Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and ClassroomsWays with Words, first published in 1983, is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two communities only a few miles apart in the south-eastern United States. 'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is an African-American working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land, but whose existent members work in the mills. In tracing the children's language development the author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities, whose ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as either does from the pattern of the townspeople, the 'mainstream' blacks and whites who hold power in the schools and workplaces of the region. Employing the combined skills of ethnographer, social historian, and teacher, the author raises fundamental questions about the nature of language development, the effects of literacy on oral language habits, and the sources of communication problems in schools and workplaces. |
Contents
Prologue | 1 |
Note on transcriptions | 15 |
Maps page | 18 |
Gettin on in two communities | 30 |
Roadville | 31 |
Trackton | 48 |
Tables | 55 |
Learning how to talk in Trackton | 73 |
The townspeople | 236 |
Photographs Maps Figures Tables Texts | 251 |
Teachers as learners | 265 |
Learners as ethnographers | 315 |
Epilogue | 343 |
Texts | 352 |
Epilogue 1996 | 370 |
Notes | 377 |
Trackton | 104 |
Teaching how to talk in Roadville | 113 |
Oral traditions | 149 |
Literate traditions | 190 |
| 407 | |
| 421 | |
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Common terms and phrases
activities adults ain't Alberta answer asked Aunt baby baby talk basal readers behavior Benjy Betty Bible Bobby boys child church classroom context cultural Danny Darett desegregation discourse ethnographic ethnographies of communication expected experiences girls grade individual interactions language lessons letters Lillie Mae listen lives Macken mainstream mamma mother move Nellie nonverbal numerous nursery rhymes nursery school occasions older children oral participation patterns Piedmont play playsongs porch preschool questions reading and writing response Roadville and Trackton Roadville children Roadville parents role Sesame Street social South Carolina story story-telling Sunday Sunday School talk tasks teachers teaching Teegie tell textile mills tion topic townspeople toys Trackton and Roadville Trackton children truck types usually verbal Wendy women words written young children Zinnia