Topic development, syntax, and social class

Hemphill, Lowry

doi:10.1080/01638538909544731

Cited by 24 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Similarly, in a working-class community in America, adults typically engage children in conversation that Is elliptical and contains extensive anaphoric references, whereas, in a middleclass community, adults typically engage children in discourse with fully explicit, elaborate noun phrases (Heath 1983)0 Nevertheless, Bernstein's (1971) original theory of codes failed to acknowledge an overriding concern with collaborative message construction by working-class speakers (Hemphill 1989)0 Thus, dichotomies such as "elaborated code" and "restricted code" have been controversial. However, a working-class/oral style has been characterized generally as an ambiguous one, whereas a middle-class/literate style has been characterized generally as an explicit one.…”

Section: Issue Of Ambiguitymentioning

confidence: 97%

Haikuas a discourse regulation device: A stanza analysis of Japanese children's personal narratives

Minami

McCabe

1991

Lang. Soc.

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Conversational narratives of 17 Japanese children aged 5 to 9 were analyzed using stanza analysis (Gee 1985;Hymes 1982). Three distinctive features emerged: (1) the narratives are exceptionally succinct; (2) they are usually free-standing collections of three experiences; (3) stanzas almost always consist of three lines. These features reflect the basic characteristics of haiku, a commonly practiced literary form that often combines poetry and narrative, and an ancient, but still ubiquitous game called karuta, which also displays three lines of written discourse. These literacy games may explain both the extraordinary regularity of verses per stanza and the smooth acquisition of reading by a culture that practices restricted, ambiguous, oral-style discourse. The structure of Japanese children's narratives must be understood within the larger context of omoiyari "empathy" training of Japanese children. Empathy training may account for the production, comprehension, and appreciation of ambiguous discourse in Japanese society. (Cultural differences in discourse style, the relationship among oral language, literacy, and literature)

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Section: Issue Of Ambiguitymentioning

confidence: 97%

Haikuas a discourse regulation device: A stanza analysis of Japanese children's personal narratives

Minami

McCabe

1991

Lang. Soc.

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“…Working‐class speakers on the other hand tended to leave their interlocutor to infer their point of view, reflected in a greater amount of detail to ‘paint the scene’ and a more frequent use of syntactic constructions such as fronting to give focus to specific elements in the discourse. A further example comes from Hemphill's (1989) analysis of group discussions: Hemphill found that working‐class speakers used more ellipsis in turn‐initial position, such that the ellipted part of their utterance could be found in the previous speaker's turn, as in Extract 23:…”

Section: Sociolinguistic Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic variation and beyond: Gender  and social class variation in the use of  discourse‐new markers¹

Cheshire

2005

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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The paper explores the relations between syntactic variation and the largescale social dimensions of gender and social class. It argues on the basis of an analysis of the marking of discourse-new entities in interview speech that syntactic variants may frequently be involved in sociolinguistic variation, but indirectly, as just one of a broad set of choices that includes forms drawn from other components of language besides syntax. The analysis shows that although there is no sociolinguistic variation in the use of the strategies speakers use to mark discourse-new information, there are significant social class and gender differences in the use of Noun Phrases that are not marked. Whilst acknowledging the risks of generalising on the basis of large-scale social categories, an interpretation of these differences is suggested in relation to findings from previous research that suggest differences in the interactive style of different gender and social class groups. The paper discusses some implications of the analysis for the fields of language variation and change, and pragmatics.

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“…Miller et al 1992 found that a focus on self apart from others emerged in personal narratives told by European-American but not Chinese-American children around age five. American adolescent middleclass girls adhered to norms of autonomous telling and making original contributions, while working-class girls more often engaged in joint discussion, took brief turns, and echoed each others' points (Hemphill 1989). Blum-Kulka 1993 found that mealtime narratives in native Israeli families were more likely to be collectively told than in families who were living in the US or had immigrated to Israel; in the American families, the narrator worked harder to protect his or her own turn, and mothers often protected the autonomous telling rights of younger children.…”

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confidence: 99%

Narratives and explanations during mealtime conversations in Norway and the U.S.

Aukrust¹,

Snow²

1998

Lang. Soc.

135

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Mealtimes reveal culturally specific ways of talking, and constitute opportunities for socialization of children into those ways. In 22 Norwegian families and 22 American families, matched for age and gender of preschoolaged child and for participant constellation, mealtimes were examined for the occurrence and type of narrative and explanatory talk. All indices suggested that the Norwegian families produced more narrative talk -in particular, talk about minor deviations from social scripts -whereas the American families produced more explanatory talk, particularly talk focused on explanations for physical events or for individual behaviors. When Norwegian families gave explanations, they were likely to be focused on social norms and deviations from them, like their narratives. The results are interpreted in relation to the Norwegian cultural values of mitigated collectivism, egalitarianism, homogeneity, and implicit social rules, in contrast to American values of individualism, diversity, and explicit formulation and transmission of civic values. (Socialization, culture, narrative, explanation, family, mealtimes, Norway, USA.)* In this article we consider children's acquisition of ways of speaking during family mealtime conversations in Norway and the US. The study of language socialization rests on two assumptions about ordinary talk: first, that it is a culturally organized feature of social life in every society, and second, that it is a major mechanism of socialization. In several recent studies, meals have been found to expose children to a wide range of culturally molded speech genres -

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Topic development, syntax, and social class

Cited by 24 publications

References 27 publications

Haikuas a discourse regulation device: A stanza analysis of Japanese children's personal narratives

Haikuas a discourse regulation device: A stanza analysis of Japanese children's personal narratives

Syntactic variation and beyond: Gender  and social class variation in the use of  discourse‐new markers¹

Narratives and explanations during mealtime conversations in Norway and the U.S.

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Topic development, syntax, and social class

Cited by 24 publications

References 27 publications

Haikuas a discourse regulation device: A stanza analysis of Japanese children's personal narratives

Haikuas a discourse regulation device: A stanza analysis of Japanese children's personal narratives

Syntactic variation and beyond: Gender and social class variation in the use of discourse‐new markers1

Narratives and explanations during mealtime conversations in Norway and the U.S.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Syntactic variation and beyond: Gender  and social class variation in the use of  discourse‐new markers¹