Children's voices: The contribution of informal language practices to the negotiation of knowledge and identity amongst 10-12 year old school pupils

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This research addresses the ways in which children's informal language practices contribute to their negotiations of knowledge and identity. An ethnographic study of 10-12 year olds' talk in and around school was carried out, which included the collection of continuous tape-recordings of talk across the school day, observation and recording of literacy activities, and interviews with thirty four children. Using an ethnography of communication framework together with ideas from the Russian socio-historical writers, this data is analysed and features of children's talk examined in relation to their negotiations of knowledge and identity. In particular, analysis focusses on children's collaborative linguistic strategies, their uses of narrative and literacy, and their taking on of other people's voices. Attention is also paid to the ways in which different aspects of context are involved in the constitution of meaning within dialogue. It is argued that a more dialogic model of communication needs to be developed in order to understand. the function and meaning of children's talk and literacy activities. In relation to this, it is suggested that Bakhtin and Volosinov's ideas about dialogic, heteroglossic and intertextual. aspects of language use provide an important way of extending current thinking about the role -of language in children's construction of knowledge and identity, in relation to more constructivist conceptions of culture, social activity and the self.