Strong language: The purpose of dialogue in the development of writing (2005) PDF

Preview

Summary

Changing English Vol. 12, No. 1, April 2005, pp. 85–102 Strong language: the purpose of dialogue in the development of writing Malcolm Reed* University of Bristol, UK In order to discuss the nature and nurture of authorship in schooled literacy, the author explores what Bakhtin calls ‘responsive und...

Description

Changing English Vol. 12, No. 1, April 2005, pp. 85–102

Strong language: the purpose of dialogue in the development of writing Malcolm Reed* University of Bristol, UK

In order to discuss the nature and nurture of authorship in schooled literacy, the author explores what Bakhtin calls ‘responsive understanding’ to text and textual relations (1986). The activity of dialogue is crucial to the condition and form of responsive understanding. This paper considers a renewed interest in dialogical method as a way of strengthening teachers’ purposes, particularly in relation to the development of learners’ writing.

Stop the trafficking of drugs! Three written monologues by secondary school students

Speech from a farmer in a drug producing rural area (Abdul M.) The army came and burn my … ah … crop for this yar. What can I do? I habe a family to feed. I habe … ah … rent to pay and ah … I must arrange a marriage for my daughter. Without the money from this crop, I be lucky to feed my family and ah … pay my rent. They habe done this without telling me why. They habe … no right to do this to me. I will demand money from the gomment (government). They cannot do this to me. What reason do they habe to do this to me? […] Gomment tell me to grow onion because they say afin (opium) is bad to grow. But onion make no money. I know shishoks (farmers) who grow onion and they in bad … ah … ah … rin (debt). Some of them get thrown out from lenlot’s shishok (landlord’s farm) because they habe no money for rent. I grow afin because lenlot tell me. He say ah … afin make lot of money in other country. He tell me not to grow anything else, but only afin and in two yars time, he pay more money for afin and five yars time I can keep this land. […] There is no way I can pay my rent this yar. I had a talk with the lenlot. He say I can pay next yar. But ah … if it ah … happen again I will be thrown out. So I am praying the army will not come back and burn my afin. If they do, I will habe nowhere to go.

*University of Bristol, Graduate School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 IJA, UK. Email: [email protected] ISSN 1358-684X (print)/ISSN 1469-3585 (online)/05/010085-18 # 2005 The editors of Changing English DOI: 10.1080/1358684052000340489

86 M. Reed I am lucky my lenlot give me chance. If he did not I had to go to city to look for work. But ah … I would habe no place to live. So the army … ah … hold my nioty (destiny).

Speech from a mother of two children (Bilal A.) Lard. I don’t know whe fi start. Me na know wha’ fi seh. Day in, day out me see de pitney dem wi’ dem drugs; a sell it, using it an’ a buy it. Sometimes I curse myself. I ask myself: ‘Why me?’ but I just haffi seh de good Lord knows best. I wouldn’t be in dis place if I could help it, you know? I feel so sorry, to tink my children haffi grow up in a place like dis, where druggies are here every dyamn hour o’ de day. Dem have wan bwoy, me tink him name Tommy, yes Tommy. Him get hook pan de drugs an’ him cyan come off. Now de bwoy wan’ help. If i’s not too late dem a-go sen’ him to wa rehabilitation centre, you know? Dere he can get professional advice fi cope. An de damage it a do to de family: Lard, is a shame. De family jos a fall apart wi dem problems. It get me vex … it get me vex to know seh children out here pan de streets ‘cause dem no have no where to live, a waste dem life wid drugs. Dem whole life gan down de drain. By de time dem get to my age, heh, if dem no dead before dat, what would they have done wi’ dem selves? Wi’ dem lives? Honestly I don’t know. De amount o’ time I waste my phone bill, the amount o’ time I write to de government fi try tell dem wa a gwan, but dem no whan listen. Dem tell me seh is nuttin’ they can can do. Dem tink me no understand. Me understand alright; it a happen pan my street. I’s dem. If it was their children pan drugs, begging fi money fi buy drugs: coke and heroin, mi sure they would do something about it. I’m sure of it. […] The saddest ting about it is de children dem. How dem a-soffer. Me haffi watch dem twenty-four hours fi de day, fi mek sure dem no pick up no nastiness: de people syringe an ting. Me haffi watch it, if me no careful next ting me know seh is my children a tek cocaine or heroin. Since all dis started, since we moved here I haffi give up my job fi look after de children. […] Honestly the amount o’ times I cry in my prayers …

