/ s ctq Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Volume 3

ORAL DISCOURSE AND EDUCATION

Edited by

BRONWYN DAVIES
James Cook University

Australia

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The Ontario Institute

and

DAVID CORSON

for

Studies in Education

University of Toronto
Canada

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME 3: ORAL DISCOURSE AND EDUCATION

General Introduction

vll
X1

Introduction Section L: Theorising Talk

1.

Talking about Text and the Culture of Literacy

I
11

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9.
10. 11.

David Olson A Critical-Pragmatic Theory of Classroom Talk RobertYoung A Sociocultural Perspective on Classroom Discourse Elizabeth Measures, Carsten Quell and GordonWells Challenging and Changing: Communicative Competence
and the Classroom

2t

3l
43 53

Shirley Grundy Ethnomethodological Studies of Talk in Educational Settings Carolyn Baker Poststructuralist Theory and Classroom Talk Nola I,lloway and Parn Gilbert

Section 2: Oral Language, Culture and Identity

Oral Language, Culture and

Class
andEthnicity:

65 75

A.D. Edwards
ConversationalPatterns Across Gender, Class Implications for Classroom Discourse
Temple Adger

DeborahTannen, Shari Kendall and Carolyn

Language Choice and Symbolic

Domination

87 95
105

Monica Heller Teacher-Pupil Talk in Multi-Ethnic Classrooms Viv Edwards Critical Oracy and Education for Active Citizenship
Rob Gilbert

B. Davies and D. Corson (eds), Encyclopedia of Innguage and Education, Volume 3: Oral Discourse and Education, v-vi.

v1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
12. 13. 14.
The Construction of Gendered Identity through Play
115

Bronwyn Davies The Construction of Gendered Identity through Classroom Talk Harriet BienumNielsen and Bronwyn Davies Narrative and the Shaping of Identity

r25 GENE
t37
147

ENCYCLOP,

15. 16.

Jill Golden The Construction of Social Competencies through Talk Judith L. Green and Carol N. Dixon The Acquisition of Communicative Competence amongst Children with Speech and Language Impairment Paul J. Pagliano

t57
This is one of eight ' tion published by Kl the maturity of the
and interdisciplinarl

Section 3: Oral Language and the Curriculum

17

18.

19. Preconditions for Successful Small-Group Talk in

Classroom

Classroom Discourse for the Facilitation of Learning Clotilde Pontecorvo Effective Educational Talk Neil Mercer

r69
179 the

t87 t97
207

confirm that 'langua any single discipline nise the diversity of choice of topics. Tl more than 40 count issues affecting ever
have also trie 'language and educ
'We

20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

David Westgate Children's Collaborative Talk Susan Lyle Interaction Patterns in University Education Vivian de Klerk Children's Talk and Computers Peter Scrimshaw The Use of Talk in Mathematics Susan E.B. Pirie Discourse and Conceptual Understanding in Science Carolyn Boulter Using Oral Discourse in Literary Studies James McGonigal

2r7
229

selves. The major a As principal volum, critical linguistics, s ume 2, Viv Edward
classrooms and the s has interests in the guage, and interdisc interests in languagr and evaluation of in 5, Jim Cummins has linguistics. For Voh and in language the in research into secr
r

239
249

Subject Index Name Index Tables of Contents other Volumes

259
269 277

And for Volume 8, guistics and in langr in the philosophy an guistics, and interdj including all the con theory of education People working i language are often research on such an,
B. Davies and D. Corsot

Vohane3: OralDiscour,
1997 Kluwer Academ

RONWYN DAVIES

THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDERED IDENTITY THROUGH PLAY

Play has many meanings and many functions in our society. The understanding of play as trivial, harmless or time wasting (Thorne, 1993) is not borne out by the literature on children's play, particularly as it relates to

gender differences and to the establishment and maintenance of gendered identities. Early research on children's oral play focussed on children's folklore and was blind to gender (Opie & Opie, 1959). Children's folk-

lore has now been scrutinized for its sexist content (Factor, 1988) but also for the ways in which the rmes are developed and changed by children in counter-sexist ways (Thorne, 1993). From the beginning of the 1980s several different approaches to play and gender have developed. One, initiated by Walkerdine (1981), draws attention to the discourses through which oppressive gender relations in children's play are facilitated in school settings. Another focuses on a variety of oral social skills in chjldren's play and the different take-up of these skills by girls and boys. In the late 80s and 90s there is a more subtle and complex theorising of gender and of the way gender is played out. These later studies tend to make gender, and the processes through which it is established and maintained, highly problematic. Ideas about how adults might work differently with children to disrupt old patterns of gendered play become a central focus.

