Analyzes an ethnographic study of child second language (L2) learning, focusing on the disputes that two of the children engaged in. Data reveal how these language events both reflected and helped shape the identities of the children in ways that influenced their opportunities for L2 learning. (Author/VWL)

Ethnographic classroom research shows culturally different children follow non-congruent patterns in arguments with their peers. Protests by two first grade boys from different cultures are examined, and some ways in which their protesting styles differ are indicated. A Black American child pursues final protests using successively more aggravated…

This report considers some of the expectations, conventions, and strategies relied upon by Anglo children when they are participating in the speech event of storytelling, with particular focus on the children's interweaving of narrational and metanarrational speech. The data were obtained from white middle-class schoolchildren, aged six through…

Discusses the interactional state referred to by speakers of Hebrew as "brogez" as an example of the ritual regulation of conflict. Identifies specific forms and strategies of this type of interaction as they are used by Israeli children and their relevance to children's communicative competence. (SED)

Explores perspectives and methodologies that sociolinguistics brings to ethnographic research in schools. The article identifies the methodological contributions arising from linguistics that interactional sociolinguistics and microethnograpy share, such as the use of naturally occurring language data, the consultation of native intuition, and…

The role of cultural context in the communicative interaction of young Inuit children, their caregivers, and their non-Inuit teachers was examined in a longitudinal ethnographic study conducted in two small communities of arctic Quebec. Focus was on discourse features of primary language socialization of Inuit families. (32 references) (Author/LB)

This issue includes four papers: (1) "Context in Children's Speech," by Jenny Cook-Gumperz and John J. Gumperz, demonstrates how context is used as a framing device for semantic interpretation of messages. It is suggested that context is not simply background information but part of the total message, entering into the information communicated,…

Presents various viewpoints on dual language acquisition by children. These include native language foundation, first-language monolinguals' vocabulary development, second-language learning, simultaneous acquisition strategies, television as a source of language learning, functions of language in discourse, analysis of conversation, syntax and…

The five papers included in this volume approach the study of American Indian languages from a diverse array of methodological and theoretical approaches to linguistics. Two papers focus on approaches that come from the applied linguistics tradition, emphasizing ethnolinguistics and discourse analysis: Sonya Bird's paper "A Cross Cultural…