unlike other studies (hinhman& younge, ect) none of the four ... · web viewsystemic functional...

Ideological Processes in Conversation and Writing 1

Social Ideologies in Grade Eight Students’ Conversation and Narrative Writing

In this paper, we illuminate the nature of social ideologies in four eighth-grade students’

talk as they generate ideas for their narrative writing. Using systemic functional linguistics

(Eggins & Slade, 1997) and related critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995), we identify the

influence of social ideologies on students’ informal talk and on their writing. We consider ways

in which interpersonal and intertextual relationships were constructed, influenced, and negotiated

in an informal brainstorming session.

Two research questions guided our study: (1) What are the interaction patterns among

four grade eight students as they brainstorm ideas for their narrative writing? (2) What social

ideologies are reflected in the students’ brainstorming talk and in the writing that follows from

the talk? Our study extends the findings of previous research (Freedman, 1992; Gere & Stevens,

1985) that focused on the relationship between students’ participation in peer response groups

(small groups established by the teacher to provide feedback to peers on developed drafts of their

work) and their sense of audience.

Theoretical Perspectives

Our study stems from a Vygotskian (1986) notion that interaction is integral to learning.

Following from this view, understanding how individuals interact within their social context is

critical to an understanding of learning to write in classrooms. Much of the previous research

into how students position themselves within their classroom’s social contexts demonstrates

unequal positions within classroom interactions. Researchers have approached these inequities

from a number of different perspectives such as: students’ appropriation of popular culture

(Dyson, 1997); gender influences on the topics and types of writing that were valued (Blake,

1997; Evans, 1996; Finders, 1997); the influence of classroom social status on the purposes for


and audience response to the writing (Lensmire, 1994; Phinney, 1994); and the implications of

race, gender, and class on students’ participation in class (Hinchman & Young, 2001). We

believe this research reflects two important aspects of ideology: the ideological content of

student discourse (the underlying assumptions about the topic under discussion) and the social

organization of the discourse (who has rights to speak about what). In this paper, we use critical

discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) to inquire into the ideological content of student discourse

and we use Eggins and Slade (1997) to examine the social organization of the discourse.

These two aspects of ideology reflect the fact that language is not neutral; language is

historically and socially charged (Bakhtin, 1981). Both the content and the organization of the

speakers’ language are influenced by their experiences. The content of these texts does not

appear randomly, but rather in particular parts of society—in particular types of homes, schools,

work, newspapers, books, magazines, television programs, websites, etc. Depending on where

they live, work, read, and go to school, depending on their parents, friends, teachers and bosses,

individuals from different parts of society meet, interact with, and use different texts. Some of

these texts have more value and more status in society than others. Familiarity with,

accessibility to and competent use of these texts recreate and reinforce the individual’s status in

society. Blair’s (1998) study provides an example, as the Native Canadian girls in a fifth-grade

classroom did not see content from their culture represented in written texts in the classroom and

handed in far fewer written texts than their non-Native peers.

We address social ideologies as organization of texts through the identification of who

brings these ideologies to the conversation, as well as who responds, and how they respond

(Eggins & Slade, 1997). The “social ideologies as organization of texts” perspective is interested

in power relationships within groups. Questions of who gets to open topics of conversations,

whose suggestions are supported and extended, and of whose suggestions are challenged or not


taken up are important for understanding social ideologies in terms of organization of texts.

Interactions often re-create existing power hierarchies and lead to the silencing and exclusion of

certain students. In Evans’s (1996) study of fifth-grade students’ participation in a literature

circle, for example, the boys positioned themselves as powerful group members through their

teasing and demeaning of the girls in the group. Similarly, Sommers and Lawrence (1992) found

that college-level peer response groups often provided fewer opportunities for female students,

as the males made themselves heard more frequently, represented female peers’ ideas as their

own, and silenced their female peers.

We use both aspects of social ideologies to look at the intertextual nature of the

conversations and to examine the implications beyond the given interaction. Intertextuality is a

useful notion to explore how students’ experiences are realized in their discussion and in their

writing. Fairclough (1995) defines intertexts as the links between a particular text and other texts

and text types (p.8). We limit the use of the word “intertextuality” to refer to the students’

spoken or written texts. We recognize that these texts are only one element among many (e.g.

through gesture, gaze, clothing, actions, and other forms of body language) that students use to

organize and express their past experiences.

In this study, we look at a sample of a brainstorming activity among a group of four

eighth-grade students. This brainstorming activity focused on magazine photographs students

had brought as starting points for developing characters for narratives. In our critical discourse

analysis of the brainstorming session, we identified the intertexts between students’ experiences

and the content of their discussion, as well as the social organization of the discussion.

Fairclough (1995) espouses the use of systemic functional linguistics in critical discourse

analysis. Systemic functional linguistics offers three major benefits to our analysis of eighth-

grade students’ conversation: (1) an integrated, systematic model of language to describe and


quantify student talk at multiple levels and degrees of detail, (2) a process of “denaturalizing the

ideological processes of casual conversation” (Eggins & Slade, 1997, p. 63), and (3) a means to

theorize links between language and social life inside and outside the classroom. Eggins’ and

Slades’ (1997) work with systemic functional linguistics builds on and extends previous

ethnomethodological work to understand how individuals make sense of their everyday life

through conversation (Garfinkel, 1967; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). Eggins and Slade

(1997) highlight the interpersonal component of talk, enabling us to understand how students

respond to and position the work of their peers and how this interaction influences their writing.

