Article published in:
Towards Culture(s) of Dialogue: Communicating Unity and Diversity through Language and Discourse
Edited by Urszula Okulska, Grzegorz Kowalski and Urszula Topczewska
[Language and Dialogue 12:2] 2022
► pp. 306–331

Practices of inclusion/exclusion in and through classroom dialogue

Children’s peer socialization to institutional norms of literacy and language use

| University of Bologna

The paper explores non-native children’s peer socialization to norms of literacy and appropriate language use in the classroom. Drawing on ethnographic research in a primary school in northern Italy, this study adopts a CA-informed approach to analyze an Italian L2 class attended by children aged 8 to 10. The study focuses on children’s enacting of correction sequences following peers’ problematic conduct. As the analysis illustrates, children creatively re-produce teachers’ ways of speaking to enforce normative uses of language. Through these practices, non-native children socialize their classmates into expected ways of speaking, reading, and writing, and negotiate the social hierarchy of the peer group. Risks and opportunities of such practices are considered in relation to children’s social inclusion and exclusion.

Keywords: language socialization, linguistic norms, literacy, subteaching, primary school, classroom dialogue, classroom cultures, L2 classroom, ethnography and Conversation Analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Peer dialogues as a language socialization arena
    • 2.2Subteaching practices
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Peer socialization to appropriate lexical choices
    • 4.2Peer socialization to an appropriate way of ‘doing requesting’
    • 4.3Peer socialization to literacy practices
  • 5.Concluding discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 08 August 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00127.nas
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