Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:46:09.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tracing the emergence of a community of practice: Beyond presupposition in sociolinguistic research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2014

Brian W. King
Brian W. King*
Affiliation:
Department of English, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, KowloonHong [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines the language-driven aspects of the formation of a classroom-based community of practice (CoP), placing emphasis on ways in which researchers can verify the status of observed practices. Discourse analysis is reinforced by such an evidence-based understanding of the social milieu of a research site. When determining whether an aggregate of people is functioning as a CoP, however, the nature of the measuring stick is a vital question. When institutional forces have brought a group of participants together, how can an observer verify empirically the dynamic development of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire? In a sample case study, representative features outlined by Wenger (1998:130–31) are identified, and their emergence traced, via analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes and audio recordings. These features provide evidence of the development of localised practices (i.e. ways of doing grounded in this community) as distinct from more widely recognisable practices. Identifying the difference increases the likelihood that results of discourse analysis can be useful to educators. (Community of practice, discourse analysis, nexus of practices, warranting)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 61 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, Louisa (2005). Sexual subjects: Young people, sexuality and education. London: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict Richard O'Gorman (1991). Imagined communities. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy (2001). The relationship between African American Vernacular English and white vernaculars in the American south: A sociocultural history and some phonological evidence. In Lanehart, Sonja L. (ed.), Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English, 53–92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bérubé, Allan (2001). How gay stays white and what kind of white it stays. In Rasmussen, Birgit Brander, Klinenberg, Eric, Nexica, Irene J., & Wray, Matt (eds.), The making and unmaking of whiteness, 234–65. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2007). On scope and depth in linguistic ethnography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(5):682–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creese, Angela (2005). Meditating allegations of racism in a multiethnic London school: What speech communities and communities of practice can tell us about discourse and power. In Burton, David & Tusting, Karin (eds.), Beyond communities of practice: Language, power and social context, 55–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cukor-Avila, Patricia (2001). Co-existing grammars: The relationship between the evolution of African American and southern white vernacular English in the south. In Lanehart, Sonja L. (ed.), Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English, 93–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Bethan (2005). Communities of practice: Legitimacy not choice. Journal of Sociolinguistics 9(4):557–81.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21(1):461–88.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1999). New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society 28(2):185–201.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (2007). Putting communities of practice in their place. Gender and Language 1(1):27–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & Wenger, Etienne (2005). Communities of practice in sociolinguistics: What is the role of power in sociolinguistic variation? Journal of Sociolinguistics 9(4):582–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gee, James Paul (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gee, James Paul. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces: From The age of mythology to today's schools. In Burton, David & Tusting, Karin (eds.), Beyond communities of practice: Language, power and social context, 214–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gee, James Paul. Hull, Glynda & Lankshear, Colin (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haneda, Mari (2006). Classrooms as communities of practice: A re-evaluation. TESOL Quarterly 40(4):807–17.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Meyerhoff, Miriam (1999). The community of practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society 28(2):173–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1974). Foundations of sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Jackson, Sue, & Weatherall, Ann (2010). The (im)possibilities of feminist school based sexuality education. Feminism & Psychology 20(2):166–85.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara (2000). Qualitative methods in sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
King, Brian W. (2008). “Being gay guy that is the advantage”: Queer Korean language learning and identity construction. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 7(3–4):230–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Brian W. (2010). “All us girls were like euuh”: Conversational work of “be like” in New Zealand adolescent talk. New Zealand English Journal 24:15–32.Google Scholar
King, Brian W. (2011). Linguistic negotiations of sexual agency in sexuality education. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington dissertation. Online: http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/2273.Google Scholar
King, Brian W. (2014). Inverting virginity, abstinence, and conquest: Sexual agency and subjectivity in classroom conversation. Sexualities, to appear.Google Scholar
Lave, Jean (1988). Cognition in practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lave, Jean, & Wenger, Etienne (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Marcyliena (2004). “I'm every woman”: Black women's displacement in women's language study. In Bucholtz, Mary (ed.), Language and woman's place: Text and commentaries, 252–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
New Zealand Ministry of Education Ministry of Education website. How the decile is calculated. Online: http://www.minedu.govt.nz/NZEducation/EducationPolicies/Schools/SchoolOperations/Resourcing/OperationalFunding/Deciles/HowTheDecileIsCalculated.aspx. Accessed January 10, 2011.Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben (2007). Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the United Kingdom. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(5):584–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scollon, Ron (2001). Action and text: Towards an integrated understanding of the place of text in social (inter)action, mediated discourse analysis and the problem of social action. In Wodak, Ruth & Meyer, Michael (eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis, 139–83. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Swann, Joan, & Maybin, Janet (2008). Sociolinguistic and ethnographic approaches to language and gender. In Harrington, Kate, Litosseliti, Lia, Sauntson, Helen, & Sunderland, Jane (eds.), Gender and language research methodologies, 21–28. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar