Introduction
Educational settings exhibit and teach—with various degrees of explicitness—a set of culturally anchored epistemological, moral, and affective assumptions. For an immigrant student, then, becoming a competent participant in a target language educational community involves not only acquisition of the language forms, but also acquisition of communicative competence, that is, communicative resources and the stances, identities, values, and ideologies that constitute and are mediated through its discursive practices (Ochs Reference Ochs, Gumperz and Levinson1996; Duff Reference Duff2012). Studies taking a language socialization perspective convincingly argue that affective stances (emotions) are culturally shaped in social interactions and constitute an inextricable part of culturally specific modes of participation, indexing social and moral values (Ochs & Schieffelin Reference Ochs and Schieffelin1989; Goodwin & Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Goodwin, Budvig, Uzgiris and Wertsch2000). As yet, however, the research on affective socialization has largely concerned child first language socialization in families (Ochs Reference Ochs1988; Cook Reference Cook1997). How such socialization works in educational settings, in terms of the design of socialization strategies targeting language and cultural novices, and the cultural/moral values mediated through the linguistic routines of particular educational communities has received less attention.
The language-mediated affective (and moral) socialization of a first grader—a seven-year-old language and cultural novice from Somalia in a Swedish primary school—is the focus of the present study. Adopting a language socialization perspective, in this article I track the verbal and embodied organization of the affective stances taken in teacher-student interactions over the course of a school year. More specifically, this study examines the immigrant student's affectively valorized noncompliant moves, indexing her resistance to (teacher) directives, associated with individual work on task. It also details the linguistic organization of the teachers' responsive socialization strategies, contextualizing these micropractices within local (educational) categories and values, as well as within wider societal ideologies, and highlights the relation between the language-mediated socialization into socially and morally appropriate participation, and affective stances taken over time.
According to the language socialization perspective, stance is achieved “dialogically through overt communicative means (language, gesture, and other symbolic forms), through which social actors simultaneously evaluate objects, position subjects (themselves and others), and align with other subjects, with respect to any salient dimension of the sociocultural field” (Du Bois Reference Du Bois and Englebretson2007:163; cf. Goodwin & Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Goodwin, Budvig, Uzgiris and Wertsch2000). Affective stance in particular refers to a “mood, attitude, feeling, and disposition, as well as degrees of emotional intensity vis-à-vis some focus of concern” (Ochs Reference Ochs, Gumperz and Levinson1996:410). As a language-mediated and embodied resource, lodged within embodied sequences of action (Goodwin & Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Goodwin, Budvig, Uzgiris and Wertsch2000:44), it indexes, resists, and/or transforms the acts and activities that constitute particular (valued) social identities (Ochs & Schieffelin Reference Ochs and Schieffelin1989; Ochs Reference Ochs, Gumperz and Levinson1996). The fundamentally dynamic character of socializing processes thus involves the agency of novices (and their socialization of experts themselves) (Ochs Reference Ochs1988; Pontecorvo, Fasulo, & Sterponi Reference Pontecorvo, Fasulo and Sterponi2001).
However, although language socialization studies have often stressed novices' agentive role, there has been a tendency to foreground the predictable, uniform outcomes of socialization (i.e. cultural reproduction), describing novices as “passive and uniform recipients” of routinized, smooth, and seamless socializing practices (Duranti Reference Duranti2012:444; see He Reference He2000; Wortham Reference Wortham2004, Reference Wortham2006; Goodwin & Kyratzis Reference Goodwin and Kyratzis2012). Recently, there has been a strong call for language socialization studies to analytically demonstrate the bidirectional, contingent, and contested character of socialization. Kulick & Schieffelin (Reference Kulick, Schieffelin and Duranti2004:355) have suggested that these aspects can be convincingly documented through a longitudinal detailing of the process of becoming a “culturally intelligible” “bad subject,” that is, a subject who does not recognize or comply with normative moves requiring that one act in particular, socially sanctioned ways. Moreover, such a focus allows us to unravel and more carefully describe the taken-for-granted values and the cultural foundations of the socializing strategies of the target community (e.g. Goodwin Reference Goodwin2007; Duff Reference Duff2012).
The present study therefore aims to highlight the ways in which the child novice's negative affectively charged stances, and teacher-responsive moves, local educational and social categories, as well as wider societal ideologies were consequential for the emergence and consolidation of a “bad subject,” that is, a socioculturally problematic student identity. This study shows that becoming an accepted member of a target community of practice is a multifaceted process, which not only involves comprehension and appropriation of interactional resources, but also the novice's normatively expected—“willing”—engagement with, and appreciation of, the values and ideologies that go along with the discursive structures of educational activities.
Immigrant students and language socialization in educational settings
Recent research on immigrant/second language (L2) novices has demonstrated that especially second language socialization processes do not necessarily run smoothly and predictably, and that socialization may be colored by the novice's and/or the target community's ambivalence, resistance, and contestation of each other's values and communicative practices (Duff Reference Duff2012). These studies have accentuated the differential and unpredicted outcomes of classroom socialization, relating them to a broad range of factors that might support L2 students' differential/deviant academic paths (Rymes & Pash Reference Rymes and Pash2001; Cekaite Reference Cekaite2007; Talmy Reference Talmy2008).
As shown by Willet (Reference Willett1995) in her study of four child/language novices in a mainstream classroom in the US, different educational criteria and social categorizations—gender, class, and ethnicity—impacted on the ways in which they participated in classroom discourse. These social categorizations supported (and were reproduced) in specific interactional practices that positioned the novices on a differential path to academic success.
The trajectory of student identity may also be related to the novice's development of interactional competence in the discursive practices of the target language community. As demonstrated by Cekaite (Reference Cekaite2007) in a study tracking a Kurdish language novice's socialization in a Swedish language reception class, different student identities evolved concurrently with the novice's growing interactional competence in L2 (i.e. her skills in producing well-timed and topically relevant verbal contributions). When confirmed by the teacher, the student's identity was “revised” from “incompetent” and “immature” to “competent” and “motivated.”
The dynamic evolvement and shifts in student identity over time may also be established through the teachers', and the student's, deployment of the verbal categories and features associated with the local educational curriculum (Wortham Reference Wortham2004, Reference Wortham2006). In a longitudinal study of academic socialization in an American high school, Wortham showed that the problematic identity of “outcast” was jointly produced in long-term teacher-student interactions. Curriculum resources that evaluated the student's contributions as being appropriate/well-reasoned or ungrounded responses were deployed by the teacher in the accumulatory development of the student's problematic identity.
