Abstract of

Between Contexts: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family Literacy, Discursive Practices, and Literate Subjectivities

Rebecca Rogers

This article draws on a 2-year ethnographic study of the literate lives of two African Americans living in urban poverty. The study demonstrates how June Treader and her oldest daughter Vicky negotiate language and literacy in their home and community proficiently yet fail to capitalize on this proficiency within the school, to the extent that Vicky is placed in special education. Illustrating the complexity of literacy in June Treader's life, I present three discursive contexts: the Discourse of Schooling, the Discourse of Mothering, and the Discourse of the Committee on Special Education meeting. Each of these contexts provides cruces (Fairclough, 1995), or moments of tension, in which linguistic and institutional markers suggest the ways in which each discursive context insists on certain literate relationships and calls forth certain subjectivities. Using critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Gee, 1996) the article goes beyond current explanations of why children and families who come from non-mainstream homes fail to do well in school. The study suggests that the nonalignment between home and school discourse communities is not the only, or even perhaps primary, problem for June and Vicky. At least as important is the ideological alignment among the discursive contexts. The study suggests that explanations must account for the complexity of literate subjectivities through the process by which split and fragmented subjectivities are acquired. In addition, there is evidence that the division between primary and secondary discourses and acquisition and learning (Gee, 1996) is not as clear as is sometimes assumed. As the secondary discourse is being learned, aspects of its ideology are being acquired.

Abstract from Rogers, R. (2002). Between Contexts: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family Literacy, Discursive Practices, and Literate Subjectivities. Reading Research Quarterly, 37(3), 248–277. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.37.3.1