PhD dissertation: Emergent speech genres of teaching and learning interaction. Communities of practice in Cameroonian schools and villages
Cognitive linguistics as a usage-based theory of emergent grammar is fundamental to this dissertation in which data from Cameroonian classrooms and everyday interactions are analysed. The analysis connects the idea of linguistic units as schematic symbolic structures with the Bakhtinian notion of speech genres. Speech genres are not absolute rules of structure imposed on language, but tendencies emerging out of practice to become conventionalised recognisable patterns in communities of practice. When entrenched in language users, speech genres have both conventionalised meanings and conventionalised form and are as such linguistic units. These linguistic units are schematic and underdetermine the forms and meanings produced in an actual usage event of a genre.
Speech genres are at work in teaching and learning interactions in the villages of the Nizaa ethnic group of the Galim-Tignère area in Cameroon. A historic and ethnographic overview of the group is the theme of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 presents the analytical concept of speech genres in teaching and learning interaction and examines the informal learning contexts of the village. In skill demonstrations there are typical ways of talking related to the use of intent observation as a learner’s strategy. Riddle games and tales are speech genres implicitly teaching both verbal skills and cultural knowledge. The social games played by the children rehearse cultural themes and ways of talking about them, adding resonance to everyday speech.
After a short review of the history of schooling in the area (Chapter 6), Chapter 7 goes on to present the notion of communities of practice and apply it to students learning to ‘do school’. The large group of redoers present in most classes explain why teachers can expect their classes to behave competently from the first day, even though French is the medium of instruction and few children have any knowledge of this language before starting school. Verbal and non-verbal practices of ‘doing school’ are treated, showing how certain ways of speaking develop in two different classes.
Chapter 8 gives a detailed analysis of one lesson session in a little village school in order to pinpoint speech genres manifested in the classroom talk. As the lesson unfolds, attention is drawn to how the teacher may have entrenched speech genres of classroom interaction, while the students have different conceptualisations of these. Though recurrent patterns of interaction are social and cognitive resources for the students, they may struggle to make successful use of them. Meanings are constructed in the interaction, making the emergent character of language visible in the dynamic processes of the class as a community of practice.
By using cognitive linguistics as the main theoretical framework and speech genres as the main analytical tool for interactional language data, the dissertation both broadens the perspective of cognitive linguistics and provides a basic view of language useful for other socially oriented approaches to interaction.
Speech genres are at work in teaching and learning interactions in the villages of the Nizaa ethnic group of the Galim-Tignère area in Cameroon. A historic and ethnographic overview of the group is the theme of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 presents the analytical concept of speech genres in teaching and learning interaction and examines the informal learning contexts of the village. In skill demonstrations there are typical ways of talking related to the use of intent observation as a learner’s strategy. Riddle games and tales are speech genres implicitly teaching both verbal skills and cultural knowledge. The social games played by the children rehearse cultural themes and ways of talking about them, adding resonance to everyday speech.
After a short review of the history of schooling in the area (Chapter 6), Chapter 7 goes on to present the notion of communities of practice and apply it to students learning to ‘do school’. The large group of redoers present in most classes explain why teachers can expect their classes to behave competently from the first day, even though French is the medium of instruction and few children have any knowledge of this language before starting school. Verbal and non-verbal practices of ‘doing school’ are treated, showing how certain ways of speaking develop in two different classes.
Chapter 8 gives a detailed analysis of one lesson session in a little village school in order to pinpoint speech genres manifested in the classroom talk. As the lesson unfolds, attention is drawn to how the teacher may have entrenched speech genres of classroom interaction, while the students have different conceptualisations of these. Though recurrent patterns of interaction are social and cognitive resources for the students, they may struggle to make successful use of them. Meanings are constructed in the interaction, making the emergent character of language visible in the dynamic processes of the class as a community of practice.
By using cognitive linguistics as the main theoretical framework and speech genres as the main analytical tool for interactional language data, the dissertation both broadens the perspective of cognitive linguistics and provides a basic view of language useful for other socially oriented approaches to interaction.
Publisert i 2008
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