Within the educational system, the second language learner identity as a specific social category may be negatively characterized and stigmatized. As demonstrated by Talmy (Reference Talmy2008) in his study of English second language learners (in a Hawaiian high school), the categorization of students in a homogeneous, deficient group of students caused them to resist schooling, which in turn led to further stigmatization (and poor school achievement).
The dynamics of classroom language socialization are also related to the multiparty character of educational settings (as an essentially multiparty participation framework; Goffman Reference Goffman1981:124–59; Goodwin & Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Goodwin, Budvig, Uzgiris and Wertsch2000), which necessarily involves the peer group, their agentive explorations, and reproduction or resistance in relation to societal and language ideologies and values (Goodwin & Kyratzis Reference Goodwin and Kyratzis2012). As demonstrated in linguistic ethnographies from multicultural educational contexts in Sweden, young immigrant children may engage in elaborate linguistic practices to invoke social distinctions by categorizing their peers according to their proficiency in the majority language (Evaldsson & Cekaite Reference Evaldsson and Asta2010). While such practices are closely related to the societal and educational monolingual ideologies (and the societal ethos of hierarchical structuring of majority/minority languages), the ideologies may be creatively exploited by the children to manage their peer group identities and relations.
As suggested above, due to a complex interplay of social categories and educational requirements, different students may participate (and be positioned) differentially in classroom socialization activities (Talmy Reference Talmy2008; Duff Reference Duff2012). Thus far, however, the ways in which the affective and moral stances taken become (longitudinally) consequential for the language novices' socialization outcomes have received less attention.
Language socialization in educational settings: Affect, moral order, and willingness to learn
Language socialization studies have extensively examined the linguistic and interactional features, values, and ideologies that go along with the discursive structures of educational activities. Studies focusing on teacher instructions, directives, and questioning patterns, and their related linguistic forms, have demonstrated their multifaceted functions as cultural tools for the crafting of cognition and social identity (cf. Rymes & Pash, Reference Rymes and Pash2001; He Reference He2000). As demonstrated by Poole (Reference Poole1992), through their choice of personal pronouns in IRE (initiation-response-evaluation) routines (inclusive pronoun we to set up a collaborative task, and second person pronoun you in the task evaluation), ESL teachers inculcated (Western) ideologies of accommodation and individuals' experience of success towards second language learners. Teachers' instructions may carry powerful socializing messages concerning the language and cultural (immigrant) identity of the students (Baquedano-Lopez Reference Baquedano-Lopez, Leather and van Dam2001). Through the use of indexical forms (e.g. exclusive we vs. they), students can be categorized as belonging to (or as outsiders from) particular cultural communities (Lo Reference Lo2004).
Affective aspects of classroom socialization have been emphasized by pointing out the links between the affect and morality, thereby aiming the analytical focus at discursive structures for moral socialization (socialization into respectful and polite vs. disrespectful behavior). For instance, Howard (Reference Howard2009), in her study of language minority children in Thailand, has shown that teachers applied “the lenses of politeness” when typifying students into particular linguistic and institutional identities. They evaluated students' language use and conduct, holding children accountable for speaking and acting in respectful, that is, affectively appropriate, ways. Lo (Reference Lo2004, Reference Lo2009) has shown that Korean heritage language teachers deployed different evidential markers to assign various types of moral agency to children's actions, locating affect in the moral evaluation of children's (mis)behavior. By looking at the lexicogrammatical patterns of Chinese heritage teachers' directives, He (Reference He2000) found that disciplining/responsive directives were structured to inculcate a particular type of moral responsibility. While teachers covertly formulated the problem (offering a description of the current state of affairs), they overtly, in imperative form, commanded students to change their behavior, grounding their commands in conditional warnings, which formulated a moral appeal by outlining the negative consequences of students' actions.
Culturally specific patterns of affective and moral socialization involve a complex interplay between language and embodiment. Being and becoming a socially recognizable persona thus means becoming an emotionally “adequate” embodied actor (Goodwin Reference Goodwin2007; Goodwin, Cekaite, & Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Cekaite, Goodwin, Peräkylä and Sorjönen2012). As demonstrated by Burdelski & Mitsuhashi Reference Burdelski and Mitsuhashi2010, in a study of Japanese preschools, teachers used the adjective kawai and embodied postures as coordinated practices for socializing young children's emotions and gender-appropriate performance.
In addition, appropriate participation in classroom learning routines requires coordination of verbal and embodied behavior. Taking a multimodal perspective on classroom language socialization, Moore (Reference Moore2008), in her study of Cameroon Muslim Quran literacy practices, documented that students' development of appropriate (attentive and respectful) engagement with religious texts involved teachers' monitoring and corrections of students' verbal responses, as well as of their body positionings and gaze. In his microstudy of parent-child homework sessions, C. Goodwin demonstrated a child's verbal and embodied resistance, and parents' active efforts to establish a cooperative participation framework, thus convincingly arguing that learning situations can be fruitfully conceptualized as “embodied frameworks for the organization of cognition and action,” and that they must be actively constructed and sustained through the ongoing, embodied work of participants (Goodwin Reference Goodwin2007:62).
Notably, the conceptualization of language socialization as a transformative and contested process requires close attention to the language/cultural novices' acceptance of, or resistance to, the discursive practices and the underlying normative expectation of the target community. As Jackson (Reference Jackson1968:1) observed already in his school ethnography from the 1960s, for students, learning to live in schools and to become a “good” student are inextricable from learning to “subjugate [one's] own wishes and desires to the will of the teacher and to subdue [one's] own actions in the interest of common good.” Such institutionally valorized willingness, however, does not emerge unproblematically, and educational participation can be characterized by resistance and subversion (cf. Jackson Reference Jackson1968). The ultimate goal of novices' socialization can thus be seen as learning to act in ways that acquiesce with institutional preferences as willing actions—and in ways that do not transgress institutional expectations for the public expression of feelings.
Whereas in philosophy and the social sciences will/volition—conceptualized as the “individual's intentionality and inclination to act in the world”(Murphy & Throop Reference Murphy, Throop, Murphy and Throop2010:5)—has been conceived and explored in different more or less abstract ways (Durkheim Reference Durkheim1984; Foucault Reference Foucault1995; for a comprehensive overview, see Murphy & Throop Reference Murphy, Throop, Murphy and Throop2010), the present study, by way of contrast, locates the socialization of a language and cultural novice as a “willing subject” within the micropractices of a Swedish primary classroom. It approaches recurring interactional routines (directive/response/uptake trajectories) as an essential site for understanding the social construction of social identities. Language-mediated cultural notions of will (based on the emic perspective of the particular classroom community) are concretized here as an individual's willingness to learn, embedded and interpreted within the (Swedish) societal and local institutional notions of the individualism, egalitarian values, moral rights and obligations of students and teachers. More specifically, the focus of the present study is on the linguistic design, as well as norms and values, underpinning the teachers' socializing strategies—strategies that are employed in response to the language novices' negative affective stances/resistance to complying with instructional directives. I demonstrate how socialization into affectively appropriate participation and a “willing” student identity become a long-term project that is part of the language/cultural novice's moral orienting. While primarily focusing on teacher-novice interactions, the present study takes into account the multiparty social and interactional ecology of the educational setting, and highlights the ways in which social relations and identities are shaped in the presence of and by the teachers, as well as peers.
