Phillips: 540 Week 13 Blog Post

Now, here’s an ethnography! Heath spent ten years completing her ethnographic research as a participant observer. Heath explains in the prologue that her book is unique because of her access to, and understanding of, the communities she investigates (Roadville and Trackton) and because of the research circumstances at the time.

Shirley Brice Heath’s Ways with Words documents the ways in which black and white working class children from the Piedmont region of South Carolina were apprenticed into language and learning. Heath demonstrates through thick description, long-term field research, and discourse analysis just how those apprenticeships are enmeshed in a complex process of socialization and tacit rules that govern in-group communication strategies.

The first six chapters of the book contrasted the two communities’ child-rearing habits, adult patterns of communication, consumption practices, and ideological stances. On the one hand, the linguistic and cultural practices of the two communities did share some continuity in that the Christian church and biblical literature played a direct role in each community—although that appeared to be undergoing a shift in an increasingly secular Roadville. On the other hand, language acquisition and practice, community participation, and gender roles in each community were strikingly different. For example, Trackton families were more communal, matrifocal, and babies were held much more than in Roadville. Roadville families had male “providers” and female “nurturers,” but held babies less. Roadville babies were addressed directly. Male children and female children were given vastly different toys and engaged in separate activities at a much earlier age than Trackton children.

Heath’s ethnography also revealed different patterns of story narration between the two communities, which foreshadows the ways in which educators may work with students’ strengths once they enter the formal school setting.

Roadville (white) children were taught facts, names of things, and moral lessons based in biblical parable structures. The children were encouraged to tell factual stories in "proper" start to finish sequence. The children were not encouraged to speak-up or out to elders and were not encouraged to be creative problem solvers. Obedience was encouraged, as was deference to adult authority figures.

Trackton (black) children weren’t taught facts or a linear style of narrative in story-telling. Instead, the kids, especially boys, were encouraged to “take the stage” and engage in a kind of competitive conversation, one in which creativity and problem solving through a narrative was rewarded and lauded by members of the community. Taking turns in talking was not taught or admired. Telling a "tall" tale was fine as long as it was interesting. Rhythmic speech patterns were often incorporated into story-telling methods. Middle-school girls engaged in different kinds of rhythmic speech games that also involved body movement like, double-dutch (skipping rope games) and hand-clap games.

Although I haven’t read the second-half of the book yet, I see clear parallels to Susan Philip’s work in Invisible Culture. Philip’s study wasn’t quite as long (1968-73) and she wasn’t a member of the Warm Springs community in the way that Heath was in both the Roadville and Trackton communities.