Basing their work on Halliday (1985), Eggins and Slade (1997, pp. 53-54) identify four

patterns of interpersonal meaning in casual conversation: grammatical patterns, semantic

patterns, discourse patterns, and generic (genre) patterns. Discourse patterns, the main focus of

our analysis, show how people act (e.g., by supporting, confronting, challenging) towards each

other in conversation. Discourse patterns also illustrate the effect of those actions on the

conversation (e.g., Does the action move the conversation along? Does it terminate the

conversation?) Grammatical patterns describe the mood (e.g., declarative, interrogative or

imperative) of the clauses used by each speaker. Semantic patterns refer to the attitudinal and

expressive meanings in the words. Generic patterns refer to the type of talk (e.g., narrative,

anecdote, recount, opinion) that occur over large segments of conversation.

Methodology

The Teacher and the Classroom Context

We describe in detail four eighth-grade students’ participation in activities on the first

day (February 23) of a six-week narrative writing project in Andrew’s eighth-grade classroom.


We selected Andrew’s classroom for the study because Andrew was known to incorporate peer

discussion into every aspect of his language arts classes.

Prior to February 23, we had observed Andrew’s language arts classes three days a week

for two months. In the first two months, the students read Lois Lowry’s, The Giver and wrote

diary entries taking the position of one of the characters in the story. In the second term, the

teacher focused on writing a narrative. The schedule of classes directed toward the narrative

writing is in Table 1.

_________________________

Insert Table 1 about here

_________________________

Andrew’s classroom differed from most in this urban Canadian school district because it

was part of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program. This school district offers

this program only at two publicly-funded middle schools. At the time of the study, Andrew was

the school’s part time coordinator of the Middle Years Program. While the philosophy of the

Middle Years Program stressed global responsibility and global citizenship, Andrew believed

that students should write about things that were close to them. He told the story of one of his

student’s parents who had asked him why students were not writing about global community

concepts. Andrew had responded: “Let them write about what they’re interested in. If it’s about

adolescence, about adolescent development, let them do that.”

Andrew also valued individual expression of ideas and often spoke of his desire for

students to take risks. He gave students many choices in the topics and formats of assignments

and provided opportunities for brainstorming and time to receive feedback from peers. Andrew

tried to intervene as little as possible in students’ writing. He explained that he used to “spoon-


feed” students and their writing ended up being very uniform, conforming to the models he

provided.

Andrew did intervene, however, in terms of providing models for student interaction.

Before instructing students to read and respond to a partner’s writing, Andrew asked students to

review guidelines for peer response to writing, one student said, “Don’t give really negative

comments.” Andrew responded by saying, “Right, no put- downs. Put your criticism in a

positive way. The purpose of responding to a writer is to help that writer, to care about what

they have to say.” David, a participant in our study added, “Start with what you like about it and

then say what they need to improve on.” We observed that the students treated each other very

respectfully in small group work and in their informal interactions while writing.

Instruction Leading to the Small-Group Interactions on February 23

This paper centers on a brainstorming session that took place on February 23rd, the

beginning of the narrative writing project. In this session, students brought in pictures from

magazines and brainstormed attributes of a character they might include in their story.

Andrew began the lesson by putting up a magazine photograph of a woman on the white

board and writing a brief description of what he thought the woman’s personality, occupation

and interests might be. He then asked individual students to dictate sentences that he might use

in a character description of his character, Luda. Andrew showed two examples of character

descriptions from other students who were not in the class, and provided a set of attributes to use

as guides while they wrote their own character descriptions (e.g., How do the character’s facial

features, body shape, and clothing contribute to his or her personality?). He assigned the writing

of a narrative of any type (mystery, realistic fiction, horror, fantasy, etc.) on any topic that


students chose as long as they used the character from their character description somewhere in

their narrative.

Case Study Participants

Of the 33 students in the classroom, 16 were girls and 17 were boys. The classroom was

diverse in terms of ethnicity and languages spoken in the students’ homes. Students were of

Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and European descent. Andrew, the teacher, was of European

descent.

Following two months of observation, we met with Andrew to select the four focus

students, Meera, Rachel, David, and Jake (all names are pseudonyms). Restricted by the number

of parental consent forms we received, we selected a sample that was as diverse as possible in

terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, and the teacher’s assessment of the students’ writing

abilities. Meera and her family had moved to Canada from Sri Lanka when Meera was in grade

two. Rachel, David, and Jake were born in Canada.

Meera preferred reading to writing, although her stories were often tens of pages long.

She stated that her goals as a writer were to write narratives that weren’t boring. She was

particularly interested in peer feedback that indicated peers’ level of interest in her writing.

Meera preferred getting feedback from Rachel because the two had known each other for a long

time and Meera found that Rachel provided good ideas. She said that she wrote differently for a

peer audience than for her teacher because “when your classmates or others are going to read it,

you want to make sure that they will like it and not something that only one person, like Mr. W

would like.” Knowing that boys in her class would be giving her feedback on the story, Meera

added a male character, Ryan, to her story because she “didn’t want to make it so girlish.”


