David Poveda

The Social Organization of a ‘Stone Fight’ Gitano children’s interpretive reproduction of ethnic conflict

This article examines the sequential organization and social meaning of a ‘stone fight’ between a group of Spanish Gitano children and a group of non-Gitano neighbour children. The episode crystallizes an ongoing dispute between neighbours in the community regarding access and use of public spaces and plazas. The authors argue that this occasion and its surrounding history allows Gitano children to reinterpret and redefine the nature of interethnic relations and contact. Also, it may provide resources for these children to cope with structurally based forms of exclusion and ethnic conflict in other social arenas (such as school or work).

Religious genres, entextualization and literacy in Gitano children

This article analyzes the connections between the oral genres displayed by Gitano (Spanish Gypsy) children and adults during religious instruction classes at an Evangelist church and the writings produced by Gitano children in an after-school computer program in the same community. Results are discussed in relation to two strands of received assumptions regarding Gypsy culture and recent theoretical insights in the study of literacy and discourse. On one hand, previous portraits of Gitano culture as exclusively oral need to be revised, in line with a more social and situated perspective on literacy. On the other, the results are a basis for critical examination of dominant explanations regarding the educational failure of Gitano children, an argument that highlights the importance of engaging intratextual linguistic analysis with discussions of the social and institutional orders. We first thank the research participants for their warm welcome to the different sites that are part of this study. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments. This study began when David Poveda worked in the School of Education and Humanities of the University of Castilla-La Mancha, where Ana Cano and Manuel Palomares-Valera completed their training. The research project was funded by the University of Castilla-La Mancha through an internal research grant (Principal Investigator: Beatriz Martin).

Literacy Artifacts and the Semiotic Landscape of a Spanish Secondary School

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Poveda, David. Literacy artifacts and the semiotic landscape of a Spanish secondary school. Reading Research Quarterly 47.1 (2012): 61-88, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/RRQ.010. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

The After School Routines of Literature-Devoted Urban Children

Abstract This paper discusses the out of school routines of a group of ‘literature-devoted’ children of the city of Madrid (Spain). The children and families were recruited for the study at a library, a childrens bookstore and a puppet show in a park. Participants provided information on their weekly routines through several procedures: surveys, photographs of their daily lives, interviews based on the photographs and interviews with parents. We develop a spatially based model that allows us to identify four styles of activity in childrens out of school lives: homebound children, non-scheduled children, outdoor and scheduled children, and fully scheduled children. Our results suggest that there is significant diversity in the ways in which childrens after-school time is organized, even within a middle-class and socially homogeneous sample as the one in this study. Also, the range of activities our participants engage in seems to contradict current portraits of Western urban childrens lives as constrained.

Storytelling with Sign Language Interpretation as a Multimodal Literacy Event: Implications for Deaf and Hearing Children.

This article examines storytelling events for children in a library and a childrens bookstore in which storytellers are accompanied by sign language interpreters. The result is that both hearing and Deaf children participate in a literacy event in which storyteller and interpreter produce a multilingual, multimodal and multimedial narrative. Using tools derived from the ethnography of communication, social semiotics and multimodal interactional analysis we build a model to examine that this discursive interrelationship between storyteller and interpreter has for hearing and Deaf childrens literary experience in the event. We postulate a continuum of six configurations (three for hearing children and three for Deaf children) in which the interpreter-storyteller relationship may add little to enhance or even disturb childrens narrative experience. In the conclusions we discuss possible alternative designs that would reduce Deaf childrens asymmetrical standing in the event.

‘La ronda’ como evento para la constitución social del grupo en una clase de educación infantil

Resumen Este artículo presenta un análisis de corte microetnográfico de un evento de habla conocido como la ronda, recurrente en muchas clases de educación infantil y primaria, en el que los niños y las niñas presentan al resto de la clase narraciones de experiencia personal. El estudio se realizó en un aula de educación infantil de cinco años en una escuela pública de Madrid y el evento seleccionado fue documentado a lo largo de todo un curso escolar. El análisis defiende que este acontecimiento comunicativo contribuye a que el grupo clase se constituya en una comunidad moral (Shweder, 1996), proceso que se ve reflejado en el modo en que se manejan temas afectivamente cargados, las normas de vida fuera del aula, la historia compartida de la clase o los derechos y deberes que rigen la interacción social durante este episodio.

