The author, acting both as ethnographer and sociolinguist, recorded conversations of black children in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia over a period of one-and-a-half years. She acted as observer of children\u27s games and talk as they interacted with their peers in their after school surroundings. Goodwin argues that peer setting provides the best opportunity to observe children as they develop social organization, and she challenges the traditional view of anthropology that perceives children as being in the process of internalizing adult values in order to integrate into the social world