Meera’s writing abilities were above average, though she had difficulty with conventional

grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Andrew identified Jake as a strong, creative writer who takes risks. Jake said he enjoyed

reading and writing at home when there were no imposed dead lines or time frames. He found it

difficult to write within the time frames that Andrew gave students in class. Jake appreciated

getting feedback from peers because it indicated the meanings that others constructed while

reading his narrative. Jake said he had been with his peer group long enough to “know how to

get the laughs” when he read his narratives to the class. He was aware that his peers might find

his writing boring if he were too descriptive, but knew that his teacher appreciated details. He

also was aware of the value in using peers’ suggestions because “you know when you’re reading

it to the class that if you use their stuff, they’re going to like it. You have to have the audience

on your side.” He felt that Meera was most helpful in providing information about rhetorical

features of his writing, whereas David was helpful in providing information about the content of

the writing.

Rachel enjoyed writing and reading. Her teacher felt that she was one of the best writers

in the class. She stated a preference for peer feedback about plot development in her narratives.

She also wanted to know whether peers found her writing interesting and “descriptive enough.”

Rachel did not ask her friends for feedback because “they’ll probably just tell you it’s good and

everything because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.” She was very conscious of her

teacher’s criteria for good writing and felt that it sometimes conflicted with peers’ assessment of

her writing.

David struggled with reading and writing, having had extensive tutoring in grade five. He

described areas he liked peers to comment on that were in Andrew’s mini-lessons and rubrics:

the mood, specific verbs, nouns, adjectives, physical descriptions and the characters’ actions,


identifying all areas as important. David did not feel comfortable writing for a peer audience

because “you really get judged a lot by the students.” He did not like receiving feedback from

peers “because the whole piece is torn apart while the others watch.” Because he did not enjoy

writing but valued good grades, David preferred using a rubric from his teacher that outlined

what the teacher expected to guide his revisions. He found it much easier to meet one person’s

expectations than to try to accommodate the expectations of a whole class of peers.

Throughout the study the four students often participated in many aspects of the writing

classroom. All students raised their hands during whole-class discussions, offered responses,

and asked questions. All students participated during the small group discussions and activities.

In their informal conversations throughout the six weeks of the narrative writing project, they

talked about their writing, gave opinions on the behavior of other students in the class and of

teachers in the school, defined and clarified the tasks Andrew assigned, provided information

about their personal lives, and about movies and television shows, and talked about writing

materials. Our analysis focuses on the talk that relates to their writing.

Data Sources

Data sources for the study included:

(1) 126 single-spaced pages of field notes of classroom observations,

(2) copies of students’ drafts and polished writing completed during the six weeks of the

writing project (Jake wrote seven drafts, David and Meera each wrote four drafts, and Rachel

wrote three drafts),

(3) transcriptions of the students’ informal conversation as they completed the

brainstorming activity (34 typed, double-spaced pages), and


(4) one 30-minute interview with each of the four focus students and one 60-minute

interview with the classroom teacher (interview questions are in Appendix A).

Data Analysis

In our analysis of the discourse of the four focus students’ informal brainstorming on

February 23rd we coded opening, responding, and rejoinder moves and their supportive or

confrontational nature. We noted how often each student opened a new sequence of talk, how

often each supported others’ talk, and how often each student’s own talk was supported by his/

her peers.

We began by identifying moves, defined by Halliday (1994) as the points where the

speaker could conceivably stop speaking and some one else would speak. We then identified

who made the opening move, who (if anyone) took up the move, and how the move was taken

up. A speaker might make a bid to open a new round of talk or to sustain the line of talk. In

casual conversations, opening moves are generally more assertive in terms of the social

organization of the conversation because the speaker is making a bid to control the topic. While

the discussions in our data are part of a classroom brainstorming discussion, the teacher did not

define any particular conventions to regulate the organization of the talk. In our data, only two

types of opening moves were relevant—opening with an “give” of information or a demand

(Halliday, 1985, p 69) (see Figure A).

____________________

Insert Figures A, B and C about here

____________________

In sustaining moves, the speaker reacts to, supports, or confronts the previous speaker. In

our data, we found two types of sustaining moves to be most common and most interesting from


an ideological point of view: responding and rejoinder. As shown in Figure B, in the first type of

sustaining move, the speaker responded to the previous speaker. Responding moves indicate a

willingness for the speaker to go along with the topic or proposition of the previous speaker. In

other words, the responding speaker depends on the previous speaker, thus the move is much less

powerful and assertive than opening moves. However, while a responding move indicates a

willingness for the speaker to go along with the topic of the previous speaker, the response might

not follow the direction of the previous speaker. As Figure B indicates, the responding speaker

may support or confront the previous speaker. From an ideological point of view, supportive

moves—moves that accept the proposition of the previous speaker—are more deferential to the

previous speaker than confrontational moves. However, it is important to note that both moves

depend on the previous speaker.

We also identified rejoinder moves in the students’ conversation. Rejoinder moves

interrupt the flow of the proposition. As shown in Figure C, rejoinder moves may query—track,

confirm, check, clarify, or probe—the previous move. While rejoinder moves cannot be neutral,

they cannot be as clearly distinguished as supportive or challenging as responding moves. By

querying into the previous move, a rejoinder depends on the previous speaker and potentially

supports her proposition. On the other hand, a rejoinder move may also confront the previous

move. However, how the present speaker will attempt to incorporate the move back into the

flow of the conversation remains unknown.

