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<div>A couple of thoughts, not definitive but just to keep the ball
rolling...</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 10:58 PM +0200 9/1/03, Timothy Mason wrote:</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I said in my last post that there are
good grounds for accepting [that "variations in linguistic
skill... can be explained - at least in part - by differences in
parental practices"].</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>I think we have to be very careful about what is meant by
"linguistic skill" here. Do we really mean that the children
in question are not competent users of Language, or do we mean that
they aren't competent users of the accepted dialect?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Also, I had the impression (from Raspberry) that the researchers
were more focused on vocabulary and, by extension, cultural knowledge
than *language* per se. We know from Labov, way back, that children of
poor parents are not really linguistically deficient; they just use
language differently from what is expected in the school
situation.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>The [view of "these differences as
culturally determined, and deep-rooted, on the other hand, is based in
a strong - and to my mind erroneous - model of cultural
determinism."]</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>But, don't we have pretty good ethnographic work from a number of
places that brings out exactly the cultural component in language
socialization practices? I don't have my references handy
(everything's in boxes) but the folks on this list probably know more
about this than I do, anyway, and I think some *are* the ethnographers
in question. Anyhow, when Raspberry notes that:</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote>"<font color="#000000">For example, the 11- to
18-month-old children of professionals (mostly university professors
in the study) heard 642 utterances during a typical hour, with 482 of
these addressed to the children themselves. Children of welfare
parents heard an average 394 such utterances, with only 197 directly
addressed to them."</font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>My question would be: Does this variation fall inside or outside
the bounds that we see from cross-cultural ethnographic investigation?
The answer to *that* question, it seems to me, is key to understanding
how to confront this "problem."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Finally...</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>The edge that the children of the
middle-classes have in the schooling game is primarily
*linguistic*...</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>I'm not so sure. What middle-class children have, in my view
(informed by my experiences working with children in the Caribbean) is
a leg up on the social and cultural knowledge required to *use* their
very considerable linguistic skills in ways that get them rewarded in
schools and in the larger society.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Sorry to stick with Timothy for now. Karl Reisman has put forward
some good and stimulating thoughts, as well, but I'm mentally stuck on
this aspect of the issue for the moment. My main concern is that we
not return to the 1950s; the music was ok, but the idea that certain
groups of people had mass cases of "linguistic deficit" was
not.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Ron</div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>Ronald Kephart<br>
Associate Professor<br>
Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminal Justice<br>
University of North Florida<br>
http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart</div>
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