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 DOI: 10.3102/00028312024001119

1987 24: 119Am Educ Res JCeil Lucas and Denise Borders

Language Diversity and Classroom Discourse  

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American Educational Research Journal Spring 1987, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 119-141

Language Diversity and Classroom Discourse

Ceil Lucas Gallaudet University

and Denise Borders McGraw-Hill

A suit filed in 1977 on the behalf of preschool and elementary school children living in Ann Arbor, Michigan alleged that the children's home and community language impeded their equal participation in instructional programs and that the school had not taken appropriate action to overcome the barrier. The focus of the case was on reading instruction, and the role of dialect in classroom discourse was not at issue. There are few studies, however, that present formal linguistic evidence for communication prob­lems in everyday classroom interaction in classrooms where children are dialect speakers. This paper describes such a study. It is based on extensive videotaped, audiotaped, and observational data collected in a Washington, DC elementary school. A wide variety of events was observed and recorded in a kindergarten, fourth, and sixth grade classroom, including whole group lessons, small groups with and without the teacher (both of an academic and non-academic nature), and one-on-one interaction. This paper briefly examines the issues and problems encountered in coding language functions, and discusses the overall project findings and conclu­sions, with examples drawn from representative portions of the data base. It is suggested that the development of functional language skills and of situationally appropriate language use precluded the occurrence of inter­ference in the classrooms observed.

On July 28, 1977, a suit was filed on the behalf of 15 preschool and elementary school children living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The defendants in the case were the Ann Arbor School District Board and the Michigan

The research discussed in this paper was funded by the National Institute of Education under grant number NIE-G-80-0072, and carried out at the Center for Applied Linguistics. We gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments provided by Robert E. Johnson, Chairman, Department of Linguistics and Interpreting, Gallaudet University, in the preparation of this paper.

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State Board of Education, and it was alleged "that the children speak a version of 'black English', 'black vernacular', or 'black dialect' as their home and community language that impedes their equal participation in the instructional programs, and that the school has not taken appropriate action to overcome the barrier" {The Ann Arbor Decision: Memorandum Opinion and the Educational Plan, 1980).

The focus of the Ann Arbor case was on reading instruction, the substance of the testimony being that efforts to instruct the children to read Standard English are thwarted if teachers fail to recognize and accept that the children speak a dialect acceptable in home and peer settings, a variety of English different from that required in a school setting. The testimony suggested that this failure on the teacher's part "can result in the children becoming ashamed of their language, and thus impede the learning process" (p. 15).

It is important to notice that the role of dialect in classroom discourse was not the issue in the Ann Arbor case. In fact, it is explicitly pointed out in the memorandum that the children and the teachers seemed to have no difficulty in understanding each other, and that there didn't seem to exist any communication problems in everyday interaction.

Although that observation may be accurate, it is interesting to note that there are few studies, if any, that present formal linguistic evidence for the communication problems in everyday classroom interaction.

Certainly, a variety of studies has described interaction in classrooms in which children are dialect speakers (see, e.g., Steinberg & Cazden, 1979; Morine-Dershimer et al, 1981). Piestrup (1973), Hall (1980), and Lewis (1980) have explored the concept of dialect interference in children's participation in the classroom. On a more general level, Gumperz and Herasimchuk (1975) described the specific verbal devices whereby com­munication of meaning in conversation can best be understood. Among these verbal devices they include variable selection, code switching, and choice among intonational, prosodic, and paralinguistic features. Mc-Dermott and Gospodinoff (1981) and Ludwig (1981) examined interaction in culturally diverse classrooms, and Michaels (1981) analyzed the rela­tionship between children's narrative strategies and access to literacy. Other research on the educational concerns of children and adolescents who speak non-mainstream varieties of English has included methodologies for teaching Standard English to non-standard speakers (Baratz & Shuy, 1969; Fasold & Shuy, 1970), examinations of sociolinguistic bias in testing (Vaughn-Cooke, 1979; Wolfram, 1976), and discussions of the role of teacher-student interaction and of the need for teacher awareness of dialect diversity (Eder, 1981; Hall, 1980; Lewis, 1980;McDermott, 1976; Piestrup, 1973; Rist, 1970).1 Few studies, however, have examined the specific

1 For a complete review of the relevant literature in the areas of dialect interfer­ence and classroom discourse, see Lucas et al. (1983).

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linguistic details of everyday classroom interaction, that is, the actual qualitative and quantitative occurrence and distribution of dialect features in classrooms in which children are dialect speakers.