The speaker may offer a rejoinder move to dismiss the previous contribution, to question

its relevance, its veracity, or its importance. In casual conversation, a challenging rejoinder is

much more aggressive than a confrontational response. With a challenging rejoinder the speaker

interrupts the flow of talk by refusing to take the position offered to them by the previous

speaker. Challenging rejoinders “directly confront the positioning implied in the addressee’s


move, and thus express a certain independence on the part of the speaker. Because they

invariably lead to further talk, in which positions must be justified of modified, challenging

moves contribute most assertively to the negotiation of interpersonal relationships” (Eggins &

Slade, 1997, p. 213).

After identifying the roles each student took while participating in the discussion, we

turned to the content of the talk. We looked at the lexis (the vocabulary) in the move, explored

what other texts seem related to that lexis, and commented on the ideological processes involved

in these moves. We identified larger social and institutional contexts within which the speakers

positioned people, processes, and situations. Because the students brainstormed characteristics

for the characters in their writing on February 23, we highlighted the elements within students’

writing that were reflected in their talk and commented on the positional context of the talk

within the conversation. We identified the choices the students made on this day that appeared

and flowed through subsequent drafts of their narrative writing.

Results and Discussion

Social Organization of the Conversations

In terms of social organization, opening moves (see Figure A) are generally assertive

moves because the speaker makes a bid to guide the topic of the conversation. From Table 2 we

see that all students made moves to open new routes for talk. Our research findings support

those of previous research on small-group contexts in which students lead conversations about

written texts without teacher participation (Evans, 1996; Sommers & Lawrence, 1992). We

found that such contexts do not always provide opportunities for all members of the group to

participate equally and have their contributions valued equally.


We did not observe the sharp gender influences in the flow of power among the four

students that previous researchers found, however. Evans (1996), and Sommers and Lawrence

(1992) found that boys controlled most of the topics of conversations in small group literature

discussions. In our data, Meera took the lead in introducing topics for conversation as frequently

as the boys did. Rachel introduced topics half as often as her peers did, however. All four

students assumed that their talk should follow the lead of the teacher by focusing on the guiding

questions he had given them.

____________________

Insert Tables 2-6 about here

____________________

The talk after a student proposed a topic for discussion influenced both the student’s

writing and her/his position within the conversation. The students’ positions within the

conversation depended on how deeply peers delved into the proposed topic, how much they

elaborated on it, and to what degree they accepted it. After a student proposed a topic for

conversation, the other students generally reacted supportively. We see from Table 3 (especially

when compared with Table 5- Confrontational Responses) that the group members mostly

responded by supporting each other. In Rachel and David’s case, the support was equally

distributed, as each was supported about as much as she/he supported the others. Jake and

Meera, however, supported others more often than they were supported.

Supportive rejoinders interrupt the flow of the talk to confirm, probe, or clarify the

previous move. Table 4 shows that all four students used supportive rejoinder moves, but David

used them more extensively than the others. Supportive rejoinders are more ambiguous. A

speaker that queries the move of another speaker only potentially supports that speaker.


As shown in Tables 5 and 6, students also disagreed with, confronted, and challenged

each other. Jake and Meera were confronted more often than they confronted others, with Jake

being confronted more than twice as often as he confronted others. Rachel and David challenged

others more often than they were challenged and confronted others more often than they were

confronted. Rachel confronted others four times as often as she was confronted. David

challenged more than twice as often as he was challenged. Meera challenged others as many

times as she was challenged.

Our observations of the students during the conversations and the students’ responses to

interview questions provide further information regarding the differences in interactional patterns

of support among the four students. These differences did not fall along gender lines, as Rachel

and David both confronted and challenged their peers more often than Meera and Jake did.

Rachel and David were more powerful in the social network of the classroom than were Meera

and Jake. David was considered by all to be very competent in terms of his general knowledge

about the world and Rachel was considered to be one of the strongest literacy students in the

class. Even though Andrew considered Jake to be a stronger writer than David, Jake deferred to

David on frequent occasions. Andrew said that he had observed many instances over the two

years he had taught these students of Jake’s greater level of respect for David than David

demonstrated to him.

Meera and Jake supported their peers more often than they were supported. These two

students indicated their desire for peer feedback to help improve their writing. In contrast, Rachel

was a very self-confident writer who did not greatly value her peers’ appraisals of her writing as

much as she valued her teacher’s assessment, however. She tended not to invite her peers to

provide suggestions about her writing. David also did not seek out peers’ perspectives on his


writing, but for a different reason. He lacked confidence in his writing abilities and tried to

avoid peer criticism and ridicule.

David used more supportive rejoinders, which tend to prolong the conversation, than did

his peers. He was the only student in the group who did not enjoy writing and had had

difficulties throughout his school years with writing. He did very little writing in class. Most of

his three-page story was written on a word processor at home. It is possible that he was willing

to keep the conversation going with supportive rejoinders to avoid writing.

Social Ideologies in the Content of the Conversations

In the previous section, we analyzed every conversational move in the brainstorming

session on February 23rd. In this section, we have taken excerpts that best reflect the social

ideologies that appeared in the conversations.

