Emergent Speech Genres of Teaching and Learning Interaction
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Emergent speech genres of teaching and learning interaction. Communities of practice in Cameroonian schools and villages Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in linguistics, at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo Bjørghild Kjelsvik March 31 2008 Acknowledgements At the end of a long road I look back at three and a half year of work on a fascinating subject; longer even, if I count the period of waiting for my application to be accepted. All these years I have had the pleasure of working with some equally fascinating people. I should start with my friends and former colleagues in Cameroon: Mrs. Patouma Sambo Jacqueline, Mr. le Pasteur Bouba Jean, and Mr. l’Évangeliste Hamadicko Daniel. There is also my sister Maayí and her children, and the other children in a little village in the bush. I will never forget the children I met as I observed classes and village life. There are so many whom I came to know and appreciate during my field work periods, I cannot mention you all! I would not have been able to write this dissertation without you. Two other fascinating persons to whom I am perhaps even more grateful: My supervisors Professor Elizabeth Lanza and Professor Rolf Theil. They have with their enthusiastic support for my project and their great knowledge of the relevant fields of research been immensely important for my work. I would hardly have been able to finish without their never-failing support. I must also thank my colleagues at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies for sharing their time, their knowledge, their jokes and occasionally their cottage cheese with me—it’s great to know you all! My family, last but not least: they put up with me disappearing to Cameroon for months without grumbling, and are my best support and my greatest joy as I now go forward to other projects. —Bjørghild Kjelsvik Note: This dissertation is written in Latex, and though that document preparation system have many advantages, it was not kind to my transcriptions. I would ask my readers kindly to bear over with useless white spaces and some odd page layout here and there in the analyses chapters. I II Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The object of study and key terms ................. 2 1.1.1 View of language ...................... 2 1.1.2 Practice and communities ................. 5 1.1.3 Speech genres ........................ 6 1.2 General aims of the dissertation .................. 7 1.3 The setting of the study and research questions .......... 8 1.3.1 Research questions ..................... 9 1.4 Plan of the dissertation ....................... 9 2 Understanding linguistic interaction 11 2.1 Community approaches ....................... 12 2.1.1 Ethnography of communication .............. 13 2.1.2 Relevance for the present work ............... 16 2.1.3 The language socialisation approach ............ 16 2.1.4 The community of practice approach ........... 18 2.1.5 Relevance of community concepts in the present study . 23 2.2 Bakhtin ............................... 24 2.2.1 “The utterance is an exceptionally important node of problems” .......................... 25 2.2.2 Speech genres and voices .................. 26 2.2.3 Relevance of Bakhtin for the present work ......... 29 2.3 Cognitive linguistics ........................ 30 2.3.1 Basic ideas of Cognitive linguistics ............ 30 2.3.2 Usage-events and schemas ................. 31 2.4 Compatibility of approaches .................... 33 2.4.1 Cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis ........ 33 2.4.2 Language in use ...................... 34 2.4.3 Linking body, actions and linguistic usage ......... 35 2.4.4 Cognitive Linguistics and Bakhtin ............. 37 2.5 Discourse in CL ........................... 39 III CONTENTS 2.5.1 The Current Discourse Space and the viewing frame . 39 2.5.2 Speech genres as linguistic units .............. 42 2.5.3 Speech genres as interactional tools ............ 45 2.5.4 A cognitive linguist’s notion of genres ........... 49 2.6 Recent developments ........................ 50 2.6.1 Empirical methods in CL work ............... 50 2.6.2 A social cognitive linguistics ................ 52 2.7 Studies of teaching and learning in Cameroon ........... 56 2.8 Contribution of the present study .................. 59 3 Methodology 61 3.1 Target area and group ........................ 63 3.2 Collecting data ........................... 65 3.2.1 Field work and practical arrangements ........... 66 3.2.2 Ethnography and participant observation ......... 67 3.2.3 Other ethnographic documentation ............. 72 3.3 Discourse analysis ......................... 76 3.3.1 Issues of corpus and sampling ............... 