This is not to say that researchers have not seen the need for such descriptions. In his review of the work on dialect interference in reading, Hall (1980) called for research on dialect that takes into account the role of situation and context. In this regard, Stubbs (1976) remarked that

Our ignorance of what actually happens inside classrooms is spectacular. We are often prepared to make broad generalizations purporting to relate children's language to their potential educability, yet we lack basic descrip­tive information about how pupils and teachers communicate. In a sense, of course, we all know what classrooms are like: we have spent long enough in them as pupils and teachers. But such intuitive, remembered knowledge is no substitute for a conceptually adequate analysis of class­room life based on recording and descriptions of the classroom routine which takes up thousands of hours of a pupil's life. People often hold firmly entrenched views on the language and education debate, often arguing more from prejudice than from carefully considered observations and evidence, (p. 70)

It is precisely with the intent to increase the descriptive information about how children and teachers communicate that the project described in this paper was undertaken. The overall goal of the project was a re-examination of dialect interference through a description and analysis of language functions in elementary school classrooms in which children are dialect speakers. The objective was to widen the focus traditionally placed on language forms to include language functions, that is, the ability of children and teachers to get things done with language, to accomplish a variety of classroom tasks. The description is based on extensive video­taped, audiotaped, and observational data collected in a Washington, DC elementary school. A wide variety of events was observed and recorded in a kindergarten, fourth, and sixth grade classroom, including whole group lessons, small groups with and without the teacher (both of an academic and non-academic nature), and one-on-one interaction. All of the children in the study were black; the kindergarten and fourth-grade teachers were black; the sixth-grade teacher was white. The analysis is based on 62 segments, all of which were both audiotaped and videotaped, and which represent the complete range of classroom events. Each segment is one event. Since we had two cameras in operation in each classroom, we were able to capture each event from beginning to end. The boundaries of events were typically marked by language and by movement, and were readily observable. This paper briefly examines the issues and problems encountered in developing the coding system for language functions, and discusses the overall project findings, with examples drawn from repre­sentative portions of the data base.

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Coding Functional Language In their review of an earlier project on children's functional language

also undertaken at the Center for Applied Linguistics, Shuy and Griffin (1978) remarked that

The intuitions and concerns of the teachers and administrators involved in our study identified functional language as a focal point. Getting things done with language is what gives the sound, grammar, vocabulary and meaning relations value, yet phonology, syntax, lexicon, and reference have been studied more frequently than function The ability to get things done with language, although difficult to quantify, is the funda­mental characteristic of an effective language user. (p. 275)

In the present study, we also shifted our focus from forms to functions, a shift that appeared to be well-motivated, particularly given the difficulties that formal studies of interference had run into. However, the shift in focus immediately raised some difficult questions that had to be answered before the analysis could proceed: What specific language functions did we have in mind? What were we coding and counting? What were we looking for? What was the object of the study?

The first step toward an answer to these questions consisted of looking at the solutions that other researchers had found, both for the general problem of coding language functions and for the problem of coding and describing specific language functions.

Halliday's discussion of major and subordinate functions served as the point of departure for the development of a coding system in this study. The frameworks used by Scollon (1976), Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), and Mehan (1979) were studied. Mehan's work was also relied upon in the devising of the language functions inventory, specifically his distinction between elicitation types, that is, product, choice, process, and meta-process. Montes (1978) was consulted in the area of directives, and Chris­tian and Tripp (1978) were consulted concerning requests.

The development of the coding system, then, took place as follows: Based on a review of other researchers' work on general approaches to coding and on the coding of specific functions, five large categories of language functions were defined, with an inventory of subordinate func­tions in each category. The five large categories attempted to account for the flow of information and/or behavior observed within classroom events. That is, it was hypothesized that participants would seek to (a) inform and respond to, (b) control, (c) ask or request, (d) give, and (e) modify information and behavior. An initial and temporary inventory of subor­dinate functions was then devised. The researchers then independently coded identical segments and revised the inventory of subordinate func­tions based on a comparison of the independent codings. This revision was followed by more independent, blind coding, which resulted in the working

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I. INFORM/RESPOND II. CONTROL Define \ /Direct Directives Describe \ Indirect Directives Repeat \ Inferred Directives Report \ Invitation to Bid Explain \ Individual Nomination Elaborate Transition Marker Extend Predict III. ASK/REQUEST

Respond: " New Information Choice /Information NT"" Choice Product ( or ) Product Process XVBehavior^/ Process Meta-Process Meta-Process

Old Information V. MODIFY/ Elaboration

Correct Specification Complain/Protest Repetition Threat Request Permission Apologize Request Feedback

IV. GIVE Evaluate Confirm Comment Offer Promise Thank

FIGURE 1. Five basic categories and subordinate functions 1

coding system, used on all segments discussed in the analysis. Figure 1 shows the five basic function categories with their subordinate functions.2

Along with the definition of language functions, another important set of distinctions emerged naturally from coding. Within each event (i.e., whole group lesson, small group with or without teacher, reading group, one-on-one, etc.), it became possible to isolate four sub-events, distin­guished from each other by language. That is, there was language that related specifically to the event at hand ("And what part do you think would help to affect your nervous system?"), to the management of the event ("You're gonna look in the Weekly Reader"), and to general class management procedures ("The children who used lunch tickets may leave their money on my desk"—spoken during a whole group lesson). There was also language unrelated to the event at hand or to classroom proce­dures, perhaps part of a private conversation; we called this context

2 Definitions and examples from the data base of each language function appear in Lucas et al. (1983), Appendix II.

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comment ("It's raining today"). Finally, a distinction was made between initiations and responses.

