Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms (Cambridge Paperback Library) [Paperback]

Shirley Brice Heath (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521273196 | ISBN-13: 978-0521273190 | Publication Date: July 1983

Ways with Words is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two communities only a few miles apart in the south-eastern United States. 'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is an African-American working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land, but whose existent members work in the mills. In tracing the children's language development the author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities, whose ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as either does from the pattern of the townspeople, the 'mainstream' blacks and whites who hold power in the schools and workplaces of the region. Employing the combined skills of ethnographer, social historian, and teacher, the author raises fundamental questions about the nature of language development, the effects of literacy on oral language habits, and the sources of communication problems in schools and workplaces.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'One of the classic texts in educational praxis.' American Scientist

'Deserves to be widely read by all researchers on child language.' Journal of Child Language

'A milestone in understanding the roots of school achievement.' London Review of Books

'Should become a point of reference for all discussions of spontaneous oral story telling.' Harvard Educational Review

' ... captures the elusive nature of effective ethnography: involvement and empathy yield a sound and practical analysis.' Developments in Language Teaching

Book Description

This unique social document records the intricate processes of language learning and language interaction in two working-class communities of the Piedmont Carolinas, one white and one black.

Product Details

• Paperback: 426 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521273196
• ISBN-13: 978-0521273190
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shirley Brice Heath Has a "Way With Words", August 22, 2000

By 

Donna M. Sennett (West Warwick, RI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms (Cambridge Paperback Library) (Paperback)

Language is power. Heath, a reflective practitioner of both human nature and schooling, provides an in-depth view of communities which epitomize the struggle for such power. In her ethnographic study of Trackton and Roadville, Heath lays bare the socializing process of children through words. The discontinuity between home and school is disturbing; a realization that students who do not fit the traditional way of schooling are left behind. Clearly illustrated is the need for teachers and students to bridge the gap which exists in relation to both language and culture, for without this effort some students will never acquire the power needed to take control of their education or pursue opportunities from which they have previously been excluded. This is must reading for student ethnographers, doctoral students, and those dedicated to school reform, particularly those in the areas of diversity in public schools, and language. This extraordinary book compares favorably to "Growing Up Literate: Learning From Inner-City Families" by Denny Taylor & Catherine Dorsey-Gaines.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Immersing Ethnography of Communication, December 18, 2007

By 

J. A. Wasserman (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms (Cambridge Paperback Library) (Paperback)

Shirley Brice Heath's Ways with Words is an immersing ethnography of communication, detailing the language socialization practices of two working-class Piedmont South Carolina communities, Roadville and Trackton, and the effects of these practices on their children's success in school. The peculiar characteristics of these two communities lend themselves particularly well to Heath's presentation of them as gestalts: both are small, geographically limited and centralized, and community members spend most of their non-working time there. Heath's thorough ethnographic description allows her to critique the oversimplifications of other studies of education; in doing so, however, she overcompensates by neglecting issues of class. The greatest contribution that Ways with Words makes to the larger field of linguistic anthropology is its tacit focus on iconicity, which strongly suggests that the emphasis on indexicality to the exclusion of iconicity in contemporary linguistic anthropology is seriously counterproductive.