Method
Data collection, setting, and participants
The present study is part of a larger project on language socialization and learning in multicultural classrooms in Sweden.Footnote 1 The data are based on one year of fieldwork in a first-grade class at a mainstream Swedish primary school in a low socioeconomic status suburb. The suburb reflected a great deal of multilingual and multicultural diversity: it harbored newly arrived, as well as second generation, immigrants from a variety of countries, and was characterized by high unemployment and low parental educational level.
The majority of children in the mainstream first-grade Swedish classroom—eighteen children out of twenty two—were so-called first or second generation immigrants from Iraq, Kurdistan, Bosnia, Syria, and Somalia. Throughout my time at the school, I took fieldnotes, video recorded classroom lessons, children's recesses, and lunches (seventy hours), collected documents, and had many informal conversations with teachers and children. Two regular teachers and two (Swedish) assistants worked in the class over the course of the year. The teaching was organized according to a monolingual language policy: Swedish was used as the main language of classroom instruction, with “home language” teachers joining for one hour a week. Swedish was also used as the lingua franca of the multilingual peer group, who rarely code-switched even when interacting with peers with the same language backgrounds.
The focus child was a seven-year-old Somali girl named Jasmin (a pseudonym), together with five other children (a girl and two boys from rural Somalia, one boy from Syria, and one from Iraq) who were cultural and linguistic novices, and who, prior to their immersion in this regular class, had spent approximately one year in Sweden (in a Swedish language reception kindergarten class). The academic transition for the newcomers presented a complex situation: while their knowledge of Swedish was very limited, and literacy and math skills were rudimentary, Swedish was the medium through which they had to advance academically (immersed together with old-timers). There were no special Swedish-language teaching activities. Instead, novices (including the focus child), together with old-timers whose proficiency in Swedish or academic skills was evaluated as low, were receiving additional teacher assistance in the class, or during pull-out activities on math or literacy training.
Socially, the novices entered a peer group who had pre-established friendship constellations, and throughout the school year, the old-timers, despite the novices' attempts to join them, were reluctant to widen their friendship networks. Jasmin was mostly confined to the company of another novice, a Somali girl named Fahmo. At the final literacy tests, the majority of the novices performed poorly, but it was Jasmin's student identity that diverged from the typical path, in that she was the only child who was left to repeat the first grade. While in the kindergarten reception class Jasmin's social qualities (care-taking, alert responsivity to the teachers' social instructions in play, circle time) were appreciated, upon her transition to the regular (culturally diverse) first grade, she soon became a “problematic” student.
Societal and local language and educational ideologies
Multiple societal, educational, and language ideologies influenced and shaped the organization of classroom activities, and the communicative practices played out there. National and local educational policies assigned teachers multifaceted tasks: to promote democratic values related to individual rights (which, acknowledging the growing cultural and language diversity in Sweden, included the individual's right to his/her cultural and language heritage), as well as to foster egalitarian values and equality in schools and society. Embedded within the implicit and widely accepted notions of the qualities of good citizenship, these tasks echoed the wider societal and cultural democratic ideology of “egalitarian individualism” in Sweden. Teachers were responsible for equal treatment of students by adapting their teaching to the individual student's level. The national curriculum also accentuated teachers' responsibilities to strengthen/develop the student's willingness to learn and confidence in her/his own skills and abilities, simultaneously as it placed a considerable (moral) weight on the children themselves to be/become responsible for their learning.
In the present class, the curriculum requirements strongly emphasizing equality were set into practice through what can be seen as a “colour blind” (Talmy Reference Talmy2008) approach, which manifested itself as a pervasive absence of teachers' topicalization of the children's ethnicity or language. However, the wider societal and educational ideologies emphasized “good” Swedish as a basic and necessary requirement for becoming a full-fledged member of society (which, despite the growing diversity, implicitly accentuated cultural homogeneity in attitudes and values). Deficient knowledge of Swedish as a significant feature of the students' identity was invoked, albeit implicitly, through the teachers' use of simplified registers, and the predominance of language/cultural novices in additional (pull-out) teaching activities.
Unit of analysis
In analyzing video recordings (made for the larger project), I transcribed a representative selection of the classroom and recess activities (thirty hours of recordings). The analyses for the present article focus on examples from Jasmin's participation in individual work on tasks throughout the year, drawing on the representative instances in which she displayed different forms of affectively valorized noncompliance with the teachers' instructional directives.
Individual work on task was a pervasive (dyadic) educational format that echoed the individual-centeredness of the curriculum. Interactionally, individual work on task entailed at least a three-partite structure: the teacher's initiating actions—directives, instructions, and information questions—that (re)initiated students' work (talk and action) on an assignment. The lexicogrammatical features of directives included second-person modalized constructions—declaratives such as du ska skriva lite lite ‘you have to write just for a little while’ and interrogatives such as ska du skriva ‘mamma’ själv, here translated as ‘are you going to write “mom” by yourself?’—that, by embedding a deontic modal ska, clearly indexed the speaker (teacher) as imposing an obligation on the hearer. The teachers also employed mitigated inclusive directives (with the subject inclusive pronoun we) and, only occasionally, imperatives (titta ‘look’). While modalized interrogatives and inclusive directives generally indexed a more indirect imposition (Ervin-Tripp, O'Connor, & Rosenberg Reference Ervin-Tripp, O'Connor;, Rosenberg, Kramarae, Schulz and O'Barr1984), and were employed initially in a directive sequence, the communicative impact of a specific directive format was inextricably contextualized within the unfolding of an embodied directive trajectory (M. Goodwin Reference Goodwin2006).
The slot immediately after an instructional directive provided a place where the student produced an (affectively indexed) response: compliance with or resistance to work on the task. The teachers' feedback turn (stance uptake) constituted a locus for the achievement of intersubjectivity: evaluation or responsive socializing moves targeting the novice's resistant, negative affective responses (cf. He Reference He2000 on responsive/disciplining directives).