Speech by a 21-year-old heroin addict attempting to rehabilitate (Ahmet M.) […] I was at University now and began to borrow money and steal to buy my minds groceries. I went again to my parent’s house pleading for money. My father was not home and it seemed they knew of my problem for my mother broke down crying, refusing me money but begging for her son to come back the way he left home. I suffered from bouts of paranoia, I unfortunately suffered a bout in my parents house. I physically abused my mother making her have to suffer pain mentally and physically alike. She was in hospital for weeks. The problem was now beyond my control but I still could not admit I was an addict. It’s true what they say: the last person to notice an addict is the addict themselves. I began to do anything for money. I even found out a friend’s credit card number and withdrew money from his account to buy my drugs. My career was going nowhere. I thought of nothing but where my next fix was to arrive from. I left university because I realized that I would need time to purchase the satisfaction of my craving.

The purpose of dialogue in the development of writing 87 I could not face going back to my parent’s house even though I had heard from friends how they wanted to help me. I even did sexual favours to other men to pay for what I now could see was an addiction, I degraded myself just to experience artificial dreams. I don’t know how but my parents managed to find me and partially with force and partially through my own realization of the reality of my situation had me admitted into a rehabilitation unit where I am today. I now live one day at a time, trying to pick up the pieces. Everyday is a battle and when I get through one day without heroin to me it’s a great victory. I’m twenty-one, I’ve ruined my career, I’ve ruined my life and now I’m struggling to beat my addiction. I know I want to do it but whether I can only time will tell. Drugs have no prejudices, whether you are rich or poor in the end we all suffer the same consequences. I was lucky to get out when I did.

The point of starting with actual examples of learners’ writing is to introduce the reader to strong language from the outset—strong, because in each case the writing is purposeful, poignant and powerful. These teenage writers express with robust skill the perspectives of other people in language that fits the identity of the speaker. So, although these writings are monologues, they are hardly monological in the Bakhtinian perspective I mean to explore. We are reading texts invested with dialogical relationships: between the writer and his choice of character; between the character and his or her voice; between that voice and a complex web of social identities woven into that activity of utterance; and between the writers and their teacher, as the task was prepared, drafted, discussed, and finally made public for examination. The extracts come from a final year (taught to 16-year-olds), General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), dual certificate, English Language and Literature coursework assignment I devised and taught some years ago in 1989. Current teachers of English might protest that this is a long time ago and that the curriculum has moved on, with far fewer opportunities for examination through coursework. It is certainly the case that the combined GCSE English Language and Literature syllabus has changed and reduced the contribution of coursework, but it would be possible to teach a similar assignment within the National Curriculum for English (DfEE, 1999) programme of study for writing addressing the triplet: ‘writing to explore, imagine, entertain’. Anyway, it is the literary, linguistic and pedagogical relationships that interest me here, rather than the mode of examination. The class watched and discussed Traffik (C4, 1989, screenplay by Simon Moore), a drama-documentary with an innovative multilingual approach broadcast by Channel 4, and read an expose´ of opium production in Afghanistan in the Guardian newspaper. The assignment requirement was to write three monologues in the voice of a farmer, a mother on a local council estate, and an addict in a rehabilitation centre. I had taught these three 16-year-old students English for much of their five years at a secondary comprehensive school for boys in East London. Abdul, Bilal and Ahmet came from distinctly different ethnic backgrounds—Bangladeshi, AfricanCaribbean, and Turkish—in a class (and school) in which few people were in a ‘minority’, such was the balance in numbers between religious affiliations, linguistic