Functions were coded for each speaker, so that we would have clear access to functional language use by individuals. Finally, language func­tions realized with a dialect feature were coded with a +. This gave us access to the relationship between specific functions and dialect features, as well as to dialect use by specific individuals. Within our framework, then, the following sample exchange from the sixth-grade data was coded as follows:

Teacher: "To be responsible means to be...?" [cups her ear] (Request/ Product/Initiate/Event)

Student: "In charge." (Product/Response/Event) Teacher: "You're responsible to who?" (Request/Product/Initiate/Event) Student: "Yourself." (Product/Response/Event) Teacher: "For yourself." (Repeat/Response/Event)

The phonological, morphological, and syntactic dialect features coded are ones that have been shown to occur with reasonable frequency in natural conversation, and therefore to be the most useful in a diagnostic study (cf. Labov, 1972; Wolfram, 1969; Wolfram & Fasold, 1974).3 An example of a phonological feature is the substitution of th forf, as in bath —► baf. An example of a morphological feature is the third person singular s, as in she says versus she say, and an example of a syntactic feature is the iterative or habitual be, as in we be playing that game everyday.

As we stated earlier, the analysis is based on 62 segments. All of these segments were transcribed orthographically, and coded for occurrence of language functions and dialect features.

Results Participant Structures

Six general conclusions emerged from the analysis. In this section, the first two conclusions and the evidence to support them will be considered. The first conclusion is that the participant structure of a given classroom event has an effect on the sheer amount of student talk. In events with the teacher, teacher talk is far more abundant than student talk, and student contributions gradually become restricted to responses to teacher initia­tions. The second conclusion is that the participant structure of a given classroom event has an effect on the occurrence of dialect features and on the occurrence of functions in that event.

In terms of the quantity of student talk, this finding is probably not surprising. What is interesting, however, is the contrast between the three grades in the volume and nature of student contributions in the teacher's presence. Striking evidence for this contrast comes from the analysis of

3 The complete inventory of dialect features can be found in Lucas et al. (1983), p. 27.

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whole group lessons. One whole group lesson was selected from each grade, transcribed, and coded for language functions and dialect features. Table 1 provides a comparison of major function types and of initiations and responses used in the whole group lessons by teachers and students in the three grades.

The numbers in this table represent percentages of the total number of functions. From this table, we can see that the teacher always does most of the talking. In the kindergarten class, most teacher functions are control-initiations, in event and event management, with inform-event and re­quest-event second. In fourth grade, there is a decrease for the teacher in control language, and an increase in inform functions. There is a noticeable increase in give-response, which reflects an increase in the use of evaluation during a lesson. Requests in event and event management are similar for kindergarten and fourth grade. The sixth-grade teacher shows a decrease in control language as well as a decrease in inform-initiations. There is an increase in inform-responses, as well as a noticeable increase in request-event. Students in the kindergarten class show most activity in inform-response-event, the next largest category being inform-initiation. In initi­ations, however, the kindergarten students show some activity in every major function category. This is in striking contrast to the fourth and sixth graders whose language in whole group lessons is restricted to responses, mainly in the inform-event category. In the fourth and sixth whole group lessons, students do not initiate turns at talk. This comparison of major language functions suggests some trends in teacher-student interaction in the progress from kindergarten to sixth grade. When children are first learning about the rules of interaction appropriate for a school setting, the teacher clearly needs more control language and the children still deem it appropriate to initiate verbal contributions, including directives, when the whole group is assembled. By the fourth and sixth grades, the children seem to have a good knowledge of interaction rules appropriate for whole group lessons—specifically, it is not appropriate to initiate a verbal contri­bution on one's own, one is to speak when given the right verbal cue from the teacher, and that is really the only time that one should speak. There are a few instances of other functions in responses. Unlike the kindergarten, however, there are no instances of control language by fourth and sixth grade children.4 A clear picture of the steady development of functional

4 These observations relate to a study done by Trenholm and Rose (1981), in which elementary and middle school teachers were asked to supply concrete descriptions of behaviors they perceived as signalling lack of communicative competence on the part of the students. The behaviors were coded into six categories that define the major rules for competent classroom discourse. The categories suggest that "the model student is well-behaved, patient, controlled and polite. He or she waits before speaking, listens intently and politely, sits quietly while others talk, and contributes clear and germane comments." They describe the model student as "the compliant communicator" (p. 24).

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TABLE 1 Comparison of major functions in whole group lessons in three grades

K (total functions « 250) 4 (total functions = 103) 6 (total functions = 197)

Functions Initiation Response Initiation Response Initiation Response

Ev. Ev. Mgt.

Mgt. Pro.

Con. Com. Ev. Ev.

Mgt. Mgt. Pro.

Con. Com. Ev. Ev.

Mgt. Mgt. Pro.

Con. Com. Ev. Ev.

Mgt. Mgt. Pro.

Con. Com. Ev. Ev.

Mgt. Mgt. Pro.