Gender

Researchers (Evans, 2002; Sommers & Lawrence, 1992) found that gender is often

implicated in studies of the social organization and content of student talk. In the following

example, the students brought gender social ideologies regarding boys’ and girls’ experiences

with beauty topics to their conversation.

[In this example and the ones that follow, please note that the speaker’s

initial is in the left hand column, that speaker’s contribution is in the middle

column, and our coding is in the right column. Commas (,) indicate pauses in the

talk. Periods (.) mark the termination of the talk. Underlined parts indicate

overlapping speech. Exclamation points (!) and capitalized syllables indicate

emphasis. Question marks (?) indicate questions. Ellipses (…) indicate that the

speech trailed off.]


M: (referring to Meera’s writing)

what are those called again, the people that do

nails, they're not really ( )

open: demand: information

D: a pedicure, a manicurist… Respond: support: reply: answer

R: pedicurist! [1 sec] nails… Respond: support: reply: answer

D: I don't know. Respond: confront: reply: withhold

R: nail doer [someone giggles] nail polisher. Respond: support: reply: answer

M: oh! the - what do they call it? Sustain: append: reiterate

J: manicurist. Respond: support: reply: answer

R: no. Respond: confront: reply: disagree

D: thank you! Respond: support: reply: acknowledge

R: no! that's not what they’re caaalled! Respond: confront: reply: disagree

D: someone else said it. Rejoinder: confront: challenge:

rebound

J: no, they’re ugh… Respond: support: reply

M: no,

they're the people that they - like go into and

they paint their nails and stuff.

Respond: confront: reply: disagree

sustain: continue: prolong: extend

D: paint your nails (laughs) take a little paint [said

in a sing-song fashion]. [3 secs]

Rejoinder: confront: challenge:

rebound

M: I've had it done. Rejoinder: confront: response: refute

J: They're like masseuses. Respond: support: reply: answer

M: a nail doer. Respond: support: reply: answer


R: No. there's an adjective. I don't know how you

spell it though.

Respond: confront: reply: disagree

J: Look it up. Command

R: Yeah, I'm thinking of it- I'm trying Respond : support: reply: acknowledge

D: Alright! where's this person from? open: demand: information

Meera’s opening move, a demand for a particular word, initiated lengthy negotiation.

On a social organization level, this segment contains many examples of challenging, assertive

interruptions to the talk and confrontational responses along gender lines (with one exception

where Rachel confronted Meera. In this example, Meera took up Rachel’s proposed term “nail

doer” but Rachel extended the term as “an adjective”). The girls confronted the boys’

suggestions. Jake continued to support the girls, even though the girls either confronted or did

not respond to Jake’s suggestions. David mocked the situation.

On the content level, conversation continued to reflect the narrow focus of Meera’s

opening move. The most expansive contribution, in which Meera included herself as someone

who has had her nails done, occurred in a challenging rejoinder and was not open for response by

the group. The two girls appeared to consider the boys as lacking in knowledge about a typically

feminine topic. Meera’s decision not to include the boy’s contribution in her writing was

influenced by the content and social organization of the talk. Ideas from the conversation did not

appear in her writing. Despite the highly confrontational nature of the episode, Meera wrote

many descriptions related to ‘doing nails’ in her notes that day and in her final narrative. The

terms “manicurist” and “pedicurist” did not appear in Meera’s writing that day nor in her final

draft. That day she wrote that her character “owns a salon” and “her job is to paint nails”.


Socio-economic Status: Profession and Nationhood

In previous research (Lensmire, 1994; Phinney, 1994), students’ social status within the

classroom defined the possibilities for characters bearing their names in their peers’ writing. In

our study, as illustrated in the following excerpts, students negotiated socio-economic status

based on profession and nationhood of the individuals in their selected photographs.

The profession of Rachel’s character’s was contested and complicated in terms of the

content and the social organization of the conversation. The discussion occurred in two parts.

Each time, Rachel opened the discussion about the job of the character in her photograph.

R: (referring to Rachel’s picture)

what should her job be? not a fashion designer… open: demand: information

J: I want her to be a hard working, middle class,

person.

Respond: support: develop

R: no, she's rich. Respond: confront: contradict

and later

R: what do you think her job would be? if she's

rich, why settle for a job?



D: in the media. Respond: support: answer

J: she's a model…model Respond: support: develop

M: retired. Respond: support: answer

R: no. Respond: confront: disagree

J: but she needs the money. Respond: support: develop

R: no, rich … and retired at 24 [laughs] Respond: confront: disagree


J: say- say she's a [2 secs] Command (?)

M: fashion designer would be good. Respond: support: elaborate

D: is she a band person? Rejoinder: support: probe

J: a real estate agent. Respond: support: reply

R: she's a singer. Respond: support: reply

D: I know. So let's say she. . . Respond: support: agree

J: Say she's a real estate agent. open: command

D: a real estate agent? Rejoinder: support: clarify

J: What about she… (?)

R: Real estate agents do not… Respond: confront: contradict

D: Does a REAL estate agent, look like this

person?

Rejoinder: confront: counter

R: She's a model. Respond: support: develop

M: (that's what I told him). ?

