Marjorie Harness Goodwin

"... carefully researched and clearly written... Goodwin makes a major step in redefining the enterprise of studying language use in context and across contexts." —American Ethnologist "I recommend the book highly."Â —John Haviland, American Anthropologist "Goodwin's thoughtful interpretation of these examples [of children's conversation] is replete with wise insights, challenging critical darts, and well-referenced links to a wide literature." —Child Development Abstracts & Bibliography "Intellectual breadth shines through this book." —Barrie Thorne "By combining Goffman's approach to ethnography with in-depth conversational analysis, Goodwin provides important and novel insights into the interactive processes through which culture is created and maintained. The results should be of interest to any social scientist." —John J. Gumperz "... required reading for linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and educators." —Language and Acquisition "This book is clearly a significant addition to the study of the range and power of children's voices at play... " —Harvard Educational Review "He-Said-She-Said provides fascinating insight into the importance of social context in the organization of gender." —Signs "A rare and wonderful combination of ethnography and conversational analysis. Goodwin gives both a sensitive account of African American adolescent street talk and a careful approach to the study of language in use." —Ray McDermott "Marjorie Harness Goodwin's study of children's talk provides the best and most comprehensive analysis of gender differences in interaction, situated in the broader context of children's social organization. She didn't set up experiments; she didn't just take field notes. She hung around with the children in her neighborhood until they trusted her, then tape-recorded their natural conversations as they played together. This is Goodwin's long-awaited compilation of years of painstaking analysis of the transcripts of those tapes. It is not only one of the best sources, if not the best source, for anyone interested in how boys and girls use language in their daily lives—indeed, to constitute their daily lives; it is also a model ethnographic study of language in its natural setting." —Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation This groundbreaking study describes in detail the complexities of children's communication. By integrating the analysis of conversation with ethnography, Marjorie Harness Goodwin systematically and empirically reveals how a group of urban black children constitute their social world through talk.

Talk as Social Organization Among Black Children

He-said-she-said

..."carefully researched and clearly written....Goodwin makes a major step in redefining the enterprise of studying language use in context and acress contexts." --American Ethnologist

Paul Drew

John J. Gumperz

Throughout Western society there are now strong pressures for social and racial integration but, in spite of these, recent experience has shown that greater intergroup contact can actually reinforce social distinctions and ethnic stereotypes. The studies collected here examine, from a broad sociological perspective, the sorts of face-to-face verbal exchange that are characteristic of industrial societies, and the volume as a whole pointedly demonstrates the role played by communicative phenomena in establishing and reinforcing social identity. The method of analysis that has been adopted enables the authors to reveal and examine a centrally important but hitherto little discussed conversational mechanism: the subconscious processes of inference that result from situational factors, social presuppositions and discourse conventions. The theory of conversation and the method of analysis that inform the author's approach are discussed in the first two chapters, and the case studies themselves examine interviews, counselling sessions and similar formal exchanges involving contacts between a wide range of different speakers: South Asians, West Indians and native English speakers in Britain; English natives and Chinese in South-East Asia; Afro-Americans, Asians and native English speakers in the United States; and English and French speakers in Canada. The volume will be of importance to linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others with a professional interest in communication, and its findings will have far-reaching applications in industrial and community relations and in educational practice.

Marjorie Harness Goodwin

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