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

traditional lore. We were told that the young had lost the power of entertaining themselves; that the cinema, the wireless and the television had become the focus of their attention; and that we had started our investigation fifty years too late". Despite this perception, the Opies found a rich oral tradition in use in children's play. In 1988 Factor continued this work, studying the rhymes, games, chants, insults, jokes and riddles, what she calls the "folkloric traditions of children's play" (Factor, 1988, p. xi).
B. Davies and D. Corson (ed"s), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Volutne 3: OraI Discourse and Education, I 15 124. @ 1997 Klrwer Academc Publshers. Printed in the Netherlands,

Opie and Opie (1959, p. v) write of the invisibility of children's verbal play in the 1950s. They comment that "one of the difficulties in making the present study has been that, since this work has no true predecessor, we had first to find out what there was to find out, before we knew whether there existed a subject to study. The generally held opinion, both inside and outside academic circles was that children no longer cherished their

tl6

BRONI/YN DAVIES

Factor (1988, pp. 140-141) documents the changing pattern of chants and rhymes from the unreflected, unquestioned sexism embedded in them in the 60s to chants which both reflect and constitute new social patterns. In the 1970s, for example, she observes girls chanting: Boys have the muscles Girls have the brains; Boys are the stupidest And we won the games. Factor (1988, p. 2) observes 'such changes occur without adult direction. They are the result of children's acute observation and awareness of shifts in social values, their sharp ear for whatever is new and newsworthy., she also notes that 'There are probably still boys who despise girls' ply and vice versa . . . certainly the separation of girls' and boyi' play remains a feature of playgroundlife' (Factor, 1988, p. 140).

UNDERSTANDING

"PLAY" AND ITS RELEVANCE

TO GENDER

real

fictional and real characters and plots which give us insight into our lived experiences. We allow ideas and concepts to "come into play" when we construct the world we take to be real. v/e talk of 'laying the game" when we mean entering into the rules of the real world and also when we mean a contestation of physical and sporting prowess on the part of athletes who tran atch them, but who also live they are often paid very
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1) Play is practising the real, or developing mastery. 2) Play is natural and not to be interfered with. It is through pray that the natural unfolding of sex/gender is facilitated (walkerdine, 19g1). 3) Play is the not-real, is Garvey (I990,p. 7) defines play as charac layers to unders-tand that what is done is not what it appears to be',. Auwarter (19g6,

GENDERED IDENTITY THROUGH

PLAY

TI7

into ctional ones". the basis for establishing and maintaining the relations be4) ' play isoneself and others inside the framework of the social world as tween
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and sexualize both girls and female teachers (See review by Alloway and Gilbert, this volume). Research on play and gender thus begins with observations of what IS taken to be natural, gradually focuses on the complex interplay between the social and the individual, then focuses on the discourses through which each of these 1S constructed. This 1S then followed by research which exafirnes play from the children ts point of view, looking at the links between play and lived and told narratives made available to the children. This research makes visible the ways 1n which the binary pattern of male- female 1S made real through lmagmary stories (Davies, 1 9 8e) and begins to recon-

