> Don't know if this would be of use but I have written a Phd exploring
> class-language variation in joint book-reading in homes and K school classes
> using (in part) Bernstein's theory. ...
> My conclusions are quite different from
> those Gordon Wells reached in the Bristol study. The thesis has just been
> published in micro fiche in CORE, Volume 19(3).
>Geoff, could you say more about the difference?
Thanks, Gordon, for the invitation to comment further.
The study closely analysed dialogue between 20 mothers and four-year-old
children in contrasted social class locations during intact joint book-reading
sessions, and between K students and teachers in jb-r during the first couple
of months of formal schooling. The schools were in the same suburban
localities as the families, and were the ones which the four-year-olds would
normally be expected to attend the following year.
In both sets of family social class locations the mothers read extensively to
children, and there was quite extensive talk around the object texts, which
were generally narratives.
There are some differences with the Bristol study in theorising/describing
speakers' locations in social class practices, and consequently then in
interpreting the significance of configurations of linguistic features
implicated in the observed variation. Perhaps of particular interest to you,
since you have seen some results from Ruqaiya Hasan's studies of semantic
variation, is the fact that the variable features in both studies are very
similar, though the data sets are quite discrete.
In Australia, for some families the widespread use of the metaphor of a
'partnership' between home and school seems to have important effects. There
is the obvious question of who can enter such a partnership, and on what
terms. I suspect that interaction in some "middle-class" families is
increasingly legislated by pedagogic handbooks, which make home interaction
during j b-r more like school interaction, which itself was largely modelled
on a particular, selective version of "desirable" home practices. A complex
relation of amplification. In trying to understand these relations I've found
Bernstein's model of the pedagogic device very useful.
Geoff Williams