Discourse Studies | 2019
Book review: Eric Friginal, Joseph J Lee, Brittany Polat and Audrey Roberson, Exploring Spoken English Learner Language Using Corpora: Learner Talk
Abstract
linguistic resources and embodied means to display sociocultural knowledge and use interactional strategies to make and employ assessments to demonstrate stance, perform social action and construct relationships. Canty (Chapter 18) formulates children’s use of categorization, epistemic and moral authority to resolve competing claims over relative epistemic rights. Last but not least, microscopic analyses provided by conversation analysis and authentic color pictures offered by technologically advanced transcription accurately show readers turn-by-turn dynamic accounts of how the epistemic, academic, social and cultural knowledge construction of children is carried out in their daily lives. For example, Gardner and Mushin (Chapter 2) address epistemic trajectories of students through an analysis of children’s verbal or non-verbal responses to teacher’s instructions. Bateman and Carr (Chapter 6) examine how a teacher and children collaborate to accomplish the storytelling task, showing that teachers may employ interactional strategies such as verbal and non-verbal prompts to scaffold children’s storytelling. Scriven (Chapter 17) details how one young sibling attempts to show another how to trace letters on an alphabet app., through which literacy practices can be oriented to by employing interactional and technological resources. Admittedly, the book still has some room for improvement in terms of organization and depth and breadth of content. The collection is basically well composed and highly effective, with an insightful foreword and introduction (Chapter 1). However, the afterword looks like an acknowledgment rather than a reflective closing statement. Although there are incidental discussions on implications for teaching practices in some chapters, more in-depth pedagogical consideration may be particularly helpful to those readers dedicated to child pedagogy. As children’s interactions are embedded in specific sociocultural contexts, perhaps more diverse contexts besides school and home, and different cultural backgrounds, may provide readers with more convincing cases for how children accomplish knowledge construction in interactions. Nevertheless, this is worthwhile research for those interested in knowledge, epistemics and pedagogical interaction, and particularly for researchers keen on childhood studies, teacher education and conversation analysis.