ceptualize the individuaVsocial interface rn children

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118

BRONWYN DAVIES OBSBRVING AND THEORISING PLAY IN RELATION TO GENDER

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Curiously, one of the flrst social/linguistic skills teachers impart to children is a sharp distinction between the fictional and the real. It is possible to tactually observe the work through which this problematic divide is set up. Paley (1986,p. 2), for example, reports a conversation between herself as teacher and a boy she calls Frederick, who is three and newly in preschool: "Last night I saw a monster in my bed - a big white monster. Then a dinosaur." He looks around expecting encouragement. "Then what did the dinosaur do?" Stuart asks. "He hided downstairs. Then he went upstairs." Frederick pauses to eat his Graham cracker, watching me. "It was a dream, Frederick," I say. "No, teacher, listen, I want to tell you something. I saw a big white monster and then I saw a dinosaur and it was hiding by my bed under the covers and it was a monster in my room." "Frederick, I know it really seemed like the monster was in your room, but it was all in your dream." Frederick persists with his story and its elaboration insisting that it is not a dream, and that the monster did not want him to come to school. The teacher decides that it might have been a shadow on the wall, and Frederick rejects this as well. While the other children take his talk to be meaningful, the teacher does not. Metaphorical elaboration of his fears, imagined images so vivid they can be described as real, have no place in a preschool where fact and fantasy are being separated out - where "truth lslling" as other than the fictional is being developed alongside frequent exposure to the flctions of the society as fictions. The very serious work of fiction writers and of poets who extend the boundaries of what is sayable and knowable is precluded in the establishment of this division in children's oral reporting of "what happened". The work of preschool cannot incorporate what the teacher sees to be fantasy, and so fantasy is established, through work such as Paley's, as part of the world of fantasy or play rather than the world of work. 'While Paley sees play as the means by which children leam about what already exists as the social world, Corsaro (1985, p. 280) claims a more active role for play. 'Children not only develop social skills and knowledge as the result of interactive experiences, they actually use their developing skills and knowledge to create and maintain social order in their life worlds.' Corsaro analyses various play episodes in which the boys and girls reveal a knowledge of the stereotypes of male and female and yet at the same time reveal their own personal characteristics which may not at all fit the stereotypes. The childrn learn that they cannot expect

GENDERED IDENTITY THROUGH

PLAY

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each other to simply fall into stereotypical play although they know just how powerful the sJereotypes are. corsaro sees the power of the division between male and female as a problem posed by the adult world. He says that through PlaY:

children are: (a) using developing knowledge of appropriate sex-ryped behaviours; (b) discovering rhat this knowtge must be linked or articulated with locar features of the intractive scene, including characteristics of the participants and the socialecological setting; and (c) refining and expanding their developing knowledge as a result of their interactive experience
(Corsaro, 1985,

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ated with the maintenance of social proximily and the continuation of social exchange-(e.g., referring to an building upon th" ideas of others). Boys, by conast, upp"ur to use strateges that are mofe likely to lead to dispersive social interactionithat is, strategies that are often fo[owed by a disruption of pray an the need to begin anew Sheldon (1992, p. 96) girls argue during social to use "double voiced dis

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used by both groups when Single-voiced discourse,

girrs and boys when rheir domin"", group as a collaborative group. "fii;"",",iH:;iJJ:LfJ,Hjl Sheldon observes ,,we can best see the how talk is gendered if we tafe in'to consieration the context in which it emerges (e.g., the sex of the speakers and what the speakers are trying to accomplish" (1992,p. 96).
Jordan, cowan and Roberts (1995, p. 343) show how children use their knowledge of rules to gain power anutonomy within their social world.

120

RONWYN DAVIES

They observe that while rules are produced by adults, they can be used by children as weapons "in struggles to achieve or resist power ,, . . . And while socio-dramatic play has'its own rules inherent in it, ,,even within socio-dramatic play thee is a tendency for children to rely on classroom rules for the exercise of power" since their truth is perceived as less open to challenge. An example of this, is when a girl they have called Jane finds her game in the doll corner being disrupted by boys. When.rhe boys fail to recognise her already established positioning as mother, she controls the situation first by using the authority she has as mother and then by invoking the teacher's rules to exclude the boys: Maurice andAaron rush into the doll corner. "'Who,s the father?" inquired Maurice. "f am," Malcolm replied quickly. "Who's the

mother?" asked Maurice. ,,Alicia can be mum," said Malcolm authoritatively ..SHUT UP MALCOLM; SHUT IIP," shouted Jane angrily, ..NOW LISTEN, I'M THE MOTIIER EVERYONE; I' M THE MOTHER. There are too many people in the doll corner. Some_ one will have to go out. QUIETT. I will tell you who came in flrst; then the ones after that will go" (Jordan, Cowan & Roberts, 1995, p. 353).