J: The one on Temptation Island was. Rejoinder: support: acquiesce

Rachel opened with two questions and the second contradicted the first: “if she’s rich,

why settle for a job?” Initially, the other three supported her request for information with

suggestions and Rachel disagreed with them all by repeating ‘no’ twice. Again Jake developed

his idea that the person needed money and again Rachel countered. When Rachel countered,

she combined three ideas that appeared previously: rich, retired, and her character’s age. Then

she laughed at the implausibility of her character being in all three ideological categories, as she

said: “No, rich … and retired at 24.”


Both Rachel and David rejected and challenged Jake’s suggestion that the character

might be a real estate agent. David interrupted Rachel’s negation of Jake’s statement with a

rhetorical question (the falling intonation on the word ‘PERson’ indicates it is not a genuine

question). David used the photograph, interrupting the flow of suggestions, to question if the

person could be a real estate agent. David assumed, and Rachel agreed, that the person could not

be a real estate agent. Jake acquiesced and explained that he got his idea for the real estate agent

from a specific media text: “Temptation Island,” a television show. In this segment, both Jake

and David incorporated information from television shows directly into their speech. David used

the picture Rachel brought in as per the teacher’s instructions. Jake made a link to “Temptation

Island” after peers challenged his suggestion.

The confrontation in the students’ talk centered on Rachel’s character’s profession and

socioeconomic status and seems to have dramatically influenced Rachel’s story. In her writing

for that day and in her final piece, there were tensions between Adalie’s high status, high-paying

modeling job and her vacation in the backwoods with her poor relatives. Rachel painted a picture

of a woman who was confident, beautiful and successful woman, as well as distraught, recently

unemployed and of a poor family background. In her writing for the day of the brainstorming

session she described Adalie as “fashionable, confident in herself, lives in Chicago condo,

model, glamorous.” That day she also wrote: “It was a good thing that no one was in the room

to see her look like such a slob.” In the final piece, Rachel wrote: “Adalie was fired from her

high paying job as a model. She arrived home from a photo shoot looking miserable and wet…”

She had plans to “buy new designer beachwear in five new styles,” yet her vacation involved a

“half hour bus ride on a humid, smelly coach bus” where she ended up at her uncle Earl’s with

its “rickety old wooden porch”. Although we cannot substantiate a causal relationship between


the conversation and Rachel’s writing, we find it interesting that the classroom talk reflected the

different socio-economic positionings of the students’ suggestions.

Although David initiated as much talk as the other students, very little of that talk was

about his photograph and his writing. In one of the few instances when David initiated talk

around his photograph, he incorporated his experiences regarding socio-economic status and

country of origin.

D: (referring to David’s picture)

what’s a poor country? [1 sec]

India? [1 sec]

would this person be from India?

open: demand: information (open)

sustain: continue: append

open: demand: information (closed)

M: Bangladesh is a poor country. Respond: support: reply: answer

(David’s first bid)

J? (that’s what Mr. xxx said)

R: yeah,

and he said that they're going to go under the

water. [somebody giggles]

Respond: support: reply: answer

Respond: support: develop: extend

J: just like Japan. Respond: support: develop

D: don't be . . . ?

R: Japan's not poor. Respond: confront: reply: disagree

J: no! he said Japan's going under, too. Respond: confront: reply: disagree

R: oh, well, then most coastal things are. Respond: support: develop: extend

D: hold on. so is this person from India? Rejoinder: track: clarify

M: yes.

I mean…

Respond: support: reply: agree

Sustain: contain: prolong


D: yeah, yeah. just say India. Sustain: continue: append

M: India. Respond: support: reply: agree

D: yeah. Respond: support: reply: agree

In terms of social organization, the talk around David’s proposition had no

confrontations, nor any challenges. The students all aligned with his interpretations of the

socioeconomic status of the characters by giving supportive responses using the information that

David provided in his opening move. The students did not incorporate details from the

photograph, from their background knowledge about India, or from their understanding about

poverty in their talk.

In terms of the content of the talk, David’s opening move broadly generalized about a

large population in one country. Unlike his peers’ opening moves, David’s request for

information from his peers (“What’s a poor country”) lacked a direct connection to the character

in the photograph. Only after David answered his own question did he link it to the character he

was developing for his narrative. In one move, David put his character in the group of “poor”

people and located “poor” people in a country other than his own. In his writing, David referred

to his character as: “John Doe—last name won’t be known until the end when he dies, used to

be a farmer on his family’s farm, from India—no one to adequately take care of his illness and

broken bones.” In David’s final narrative, the characters were poor adolescent victims of a civil

war in an unidentified country. Although he used the country suggested by peers in his notes, he

decided not to use this information in his final narrative.

Meera, who had emigrated from Sri Lanka in second grade, and likely had background

knowledge that her peers would not have had about the region, provided additional information

that Jake seems to have supported but the rest of her peers ignored. Meera’s peers did not probe


for details about her suggestion. Indeed, David interrupted Meera as she started to expand on

what she meant.

Age

Although gender and socioeconomic status were social ideologies explored in previous

research analyzing students’ talk within peer response groups (Blake, 1997; Evans, 1996;

Finders, 1997), age did not appear as a category in this research. Furthermore, in the whole-class

discussion, Andrew said he did not think the character’s age mattered. From the following

segment and others like it in the brainstorming sessio, we observed that age clearly did matter to

the students. In their talk, the students linked the age of the character to what the character could

do. We present two examples demonstrating the problems that age presented to students as they

developed identities for their characters.

