‘Use your words’: Vocalization and moral order in an oral preschool classroom for deaf or hard-of-hearing children

Kristella Montiegel

doi:10.1017/s0047404521000786

Abstract

AbstractThis ethnographic study examines deaf or hard-of-hearing children's socialization in an oral classroom, a setting designed to promote spoken language as the primary mode of communication. Drawing from nine months of observations, I describe how the meanings assigned to children's vocalizations create a system of values and judgements that organizes and regulates classroom behavior. Specifically, vocalization itself is oriented to as a moral practice that is necessary for the mutual understanding and accomplishment of classroom activities. Informed by ethnomethodological and language-socialization perspectives, I illustrate how participants co-construct a local moral order wherein students are held accountable for ‘using their words’ to perform social actions. Analyses discuss three interactional contexts where moral issues are routinely constructed as contingent on and resolvable through vocalization—children's help-seeking, children's disputes, and negotiations of classroom participation—thereby shaping children's understanding of language use and reflecting broader institutional expectations and ideology regarding oral communication. (Moral order, preschool children, socialization)*

Highlights

The class is gathered on the floor for Morning Meeting
Given that spoken language is prioritized in the oral classroom, this study explores how children and teachers establish the act of vocalization as valued, regulatory, and constitutive of a moral order that shapes classroom interaction in an orderly way
While many of the teachers’ practices that were demonstrated in the analyses have been discussed in previous research, the main contribution of the present study is its focus on participants’ overt orientations to vocalization as a constitutive practice in their oral classroom, such that it is normatively expected in the production of social actions in classroom interaction

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The class is gathered on the floor for Morning Meeting. Ivan is fixated on his shoes and fidgets with untied shoelaces. Exploring the link between children’s language and moral order has been studied across a range of preschool contexts (cf Goodwin & Kyratzis 2007), such as during children’s arguments (Björk-Willén 2018; Moore & Burdelski 2019) and in their play activities (Danby & Baker 1998; Kemp & Kyratzis 2018) This literature highlights how moral meanings are socialized into children through their attachment to particular interactional practices that adults respond to in various ways. The abovementioned body of literature is especially remarkable in its explications of how even preschool-age children are adept in developing and understanding social organization through language Taken together, these works illustrate how children’s moral socialization does occur through exposure to the knowledge and language practices of their community, and through their active participation in—and reproduction of—them. My analysis shows how the routine prompting of children’s vocalization is both facilitated by— and is reinforcing of—the institutional expectations of formal oral-educational programs, as well as a broader oral-language ideology

METHODOLOGY

PARTICIPANTS

DISCUSSION