Language Socialization in Roadville and Trackton
The white working-class families of Roadville have had connections to local textile mills for four generations, their relatives having come from the Appalachian Mountains to work (28) . The black working-class families of Trackton, on the other hand, have only been working in the mills for the two decades since the advent of desegregation (29). Desegregation has had an effect on more than just work: in the 1970s, black and white children started attending the same schools with both black and white teachers, leading to major difficulties for educators
Roadville and Trackton are alike in many ways: both are somewhat isolated working-class communities, neither of which occupy more than a single block, within a larger town. Life of community members, excepting work, school, and church, centers on their respective communities. Although not everybody of working age works in the local textile mills, all families have some members who do. Moreover, both communities are positively oriented toward school, believing it critical for future success beyond the mills. Despite these similarities, children in the two communities are socialized into language quite differently.
In Roadville, babies are spoken to as potential conversational partners from the moment of birth (118). Their actions are assumed to be intentional and meaning-laden, and their utterances taken to be referential (120-2). As they grow older, children are told the labels for things, and adults expect to hear this appropriate label recited upon request (127). Roadville adults value this kind of `right' knowledge that can be memorized and routinely repeated precisely as told.
Trackton stands in sharp contrast; here, babies are not seen as potential interactional partners. They are spoken about rather than to (74-5). They are nevertheless surrounded at all times by multiple ongoing communications, as community life is centered on an open plaza between their houses in which can be heard the overlapping voices of adults, older children, and radios (73). In coming to be competent speakers, Trackton children are on the stage of the plaza where the artful embellishment of stories is highly valued. Whereas in Roadville the rote recitation of conventional scripts is positively evaluated, in Trackton verbal creativity receives the highest praise.
Both people in Roadville and in Trackton tell stories, but the content, context, and purposes of these stories are quite dissimilar. In Roadville, stories are purely truthful and end with a moral that is applicable to the faults of all present, thus building a mutual community identity. In Trackton, stories are fictions that blossom from an initial germ of truth in an attempt to extol one's virtues and gain attention on the plaza (183-4).
There are no books in Trackton except the Bible and lesson books from school, but reading is nevertheless an important aspect of children's lives. It serves functional purposes when interacting with the mailman, and especially when going to the store (191-2). Prices and product names must be read, but text is strongly rooted in its context and visual appearance: when `Kellogg's' is presented in small-capitals, in contrast to its usual looping script, children cannot recognize the word (193).
In contrast, Roadville residents highly value reading as an activity with intrinsic value, but talk about reading is rarely followed up with actual reading (220). Children are, however, read bedtime stories as preschoolers. During these stories, parents ask their children to label objects in the story or occasionally to connect what is seen in the story to real-world information (223-4). After the age of three, however, the active participation of children in reading stories subsides, and children are to sit and listen passively (225-6).
In her description of the oral and literate traditions of both Roadville and Trackton, Heath presents a critique of over-simplified classifications. Neither community can be reduced to a dichotomy of `oral' vs. `literate', as both communities engage in both types of practice. Moreover, the complex and multiple uses of both written and spoken text (only some of which are detailed above) proscribe grouping both all oral traditions and all literate traditions together as `essentially the same' (230). In characterizing these distinct and nuanced characteristics of the oral and literate practices in Roadville and Trackton, she sets the stage for explaining the different experiences and challenges of children from these communities in school.

Roadville and Trackton Children in School
In the early grades of primary school, Roadville children generally excel. They are seen as polite; understand the ties of single functions to single spaces (e.g. a place to keep puzzles, a place to play with sand, etc.) (273); and recall lessons, events, and stories verbatim (301). Trackton children, on the other hand, flounder on all of these counts. Instead, they behave as they would in Trackton, using stories to divert accusations of misconduct and approaching toys and spaces as bricoleurs. When expected to tell stories, both groups of children fail to meet the expectations of teachers, but in highly differentiated ways. Unlike in Roadville, in the classroom fictive stories with ongoing evaluations of events are valued. Instead of such stories, Roadville children tend to deliver chronological recapitulations of actual events (301). Trackton children neither tell entirely nonfictive stories, nor do they meet expectations of setting up the context for their fictive stories (296-7). In both cases, the children's understanding of `story' is conditioned by norms for story telling in their respective communities, which differ substantially from the mainstream values of their teachers (295).
When discussing mainstream townspeople, the community from which these teachers generally come, Heath unhelpfully skirts around the issue of class. Although she does not hesitate to label both Trackton and Roadville as `working-class', she only ever hints at the fact that these particular townspeople are middle class, despite labeling mainstreamers as so in general (12). This omission is likely part of her anti-simplification project, which encompasses not only class, but dichotomies of oral vs. literate traditions (as explained above), race (3), and other single-factor explanations for children's success or failure in school (344). In rejecting class and race and embracing complexity, Heath attempts to dismiss both race and class as simple determiners of school success, which she does successfully by connecting the specific ways Roadville and Trackton children struggle in school to specific practices of language socialization and use in their home communities. By entirely neglecting class and race, however, she impinges on her own ability to connect her ethnography with a larger discourse concerning the reproduction of class. She criticizes `critics of education' for `arguing that the preschool language socialization patterns of the middle class ensure their preparedness in the knowledge and skills of symbolic manipulation of language required for school success' `with more abstractions than linguistic or cultural data' (404, note 1), s. Although she does not describe the middle class aspect of the process of class reproduction, she elegantly elaborates with abundant `linguistic and cultural data' two instances of the working-class side of class reproduction by showing how `preschool language socialization patterns' in working-class Roadville and Trackton ensure the unpreparedness of their children `in the knowledge and skills of symbolic manipulation of language required for school success'.