88 M. Reed backgrounds and family origins. The majority of pupils were born and raised in the locality. This was a place of cultural heteroglossia, of ‘many voices’ (Miller, 1983), in which diversity was not odd but normal. Contrary to the representations of educational failure and literate incompetence that are expected of less privileged, urban schools and their students, these writers left school with top grades in English. The introduction of the coursework dual certificate GCSE in English Language and Literature was of momentous importance to the educational achievement of working-class boys, regardless of their ethnic origins. It allowed me in the English department to tailor my choice of literary texts and assignment demands to the interests and life experiences of my pupils; it legitimated an approach to literacy learning and teaching that I want to call dialogic. It isn’t original of me to propose this term, but the concept of dialogue as a pedagogical activity is being invested with some importance at the moment, so I would like to examine something of the heritage to dialogic literacy teaching. I want to distinguish between dialogic and dialogical, much as one would distinguish between ‘logic’ and ‘logical’. Bakhtin (1981, 1986) means to portray a particular philosophy of language in his use of ‘dialogic’, which is an epistemological term distinct from the adjectival application of dialogue to an event, which would be ‘dialogical’. To use ‘dialogic’ in an adjectival sense means describing a phenomenon as belonging to the Bakhtinian theorisation of utterance, known as ‘dialogics’. I want to argue that a dialogic literacy pedagogy constitutes rather more than a teacherly openness to engagement in dialogue with learners, which I would term merely dialogical. Dialogical pedagogy emphasises the linguistic form of dialogue; dialogic pedagogy emphasises the communicative relationship that empowers acts of dialogue. Perhaps I should explain this difference in terms of the teacher–learner relationship. In a dialectical relationship, the teacher and the learner are imagined in a tension of opposition that seeks resolution or synthesis through discussion. In a dialogical relationship, the teacher and learner approach their dialectical difference through forms of dialogue that attempt to resolve difference. In a dialogic relationship, teacher and learner recognise that difference is productive and distinguishes one point of view from another—dialogue exists because of difference. Talking to and listening to the other synthesises the relationship whilst respecting difference. As a teacher, I am not the same as my pupils, and I will never become the same; our relationship is founded on difference. Dialogic pedagogy acts with a respect for learning from difference. What these examples of writing offer is an opportunity to consider what informs the understanding in my response as a teacher to the writing of learners. It is not how these pupils fit my understanding that I wish at all, but how I might fit theirs by having ‘the audacity to believe that teachers must learn from their students in dialogue’ (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p. xxvii) and by being willing to ‘establish a dialogue at classroom level’ (Hardcastle, 2002, p. 8). In responsive understanding, I respond to the person in their utterance, rather than to the utterance of any given person. The point here is that I have a direct and interpersonal relationship with my learner-writers.

The purpose of dialogue in the development of writing 89 Of course, there is a danger that the very idea of greater connection with the learner in the literacy classroom is seen as idealistic and impractical. You might say: ‘I have many learners with many needs and too little time available for the extended one-to-one support that would benefit each and every one of them’. But my notion of dialogue is as much to do with listening, bearing witness, and being known as a constructive force within the activity of writing, as it is with giving individual support. I am concerned here with the construction of internal voices, with the consideration of wanting to write as a means of utterance, rather than with correction. Learners have so few opportunities to engage with real, responsive audiences to their work that the promise of a listening mind in the teacher becomes something of a necessity. In urban classroom contexts, there are many young men and women—far too many—who struggle for and are often denied the quality of social transaction which gives voice to the dignity and significance of their everyday communicative means. In addressing literacy development from sociocultural perspectives, I am concerned for the development of agency through semiotic, interpersonal activity. That is, I am focused on people taking action to realise meaning through language and physical activity (e.g. gesture, the use of tools) as an expression of mind between minds (Vygotsky, 1978; Franks & Jewitt, 2001). The effect of these ‘mediational means’ is both to shape action ‘in essential ways’ (Wertsch, 1991, p. 12) and to illuminate and extend that capacity we think of as ‘mind’. The relationship that is taking place between the learner-writer, the teacher and the world at large in these examples of learners’ writing is a pyschological activity as much as it is a literate one: signs, minds and actions co-construct each other. The expression of intermental activity is likely to take place in some form of interaction, which we tend to consider as a direct, interpersonal interaction—what Bruner (1996, p. 20) calls the ‘interactional tenet’ in sociocultural approaches to education. In interactive mediation, the word has been considered the principal ‘unit of analysis’ in Vygotsky’s contribution to developmental psychology: If word meaning belongs in the public, sociocultural sphere of language but also requires an act of thought, a generalization, then words are at the interface of the cultural and the individual. Vygotsky’s analysis has taken us from words towards the outline of a sociocultural theory of development in which distinctive priority will be attached to the mediating, semiotic power of language. (Burgess, 1993, p. 26)

