H714: Childhood Socialization October 10, 2006 Kendra Winner

October 10, 2006 Agenda  Speech Events Continued … reading discussion  Childhood Language Socialization  Video Analysis  Primary and secondary socialization  Facilitated Discussions

Small Group Activity Continued:  How thoroughly/accurately are “emic” meanings of participants considered in interpretation of the data (consider methodology such as cultural insiders, triangulation of data)?  How do particular components of the communicative events interact to impact meaning and structure? Senders, speakers, addressors Receivers, hearers, addressees Purposes and functions Channels Linguistic Codes Settings (immediate, social, community, cultural) Forms/Genres Topics Speech events proper

Discourse Completion Test … revisited  Cop Scenario Move the damn car. (upgrader) Move the car, lady. (softener) Do you know you’re parked in a loading zone?

Speech Events  Communicative, rule governed sequences. Knock knock jokes “Knock Knock” “Who’s There?” “Abby” “Abby who?” “Abby Birthday to you.”

Speech Events Knock knock jokes “Knock Knock” “Who’s There?” “Marsh” “Marsh who?” “Marshmellow.”

Speech Events  Communicative, rule governed sequences. Playing the dozens  Rules  Meaning

Emic … meaning for participants  Deborah Schiffrin (1984)  Jewish Argument as Sociability Working-class, Jewish community in Philadelphia

 Debby: Is there a coffee clique around here?  Jack: No  Freda: There may be, but I don’t know it.  Jack: I don’t think there is  Freda: I think there is, but don’t know of it.  Jack: No? All right.

 Debby: Okay. Have you traveled very much outside of Philadelphia?  Jan: No. I think as far as we got was Canada. Ou were overseas in the war, but I didn’t go any further.  Ira: uh … Yeh, we went t’New York, we went to Atlantic City, we went t’Pittsburgh.  Jan: Well that’s this country, she said out of Philadelphia.  Ira: um … we just went to’Kuch’s what the hell do you mean we don’t travel?

Big Ideas …. So far  Week 1: Language and Culture – Perspectives and Methodologies  Week 2: Communicative Interaction: Dialects and Speech Acts  Week 3: Conversational Interactions and Speech Events

Clifford Geertz  To see ourselves as others see us can be eye- opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes. If interpretive anthropology has any general office in the world it is to keep reteaching this fugitive truth.

Childhood Socialization  Through their participation in social interactions, children come to internalize and gain performance competence in socioculturally defined contexts (Ochs, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978)

Language Socialization  Socialization through language The acquisition of social understandings and systems of belief through exposure to and participation in language-mediated interactions (Ochs, 1990).  Socialization to use language The ability to speak in ways that are appropriate to the context

Video Observations  What adult goals can you infer?  How much are very young children treated as “real” conversational partners?  How do adults structure their talk to support joint interaction? To support teaching?

Cultural Variation  Contexts of occurrence US white middle class Kaluli  Frequency of occurrence  Significance/meaning (structure/function)  Variation among members of a society  Explicit/Implicit

Socialization Contexts  Primary Socialization Family/Home Community (peer groups, religious organizations)  Secondary Socialization School Peer groups Work Institutions/organizations

Early Language Socialization  Peggy Miller  South Baltimore Dyadic  A >B  B>A Direct instruction  Elinor Ochs & Bambi Schieffelin  Samoa Polyadic  A>B  B>C  C>A Observation

Later language socialization  Context shifts From heavily familial to heavily extra-familial Peer contexts  Distinctive speech events and routines that don’t have a parallel in adult society or adult expectations Yup’ik Story Israeli Ritualized Sharing School contexts