Tactics of resistance in student-student interaction

Abstract

This study seeks to define a “space” where otherwise marginalized students might participate more centrally in classroom literacy events. Drawing on Lave and Wenger, the study is concerned with the differential effects of a classroom literacy event on the academic identities of two students in a group of four, both of whom felt insecure as writers. Drawing on the work of Kenneth Burke and de Certeau, the study regards rhetorical maneuvers as resistance to the social designs of others. From this theoretical vantage point, using a range of methods for analyzing language as social action (derived mainly from the work of Erving Goffman), the study shows how one student's rhetorical maneuvers performed her resistance to a more dominant peer and, simultaneously, her understanding of written text; nevertheless, her authorial rights were expropriated by her peers. An adult observer (the author) did not recognize and did nothing to arbitrate the student's marginalization. The analysis identifies implicit meta-textual issues from the students' talk and suggests that a sufficiently powerful (explanatory) theory of text could help to mediate more equitable negotiations of what counts as text in classroom literacy activities.