Dr. sj Miller
EDUC 4222/5222
Class Notes 9.21
M, 4:30pm-7:00pm
Class Focus: Investigations into Language and Power in Context
Readings covered today:
 *Andrews
 *Young et al., Chapter 2
 *Harmon, Chapters 3 and 5
D2L:
 Read Moll, Funds of Knowledge
 Listen to Labov:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090
 What is sociolinguistics? http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/
 Sociolinguistic
basics: http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/sociolinguistics
Essential Questions
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 What is the relationship between culture, language, and
power?
 What is sociolinguistics?
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4:30- Attendance clipboard
4:32- EQ!!!!!
4:35-5:05 Ashley, Erin and Matt lead
5:05-Watch DYSA (disc 1: Sec 5)?
5:10-5:20- Notes, etc.
 How does Moll et.al define funds of knowledge (see p.
133)- what is significant about this when understanding
youth culture?
 What is sociolinguistics? (Sociolinguistics is the study of how
language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings. In
its broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse
ways in which language and society entwine. This vast field of inquiry
requires and combines insights from a number of disciplines, including
linguistics, sociology, psychology and anthropology)
 In what ways do FOK and SL meet each other?
5:20- Discourse conventions, Andrews…Chapter 7
Conventions- the often, unspoken norms that governs our discourse and
actions
 Where and how do we learn these?
Common categories include:
 Standing in line (queuing)
 Phone (impersonal and business)
 Classroom speech/behavior (IRE- teacher initiates, student
responds, teacher evaluates student’s response)
 Doctor visits
 Speaking with parents (names)
 CmC (computer-mediated conversation)
Labov/Fanshell describe discourse preconditions
I. first speaker has a right or duty to speak
II. the second speaker has a responsibility or obligation to reply
Speech conventions – paired as opening and closing a
speech
 Adjacency pairs- the pairs of speech that connect in social
contexts- help to organize social conversations
 Question: answer
 Invitation: Acceptance
 Assessment: disagreement
 Apology: acceptance
 Summons: acknowledgment
These pairs are contiguous, ordered and matched.
Utterance pairs, on the other hand, require a prescribed
response- in an utterance pair
 Greeting: greeting
 Question: answer
 Complaint: excuse, apology, denial
 Request/command: Acceptance/rejection
 Compliment: acknowledgment
 Farewell: farewell
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Cooperative Principle governs our speech
category of quantity- speaker’s are required to provide just
the right amount of info but no more than is required
category of relation-what is said is relevant and germane to
the conversation
category of manner-assumes that speakers will be clear and
orderly
category of quality-speakers speak the truth, or are verifiable
or both
When we don’t oblige, we tend to experience a social tax- levied against
those who violate society’s norms and expectations
5:40- Gender Pressure/Policing- accounting for Power- and labels vis-à-vis
discussion in Harmon (do chart below) Must be quiet while each group does theirs)
 Chart 1: Men and those who are male-identified comment on how people
(both men and women pressure/police gender) to conform to gender norms
 Chart 2: Then women and those women-identified comment on how
people (both men and women pressure/police gender) to conform to gender
norms
 Then: Women go first (challenge at will)
 Then men (challenge at will)
Chart 1:
Women/Female
Men/Male
Power and labels (how does
someone get labeled if they
don't conform?)
Chart 2:
Women/Female
Men/Male
Power and labels (how does
someone get labeled if they
don't conform?)
6:00- Sperm and Egg Activity –
 First, what is feminism? Does it have positive or negative connotations
and according to whom are these perceptions deployed?
 Show cartoon image first (what does this say? Who seems to have
power? In control? Passive? What does this imply about gender? Can
you separate this from the socio-historical-cultural context?)

Look at timeline for women in GB- in fact, what would Nieto say about
context?
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Louise Brown was born at Oldham General Hospital, Oldham, by planned Caesarean section
delivered by registrar John Webster.[1] She weighed 5 pounds, 12 ounces (2.608 kg) at birth.[2] Her
parents, Lesley and John Brown, had been trying to conceive for nine years. Lesley faced
complications of blocked fallopian tubes.
On 10 November 1977, Lesley Brown underwent a procedure, later to become known as IVF (in
vitro fertillisation), developed by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards. Edwards was awarded the
2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work.[3] Although the media referred to Brown as a "test tube
baby",[4] her conception actually took place in a petri dish.
After the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby, there was inevitably some concern about
the implications of this new technology. In 1982, the government brought together a committee
chaired by philosopher Mary Warnock to look into the issues and see what action needed to be
taken. From 1982 to 1984, she chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and
Embryology. Her report on this occasion gave rise to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act
1990, which governs human fertility treatment and experimentation using human embryos. Its effect
has been to require licensing for procedures such as in vitro fertilisation and to ban research using
human embryos more than 14 days old. According to Suzi Leather, a former chair of the Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, "perhaps the greatest achievement of the Warnock
committee is that it managed to get an ethical consensus that people understood as well as
shared"
 6:15-Read as full group Sperm and Egg Race
 Number off 1-3 and please move
 Hand out questions and answer ( I am going to collect this)
6:45- Full group discussion
For Sept 21h:
 Discussants: Shane, Christian, Brittini Laura (just covered starred ones)
 Readings- D2L—explain Gee guide.
 BRING YOUR HARMON NEXT WEEK
 WORLD DIALECT/ENGLISH QUIZ- bring in results in D2L
 BRING A RECORDING DEVICE
 Don’t forget to do your PD (on-going)
 Midterm proposal