Methodological approach
Methodologically, the present study adopts a language socialization approach involving an ethnographically informed analysis of talk and action, with a focus on particular interactional routines as they develop over time (Ochs Reference Ochs, Gumperz and Levinson1996). The analytical procedure is informed by a multimodal interactional approach to human interaction and sense-making (C. Goodwin Reference Goodwin2000). I present a fine-grained analysis of video recordings to illustrate how the teachers and children used specific language-mediated practices in conjunction with body positionings, gestures, and gaze. Importantly, microanalysis is contextualized in a holistic study of the community as cultural arrangements shaped by, and in turn shaping, the wider societal/educational ideologies and values.
Trajectory of participation
Throughout the school year, Jasmin participated in a limited range of educational formats—individual work on task (drawing, coloring, literacy, math activities) being the main arena for her academic involvement. It served as a significant locus for the display and ascription of her student identity: it constituted the main surface for her academic contact with the teachers in that she seldom volunteered/participated in teacher-led whole class activities. Although Jasmin was not the only language and cultural novice in this ethnically/linguistically heterogeneous class, before much of the year had passed, her identity as an “academically problematic” student was publicly circulating in the classroom. Her responses to the teachers' instructional directives (on literacy and math training) were repeatedly designed as verbal and nonverbal noncompliance/resistance and her refusals primarily targeted the coursework related directives. Jasmin's negative affective stances occasioned the teachers' (multifunctional) uptake, which—while aiming to get the student to proceed with her work—exhibited a range of socializing moves inculcating institutional (affective and moral) values.Footnote 2
The stances Jasmin took and her student identity shifted over time: from a “resigned” student to, at end of the year, a “bad subject,” an “unwilling,” “defiant,” and “immature” student. In the following, this trajectory as well as the lexicogrammatical and embodied features of teacher-student (as well as the peer group's) communicative practices are detailed.
Resigned student identity
Novices' resignation and negative self-assessments (“I cannot”)
Jasmin's participation in individual work on task during the initial phase of the year varied. While she was mostly active and gladly took on drawing assignments, she also displayed negative affective stances, showing her resignation and unwillingness to comply with the teachers' directives. Her resigned responses were designed as affectively valorized negative self-assessments (“jag kan inte” ‘I cannot’; “jag vet inte” ‘I don't know’). The negative forms of epistemic verbs (modal kan ‘can’ and vet ‘know’) in declarative constructions, and bodily disalignment with relevant classroom artifacts (e.g. a book; cf. C. Goodwin Reference Goodwin2007), were coordinated to bluntly state her lack of relevant academic skills. In the context of curriculum-based teacher responsibilities (to develop the individual student's knowledge, as well as to strengthen the student's confidence in her academic abilities), they invoked teacher-socializing actions that were shaped as positive assessments of the individual's skills (“you can,” “you are very clever”).
In extract (1), during a literacy task, the teacher asks Jasmin if she would write the word mamma ‘mom’ by herself, using a modal ska and a second-person sg. pronoun du to frame the task as an imposition and an individual responsibility of the student (line 3).Footnote 3
(1) (October) Participants: Class, Jasmin, and Teacher A
Jasmin displays her resistance by demonstrating her resignation: she lies down on the desk, assuming a nonworking position and, with an extended outbreath, announces that she ‘cannot’ accomplish the task (lines 5–6). The negative form of the epistemic modal kan ‘can’ (denoting acquired skills/knowledge) indexes her lack of academic knowledge (how to write mamma ‘mom’). By causally relating the noncompliant move to Jasmin's objective lack of competence (rather than individual wants and wishes, see extract 6 and 7), this language resource constructs a legitimate refusal and can be seen to solicit teacher assistance.
As can be seen, the student's negative self-assessments invoked the teacher's institutional responsibilities to remedy the (learning) problem: nonverbally, the teacher scaffolds the novice's task accomplishment, and verbally, with a second-person positive evaluation (‘yes you can’, lines 7), she emphasizes the individual student's skills/abilities, giving the novice credit for the work the teacher actually assists with (e.g. Poole Reference Poole1992).
This extract demonstrates the ways in which the verbal design of classroom interactional routines inculcates educational ideologies that put strong emphasis on both individualism and equality. The teacher's overly positive assessments of the individual students' work and behavior were deployed across the school year. They bore a recurrent linguistic shape, with a second-person perspective (“du är jättebra” ‘you're really good’; “vad fint du har gjort” ‘you've done it very nicely’; “du gör ditt bästa” ‘you're doing your best,’ and, among the students, “alla gör sitt bästa” ‘everybody's doing their best’) promoting a cultural preference for the individual's experience of success, individual displays of knowledge, as well as the masking of differences between the students and their failures. Simultaneously (and paradoxically), these notions put a (moral) responsibility on the individual student for her learning. As can be seen in the present example, the positive evaluation of Jasmin's skills allows the teacher to get the novice to engage in (collaborative) work on task.
Noncompliance as pleading appeals (to change the task)
Jasmin recurrently showed her dissatisfaction with tasks, responding with language-mediated pleading bargaining moves (Goodwin, Cekaite, & Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Cekaite, Goodwin, Peräkylä and Sorjönen2012), and nonlexical resigned response cries (e.g. sighs; Goffman Reference Goffman1978). Pleading bargaining responses displayed formal (prosodic and lexical) similarities with what Schieffelin (Reference Schieffelin1990:112) has described as pleading appeals, that is, forms strategically used to attempt to make others “feel sorry for” the child speaker. The novice articulated her willingness to work (but on alternative tasks) by using rudimentary lexical means (characteristic of the basic variant of L2; Perdue Reference Perdue2000), such as volition modal vill Footnote 4 ‘want’ + object, infinitive + object, or simple labeling of objects.
The following exchange in extract (2) takes place during a pull-out activity for several children who are working on their individual tasks (seated at the same table). Generally, the children work on individually assigned books from a series that increases in complexity (everybody being aware of this ranking). The teacher checks Jasmin's math exercises and evaluates her work negatively. She starts flipping back pages in Jasmin's book, with an inclusive directive telling her that they have to go back in the workbook because Jasmin's earlier work is incorrect (line 1).