In the first example, Meera invited her peers to help her figure out the age of the man in

Jake’s photograph.

M: (referring to Jake’s picture)

how old is this person? Maybe 47 or so? open: initiate: first demand then give of

information

R: Probably.

(referring to Rachel’s picture)

like how old is she? [refers to woman in her own

photograph?]

Respond: support: reply: agree

open: initiate: demand

D: a 47-year-old does not do that, though. Respond: confront: reply: counter

R: How old is she? In her twenties? open: initiate: demand

D: (referring to Jake’s picture)


you think of your parents doing that? Rejoinder: support: track: probe

J: Yeah. Rejoinder: support: response

D: Really? Rejoinder: support: clarify

This segment of talk fulfilled the teacher’s directions to use the picture, to support each

other, and to develop attributes for the characters the students would use in their stories. On the

content level, David’s move limited the possibilities for what Jake’s character’s age might be.

He relied on the photograph to convey his meaning of what a 47-year-old does not do. David did

not elaborate on the “that” that the man in the photograph was doing and the talk did not develop

details that Jake might have added to his character description. In terms of social organization,

David’s countering move was mild, as he probed into the action and did not respond to Jake’s

inference that his dad rock climbs. In this segment, Jake and David negotiated the possibility

that a 47 year old could actually rock climb. Few ideas from this segment of talk appeared in

the students’ writing and the students did not identify their characters’ ages in their final

narratives. Once they agreed it was possible, age did not appear in the content of the story.

Ideologies and Discourse: Towards a More Complex Picture of

Peer Interactions and Writing

In this paper, we analyzed the social ideologies of small group peer interaction during a

pre-writing brainstorming session using a combination of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough,

1995) and systemic functional linguistics (Eggins & Slade, 1997). We used the ideas of critical

discourse analysis to argue that social ideologies enter into, shape, and form the dynamic of

student interaction. We used Eggins and Slade’s (1997) contribution to systemic functional

linguistics to identify different interpersonal moves within the talk and to analyze the ongoing


and often subtle flow of power and position within the conversation. In this final section, we

argue that this combination of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics

provides a useful tool for representing the flow and dynamism of interaction and power within

students’ conversation, as this merger respects the lasting influence on students’ writing of the

ideological and interpersonal aspects of peer interaction.

Previous analyses of peer interaction around writing focused on the students’ positions

within particular ideologies such as gender (Blake, 1997; Evans, 1996), social status (Lensmire,

1994; Phinney, 1994), ethnicity and socioeconomic status (Blair, 1998), and popular culture

(Dyson, 1997). Rather than focusing on disruptions and dichotomies as in previous research,

however, in our research we created a picture of the ideologies and discursive practices that

emerged and shaped the flow and the content of the students’ informal conversations.

The combination of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics allowed

us to create a complex picture of power within a dynamic and engaged classroom event. The

complexities were apparent in the findings that students, for the most part, participated

supportively in the small group brainstorming session. However, we also found instances of

disagreement and the dismissal of other’s positions to confound this supportive picture. Rachel

and David, socially powerful students in the classroom, challenged and confronted Meera and

Jake more frequently than Meera and Jake confronted them. Meera and Jake were more

supportive than their socially powerful peers. All students supported, challenged and confronted

each other at some points in the brainstorming sessions, however.

Furthermore, our analysis allowed us to highlight the power and influence on the

students’ writing of the social ideologies reflected in the content and social organization of the

talk. In our closer analysis of the instances of confrontation, we showed that the conflict was a

negotiation of social ideologies based on gender, age, and to a greater extent, socio-economic


status (profession and nationhood). In the whole of the data, however, we found no clear and

consistent patterns of students’ positions within these social ideologies. They entered and flowed

with the talk unevenly and in complicated ways. Using gender social ideologies as an example of

the complicated flow of power, we found that sometimes the girls disregarded boys’

contributions related to topics that are traditionally positioned as feminine (e.g., Meera’s decision

not to use the correct term, “manicurist,” that David provided), and sometimes they accepted the

contributions (e.g., Rachel’s character was a model, a suggestion that Jake provided).

Sometimes the boys took typically feminine topics seriously (e.g., Jake’s support of the girls’

discussion about “nail doers”) and sometimes the boys mocked the topic (e.g., in a sing-song

fashion, David said, “paint your nails”, laughs, and then said, “take a little paint”).

The talk had a lasting effect on the writing in that elements of the conversation during

this brainstorming session appeared in the final drafts of the students’ work. The writing often

reflected the complexity of the social ideological negotiations and tensions in the brainstorming

sessions, as in the example of Rachel’s story where her character’s life was characterized by

extreme wealth and high status, and at the same time by poverty and backwardness. The

brainstorming session related to her writing moved back and forth between characterizing the

story character as “hard work, middle-class”, “a model”, someone who “needs the money”, and

someone who was “rich and retired at 24.”

While brainstorming is a common pre-writing activity in classrooms, the small sample

size and the focus on a limited series of events precludes establishing typicality in terms of

making recommendations for classroom practice. We believe, however, that the results of our

research have implications for further research. Combining Fairclough’s (1995) and Eggins and

Slade’s (1997) approaches as a data analysis tool allows researchers to explore the intricacies of


power, negotiation, and interaction within informal classroom activities in which talk plays an

important role.