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MAKING GENDER

PROB LEMATIC

Walkerdine (19S1) analyses the ways in which the life worlds of children's play is created and maintained through a belief in play and gender as "natural" and innocent. The extreme misogyny of the boys in her study is invisible to the teacher. The discourses of good teaching she has access to make the boys' behaviour trivial and of little import. Kamler et al (1993) take up this point in a sfudy of the first month of school. They show how violent and aggres sive behaviourin boys is normalised through going unremarked in school. while similar behaviour in girls is not only noticed but marked as deviant. Girls (and some boys) are denied the ability to stand up to aggression in school, at the same time as they are denied the safety that prohibirion of schoolboy violence would allow Davies (1989) takes up the poststructuralist analysis in Walkerdine's work and looks at the intertextuality of the stories preschool children play out in the playground and the fictional stories they are read. The taking up ofgender identities is analysed as a locating of oneself in recognised and recognisable storylines derived from a reading of the culture and its texts However limiting and oppfessl ve the effects may be, gendered identity is something that is struggled for, since it is recognised as essential to becoming a competent and powerfl member of any.social group. This is

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GENDERED IDENTITY THROU-GH

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their desire is often for the possibilities only available to the other gender, andthattheir competencies are not always limited to what one or other of the genders is supposed to be able to do. Jordan and Cowan focus on the contest between boys' determination to explore narratives of masculinity involving guns, fighting, fast cars, and the teachers' attempts to exclude such play from their classrooms. "We afge that what occurs is a contest between two definitions of masculinity: whatwe have chosen to call 'warrior narratives' and the discourses of civil society - rationality, responsibility, and decorum - that are the basis of school discipline" (1995, p. 728). They observe that "Whereas even the most timid, least physically aggressive boys . . . are drawn to identifying with the heroes of these narratives, girls show almost no interest in them at this early age. The strong-willed and assertive girls in our study . . . sought power by commandeering the role of mother, teacher or shopkeeper (1995,p. 732). Jordan and Cowan argue that the outlawing of the warrior nanative might be read by boys as simply one of the many constraints of school, but that equally it may be read as proof of the femininity of schooling. In the latter reading the wanior narratives become crucial discursive tools in the maintenance of male identity. Jordan also analyses the process by which the "good boys" , in contrast to the "fighting boys", adopt a deflnition of masculinity based on avoidance of what is done by

play runs across and between the genders, that so, despite the fact that their

girls. "Fightingboys' 'who have appropriatedthe role of hero in the warrior

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discriminatory scene into one of interestingly the dominant aggressive boys vacated the scene rather than join in this new collaborative play

transformation of a skilful and collaborative

WORK IN PROGRBSS
in progress is that being
ged in a study of young s not a major feature of

nctionar worrds with reat worrds in video "Video game texts . . . align masculinity with power, with aggres_ sion, with victory and winning, with superiority and strengttr _ and of course, wfh violent action. They offerpositions for yung male game players that promise success as masculine sujectsl

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tions of violence challenge the reader to resist, to contest, to de-naturalise cultural and textual practices that legitimate violence and that betray our potential for human connectedness' (1997, p. 99).Most of the boys were uncritical and unreflective about their experiences of the video games and were unlikely to recognise the political effects of theil immersion in violent

violent action" (Alloway & Gilbert, 1997, p. 97). ll-4,i Alloway and Gilbert use Giroux's distinction violence. Ritual violence is repetitive and connected to thrill and release; it naturalises itself simultaneous refl ection, creation and maintenance of reality. Symbolic violence, in contrast, .asks for more complex, critical, and intellectual engagement with the issues by evoking more complex emotional responses, symbolic representa-

The video game arcade thus becomes a social arena within *ttl"tt hegemonic masculinity can be experienced and practiced. . . . In the virtual reality on promise within the video game, maleness is equated with the attainment of power and Juccess through

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GENDERED IDENTITY THROUGH

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PLAY

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more sense of the ways in which violent imaginary play is entailed in the establishment and maintenance of a violent world.

