described in this paper centers on contextual aspects of language variation. The domain of the research can be viewed as more encompassing than recent work in generative linguistics, which focuses on the sentence and its components as the units of analysis. On the other hand, it is more modest than the program for the study of communicative competence set forth by Hymes (1967). His framework for the study of the ethnography of speaking includes contextual and performance factors such as the following: setting (time and place); participants; intentions; topic; tone (e.g., mocking); the code and channel of transmission; norms of interaction (e.g., loudness, when to interrupt); and types of speech acts and events (e.g., conversations, curses, prayers). The domain of the present investigation takes the utterance of a sentence in a particular context and in a particular manner as the unit of analysis. Unlike Hymes', this approach restricts itself to verbal material as well as to single utterances. In that sense it also differs from, and, in fact, complements, the wider scope of the enthnomethodologists in conversational analysis (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974) or the research of others on social interaction (e.g., Duncan, 1973).This research utilizes structural aspects of language (i.e., the requesting strategies a speaker uses) as a window to social behavior in the same way Vygotsky conceived of language as a window to the mind. The notion of a requesting strategy is defined here by the semantic form of the utterance. Examples (1) through (5) provide a representative sample of the range of requesting strategies in English. The list is by no means exhaustive, since more than twenty such strategies have been identified for English (Fräser, 1977).(1) Would you lend me 35 cents?(2) Will you lend me 35 cents?(3) Can you lend me 35 cents? (4) I want 35 cents. (5) Give me 35 cents now.

show abstract

On the functional analysis of social class differences in modes of speech

Cited by 52 publications

References 6 publications

Topic development, syntax, and social class

Topic development, syntax, and social class

A developmental study of low- and middle-class children's responses to wh-questions

Variation in the requesting behavior of bilingual children

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About