A Tale of Latent Iconicity
Because Heath is writing in part for a non-specialist audience, she largely refrains from using specific linguistic anthropological terminology. Nevertheless, latent within Ways with Words is a tale of iconicity, which infuses the story Heath tells about the way people use language: iconicity undergirds the linguistic ideologies of Trackton, the language habits of Roadville, and the judgments of students by mainstream teachers. In exploring the ways in which iconicity pervades language in Ways with Words, I hope to demonstrate the necessity for an awareness of iconicity in the description of language practices in Roadville and Trackton and the problems children encounter in school, thereby showing that the focus on indexicality to the exclusion of iconicity in contemporary linguistic anthropological discussions of pragmatics and metapragmatics is seriously counterproductive.

Iconicity In Trackton
One aspect of language use about which Trackton residents have a metalinguistic discourse is the variability in... Read more ›

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Words, instruction, and understanding - an invaluable resource for teachers, January 12, 2008

By 

Vincent D. Pisano "Stillborn Messiah" (CT, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms (Cambridge Paperback Library) (Paperback)

Shirley Brice Heath's Ways with Words is an ethnographic study of two greatly differing groups, both racially and economically, in the South-Eastern United States during the 1970s, and the difficulties created for teachers, due to language and learning differences, when they come together in the school system. These are, respectively, the black textile-working community of `Trackton', and the white business-owning townspeople of `Roadville'.

The language usage of the Trackton children often causes problems later on in the townspeople's schools. Aside from the difficulty they have with such concepts as time-space scheduling and the function of certain toys for certain purposes, due to their different learning strategies at home, class assignments can become a hindered task. First of all, language barriers exist between the teachers of Roadville and the black students from Trackton. Often times their word usage does not parallel and misunderstandings become regularity, such as the Trackton usage of the word "ain't" for "didn't" and the teacher's misunderstanding of it as "doesn't". This explains the instance of confusion in a conversation between a teacher and young Lem: "A teacher asked one day: `where is Susan? Isn't she here today?' Lem answered: "She ain't ride de bus.' The teacher responded: `She doesn't ride the bus, Lem.' Lem answered: `She do be ridin' de bus.' The teacher frowned at Lem and turned away" (Heath 276). Such miscommunications were commonplace between these two groups.

Trackton children would also have trouble following what to the teacher were simple directions. For example, Trackton children made a distinction between putting toys "away" and putting them "where they belonged" (Heath 280). Teachers would become frustrated when they asked the prior and found toys scattered in places where they "didn't belong," however, if the latter was asked, the task was completed properly. Also, Trackton's differing notion of truth played a large role in the frustrations. When it was time for story telling, the Trackton children excelled at fanciful tales. However, when asked to give a truthful account, they still embellished with lies, for "inside the classroom, their language play, incorporation of commercial characters, and many of their themes" that are actually valued in their culture "are unacceptable. The close personal network which gives Trackton stories their context and their meaning at home has no counterpart in the school" (Heath 297).

Unfortunately, the teachers initially misjudged these differences between the townspeople, including the teachers, and the Trackton children. But soon many teachers began to find an effective means of teaching the children and advancing their skills by using the terms and rules of the Trackton children themselves. They began to realize that the Trackton children were interpreting things such as workbook activities not in the wrong way, necessarily, but in a different way contrary to what the author had in mind. For instance, seeing three fish in a fishbowl and counting only one, because there was only one group of fish in the fishbowl (Heath 291). They began to use more visuals that made more sense to the Trackton children, like household products, photographs, and shopping games to perpetuate a learning environment. Some even had the children record their own conversations and those of others, to later replay and notice the differences in language use. All of these attempts, by the way, were successful.

Shirley Brice Heath dives into meticulous (I repeat, meticulous) detail on how these successes were and can again be achieved. The work is dense with information, and is therefore not light reading, but her guidance on using ethnographic technique to improve the classroom is invaluable to teachers, especially those who contend with a local culture that is in many ways foreign to their own. The author Amy Tan once wrote of her Chinese mother that because she spoke "broken" English, people assumed her thoughts were "broken" as well. Ways with Words reveals just how much can be falsely assumed through miscommunication, and how those barriers can be breached.