Linguistic ethnography and the study of welfare institutions as a flow of social practices: the case of residential child care institutions as paradoxical institutions*

Abstract In this article we review ways of understanding how social and welfare institutions achieve their goals and produce their products, whether these are expected or not. We analyze mainstream approaches to study these institutions in Spain and in other parts of Europe. From this review, we argue in favor of an approach focused on the role of social practices as constitutive elements of institutional life and products. Our proposal focuses on one type of institution, residential child care institutions (RCCIs), to highlight how traditional limits between formally designed activities and informal practices may be problematized. The data comes from a brief linguistic ethnography, conducted in central Spain, in two RCCIs that focused on childrens everyday social practices in the institution. We argue that RCCIs may be characterized as “paradoxical institutions” due to what we call “paradoxical practices,” prototypical of these institutions. As part of this argument, we analyze and discuss the trajectory of a paradoxical practice by paying attention to the product it creates and develop a model to understand institutional functioning. Finally, we discuss how linguistic ethnography provides a valuable alternative to scrutinize the work of residential child care institutions and the role they play in childrens socialization.

Multimodalidad y participación de la infancia sorda en contextos de socialización literaria informales

En este articulo realizamos un analisis del discurso y la interaccion multimodal de una sesion de cuentacuentos realizada en una biblioteca en la que el narrador esta acompanado por una interprete de lengua de signos espanola (LSE). El caso forma parte de una investigacion mas amplia que examina sesiones de cuentacuentos en bibliotecas, librerias infantiles y parques como espacios de socializacion literaria en contextos de aprendizaje informal. Analizamos, por una parte, la relacion cambiante entre los medios/modos desplegados en el relato y las dificultades que esto genera para los espectadores sordos y, por otra parte, la propia participacion de los ninos sordos en esta sesion. El analisis hace explicita la complejidad del acto de interpretacion en LSE y la situacion asimetrica en la que se encuentra la infancia sorda en estas sesiones de cuentacuentos. Igualmente, el episodio analizado invita a plantear el desarrollo de una conciencia multimodal como parte de las competencias literarias y discursivas que potencialmente favorecen la clase de eventos narrativos analizados.

Concepciones del texto e intersubjetividad en cuentacuentos infantiles

Resumen En el contexto de la antropología lingüística y el folklore encontramos distintas propuestas analíticas sobre el texto, convergentes en dos dimensiones de la actividad narrativa (Bauman, 1986; Young, 1984 y Butler, 1992) que plantean categorías analíticas y permiten identificar diferentes planos, elementos y estructuras del discurso. Estas orientaciones pueden formar parte de los repertorios de los hablantes, ser estratégicamente manipuladas y ser producto de diferentes condiciones e ideologías sociales sobre el discurso (Briggs y Bauman, 1992). Un elemento teóricamente relevante, en este contexto, tiene que ver con desentrañar qué concepciones sobre la intersubjetividad (Crossley, 1996) se constituyen en la interrelación de los dos planos del discurso narrativo. En este trabajo realizamos un análisis de las ideologías y actuaciones de los cuentacuentos a través de la relación entre las concepciones del texto y las estructuras intersubjetivas que se presentan en el discurso que los cuentacuentos organizan sobre su actividad narrativa. El objetivo de este análisis es explorar el papel que otorgan a la audiencia en esa práctica de socialización literaria (Poveda, 2003).

Literacy mediations and mediators in the escuela dominical of a Gitano evangelist church

In this paper we examine discourse and interaction during Saturday morning religious instruction classes in a Gitano (Spanish Romani) evangelist church. The focus is on adults as literacy mediators for the children in the process of learning ways to use and interpret the Bible. The analysis centres on two aspects: (1) the forms of textuality that are developed around the Bible, and (2) the role that the adults gender or institutional position play in the forms of interactions and authority relations that are established with the children and the texts. These results should help revise conceptions of Gitano culture as exclusively oral and they also illustrate how the social, institutional and interactional orders of learning and discourse are interrelated in a non-formal religious setting.