Con. Com. Ev. Ev.

Mgt. Mgt. Pro.

Con. Com.

Total functions Teacher Students

39.2 8.8

24.4, 4.4 2

6.8 12.4

2 37.8 9.7 .9

27.1 23.3 .9

36.0 .5

4.0 25.8 31.9

1.5

Major functions Teacher

Inform Control Request Give Modify

Students Inform Control Request Give Modify

10.4 18.0 10.0

.8

4.4 .4 .4

1.2 2.4

2.0 20.8

.4 1.2

A 2.8

1.2

.4 1.6

2.8

1.2 2.8

11.6

.4

.4

.4

1.2

11.6 14.5 10.6

.9

3.8 4.8 .9

.9

10.6 .9

2.9 12.6

22.3

.9

.9

2.5 6.5

25.3 1.5

.5

4.0 13.7

2.0 10.1

28.4

.5 2.0

.5 1.0

1.0 Note. Ev. == event; Ev. Mgt. = event management; Mgt. Pro. = management procedures; Con. Com. = context comment.

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language skills from grade to grade emerged from the study and we suggest that it is this development of functional language skills and of situationally appropriate language use that precluded the occurrence of interference. We will return to this suggestion.

Evidence of the effect of participant structure on the quantity of student talk and on the occurrence of language functions and dialect features has been shown in the comparison of whole groups across grades. Further evidence for these two conclusions can be found by comparing events within a single grade. For example, Table 2 shows the distribution of major language functions and the occurrence of dialect features in a fourth-grade whole group lesson concerning personal hygiene.

We can see from Table 2 that the largest amount of student talk is in the event response category, and the major function observed is informing. This concentration is a direct match to the highest frequency teacher category, event initiations in the ask/request new and old information category. Most of the teacher and student talk, then, is topic/content related.

Table 2 shows 47 teacher initiations in the event management category, and we should point out that the majority of these instances comprised transition markers, invitations to bid, and individual nominations.

In this particular lesson, frequencies show that there are only three student initiations. Those three initiations cover only two function cate­gories, informing and requesting information.

The pattern of children's talk in the response category covers three

TABLE 2 Frequency of utterances by major function category: fourth grade, whole group

Speaker Initiation Response

Function Speaker Event Event

Mgt.b Mgt. Pro.c c.c* Event Event

Mgt. Mgt. Pro. C.C.

Inform Teacher 13 4 8 0 11 6 1 0 Students 1 0 0 0 37 3 0 0

Control Teacher 21 38 1 1 0 3 1 0 Students 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Ask/ Teacher 36 (+3)" 5 2 1 2 6 0 0 request Students 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0

Give Teacher 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 3 Students 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Modify Teacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Students 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

a (+) indicates number of functions occurring with dialect features. b Event management. c Management procedures. d Context comment.

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function areas: informing, controlling, and regulating information. The evidence clearly shows that children are most often responding to teacher questions.

Only teacher talk occurs in the give category, primarily as evaluation. Neither the teacher nor the students use those functional categories related to modifying behavior or information in the whole-group situation.

The instances of functions accompanied by dialect features are almost nonexistent. The dialect features that do occur are produced by the teacher in ask/request speech functions. The overall picture, then, in this fourth-grade whole group lesson, is of a fairly orderly academic event in which the teacher elicits information from the students, and the students respond to the elicitations. The management of the event is accomplished by the teacher. This whole group segment with the teacher is in sharp contrast with another fourth-grade segment that involves three children without the teacher.

The assignment required that each child select a book to discuss with his or her group. As part of the discussion, the group was to find and list compound words and adjectives in the books selected. During the course of the segment, the conversation slowly shifts from the academic topic to an unrelated discussion of G's book. What follows is a brief excerpt from the transcript.

G: Awright . . . Look for the leather, leather back turtle. Wood turtle. Forest.

P: You know the Forest Turtle—is that right? G: Yeah. I: Yeah. G: Look for the urn Sof Shell. I: Sof Shell. P: (points to book) sof shell sof shell, sof shell. G: Wrong. Up here! That's it. I got one that's gon fool you. I: Show me. G: Here it is. Wait a minute Wait a minute I: [Where? J G: Hmm hm. Look for the snapping turtle. Wrong. There it is, snap­

ping turtle ["(laughs) 1 Yeah. I: Low man, that's how it lookj P: They cute ain't they? G: Now you know what the snapping turtle looks like. His head is going

like a foot. You see when they got a head goin' up like a foot.