PROBLEMS AND DIFFICULTIES

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The most significant problem in the research on gender and play is in recognising the complex relations between what is imagined and what becomes real. The power of the imagination is not just to shape what is real, but to lend power differentially to real players, with very real effects. Baudrillard analyses in some detail the seepage in film texts between image and reality. He says: More generall the image is interesting not only in its role as reflection, mirror, representation of, or counterpart to, the real, but also when it begins to contaminate reality and to model it, when it only conforms to reality the better to distort it, or better still: when it appropriates reality for its own ends, when it anticipates it to the point that the real no longer has time to be
produced as such (Baudrillard,1987, p. 16). A further problem is to understand the recalcitrance of the imagined self

and its imagined patterns of desire in the face of new and "politically correct" admonitions from adults (Davies, I99l). Related to this is the

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Future research on children's play and gender is unlikely to treat play
as

r24

RONWYN DAVIES

critical citizenship is honoured as a goal of education, classroom practice should be about enabling students critically to read the processes wherein they take up personal, relational and cultural meanings'.
James Cook University Australia
REFERENCES
Alloway, N. & Gitbef, P.: 1997, 'Video game culture: Playing with masculinity, violence and pleasure', in S. Howad (ed.), Wired Up: Young People and the Electronic Media, Falmer Fress, London, 95-114. Auwarter, M.: 1986, 'Development of communicative skills: The construction of fictional reality in children's play', in J. Cook-Gumperz, WA. Corsao & Streeck, J. (eds.), Children's Worlds and Children's Language, Mouton de Gruyter, Berln,2O5229.
Baudrillad, J.: 1987, The Evil Demon of Im.ages, The Power Institute of Fine Arts, Sydney. Black, B.: 1992, 'Negotiating social pretend play: Communication differences related to social status and sex', M e rrill - P alme r Quart e rly 38, 212-232. Bretherton, I.: 1989, 'Pretence: The form and function of make-believe', Developmental

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9,383401. Corsaro, W.A.: 1985, Friendship and Peer Culture in

Revew Company, Norwood.

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Early Years, Ablex Publishing

Corsaro, W.A.: 1994, 'Discussion, debate, and fendship processes: Peer discourse in U.S. and Italian nursery schools', S ociolo gy of Education 67, l-26. Davies, B.: 1989, Frogs and Snails and Feminist Thles. Preschool Children and Gender,

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Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

Davies, B.: 1996, Power/KnowledgelDesire. Changing School Organisation and Management Practices, Department of Employment, Education and Training, Canberra. Davies, B.: 1997, 'Constructing and deconstructing masculinity through critical literacy', Gender and Education 9(1), 9-30. Factor, J.: 1988, Captain Cook Chased a Chook. Children's Folklore inAustralia,Penguin, Ringwood. Garvey, C.: 1990, Play,Hanard Univers Press, Cambridge MA. Jordan, E.: 1995 'Fighting boys and fantasy play: The construction of masculinity in the early years of school', Gender and Education1(l),69-85. Jordan, E. & Cowan, A.: 1995, 'Warrior narratives in the kindergaten classroom. Renegotiating the social contract?' Gender and Society 9(6),7n-:743. Jordan, E., Cowan, A. & Roberts, J.: 1995, 'Knowing the rules: Discursive strategies in

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Opie, I. & Opie, P.: 1959, The Innguage and Lore of Schoolchildren, Oxford University Press, London. Paley, V.G.: 1986, Mollie is Three. Growing Up in School, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Sheldon, A; 1992, 'Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic challenges to self-assertion and how young girls meet them', Merrill-Palmer euarterly 38(l), 95-117. Thorne, B.: 1993, Gender Play. Gir and Boys in School Open University Press, Buckingham. ry'alkerdine,V.: 1981,'Sex,powerandpedagogy',ScreenEducaton38,14-24.

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bec

Winnicott, D.W.: 1971, Playing and Realitypengin, Harmondsworth.

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