Julia Snell

Dialect, interaction and class positioning at school: from deficit to difference to repertoire.

Sociolinguists have been fighting dialect prejudice since the 1960s, but deficit views of non-standard English are regaining currency in educational discourse. In this paper I argue that the traditional sociolinguistic response – stressing dialect systematicity and tolerance of ‘difference’ – may no longer be effective by questioning a key assumption that both deficit and difference approaches share, namely that there exist discrete varieties of English. Based on an empirical study of the language of working-class children in north-east England, I demonstrate that non-standard dialects of English do not have a discrete system of grammar that is isolated from other varieties; rather local dialect forms interact with a range of semiotic resources (including standard forms) within speakers’ repertoires. Interactional analyses of the childrens spontaneous speech highlight this hybridity, as well as the social meanings behind the linguistic choices children make. I conclude by addressing educational responses to non-standard dialect in the classroom, suggesting that it is not the presence or absence of non-standard forms in childrens speech that raises educational issues; rather, educational responses which problematise non-standard voices risk marginalising working-class speech, and may contribute to the alienation of working-class children, or significant groups of them, within the school system.

Interrogating video data: systematic quantitative analysis versus micro‐ethnographic analysis

This paper demonstrates how systematic observation software, such as The Observer XT, can be used to organise and manage large video corpora, assist in case selection, and facilitate comparability and cross referencing with a corpus. While this software has conventionally been used to produce quantitative results that can be subjected to statistical analyses, it will be argued that it can also assist in complementary qualitative analyses. Drawing upon data from a recent study of classroom discourse, the paper shows how a combination of systematic quantitative analysis and micro‐ethnographic analysis can lead to a productive cycle of generating and testing hypotheses, maintaining qualitative and ethnographic insight while producing findings of a more generalisable kind.

Schema theory and the humour of Little Britain

LITTLE BRITAIN is a television comedy show in the UK. Recurring characters appear in its episodes enacting situations that can be said to satirize British society. It was first aired by the BBC in February 2003. Little Britain has quickly amassed a loyal following and has grown significantly in popularity. It has won a number of prestigious comedy awards including ‘Best Comedy Performance’ and ‘Comedy Programme or Series Award’ at the BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, 2005). The humour in Little Britain has therefore been successful. Moreover, it is not based purely on visual comedy, being originally launched on BBC Radio 4 then transferred to television. Its humour originates in the language used. Schema theory, a useful tool for analysing much situational comedy, can shed light on the construction and interpretation of humour in Little Britain

An Introduction to Linguistic Ethnography: Interdisciplinary Explorations

The term ‘linguistic ethnography’ captures a growing body of research by scholars who combine linguistic and ethnographic approaches in order to understand how social and communicative processes operate in a range of settings and contexts. To date, linguistic ethnography has been described as an umbrella term: an area of shared interests where established research traditions interact (see Tusting and Maybin 2007; Rampton 2007a; Jacobs and Slembrouck 2010; Maybin and Tusting 2011). A great deal of research has been undertaken under this umbrella (see, for instance, the work of Jan Blommaert, Angela Creese, Marilyn Martin-Jones, Ben Rampton and Celia Roberts, and Table 1.1, below), building on the foundational work of scholars such as Frederick Erickson, John Gumperz and Dell Hymes, all of whom are cited throughout the collection. However, linguistic ethnography has yet to reach a position where we can claim it to be a clearly defined approach. Linguistic ethnographic work is dispersed among many different disciplinary areas and, currently, there is no dedicated journal to bring work together and support its development. We therefore thought it timely to publish a selection of contemporary linguistic ethnography work in one collection. Our aim is to take stock of linguistic ethnography: to invite readers to examine the breadth of disciplinary and methodological currents converging in linguistic ethnography, identify intelligible threads and consider opportunities and challenges.

Linguistic Ethnographic Perspectives on Working-class Children’s Speech: Challenging Discourses of Deficit

In February 2013 it was widely reported in national newspapers that the head teacher of a primary school in Teesside, north-east England, had banned the use of spoken Teesside dialect forms in the classroom and written to her pupils’ parents to ask that they do the same at home (e.g. Furness 2013; Williams 2013). The stated reason for this move was the need to give the working-class pupils involved the best possible chance of educational (and later career) success, which for this head teacher meant eradicating eleven ‘incorrect’ words, phrases and pronunciations from the children’s speech (represented in Figure 12.1). This story was of particular interest to me because I happen to be a native of Teesside — one who uses all eleven of these ‘problem’ features — and I have also conducted research on children’s language in this area. As such, I was especially infuriated by the inaccuracies and flawed assumptions evident in this head teacher’s letter to parents (and the media reporting of it) and troubled by the potential damage these might cause to young working-class children. I responded publicly in an article published in The Independent (Snell 2013a), but it was of course impossible to do justice to the issue in the less than 600 words afforded to me. In this chapter I pick up on some of the points addressed in this article, as well as the issues and questions that were raised in the debate surrounding it.

To what extent does a regional dialect and accent impact on the development of reading and writing skills

Abstract The issue of whether a regional accent and/or dialect impact(s) on the development of literacy skills remains current in the UK. For decades the issue has dogged debate concerning education outcomes, portable skills and employability. This article summarises research on the topic using systematic review methodology. A scoping review was undertaken with the research question: ‘To what extent does a regional dialect and accent impact on the development of reading and writing skills?’ The review covers research relevant to the teaching of five to 16-year-olds in England, but also draws on research within Europe, the USA, Australia and the Caribbean. The results suggest that curricula have marginalised language variation; that the impact of regional accent and dialect on writing is relatively minor; that young people are adept at style-shifting between standard and non-standard forms; and that inappropriate pedagogical responses to regional variation can have detrimental effects on children’s educational achievement.

“Low Ability,” Participation, and Identity in Dialogic Pedagogy:

Teachers are increasingly called on to use dialogic teaching practices to engage active pupil participation in academically challenging classroom discourse. Such practices are in tension with commonly held beliefs about pupil ability as fixed and/or context independent. Moreover, teaching practices that seek to make pupil thinking visible can also make perceived pupil “inarticulateness” and/or “low ability” visible, with important implications for pupil identities. This article explores how teachers in a dialogic teaching intervention managed the participation and identities of “low ability” pupils. We use linguistic ethnographic methods to analyze three different case studies in which teachers seek to include underachieving pupils’ voices in the discussion and discuss implications for dialogic pedagogy and the study of classroom social identification processes.

2.8 Moving from “Interesting Data” to a Publishable Research Article: Some Interpretive and Representational Dilemmas in a Linguistic Ethnographic Analysis of an English Literacy Lesson

This chapter explores the processes of case selection, data analysis, theoretical framing and representation in the move from research data to publication of a research article in a linguistic ethnographic study of classroom discourse and interaction. Over the course of our fieldwork in an East London primary school we observed and video-recorded a lesson in which the teacher invoked the televised talent show, X-factor, in organising the class to provide feedback on pupil writing. The subsequent 8-min episode intrigued us, so we spent a considerable amount of time analyzing it, and also played it back and discussed it with the teachers in the school. Ultimately, we published an article based on this episode: “Promises and Problems of Teaching with Popular Culture: A Linguistic Ethnographic Analysis of Discourse Genre Mixing” (Reading Research Quarterly, 2011). However, the move from “interesting episode” to published article was not at all straightforward. In this chapter we discuss the interpretive and representational dilemmas that we confronted in this process. In doing so, we reflect on the relationship between data and theory in linguistic ethnography, and on how academic institutions and genres impinge upon practices of interpretation and representation.