(2) (November) Participants: Teacher B, novices Jasmin, Fahmo (Somali girl), Mahmud (Somali boy), and old-timers Ebba (Swedish girl), Rashad (Iraqi boy)
Jasmin's indignant ‘What?’ displays her negative stance toward the teacher's directive (line 2). Within the multiparty participation framework, the classmates, an overhearing audience, closely monitor the teacher's negative evaluation, and loudly discuss Jasmin's academic achievements (lines 5–7, 11). They position Jasmin as an incompetent student (she is still working on the easiest exercise book, Ladybug) and a cheater who copies from others (*‘you and Jasmin simply copy from Alma,’ lines 11–12). Peer talk is framed as evaluative, critical comments (negative other-assessments and positive self-assessments of academic progress) (Goodwin & Kyratzis Reference Goodwin and Kyratzis2012). The local peer group ethos, established through such peer evaluative practices, is further detailed in extract (4). Important to mention now is Jasmin's attentiveness to peer talk. Despite the fact that the teacher verbally diminishes her task obligation (lines 8–9, affective modifiers “lite lite” ‘little little’; Ochs & Schieffelin Reference Ochs and Schieffelin1989), Jasmin bargains in a “pleading mode,” claiming her willingness to work but under different conditions. In a “basic” variety of Swedish, she says she wants the more advanced book her classmates mention (“jag vill jobba Groda” *‘I want to work on Frog,’ line 13), using a falling contour, elongated final vowel indexing her unhappiness, and a pleading appeal (e.g. Goodwin et al. Reference Goodwin, Cekaite, Goodwin, Peräkylä and Sorjönen2012).
However, the teacher refuses with a disciplining, explicit socializing move—a generic rule statement that positions Jasmin as a cultural novice who is ignorant of the norms and cultural values guiding the interactional manifestation of appropriate learning conduct (lines 14–17). Such extended disciplining responses were employed in relation to the novice's persistent noncompliant moves and carried a systematic lexicogrammatic design, serving as multifunctional linguistic socializing resources: (i) The negative evaluation of the novice's prior action/stance was constructed through oppositional turn-initial prefaces (polarity marker nej ‘no’ and adversary conjunction men ‘but’); (ii) The epistemic dimension was brought up through epistemic markers and constructions (vet du vad? ‘you know what?’) that invoked the novice's lack of knowledge; (iii) The rule statements (generic declaratives) outlined the nonnegotiable norms, thus constructing a reason for complying with (Swedish) collectivity. Through recurring generic man ‘one’ in declarative statements, as well as status quo indexing “nu är det såhär” ‘it's like this now,’ they framed the information as emanating from collectivity, a prefixed cultural normative system (Scheibman Reference Scheibman and Engelbretson2007). In this way, they invoked Jasmin's identity as a cultural novice, ignorant of, and transgressing the nonnegotiable, culturally shared (societal and educational) norms and expectations. The generic declarative statements were modalized, and the embedded modal verbs juxtaposed individual volition (novice's wishes) with obligations (ska ‘have to,’ måste ‘must’), defining the individual's possibilities to act (kan ‘can’) within the framework of the outlined obligations. They formulated a strong moral ground for appropriate action, but did not command, or specify what would happen if the child did not comply (cf. He Reference He2000). Rather, these linguistic features allowed the teachers to frame the appropriate action as the moral effort and responsibility of the student herself. Through causal linking (particle då ‘then’; conjunction därför ‘therefore’) between the generic statements (normative proscriptions and prohibitions), these socializing moves contrasted appropriate and inappropriate modes of acting.
As can be seen in extract (2), the teacher categorizes Jasmin's affective stance as a normative transgression from the educational (and implicitly, wider sociocultural) ideologies, linking feeling norms to the moral work ethic (i.e. the student's obligations and willingness to work (lines 14–17). Through focalization of linguistic emotion labels (rolig ‘fun’), the teacher establishes an indexical, one-to-one relation between specific emotions and proper learning behavior (cf. Lo Reference Lo2009). She explicitly socializes Jasmin into the nonnegotiable values associated with appropriate participation in Swedish schooling system: the individual student's negative emotional attitude toward tasks/classroom assignments has to be suppressed, and the student has to accept the institutionally assigned tasks willingly and without complaint, as well as show patience and perseverance.
Embodied socialization into attentive learning
Jasmin recurrently engaged in a nonworking, resigned position, organizing an embodied participation framework so as to resist work on task (C. Goodwin Reference Goodwin2007). In response to Jasmin's (repeated) embodied nonattention, the teachers resorted to tactile means to arrange, and socialize, the novice's body into an interactionally appropriate (learning) posture, a work-relevant attentional framework.
In extract (3), during a group pull-out activity, in response to the teacher's recycled imperative, Jasmin (still) displays her embodied reluctance to engage in the task, sighing and gazing above the book instead (line 2).
(3) (November) Participants: Jasmin, Fahmo, and Teacher B
The teacher's subsequent stance is an upgraded move that involves an embodied repair, realized through tactile means: she reorganizes Jasmin's body into a posture of attentiveness by directing Jasmin's head—i.e. her gaze towards the book. Importantly, the teacher's uptake here also involves an embodied socializing move: by directing Jasmin's head/gaze towards the book, she reorganizes Jasmin's body into a posture of attentiveness. In addition to physically constraining the child's possibilities to ignore her directives, the teacher simultaneously socializes the novice into a bodily appropriate interactional manifestation of learning conduct. While tactile steering of language novices' actions constitutes a recurrent meaning-making resource at the very initial phases of L2 learning (Cekaite Reference Cekaite2007, or with young children, Burdelski & Mitsuhashi 2009)—and is used to establish the basic premise for multimodally choreographed understanding)—when deployed in other contexts, that is, in response to the first-grader's repeated noncompliance, such tactile steering served as a normative socializing move that highlighted inappropriateness of Jasmin's embodied conduct, and her resistance.
Ignoring teachers' directives
Generally, the classroom instructions were not specifically adapted to Jasmin's (or the rest of the novices') knowledge of Swedish or academic level. In giving their instructions, the teachers primarily concentrated on the content of academic tasks, rather than Swedish language. Jasmin often had difficulties understanding tasks (or their solutions). In addition to her increasing displays of frustration (over time), she repeatedly and persistently tried to silently avoid or reframe tasks.
Below in extract (4), the class is given the task to individually build a color matching “staircase” (arranging color bars in a specific order). After several unsuccessful attempts, Jasmin loudly smashes her construction.
(4) (January) Participants: Teacher A, Jasmin, and the class
Jasmin's aggravated display of frustration elicits the teacher's immediate instructional response (to engage her in work). In an interrogative format ‘Are you going to build a staircase?’ (mitigated directive, cf. extract (1)), the teacher frames the task as an individual assignment, requesting that Jasmin herself construct a color coordinated staircase (line 2). Jasmin, however, engages in an alternative, less complex, task. She builds a simple silhouette of a house, and rather than turning toward the teacher, she adamantly keeps her gaze on her own building project (lines 3–9). While Jasmin's question “Trappa?” ‘Staircase?’ reveals her lack of understanding (line 3), the teacher, rather than offering a word definition, responds with a counter question “Vad är trappa?” ‘What is a staircase?,’ thus initiating an examination-like exchange (lines 4, 6, 8, 10). The teacher's verbatim repetitions (albeit with varying prosodic emphasis) resemble a simplified register (foreigner talk), thus highlighting Jasmin's lack of L2 knowledge, and invoking her identity as a language novice. These repetitions provide but little help in clarifying the meaning of trappa ‘staircase,’ and Jasmin, with the negative self-assessments ‘I cannot’ and ‘I don't know’ (lines 7, 9), admits her nonunderstanding of the basic premise of the task, thus acknowledging her identity as an L2 novice/nonknowledgeable student.
