Interactional renegotiations of educational discourses in recreational learning contexts

TY - JOUR

T1 - Interactional renegotiations of educational discourses in recreational learning contexts

AU - Madsen, Lian Malai

PY - 2011/3

Y1 - 2011/3

N2 - In this paper I focus on sequences of interaction among youth where the participants engage in classroom related activities (such as spelling, discussion of essays, etc.). My paper is based on interactional and ethnographic data collected among youth in two different leisure contexts. I discuss how the participants by employment of various interactional and linguistic means, including the use of non-standard linguistic features, integrate different cultural frames by bringing out-of-classroom practices into educationally focused interactions, as well as by bringing classroom related activities outside the classroom and into recreational contexts. In these interactional sequences, the participants challenge and renegotiate dominant assumptions characteristic of educational discourses, of a contradiction between mainstream-societally accepted behaviour valued in school contexts, and semiotic measures of social peer-credibility among late modern urban youth. I consider how the adolescents' interactional practices and their situated use of particular linguistic features reflect as well as contribute to ongoing enregisterment (Agha, 2007) of a speech style in contemporary Copenhagen. Finally, I discuss to what extent the bringing together of peer-culture and school orientation can be viewed as re-negotiations of social class relations. This discussion involves a comparison to the British context and to work by Rampton (2006, 2008).

AB - In this paper I focus on sequences of interaction among youth where the participants engage in classroom related activities (such as spelling, discussion of essays, etc.). My paper is based on interactional and ethnographic data collected among youth in two different leisure contexts. I discuss how the participants by employment of various interactional and linguistic means, including the use of non-standard linguistic features, integrate different cultural frames by bringing out-of-classroom practices into educationally focused interactions, as well as by bringing classroom related activities outside the classroom and into recreational contexts. In these interactional sequences, the participants challenge and renegotiate dominant assumptions characteristic of educational discourses, of a contradiction between mainstream-societally accepted behaviour valued in school contexts, and semiotic measures of social peer-credibility among late modern urban youth. I consider how the adolescents' interactional practices and their situated use of particular linguistic features reflect as well as contribute to ongoing enregisterment (Agha, 2007) of a speech style in contemporary Copenhagen. Finally, I discuss to what extent the bringing together of peer-culture and school orientation can be viewed as re-negotiations of social class relations. This discussion involves a comparison to the British context and to work by Rampton (2006, 2008).

U2 - 10.1016/j.linged.2010.11.006

DO - 10.1016/j.linged.2010.11.006

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0898-5898

VL - 22

SP - 53

EP - 67

JO - Linguistics and Education

JF - Linguistics and Education

IS - 1

ER -