Words are often thought of as oral rather than graphic representations in discussions of sociocultural development, because this preserves the face-to-face instantiation of utterance. If utterance is typified by humankind’s primary semiotic system (the signs and activity of speech), then literacy engages a secondary semiotic system through graphic signs, the activity we engage in to understand written text, and the material and psychological tools and artefacts we use to create graphic meaning (Daniels, 2001). Is literate activity a form of utterance and interaction, when we seem to be conversing and interacting with no one in particular? I want to argue that it is, despite the absence of a direct addressee, and that it is fundamental to

90 M. Reed learner-writers’ conception and development of themselves as writers that we sustain their belief that their writing has voices that deserve to be heard, and that we are listening. ‘Instruction was the driving force of development for Vygotsky … Co-operation and collaboration are seen as crucial within effective teaching’ (Daniels, 2001, p. 55): as a teacher, I recognise the tension between didacticism and dialogue in this statement of pedagogy. The teaching of writing in particular can easily become a one-way passage, from teacher to learner, revealing one aspect of the traffic of mediation. Instead of telling learners what to do in their writing, how might I listen to what they are telling me? As a foretaste of what is likely to become a highly influential discourse in the publication of advice for teachers in England, the following statements in the introduction to Robin Alexander’s booklet, Towards dialogic teaching: rethinking classroom talk, bear examination: Dialogic teaching harnesses the power of talk to stimulate and extend children’s thinking, and to advance their learning and understanding. It also enables the teacher more precisely to diagnose and assess. Dialogic teaching is distinct from the question– answer–tell routines of so-called ‘interactive’ teaching, aiming to be more consistently searching and more genuinely reciprocal and cumulative. In Britain, the educational status of talk has traditionally been ambivalent or marginal. Dialogic teaching puts talk back where it belongs, and where in many other countries it resides: at the very core of both the pupil’s curriculum and the teacher’s professional repertoire. (Alexander, 2004, p. 1)

Alexander has a long association with curricular innovation in primary education; in particular, he is remembered (with Rose and Woodhead, 1992) as one of the ‘three wise men’ who criticised child-centred approaches in primary education and laid the groundwork for what was to become the ‘literacy hour’ in the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998). The influence of the NLS on the Key Stage 3 National Strategy has been huge: much of what began as innovation in the primary strategy underpins the pedagogy of the secondary strategy. Alexander is currently preparing ‘Teaching through dialogue’ materials for the primary strategy. He references in footnotes some of the theorists and educational researchers one would expect in a genealogy of the concept of dialogic teaching, from Bakhtin and Vygotsky through to Wells (1999), Mercer (2000), and Daniels (2001). It may come as something of a shock, however, to teachers of English—especially those of us trained at the University of London’s Institute of Education, or members of the National Association for the Teaching of English—to learn that ‘the educational status of talk has traditionally been ambivalent or marginal’. I have always considered the tradition of English teaching in which I was trained and which I still espouse as reciprocal, certainly dialogical, and well on the way to being dialogic. As in 1992, Alexander presumes a deficit in pedagogical understanding and activity where there has been, instead, a very clear presence and legacy. Indeed, the relations among language, dialogue, pedagogy and reciprocal enquiry have been recognised for decades in the teaching and learning of literacy. In ‘Writing to learn and learning to write’, first published as a lecture in 1972, James Britton writes:

The purpose of dialogue in the development of writing 91 [W]riting, even expressive writing, is very different from speech and this is pretty obvious. In speech you have a face-to-face situation. You have immediate feedback. When you are writing, you are left on your own. You have to work in a vacuum with no feedback. You have to imagine your audience and hold him fully in mind if you are to take his needs into account. What’s written here and now is to be read there and then; some other time and some other place. I think we need to conjure up an audience for this rather lonely task, and this is one reason why I hold unorthodox views on the role of the teacher with regard to the child’s writing. I think the teacher needs to extend to a child a stable audience....