Peer socialization: Ascriptions of incompetent student identity
Jasmin was a social child, frequently trying to approach the old-timer peer group. She gladly attempted to join in and initiate social activities and play, taking care of the others, but, like the rest of the language novices, she was rarely admitted to the old-timer networks. When her academic attempts were unsuccessful, she repeatedly tried to get help, to observe, and/or copy the old-timers' work. However, as time went by, they became reluctant to assist her. Her identity as an unsuccessful student solidified in the peer group, who criticized her work because “hon kan ingenting” ‘she doesn't know anything’ and “hon gör inte rätt ens” ‘she doesn't even do it correctly,’ and constructed an indexical relation between her dependence on their assistance and the identity of an academically unsuccessful student, and a cheater.
In extract (5), the class is working on individual math assignments. Jasmin, after receiving teacher help, and then, after individual unsuccessful attempts, loudly sighing, approaches an old-timer Alma, asking her (with bold directives/imperatives, i.e. basic variant of Swedish) to look in her book.
(5) (March) Participants: Jasmin and old-timers Alma (Bosnian girl) and Hussein (Kurdish boy)
Jasmin's demands for assistance are prosodically shaped as (affectively indexed) pleading (lines 1–2). However, the old-timers refuse to tell her the correct answer (lines 3, 6). Using deontic modals (indexing obligation), they define learning as her individual responsibility (“hon border lära sig” ‘she must learn (by herself)’), stating that Jasmin's request for an answer is normatively inappropriate. It is associated with her lack of knowledge, and her repeated unwillingness to work/learn (peer upgraded directive “nu får du skriva själv” ‘now you have to work by yourself’). The negative evaluation of Jasmin's skills (“hon kan inte” ‘she cannot/she doesn't know’) clearly invokes her subordinate identity as an incompetent student who has not acquired even basic academic knowledge (lines 9–10; see also extract (2)). These interactional practices (evaluative and critical comments and aggravated directives) mediated pervasive local peer-group cultural values: while reiterating the Swedish educational ideologies, related to individual knowledge construction and responsibility for one's own learning, the peer group highlighted (rather than avoiding and masking, as the teachers did) the asymmetries and differences in knowledge (in different areas, including proficiency in Swedish).
Unwilling stances and outright refusals: Unsuccessful and “immature” novice student identity
A significant change during the final months of the school year was a shift in Jasmin's stance repertoires, which now predominantly included affectively negative, defiant stances, and outright embodied refusals (although she also resorted to earlier affective resources, i.e. resigned negative self-assessments). By using negative declaratives incorporating modal verbs of volition (“jag vill inte” ‘I don't want to,’ “jag vill inte läsa” ‘I don't want to read’), Jasmin articulated her unwillingness to engage in learning assignments. She also resisted by staying out of the class, trying to leave, or sitting sulkily throughout the teachers' instructions (but usually did not protest to tasks unrelated to literacy or math).
Importantly, the change in Jasmin's stances highlighted the bidirectional and contested character of socialization (cf. Wortham Reference Wortham2006). The different linguistic resources used in the oppositional utterances deployed over the course of the year—initial refusals through epistemic verbs kan inte ‘cannot’ and vet inte ‘don't know,’ and at the end of the year, negative statements embedding volition verbs jag vill inte ‘I don't want to’—put the teachers under various kinds of institutional obligations, and occasioned a change in their language-mediated (and embodied) socializing practices, who now readily and repeatedly explicitly criticized Jasmin. Importantly, through her actions and verbalizations, the novice was thus (not necessarily consciously) socializing the teachers as specific kinds of teachers, who engaged in specific socializing actions. Teacher responsive moves served as disciplining socializing resources, while simultaneously contributing to the solidification of a “bad subject,” that is, “unwilling” student identity.
The teachers were explicit about what they perceived to be Jasmin's problematic stance, equating it with her stated unwillingness to learn. The narratives and explanations they constructed about her lack of progress, refusals, and the affective character of her participation articulated the preferred outcomes of academic socialization, including the moral and affective identities that were desired by the school and society. Similar views were adopted by her peers, who reiterated and reported Jasmin's refusals—“Hon sa ‘jag vill inte läsa’” ‘She said, “I don't want to read”’—to the teacher. Although at the end of the year other novices were performing as poorly as Jasmin, they were characterized as “trying hard,” and Jasmin was the only child left to repeat the first grade. The teachers positioned her as unready for school, and too socially immature to appreciate and participate in schooling, lacking motivation and an understanding of the benefits of literacy (implicitly linking these features to her identity as a recently arrived rural immigrant; cf. Talmy Reference Talmy2008). The multifaceted identity of the incompetent student as an “unwilling” (or “willfully academically unsuccessful”) subject was constructed through a range of negative affective stances and responsive language-mediated socializing strategies, detailed in further sections.
The novice's outright refusals and categorical statements of unwillingness
At the end of the school year, Jasmin shaped her refusals as embodied, affectively charged, categorical statements of intentional unwillingness. She used first-person negative declaratives “jag vill inte” ‘I don't want to,’ framing her resistance as her individual and rational choice. Such repeated refusals gave rise to the teachers' socializing moves, which through their linguistic and embodied design clearly articulated the inextricable relation between willingness to learn, appropriate emotions, and individual's responsibilities. The teachers now repeatedly deployed generic statements describing omnipresent norms (see extract (2)), which positioned Jasmin as a cultural novice who still lacked knowledge about Swedish (cultural) norms, expectations, and values.
In extract (6), during an individual pull-out activity, Jasmin is reluctant to read with the teacher, and sits turned away with a “sulky” look on her face. The teacher responds with an explicit socializing move, that is, generic declaratives, combined in a narrative description of the nonnegotiable sociocultural norms defining a (regular) seven-year-old child's responsibilities (lines 1–5).
(6) (April) Participants: Teacher A and Jasmin
Jasmin refuses to comply: with the immediate definite announcement that she is zero years old (an infant) (line 6), she efficiently excludes herself from the Swedish school-age category and positions herself as unable, and unwilling, to read. Although the teacher reframes Jasmin's response in terms of ability (lines 9–11), Jasmin reiterates her refusal (“jag vill inte” ‘I don't want to’). Emphasizing the modal verb vill ‘want,’ she indexes her stance as an intentional, definite act (lines 8, 12).