Table 3 shows the distribution of language functions and dialect features in this segment. We see from this that the children initiate as well as respond and there are examples of functions in every category. There is also a noticeable occurrence of dialect features. Most of the talk in this segment directly concerns the event or the management of the event, and

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TABLE 3 Frequency of utterances by major function category: fourth grade, small group without teacher

Initiation Response Function Speaker E v e n t M g t E v e n t M g t Event * , . - „ b C.C.C Event , , . * CC. Mgt.a Pro. Mgt. Pro. Inform P 13 (+5) l(+l)2(+2) 3 21 (+5) 0 0 0

G 28 (+9) 3 0 0 11 (+10) 0 0 0 I 6 0 0 0 12 (+1) 0 0 0

Control P 1 3 1 1 0 1 0 0 G 17 (+2) 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 I 0 0 0 0 1(+1) 0 0 0

Ask/request P 4 0 0 0 6 (+4) 0 0 0 G 21 (+1) 0 0 0 5(+l) 0 0 0 I 0 0 0 0 5(+D 0 0 0

Give P 2(+l) 0 0 0 12 (+1) 1 0 0 G 2 0 0 0 21 (+4) 0 0 0 I 1 0 0 0 5 0 0 0

Modify P 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 G i (+ i ) 1 0 0 13 (+5) 0 0 0 I 0 0 0 0 4(+l) 1 0 0

Note. (+) indicates number of functions occurring with dialect features. a Event management. b Management procedures. c Context comment.

although there are no examples of control language by the children in the segment with the teacher, there are numerous instances in this segment, particularly by G.

We have seen that there is more occurrence of dialect features in some segments than in others, and a different distribution of language functions according to participant structure. This in turn suggests that children's developing awareness of what kind of language is appropriate for different settings can be documented. This suggestion is further supported by a comparison of the language usage of individual speakers in different segments. For example, in the two fourth-grade segments that we just discussed, G and Fs whole group language use could be compared with their language use in a small group. Such a comparison is also possible for two kindergarten children, E and CS, who clearly emerged as classroom leaders. Table 4 contrasts their language usage in a whole group project with the teacher, with language usage in a small nonacademic play session without the teacher.

Several interesting trends emerge from this display. In E's case, although we don't see a significant increase of functions in the inform category,

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TABLE 4 Contrast of language usage of two kindergarten speakers, by segment

Whole group Small group Speaker Function with teacher without teacher

Initiation Response Initiation Response Inform 22.2 7.4 22.9 9.1(1+) Control 11.1 0 38.9 (3+) 3.8 Ask 40.7 (1+) 0 3.0 •7(1+) Give 0 7.4 3.8 10.0(1+) Modify 11.1(1+) 0 6.1 (2+)

Dialect =

1.5

Dialect = ■■ 2/27 = 7% 6.1 (2+)

Dialect = 8/131=6.1% Inform 41.6(1+) 8.3 36.6 (8+) 6.6 Control 8.3 0 30.0 (2+) 0 Ask 8.3 0 10.0(1+) 1.1 Give 16.6 16.6 3.3 5.5 Modify 0 0 3.3 3.3

Dialect = 1/12 = 8.3% Dialect = 11/90= 12.2%

there is a noticeable increase in control functions in the play session and a decrease in ask functions. He shows a slight increase in overall dialect usage in the play session. Dialect features occur in the inform and control function categories in that session, but are absent in the same function categories in the whole group project with the teacher. The same pattern occurs for CS, with a maintenance of utterances in inform, and increase in control, and a decrease in ask categories. CS shows a sharper increase in overall occurrences of dialect features, and he also uses dialect features in the play session with functions that occur without dialect features in the whole group project. The one point of contrast between the two children is in response behavior: whereas E shows an increase in response behavior in the play session, CS shows a decrease. This may reflect E's relatively higher status, his responses being a way of directing the flow of events.

The examination of individual speakers also reveals some very straight­forward facts about the sheer amount of children's language production, with important implications for assessment of children's language compe­tence. Table 5 provides data on the language production of three kinder­garten speakers in two different settings: the whole group project with the teacher, and one-on-one interaction. There is a noticeable contrast between the whole group language behavior of the two children in Table 4 and that of these speakers. As we mentioned earlier, the children in Table 4 clearly emerged as classroom leaders, and their verbal production was generally higher than that of other children in the classroom. The sharp contrast found in Table 4 between language production with the teacher present

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TABLE 5 Comparison of three kindergarten speakers in events with and without teacher (% given function of child's total functions in the event)

Whole group One-on-one Function ^ ^ teacher without teacher

Initiation Response Initiation Response Inform 0 0 46.3 (9+) 3.6 Control 0 0 25.6 1.2 Ask 100 0 3.6 6.0(1+) Give 0 0 4.8 4.8 Modify 0 0 3.6 (2+) 0 Inform 0 0 45.7(15+) 5.6(1+) Control 0 0 24.2 (3+) 3.7 Ask 0 0 5.6 (2+) 0 Give 0 0 1.8 6.5 Modify 0 100 2.8 3.7 Inform 20.0 0 16.9 4.2 Control 0 0 29.5 5.6(1+) Ask 20.0 0 8.4 1.4 Give 0 0 9.8 18.3 (1+) Modify 20.0 40.0 0 5.6(1+)

and language production without the teacher is not unusual in this class­room and is generally representative of the situation.

