Discourse, social knowledge and identity in a gypsy peer group

Este artículo examina el modo en que un grupo de niños y niñas de etnia gitana habla en sus interacciones espontáneas sobre diferentes conjuntos de residentes de su barrio. Los datos proceden de una etnografía lingüística del grupo de iguales en una ciudad española de mediano tamaño y este artículo se centra en un paseo nocturno en el que el grupo de iguales se aleja de su zona de juego habitual y circula por diferentes sectores del barrio en el que residen. El barrio, debido a una sucesión de transformaciones urbanísticas y sociales, es relativamente heterogéneo desde el punto de vista socio-económico y étnico. Se analizan dos mecanismos discursivos, la categorización de pertenencia a un grupo y la estilización, para mostrar el papel del habla en la comprensión que los niños y las niñas tienen de esta heterogeneidad con relación a su propia identidad étnica y social. Finalmente, se señalan algunas de las potencialidades que proporciona el microanálisis etnográfico de la interacción social para estudiar el conocimiento social infantil desplegado en la acciónThis article examines the way in which a group of Gypsy children talks in their spontaneous interactions about different sets of residents of their neighborhood. The data is part of a linguistic ethnography of peer interactions of a group of Gypsy children from a mid-sized Spanish city and this article focuses on a ‘night stroll’ the children took in which they moved away from their habitual play areas and walked through different parts of their district. The neighborhood is relatively heterogeneous in socio-economic and ethnic terms as a result of several social and urban transforma tions. Two discursive mechanisms, membership categorization and stylization, are examined to show the role talk plays in children’s understanding of this social heterogeneity in relation to their own ethnic and social identity. Finally, the article points out some of the potentials of ethnographic microanalysis of social interaction to study children’s social knowledge in actio

Quico’s story: an ethnopoetic analysis of a gypsy boy’s narratives at school

This article examines a narrative told by Quico, a five-year-old Gypsy child, in a Spanish kindergarten classroom. The guiding framework stems from ethnopoetics and performance-oriented narrative analysis. First, a stanza analysis of the narrative is presented. Structurally the narrative can be described as topic associative in the sense discussed by Sarah Michaels (1981, 1991). The text is organized around a set of recurrent markers and rhetorical devices such as aluego ‘later’ or dramatized direct speech. In content, the story deals with events in his family and his role as agent in these routines. Second, the child’s telling is resituated and examined in its interactional context. Contrary to previous studies, despite clear differences between Quico’s discourse style and the speech patterns of the rest of the children, his tellings were well received and managed by the teacher and the rest of the class. This outcome is related to the general goals set by the teacher for this speech event and to her experience with Gypsy students and provides a new analytical case that can be incorporated into the home–school mismatch framewor

Parent and ethnographer of other children

In this article I examine the role my parental identity and my daughter’s presence in the field played in the relationship I established with a group of Gitano (Spanish Roma) children and their families. This study was conducted as part of a linguistic ethnography focused on children’s peer interactions and social organisation during their informal daily activities. The discussion addresses the more general issue of how researchers from various social disciplines incorporate their own children into the research proces

Names and social relations: the peer group as an interpretive community

Este artículo examina el uso de los nombres (a través de apodos, referencias a terceras personas y relatos sobre ‘motes’) que hace un grupo de iguales de niños y niñas en sus interacciones espontáneas. Las prácticas de nombramiento tienen lugar en diferentes situaciones interactivas, como conflictos, narraciones o negociaciones y señalan diferentes grados de afiliación, inclusión o exclusión entre los iguales. El uso eficaz de estos nombres implica conocimientos compartidos por los miembros del grupo de iguales y, a su vez, estos conocimientos forman parte de ámbitos diferentes, y más o menos penetrables por terceras partes externas, de su cultura infantil (e.g. personajes populares de los medios de comunicación, personajes del barrio o participantes en relaciones íntimas). En consecuencia, la utilización de distintas clases de nombres informa sobre el lugar que ocupa cada interlocutor en el grupo entendido como comunidad interpretativa. Igualmente, el análisis del uso de nombres sirve para desentrañar aspectos de la estructura social del grupo de iguales. Los datos del trabajo provienen de una etnografía lingüística en torno a las interacciones entre iguales de un grupo de niños y niñas mayoritariamente de etnia gitana de una ciudad española de pequeño tamañoThis article examines how members of a child peer group use names (through nicknames, references to third parties and narratives around names) in their spontaneous interactions. Naming practices take place in different interactional situations, such as conflicts, narratives or negotiations and they signal different forms of affiliation, inclusion or exclusion in the peer group. Efficient use of names involves shared knowledge between members of the peer group and this knowledge is related to different domains, which are more or less accessible to external third parties, of their peer culture (e.g. media figures, neighborhood characters or participants in intimate relationships). Consequently, name use provides information on the place that each interlocutor plays in the group understood as an interpretive community. Also, the analysis of name use can uncover aspects of the peer group’s social structure. The data of this study comes from a linguistic ethnography focused on peer interactions of a mostly Gitano group of children from a small city in Spai