Notably, the linguistic design of Jasmin's categorical statements of unwillingness allows her to actively assume the identity of resistant student, and constitutes a linguistically mediated ground for the teacher's explicit disciplining socializing moves, that is, generic statements (see extract (2)). In lines 13–15, the juxtaposition between personal pronouns, an exclusive we (ingroup category of teachers), the second-person you (Jasmin as an individual student), and the modal auxiliaries cannot and must effectively contrasts the possibilities (to act) and the responsibilities of the school staff and the student. The summarizing deontic generic statement ‘one must have it oneself’ does not only define an unquestionable moral ground, a strong obligation, and a normative goal for the novice. It also accentuates the individualistic perspective, locating the origo of volition within the student herself, who is made morally responsible for her learning, much in line with societal and educational individualistic ideologies and values. Although expressing individuality is considered a positive trait in the Western rhetoric of individual subjectivity (Murphy & Throop Reference Murphy, Throop, Murphy and Throop2010), expressing individual wants and desires that deviate from the institutional expectations of educational settings clearly positioned the novice as a “bad subject.”
Teacher display questions: Indirect socialization into “willing” participation
In response to Jasmin's affective statements of unwillingness, the teachers also used display questions that solicited the novice's own perspective on appropriate participation (willingness vs. resistance, positive vs. negative emotions). They were shaped as yes/no assertions and were indexical of the teachers' moral position (He Reference He2000). While on the surface these assertions invited the student's autonomous answer, through their yes/no format, they also asserted the institutionally preferred manner of reasoning. The novice's aligning responses were then used as a rational ground for the teacher's formulation of general norms, committing the novice to complying with the shared (teacher's and her own) position.
In extract (7) from an individual pull-out activity, Jasmin repeatedly tries to leave the class, stating her unwillingness to engage in a literacy assignment. The teacher uses tactile “shepherding” moves to guide Jasmin back to the desk (Cekaite Reference Cekaite2010) (a noticeable change compared to less prominent tactile reshaping of the student's attentional focus earlier in the year, extract (3)), and then issues an upgraded directive/imperative sätt dig ‘sit down.’ Jasmin moans very loudly, bodily displaying frustration, and states her unwillingness again (line 2).
(7) (April) Participants: Teacher A and Jasmin
The teacher's display questions, posed in yes/no interrogative format, create an interactional space for the student to provide an answer, positioning her as autonomous agent and engaging her in a rationale mode of reasoning. By using examples from Jasmin's world experiences with adults as obvious models, the teacher's conditional constructions (‘If your mom doesn't want to cook, can she just not do it?’; ‘Can I just not go to my job if I don't want to?’) skillfully exploit the child's aligning, “correct,” answer as a rational moral ground to commit her to ratifying the generic norms (lines 3–4, 6, 8). The teacher uses a juxtaposition between the modal auxiliaries vill ‘want’ (individual volition) and kan ‘can’ (individual's possibilities) (lines 11–12) to establish a causal relation between responsibilities (as a grown-up and a child), and (limited) possibilities to act according to one's personal wishes.
Interestingly, the display question format constitutes readily available sequential possibilities for the child recipient to challenge or subvert the institutional ideologies by providing an unexpected answer (e.g. He Reference He2000). Jasmin exploits this opportunity to claim her identity as a competent child and family member (who can cook instead of her mother). She thereby takes up quite a different identity from what is expected of a seven-year-old in Sweden (i.e. a student whose primary responsibility is to learn; extract (6)). Moreover, in line 13, Jasmin skillfully exploits the IRE interactional routine. With “jag har gjort detta” ‘I have done this,’ she solicits the teacher's evaluation of the task (completed much earlier), and uses the teacher's positive feedback (the final move in an IRE sequence) to immediately terminate her work engagement (line 15). Thus, while Jasmin's classroom participation was considered “inappropriate” (“unwilling,” “sulky”), her resistant responses (lines 5, 7) revealed her intricate knowledge of the interactional routines and the values that accompanied these discursive structures, allowing her to immediately subvert and exploit them to her advantage (see also (6), line 6).
Explicit embodied emotion repair and socialization
As Jasmin's negative, unwilling embodied affective stances (e.g. running away, sitting turned away, sulky face, loud moaning, collapsing demonstratively on the desk) became prominent, the teachers deployed explicit embodied socializing moves to model and even assemble Jasmin's bodily postures into appropriate—attentive and willing—participation in the learning practices. Willingness to learn was explicitly demonstrated as a glad/happy embodied affective stance. In extract (8), responsively to Jasmin's refusals, the teacher shows that “happy” mood in educational setting is equal to enthusiastic/willing approach to learning.
(8) (April) Participants: Teacher A and Jasmin
Jasmin's affectively charged negative responses to instructional directives were readily identified as inappropriate, and explicitly corrected and criticized, both verbally and nonverbally, and she was described as sulky, resistant, and angry.
In (9), Jasmin, together with two other unskilled “readers,” is given a group reading task. While Ebba and Mahmud argue about who has to read which portion of the text (lines 1–3), she sits noticeably looking away with a sullen/sulky look.
(9) (May) Participants: Teacher C, Jasmin, Mahmud (Somali boy), and Ebba (old-timer, Swedish girl)
Jasmin, overhearing Mahmud's discussion with Ebba, where he gives direct instructions (with modal ska indexing the children's obligations to read), objects to the reading, using an elongated polarity marker “ne::j” ‘no::’ to signal her markedly negative affective stance (line 5). The teacher's uptake is an aggravated embodied directive (a second-person declarative) “men du ska sluta vara så sur” ‘but you have to stop being so sulky’ (line 6). She explicitly demands that the novice stop expressing negative emotion and blatantly corrects Jasmin's bodily positioning by re-arranging the novice's entire body posture.
Negative emotion and stances, categorized as “to sulk/sulky” were recurrently discussed and criticized by the teachers in the class. They were defined as especially inappropriate in the educational contexts. Because of their extended duration (associated with a rather stable psychological trait of an individual), they were defined as affecting the novice's attitudes and conduct in general, and were antithetical to a normatively prescribed “willing/glad” learning attitude (see extract (8)). Appropriate interactional participation/learning was in this way explicitly framed as an experienced and embodied, publicly visible positive emotion, and Jasmin was readily identified as a “bad” student who repeatedly transgressed these institutional norms and expectations.