Acknowledgement: This research was supported by a University of Toronto Connaught

Grant. We are grateful to participating students and to Andrew for their involvement in our

research.


References


Appendix A: Interview Protocols

Interview with Students

(1) What kind of comments and suggestions do you like to get from your classmates on

your writing?

(2) How do you decide whether you will use your classmates’ suggestions when you

revise your writing?

(3) What do you like and dislike about having a peer read and give you feedback on

your writing?

(4) When you write a story that you know somebody else is going to be reading, do you

write it any differently than you would if you knew it was just going to be handed in

to your teacher?

Interview with Teacher

(1) What are your thoughts on the role that student interaction plays in grade eight

students’ literacy learning?

(2) Student feedback to peers seems to be an important part of your language arts

instruction. How did your instruction evolve to this point and what are your

impressions of the influence that peer feedback has on students’ literacy learning?


Table 1: Schedule for Writing Classes

Date Focus of Mini-Lesson

Time for Writing

and Responding

Informally

Feb. 23 Using a photograph to think about possible

characters for the narratives

30 mins.

Feb. 25 Physical description of characters 30 mins.

Mar. 2 Using action to develop characters 60 mins.

Mar. 5 Using specific verbs 0 mins.

Mar. 19 Further work on using action to develop characters 30 mins.

Mar. 21 Independent writing 30 mins.

Mar. 23 Writing effective leads 35 mins.

Mar. 26 Peers used Andrew’s checklist to give feedback to

response buddies

35 mins.

Apr. 2 Writing 30 mins.

Apr. 3 Peer response group 0 mins.


Table 2: Opening Moves: Moves that Proposed a New Topic

Student Number of Opening

Moves

Rachel 12

Jake 23

David 20

Meera 21

Table 3: Supportive Responses

Student Supported Talk Was Supported

Rachel 34 34

Jake 34 24

David 32 29

Meera 45 36

Table 4: Supportive Rejoinders (moves that probed, confirmed, or clarified prior talk)

Student Talk Probed,

Confirmed,

Clarified

Was Probed,

Confirmed,

Clarified

Rachel 9 10

Jake 7 13

David 14 9

Meera 5 4

Table 5: Confrontational Responses


Student Confronted Talk Was Confronted

Rachel 16 4

Jake 4 10

David 4 5

Meera 4 5

Table 6: Challenging Rejoinders: (moves that doubted the veracity of the previous move, dismissed the speaker’s position, or terminated) the interaction.

Student Talk Challenged

Was Challenged

Rachel 5 3

Jake 2 8

David 7 3

Meera 2 2


open

move

sustain

Give of information

Demand

Opening moves begin talk around a proposition.Since the speaker is making a bid to control the topic of conversation, openings are assertive interpersonal moves.

See Figure B

Figure A: Opening moves relevant to our data. Adapted from Eggins and Slade (1997: 193).

open

move

sustain

Give of information

Demand


See Figure B

open

move

sustain

open

move

sustain

Give of information

Demand


See Figure B

Figure A: Opening moves relevant to our data. Adapted from Eggins and Slade (1997: 193).


Sustaining /Reactingmoves

Responding

Rejoinder

Support

Confront

See Figure C

Figure B: Reacting moves (within Sustaining moves) relevant to our data. Adapted from Eggins and Slade (1997: 202).

Supportive responses imply a lot of co-operation and the present speakers willingness to develop the content of the prior move. Replying moves are non assertive and create an alignment between the prior and presentspeakers.

Confronting responses do not imply the alignment that supportive responses do. However, in a confrontational response, the present speaker is showing a willingness to discuss the proposition ofthe prior speaker

Develop

Reply

ReplySustaining /Reactingmoves

Responding

Rejoinder

Responding

Rejoinder

Support

Confront

See Figure C

Figure B: Reacting moves (within Sustaining moves) relevant to our data. Adapted from Eggins and Slade (1997: 202).

Supportive responses imply a lot of co-operation and the present speakers willingness to develop the content of the prior move. Replying moves are non assertive and create an alignment between the prior and presentspeakers.

Confronting responses do not imply the alignment that supportive responses do. However, in a confrontational response, the present speaker is showing a willingness to discuss the proposition ofthe prior speaker

Develop

Reply

Reply


Figure C: Rejoinder moves (within Sustaining moves) relevant to our data. Adapted from Eggins and Slade (1997: 209).

Supporting Rejoinder

Sustaining/Rejoindingmoves

ConfrontingRejoinders

Track

Response

Supportive rejoinders (including tracking moves that check/ confirms/ clarifies/ or probes) prolong the talk. Supportive rejoinders imply a willingness to maintain the interaction and imply alignment with the previous speaker.

Confronting rejoinders (including challenging moves that terminate the interaction, refute, or question the legitimacy of the prior move) directly challenge the prior speaker’s bidto position the present speaker. Challenging moves are the assertive in negotiating interpersonal relationships

Challenge

Response

Figure C: Rejoinder moves (within Sustaining moves) relevant to our data. Adapted from Eggins and Slade (1997: 209).




Track

Response



Challenge

Response




Track

Response



Challenge

Response

unlike other studies (hinhman& younge, ect) none of the four ... · web viewsystemic functional...

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