H714: Childhood Socialization

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H714 Childhood Socialization

• October 10, 2006
• Kendra Winner

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October 10, 2006 Agenda

• Speech Events Continued reading discussion
• Childhood Language Socialization
• Video Analysis
• Primary and secondary socialization
• Facilitated Discussions

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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

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Discourse Completion Test revisited

• Cop Scenario
• Move the damn car. (upgrader)
• Move the car, lady. (softener)
• Do you know youre parked in a loading zone?

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Speech Events

• Communicative, rule governed sequences.
• Knock knock jokes
• Knock Knock
• Whos There?
• Abby
• Abby who?
• Abby Birthday to you.

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Speech Events

• Knock knock jokes
• Knock Knock
• Whos There?
• Marsh
• Marsh who?
• Marshmellow.

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Speech Events

• Communicative, rule governed sequences.
• Playing the dozens
• Rules
• Meaning

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Emic meaning for participants

• Deborah Schiffrin (1984)
• Jewish Argument as Sociability
• Working-class, Jewish community in Philadelphia

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• Debby Is there a coffee clique around here?
• Jack No
• Freda There may be, but I dont know it.
• Jack I dont think there is
• Freda I think there is, but dont know of it.
• Jack No? All right.

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• 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 didnt go any
  further.
• Ira uh Yeh, we went tNew York, we went to
  Atlantic City, we went tPittsburgh.
• Jan Well thats this country, she said out of
  Philadelphia.
• Ira um we just went toKuchs what the hell do
  you mean we dont travel?

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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

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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.

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Childhood Socialization

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

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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

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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?

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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

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Socialization Contexts

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

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Early Language Socialization

• Peggy Miller
• South Baltimore
• Dyadic
• A gtB
• BgtA
• Direct instruction

• Elinor Ochs Bambi Schieffelin
• Samoa
• Polyadic
• AgtB
• BgtC
• CgtA
• Observation

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Later language socialization

• Context shifts
• From heavily familial to heavily extra-familial
• Peer contexts
• Distinctive speech events and routines that dont
  have a parallel in adult society or adult
  expectations
• Yupik Story
• Israeli Ritualized Sharing
• School contexts