76 3.3.2 Sampling in my data .................... 78 3.3.3 Transcription of data .................... 84 3.4 The sufficiency of the data for this study .............. 89 4 The Nizaa in history and society 91 4.1 Geographical setting: Adamaoua .................. 92 4.2 Historical setting .......................... 96 4.2.1 The empire of Usman dan Fodio .............. 97 4.2.2 The European take-over: Cameroon today .........101 4.3 The Nizaa ..............................102 4.3.1 Origin traditions of the Nizaa ...............103 4.3.2 Resistance traditions ....................105 4.3.3 Settling in Galim ......................107 4.4 A language group in the Adamaoua ................108 4.4.1 Language description; orthographic conventions .....111 4.4.2 Tones ............................112 4.5 Cultural traits of the Nizaa .....................114 4.5.1 Villages and settlements ..................114 4.5.2 The importance of the family ................118 4.5.3 The importance of agriculture ...............125 4.5.4 Initiation of boys ......................127 4.6 A place in modern society .....................130 4.6.1 Impact of Islam .......................131 IV CONTENTS 4.6.2 Changes by law and administration ............134 5 Village speech genres 139 5.1 Speech genres as analytical tool ..................140 5.1.1 Speech genres of teaching and learning ..........142 5.1.2 Schemas of teaching and response .............144 5.2 Learning skills in Mipom ......................149 5.2.1 Getting newcomers into a practice .............150 5.2.2 A skill demonstrated ....................153 5.2.3 Intent participation as learning mode ............162 5.2.4 Abstracting a schema ....................164 5.3 Nizaa children’s peer culture ....................167 5.3.1 Peer group culture .....................167 5.3.2 Games as transmission of cultural knowledge .......169 5.3.3 Games as expressions of children’s peer culture ......170 5.3.4 Games observed ......................171 5.3.5 Asking for fire, 11th February 2006 ............183 5.3.6 Learning from games ....................193 5.4 Riddle games and tales .......................200 5.4.1 The riddle game ......................201 5.4.2 Counting riddles and analogies ...............204 5.4.3 Tales ............................206 5.5 Learning environments .......................210 5.5.1 Reproducing the frame of reference ............210 5.5.2 Games and tales as usage events of speech genres .....211 6 The school system in Cameroon 215 6.1 Historical outline ..........................215 6.1.1 Schooling under the German protectorate .........216 6.1.2 French colonial schooling policy ..............217 6.1.3 Missionary schooling in Adamaoua ............220 6.1.4 The development after 1960 ................222 6.1.5 Crisis and progress .....................223 6.2 The educational system today ....................224 6.3 Schools in the target area ......................226 6.3.1 School facilities in the target area .............227 6.3.2 Classroom layout ......................230 6.3.3 Students ...........................230 6.3.4 Languages in class .....................231 6.4 Childhoood in the social structure .................232 V CONTENTS 7 Practice in class 235 7.1 Analytical tools ...........................236 7.1.1 Some key terms and their uses ...............237 7.1.2 Analytical scope ......................239 7.1.3 Participation and reification ................241 7.1.4 A closer look at traits ....................243 7.2 Establishing practice ........................244 7.2.1 Harsh realities: ‘Redoublants’ and drop-outs .......245 7.2.2 The effects of the ‘Redoublement’ pattern .........249 7.2.3 The first day at school in Groupe 2, Galim .........252 7.2.4 First day at school in Mipom ................255 7.3 Reifications of practice .......................260 7.3.1 Classroom layout and the platform format .........261 7.3.2 Talking about body idiom in the classroom ........270 7.4 Institutional settings and local practices ..............283 8 Speech genres 287 8.1 Pedagogical models .........................289 8.1.1 The phases of a lesson ...................290 8.1.2 Rote learning after all ....................292 8.2 Session analysis ...........................294 8.2.1 Outline of the session: Practical Hygiene in Mipom ....294 8.2.2 Levels and speech genres ..................298 8.2.3 Sectioning devices in the session ..............301 8.2.4 Sentence completion and complete sentences .......306 8.2.5 Eliciting text ........................310 8.2.6 Lecturing and explaining speech genres ..........320 8.2.7 Rehearsing and performing texts: Outline subsection 4 . 326 8.2.8 Modeling and imitation ...................330 8.2.9 Lists and texts to learn ...................335 8.3 School and village together .....................342 8.3.1