Although CHE, TA, and R are all consistently present during the whole group project, their contributions to the conversation are limited or non­existent. The contrast between their linguistic contributions in a group with a teacher and in one-on-one or small group interaction is dramatic. In the latter, all three girls reveal competence in all function categories and the ability to use language functionally. There is also the occurrence of dialect features that may reveal a developing awareness of language appro­priateness. Were the language competence of these girls to be evaluated based solely on their interaction with the teacher or with an external evaluator, the resulting picture would be strikingly different from an evaluation based on their interaction with peers.

Developmental Progression of Dialect Use Our third conclusion is that there is a developmental progression in the

use of dialect from kindergarten through fourth grade to sixth grade. It would appear that the children in kindergarten are still in the process of learning in which situations dialect is appropriate or inappropriate. By fourth and sixth grade, that learning process is practically completed. The progression in the use of dialect is accompanied by a progression in functional language use, from student initiations and responses in all

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contexts with a wide range of functions in kindergarten, to a clear separa­tion of initiations and responses and language functions according to setting in the fourth and sixth grades.

Evidence for the developmental progression in the use of dialect emerged from the comparison of all segments across the three grades. Some partic­ularly interesting evidence for the developing awareness of situationally appropriate language use comes from two kindergarten segments. These are the same segments that, when compared with whole group events, revealed sharp contrasts in the language of individual speakers. Table 6 compares the occurrence of dialect features in six kindergarten segments.

We see from this that the occurrence of dialect features is not very remarkable in any of the segments. However, the occurrence in Segments 2 and 6 stands out from the other four segments, particularly in the inform function category. The greater occurrence of dialect features in these two segments seems to be directly related to the nature of the events in the segments. What distinguishes these two segments is that they consist largely of pretend events—playing house or running a barnyard—that are clearly understood by the participants to be ideally taking place in some place other than a kindergarten classroom. It follows that the language used would be that considered appropriate for settings outside the classroom, hence the greater occurrence of dialect features. What is remarkable is the apparent sensitivity in these young children to which language forms are appropriate for which settings. It is clearly a developing sensitivity, as we see that there is some occurrence of dialect features in the presence of the teacher. We find this to be in sharp contrast with the fourth-grade data, for example, which reveal categorical absence of dialect features in the presence of the teacher.

It is also interesting to note that a number of dialect features occur in the modify function category. Examples include utterances such as: "G: 'Now you makin' me to spill it!'" or "R: 'It ain't dirt—it's sand!'" What is striking about these and the other examples is the element of protest and of emotional involvement of the speaker. We suggest that in a setting in which dialect usage is understood by the participants to be inappropriate, it may be acceptable if it accompanies language functions concerning protest about or modification of an unacceptable state of affairs.

Awareness of Situationally Appropriate Language Use The fourth conclusion of the study is that an awareness in both the

students and the teachers of situationally appropriate language use accom­panies the developmental progression in the use of dialect. In the kinder­garten, the children do not verbalize this awareness but they display it through their use of dialect that varies significantly according to setting. In the fourth and sixth grades, the situationally different use is accompanied

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TABLE 6 Occurrence of dialect features across all kindergarten segments, by major function category (percentage of total number of utterances in segment)

Initiation Response Segment Function

Event Event Mgt.a

Mgt. Pro.b C.C.C Event Event

Mgt. Mgt. Pro. C.C.

1 Medium group with teacher

One-to-one without teacher

Small group without teacher (farm corner) 4 Small group without teacher (jumprope) 5 Small group without teacher (sand table) 6 Small group without teacher (farm corner)

Inform Control Ask Give Modify Inform Control Ask Give Modify Inform Control Ask Give Modify Inform Control Ask Give Modify Inform Control Ask Give Modify Inform Control Ask Give Modify

1.1 1.5

2.7

2.7 10.3 1.0 1.0

1.0

2.3

0.7

1.4 4.3 0.8 2.0

1.0 0.5

1.3 1.3 1.3

1.0 0.5

1.3

4.0

0.7

1.4 0.5

0.5 0.2

0.5

4.0

4.6 0.7 1.4

0.7 2.8 0.5 0.2

0.2

a Event management. b Management procedures. c Context comment.

by the ability to talk about the awareness. The teachers share the awareness. Our main source of evidence for this conclusion consists of observations made by the students and the teachers. As part of the data collection, all of the students were interviewed in self-selected groups of three or four, and were asked, among other things, about the nature of language modi-

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fication or correction in the classroom.5 These interviews yielded Uttle in kindergarten. In the fourth and sixth grades, however, the interviews were quite revealing. What follows is an excerpt from one of the sixth-grade interviews:

Interviewer: Do you think some people talk better than others? M: Yeah.

Interviewer: In what way? M: Because some people say like, you know, they'll say "I ain't

got no more," like that, and some people say, "I haven't any more," like that.

Interviewer: What is a good talker? R: A person who speaks real good.

Interviewer: Yeah, but how do you know they're speaking good? What are they doing that's different from a person who doesn't speak good?

G: Use a good s sound P: They put endings on their words. L: Like sometime I think M. talk well because everytime I be

saying the wrong words, she always correct me. Interviewer: What do you mean when you say the wrong word?