Conclusions
The present study has tracked the language-mediated and embodied affective (and moral) socialization of a language novice in a Swedish first-grade classroom, and demonstrated a trajectory across which socialization into normatively predictable cultural patterns did not occur (cf. Wortham Reference Wortham2004; Cekaite Reference Cekaite2007). Answering the call to explore and account for the bidirectional and contested character of language socialization activities, the study illuminated the process of becoming a “bad subject” (Kulick & Schieffelin Reference Kulick, Schieffelin and Duranti2004), a problematic “unwilling” student, that is, resistant and affectively defiant in relation to participation in (literacy-related) educational activities. By focusing on identity development within the micropractices of the recurrent interactional sequences, the study has detailed the lexicogrammatical design of the novice's affectively charged noncompliant moves, as well as the cultural values underpinning the teachers' socializing responses. Attention to the dynamic interplay of the local educational and wider societal categories, values, and ideologies has unraveled the complexity of the second-language socialization taking place in the Swedish educational setting, as well as the cultural norms guiding the appropriate interactional manifestation of learning behavior (in classroom practices).
As demonstrated, in this educational setting, socioculturally embedded roles, expectations, and feeling rules constituted the “backdrop” against which the participants' stance-taking occurred, and as such, specified their linguistic and embodied, normative/moral meaning (Du Bois Reference Du Bois and Englebretson2007; Jaffe Reference Jaffe and Jaffe2009). The participants oriented to and deployed the circulating notions related to the wider societal (and national curriculum) ideologies of egalitarian individualism, emphasizing the individual's rights and responsibilities (in one's knowledge construction, language heritage) and also accentuating equality (by downplaying differences and failures; extract (1)). The novice's affectively valorized responses were interpreted by the teachers as indexing contestation, ignorance, and resistance/unwillingness to engage with the values that accompanied the discursive practices of a particular educational (target language) community.
The linguistic and discursive design of teacher talk clearly demonstrated the language-mediated ways in which the teachers suffused the activity of learning with wider culturally situated (moral) meanings. The teachers' directives had a systematic lexicogrammatical design: shaped as modalized deontic declaratives and interrogatives they indexed a (mitigated) imposition on the individual student, but did not command her to engage in work.
Jasmin's initial participation in individual tasks was characterized by resigned affective stances, which, among other resources, were crafted as rhetorical devices to invoke her lack of academic skills (e.g. prosodically calibrated negative self-assessments ‘I cannot,’ ‘I don't know’; extract (1)). The teachers' responses were shaped as positive second-person assessments ‘yes you can’ and ‘you're so clever.’ They emphasized the novice's (individual) abilities and skills, invoking her institutional responsibilities to engage in learning/classroom work.
The peer group's recurring linguistic practices (evaluations and criticisms) were significant in constructing a pervasive local peer-group ethos that highlighted and emphasized the distinctions (and inequalities) between the students, rather than (institutionally desirable) downplaying and masking of academic, language, and ethnic differences. These practices were a significant factor contributing to solidification of the novice's problematic student identity (extracts (2) and (5)).
Over the course of the year, the novice's stances noticeably shifted to (mostly) affectively charged resistant moves that blatantly stated her unwillingness to participate in learning tasks (i.e. categorical statements of unwillingness ‘I don't want to,’ out-loud cries of exasperation and discontent, and spatially organized embodied refusals; extracts (6)–(9)). They constituted a different multimodal ground for the teachers' responsive moves, and demonstrated the agency of the novice in the socializing processes as her (not necessarily conscious) socialization of the teachers themselves. The teachers repeatedly engaged in extended encounters that explicitly articulated and explained the cultural norms and values guiding appropriate participation in the target community. The institutional interpretation of Jasmin's statements of unwillingness was colored by the developmentally influenced notion of school readiness/maturity. Her affectively charged stances were thus associated with her identity as a language and cultural novice, who lacked the appropriate cultural knowledge, and had to be explicitly socialized into the beliefs and values of the L2 community (extracts (2), (6), and (7)).
Responsively to repeated noncompliant moves, and the novice's statements of unwillingness, the teachers recurrently employed generalized norm statements. They were deployed to directly negatively evaluate Jasmin's affective stance, identifying it as a transgression from general (moral) work ethics, and as her ignorance of omnipresent, and nonnegotiable cultural expectations. With an initial evaluation (turn-initial negation or an adversary conjoiner but), they immediately negatively evaluated Jasmin's affectively charged stance. Generic (modalized) statements detailed a specific aspect of a prefixed normative system (e.g. ‘sometimes one has things to do;’ extract (2)). They defined a generic state of affairs (rather than an individual decision/rule), and by juxtaposing with a modalized prohibitive (kan inte ‘cannot’), negated the individual's possibilities to act according to her own wishes. Finally, a deontic modal construction måste ‘must’ summarized the absolute (moral) obligation for everyone, including the focus child, to adhere to. Importantly, they formulated a strong moral ground for appropriate action, but did not specify what would happen if the child/the novice did not comply.
Moreover, emotional socialization was dependent on enskillment of the novice's body. Such enskillment was realized through the teachers' (mitigated or upgraded) embodied corrections, which assembled the novice's body posture to display bodily alignment, that is, attentiveness to the teacher and the task (extracts (3), (8), and (9)).
Overall, the present study highlights the dialogic nature of emotion, as displayed, interpreted and socialized in educational communicative practices, signifying consequential moral indexicalities. Noticeably, within the recurrent interactional activities, the novice's stances served as crucial indexical signs of her appropriate/inappropriate student identity, and were linked to the culturally anchored notion of will/willingness to learn. The juxtaposition between individual action choices, cultural and societal obligations and responsibilities, and thereby logically derived possibilities for the individual to act, highlighted the linguistically mediated and embodied nature of the process of becoming (and acting as) an individual, and a member of a target language society.
The ethnographically contextualized microanalytic approach deployed here underscores the dynamics of sequencing in social activities, and also the importance of documenting and analyzing embodied language practices that participants (the teachers and the language novice) used in interactional classroom routines across a temporally extended spectrum of participation (Goodwin & Kyratzis Reference Goodwin and Kyratzis2012). As demonstrated, becoming an accepted member of a target-language community of practice is a complex, value-suffused process. Beyond the acquisition of target-language forms and communicative competencies (i.e. the appropriation of interaction resources and the comprehension of the underpinning sociocultural values), it necessarily involves the novice's normatively expected willing engagement, that is, affectively indexed appreciation of the values and ideologies that go along with discursive structures of educational activities.
Appendix: Transcription conventions
- :
prolonged syllable
- (.)
micropause, i.e. shorter than (0.5)
- (2)
pauses in seconds
- YES
relatively high amplitude
- ( )
inaudible word
- (( ))
comments of the transcriber
- ?
rising terminal intonation
- .
falling terminal intonation
- =
latching between utterances
- come
sounds marked by emphatic stress
- hhhh
outbreath