Metalinguistic activity, humor and social competence in classroom discourse

This paper examines the role that humor plays during an episode of classroom interaction. Using concepts derived from the ethnography of communication and interactional sociolinguistics, it analyzes activity during a metalinguistic event in a kindergarten classroom and argues that verbal humor, in itself a form of metalinguistic activity, plays a crucial role in the modulation of children’s face demands. The analysis also shows how humor is the result of the shared history of participants. The findings highlight the importance of considering emergent and improvised goals during classroom discourse that go beyond the prescribed curriculu

Linguistic ethnography and the study of welfare institutions as a flow of social practices: the case of residential child care institutions as paradoxical institutions

In this article we review ways of understanding how social and welfare in-stitutions achieve their goals and produce their products, whether these are expected or not. We analyze mainstream approaches to study these institu-tions in Spain and in other parts of Europe. From this review, we argue in favor of an approach focused on the role of social practices as constitutive elements of institutional life and products. Our proposal focuses on one type of institution, residential child care institutions (RCCIs), to highlight how traditional limits between formally designed activities and informal prac-tices may be problematized. The data comes from a brief linguistic ethnog-raphy, conducted in central Spain, in two RCCIs that focused on children’s everyday social practices in the institution. We argue that RCCIs may be characterized as ‘‘paradoxical institutions’’ due to what we call ‘‘paradoxi-cal practices,’’ prototypical of these institutions. As part of this argument, we analyze and discuss the trajectory of a paradoxical practice by paying attention to the product it creates and develop a model to understand insti-tutional functioning. Finally, we discuss how linguistic ethnography pro-vides a valuable alternative to scrutinize the work of residential child care institutions and the role they play in children’s socializatio

Discurso, conocimiento social e identidad en un grupo de iguales gitano

This article examines the way in which a group of Gypsy children talks in their spontaneous interactions about different sets of residents of their neighborhood. The data is part of a linguistic ethnography of peer interactions of a group of Gypsy children from a mid-sized Spanish city and this article focuses on a ‘night stroll’ the children took in which they moved away from their habitual play areas and walked through different parts of their district. The neighborhood is relatively heterogeneous in socio-economic and ethnic terms as a result of several social and urban transformations. Two discursive mechanisms, membership categorization and stylization, are examined to show the role talk plays in children’s understanding of this social heterogeneity in relation to their own ethnic and social identity. Finally, the article points out some of the potentials of ethnographic microanalysis of social interaction to study children’s social knowledge in action

Bilingual beyond school: Students’ language ideologies in bilingual programs in south-central Spain

This article examines adolescent and late adolescent discourses on bilingualism, bilingual education and the role of English and other additional languages in the current out-of-school lives and future trajectories of Spanish students enrolled in bilingual education programs. The data is part of a larger critical sociolinguistic ethnographic project on the implementation of bilingual education programs in secondary education (organized as English-Spanish CLIL) in Castilla-La Mancha, a region in South-Central Spain. Discourses were mainly elicited through a series of workshop-type and group discussion activities held in classrooms from two semi-private and two public schools, as well as an additional focus group conducted with university students. In total, 12 group events, involving approximately 300 students, were organized and documented through video-recordings, audio-recordings, photographs and fieldnotes. Students’ language ideologies around bilingualism are examined through an inductive qualitative / grounded theory approach. Three themes are identified: (a) the definition of bilingualism and bilingual competence, (b) the place of English (and other additional languages) in students’ current lives and social experiences and; (c) the role assigned to English in future employment and mobility opportunities. These discourses are discussed in relation to recent critical sociolinguistic work on the interconnection between language, multilingualism and neoliberalism. The paper closes with some methodological thoughts regarding the place of linguistic ethnography in the analysis of students’ collective discoursesThe research Project «The Appropriation of English as a Global Language in Castilla-La Mancha Schools: A multilingual, situated and comparative approach» – APINGLO-CLM – (Ref.: FFI2014-54179-C2-2-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), 2015-201

Teacher knowledge and minority students: the potential of saberes docentes

The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Pedagogies: an International Journal 2011 http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1554480X.2011.531940Drawing heavily on the work of the French sociologist Agnes Heller, Latin American anthropologists and educators proposed the notion of saberes docentes, roughly translated as “teacher knowledge”, to account for the knowledge acquired through everyday trials and rehearsals of specific problems along with the accompanying reflective processes. In this paper, we argue in favour of incorporating the notion of saberes docentes into our current understanding of educators’ work with ethnic minority students in urban and semi-urban educational contexts. To support this argument, we discuss data from two different research settings involving the education of ethnic minority children: (a) the educational programmes organized by a Gitano (gypsy) cultural association that employs several non-Gitano educators in a small city in central Spain; and (b) schools employing bilingual teaching assistants – both immigrant and non-immigrant – working with immigrant students in the northwest region of the United State