L: Like I be saying, "M., I ain't got none," like that. She say, "It's not ain't." She say, "You don't have any."

Six different items were mentioned as being targets for modification or correction: Ain 't as an auxiliary (e.g., / ain 't got no more) and negative concord with indefinites (/ don't got none) were most commonly men­tioned, followed by inflectional endings (she say vs. she says), the correction of a politeness marker (Pardon me? vs. Huh?), and specific lexical items (e.g., the use of what not as a lexical item, e.g., / went to the store for milk and eggs and what not ...), some of which cannot be said to be dialect related. We found that this corresponded to the same ordering of correction actually observed in the classroom.

The teachers were also interviewed individually and questioned about language diversity and correction and the same features were mentioned in those interviews. In her interview, the sixth-grade teacher mentioned "verb forms and endings" as targets for correction. Furthermore, although the kindergarten and fourth-grade teachers did not overtly correct dialect features (at least not in the presence of researchers and video equipment), the sixth-grade teacher did. Forty-five examples of correction in the sixth-grade data were analyzed, and we found that the dialect features that are mentioned and discussed by the teachers and the students are the same features that get corrected, even though many other features occur. The

5 Our choice of the word modification is motivated by a desire to avoid the value judgment implicit in the term correction. For a complete discussion of correction, see Lucas (1986).

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following segment documents the occurrence of a dialect feature that is noticed and corrected by the teacher during a whole group discussion concerning the upcoming class trip to Jamestown and how much money should be taken for souvenirs and lunch:

T: What do you get for an allowance each week, L—? SI: I don't get no allowance. T: I don't get no allowance? S2: (laughter) T: What was that? SI: I don't get . . . I don't get any allowance. T: You don't get any allowance? S1: Nope. My grandmother get my money.

This example is in contrast to an occurrence of dialect features that are not corrected, as is the case in a rather heated discussion about whether or not one should keep or return the belongings of others that one has found:

SI: Billy do, too. S2: You do, too. T: You know, what does the word too mean? S3: Willy do. T: What does the word too mean? When he said, "You do, too."

Aren't you admitting you do it yourself? When you s . . . SI: No. T and others: Yeah. T: Yeah! So that means I did do it and so did you. SI: I don't... T: So you just gave a confession. I did too. SI: He do. I don't. T: I do too. SI: Uhuh!

The fifth conclusion relates to the modification of dialect. We observed that although a wide range of dialect features occurs, only selected ones get modified. The explanation for this observation concerns the linguistic nature of the modified features as opposed to the unmodified ones. The unmodified features included third person singular present -s (she say vs. she says), iterative be (we be playing), copula deletion (he home vs. he is home), plural -s, ain 't as an auxiliary, and existential it's (it's a book on the table vs. there's a book on the table). All of these are what we might want to call "active" features, in that they are general features that can apply to a very wide range of items in the language: the -s plural can be variably deleted from any noun that takes an -s plural; it can be used as an existential in an enormously wide range of linguistic environments; similarly, third person singular present -s can be variably deleted on a very large number of present tense verbs. The point is that what unites these features is that they are all rules that apply to large classes of items. The

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Lucas and Borders items to which such rules apply are not easily isolable, precisely because of the broad or general nature of the rules. This is in contrast to the features that do get modified, such as ain 't/didn 't substitution {he ain't do it vs. he didn 't do it) or negative concord with indefinites (/ ain't got none). Here the class of items to which the rule applies is noticeably smaller and may be limited, as in the case of ain 't/didn't, to one item. It is easy to single the item out, and the item itself seems to take on the characteristic of a fixed lexical item as opposed to the object of a general syntactic or phonological rule. Indeed, the isolability and relative singularity of the modified features may be useful in understanding how certain features become socially stereotyped in the first place. We see then, both from observations by the children and the teachers, and from the way dialect diversity is handled, an awareness of situationally appropriate language use.

Language Diversity and Classroom Discourse This study consists of a close examination of the actual qualitative and

quantitative occurrence and distribution of dialect features in three class­rooms in which children were dialect speakers. Dialect features occurred in everyday classroom discourse, and both the teachers and the students had a clear awareness of dialect diversity. However, notwithstanding these two facts, the sixth conclusion of the study is that there was no evidence of dialect interference resulting from dialect diversity, as far as everyday classroom discourse is concerned. We recall the 1980 Ann Arbor memo­randum, in which it is stated that" . . . so far as understanding is concerned in the school setting, although there was initially a type of language difference, there was no barrier to understanding caused by the language . . . " (p. 7). Our study, with its description of 62 videotaped segments representative of a wide range of classroom events, clearly bears out this observation. Our study demonstrates that although the issue of interference may be fundamentally a language issue, it is clearly not an issue of the production and comprehension of language forms. The production of dialect forms did not impede interaction in the classrooms that we studied. To the contrary, our examination of dialect diversity revealed that the children had a fairly sophisticated sociolinguistic competence. Specifically, they clearly demonstrated awareness of and capacity for situationally appropriate language use. Furthermore, there was no conversational repair work relating to comprehension of language forms. Finally, some children who contributed little or nothing in whole group lessons with the teacher participated very actively in other settings, demonstrating competence in a wide range of language functions. Our point here is that the focus should not simply be on absence of interference. It should also be on the presence of language skills that preclude the possibility of interference. That is, there is no barrier caused by dialect interference because there exists situationally

