Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Classroom Discourse Analysis 533
Gaining this kind of metalinguistic awareness of multiple repertoires
and the role one’s own repertoire plays in communicative success (or failure)
is a primary goal of pursuing classroom discourse analysis. In the
following sections, I discuss, in order, how each of these features of ‘communicative
repertoire’ is illuminated through the analysis of classroom
communication.
Communicative Repertoires in Classroom Discourse
Rethinking correctness
Spend a few minutes in any classroom discussion and it becomes clear
that being ‘correct’ and speaking in a ‘polished’ manner is, for many students,
not top priority. In fact, sometimes, students – even when they
know ‘correct’ answers or ‘polished’ ways of speaking – fi nd it socially
problematic to use that repertoire. To return briefl y to Tom Wolfe’s fi ctional
‘Dupont University’ for example, a ‘giant’ basketball player, ‘JoJo’,
who covertly wants to be an intellectual, fi nds himself trapped into
performing ignorance when he starts to give a thoughtful response to a
question about Madame Bovary. When the professor asks the class why
Madame Bovary’s husband performed a risky, but potentially heroic,
operation, JoJo begins:
‘He did it’, said the Giant, ‘because his wife had all these ambitions. . .’
(p. 108)
Immediately, JoJo’s teammates in the class sense that this answer may
be (horror!) accurate, and they begin to sarcastically give each other fi st
bumps and exclaim, ‘Hey, JoJo read the book’, and ‘. . . we got us another
scholar. . .’. After the professor settles the commotion and encourages JoJo
to continue, with a ‘Mr Johanssen? As you were saying’, Mr Johannsen (ne
JoJo) faces a choice. Which of his repertoires will he use here? The ‘Mr
Johanssen’ repertoire or the ‘JoJo’ repertoire? He responds:
Oh yeah. He did the operation because . . . his wife wanted some
money to buy some stuff. (pp. 108–109)
Clearly, he has chosen his ‘JoJo’ repertoire, affi liated with his basketball
peers, and disaffi liated from his aspiring scholarly self. Being ‘correct’
in this classroom was not the diffi cult job for ‘JoJo’; rather the diffi cult
part about giving the right answer was that it called on a repertoire that
would lead him to be completely cut off from (and humiliated by) his
basketball peers.
In real classrooms, just as in Tom Wolfe’s fi ctional university, fi nding
voice in ways that are recognized by the teacher as ‘correct’ while still
maintaining face among peers can be a complicated negotiation. Often,
students draw on an entirely different repertoire in their peer-to-peer
communication, while a teacher attempts to continue with his own lesson,