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appropriate language use and awareness of dialect diversity in both the teachers and the children. The absence of a barrier is not an accident; rather, it is evidence for active sociolinguistic competence in the classroom. This observation ties in directly to the observations of other researchers, most specifically McDermott and GospodinofF (1981). In their examina­tion of interaction in ethnically diverse classrooms, they remark that

While we do not deny that communicative code differences exist, we emphasize that they are secondary to the political relations between members of the different groups both in the classroom and in the larger community... The presence or absence of dialect in the children's speech is not the crucial determinant of successful communication in school. Rather, dialect appears to function as a focus for the relational work of the children and the teacher. If the teacher and the children are alienated from each other, their dialects will take center stage and the teacher and the children will battle each other about the proper way to speak, (pp. 212-218)

Our study clearly supports these remarks, as the obvious presence of dialect in the classrooms did not constitute interference in communication.

The Ann Arbor memorandum goes on to say that "If a barrier exists because of the language used by the children in this case, it exists not because the teachers and students cannot understand each other, but because in the process of attempting to teach the students how to speak standard English the students are made somehow to feel inferior and are thereby turned off from the learning process" (p. 7).

Clearly, the "somehow" has long been the object of research attention, and is precisely what is being addressed by McDermott and GospodinofF (see also Brice-Heath, 1983 and Ogbu, 1985). The "somehow" has also been addressed, beginning with Rosenthal and Jacobson's pioneering study in 1968 on the effect of teacher expectancy on student performance, and continuing with a number of studies examining the effect of teachers' language attitudes on assessment of children's oral answers, reading ability, intelligence, personal characteristics, and so forth. (See, e.g., Babad, Inbar, & Rosenthal, 1982; Crowl & MacGinitie, 1974; Frender, Brown, & Lam­bert, 1970; Jensen & Rosenfeld, 1974; Labov, 1972; Politzer & Hoover, 1976; Rist, 1970; Seligman, Tucker, & Lambert, 1972; Taylor, 1983; Williams, Whitehead, & Miller, 1972.) The data for these studies were elicited from teachers in experimental situations outside of actual class­rooms, and in many cases, the samples of children's "oral" language were reading samples and not samples of natural conversation. Other researchers have addressed the issue of teacher attitudes in much broader ways. McDermott (1976) described variation in teacher behaviors across different level reading groups (noting, e.g., that in "high" groups, teachers tend to call on the children, whereas in "low" groups, the children tend to have a bid for a turn). Eder (1981) examined the nature and the extent of

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differences in the learning contexts of ability groups in a first-grade class­room and questioned the utility of ability groupings for instructing low ability students. She suggests that those students who were likely to have much more difficulty learning were assigned to groups whose social con­texts were much less conducive for learning.

Our study, with its extensive naturalistic corpus, raises some new ques­tions in this area of teacher attitudes and assessment. For example, if interaction between teachers' language attitudes and assessment can be demonstrated in experimental situations, it stands to reason that the same interaction may be operative in actual everyday classroom situations, as a function of occurrence of dialect diversity. Simply because "there was no barrier to understanding caused by the language" does not guarantee that teachers' judgments of student potential and performance are not being affected by attitudes toward dialect diversity.

Furthermore, in discussing the issue of the measurement of success in culturally diverse classrooms, Steinberg and Cazden (1979) remarked that " . . . there were marked differences between the picture of the child that emerged from the official, teacher-led part of the classroom day, and the picture that emerged from the activities that the children carried on by themselves but were caught for later viewing on tape" (p. 263). They went on to observe that teachers may underestimate children's competence, if that estimation is based entirely on a child's performance in teacher-led events. Our study clearly supports this observation, in terms of children's use of both dialect form and language functions. Indeed, it appears to be the case that some children display a much wider range of functional language competence in situations in which dialect features are deemed acceptable (as demonstrated by the higher frequency of occurrence). One possible practical application for the findings would be to capitalize on that already-existing functional language competence and use it to develop sociolinguistic skills for a variety of settings. That is, identify the language functions that are already being realized in one language variety and develop them in another language variety.

We would like to conclude by suggesting that the knowledge gained about children's sociolinguistic competence from studies such as this one be incorporated systematically into assessment procedures. We are aware of some work in that area and we see it as a crucial area for future educational research.

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Authors CEIL LUCAS, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics and Interpreting,

Gallaudet University, 8th & Florida Ave., NE, Washington, DC 20002. Special­izations: sociolinguistics, ASL structure, bilingualism.

DENISE BORDERS, Evaluation Consultant, CTB/McGraw-Hill, 2500 Garden Rd., Monterey, CA 93940. Specializations: psycho- and sociolinguistics/meas-urement.

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