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  1. Jul 2016
    1. anthropology, linguistics, and cognitive psychology.

      I'm curious to see how much language structure (how much of the STUFF of linguistics theories and concepts) she uses to describe the community members' practices.....

    2. any reader who tries to explain tbe community con-trasts in this book on the basis of race will miss the central point of the focus on culture as learned behavior and on language habits as part of that shared learning.

      A helpful distinction she has made throughout this prologue. Race does not equate to differential languaging practices. COMMUNITY SOCIALIZATION does.

    3. This book argues that in Roadville and Trackton the different ways children learned to use language were dependent on the ways in which each community structured their families, defined the roles that community members could assume, and played out their concepts of childhood that guided child socialization.

      Major finding

    4. Only in the past few decades have blacks and whites of working-class communities come together in institutions of work, commerce, politics, and schooling where each has met yet a third set of ways of using language to get things done.

      Helps explain why the community members have so much experience dialect-shifting- it's part and parcel of how they accomplish their daily lives/goals.

    5. are the products of their history and current situation.

      ...which is why use of an ecological framework to make sense of their languaging practices makes sense

    6. parents, children, teachers, and students pursued, to the extent possible in that period of history in that region, their normal priorities of meeting daily needs and sustaining their self-identities.

      This is a really powerful statement: lang. socialization research captures the pedantic. in other words, these people weren't doing anything exceptional, they were going about living their lives. I'm reminded of a Gee quote, something about people have the language tools to "do just fine" to accomplish their needs/goals (something to that effect). But with the gaze of an academy or educational institution, suddenly entire groups of people are seen as having deficit languaging practices. (I know the multilingual population has suffered this misconception for decades in US schooling)

    7. no deadlines, plans, or demands from an outside funding agency set limits on the time or direction of the cooperative arrangements between teachers and anthropologist.

      Indeed- she seemed to have cart blanche access (something she does not appear to have taken for grated)

    8. and the significance of choices among language uses.

      I'm reminded of something Shondel said in our Ed Linguistics seminar: choosing a register or dialect of speech is not like choosing a color of a car. There are serious identity-psychological implications of these choices.

    9. My entry into these specific communities came through a naturally occurring chain of events. In each case, I knew an old-time resident in the community, and my relationship with that individual opened the community to me. I had grown up in a rural Piedmont area in a neighboring state, so the customs of both communities were very familiar to me

      Wow- she was studying a region that she knew- and a topic that was near and dear to her heart. She truly had insider status, but was at once an outside-researcher. I'm curious to see how she balances this throughout the tenure of this project.

    10. For those members of my classes for whom such descriptions became a serious objective, their initial focus was on their interactions with their own children; subsequently, they gave attention to communicative situations in their classrooms and the textile mills.

      Again- an explicit desire of community members to examine at their parent-child interactions. It surprises me how much of this work originated in community members' queries and dissatisfaction with the extant categories of language research. (but then again- should it really surprise me?)

    11. I was both ethnographer of communication focusing on child language and teacher-trainer attempting to determine whether or not academic questions could lead to answers appropriate for meeting the needs of children and educators in that regional setting.

      Huh- the study of language socialization as it pertained to teacher pedagogy was a relatively NEW area of inquiry back then (ie: ed. linguistics wasn't even a field until the early 1970s), Heath truly was at the forefront of a new movement.

    12. They brought a central question: What were the effects of preschool home and community environ-ments on the learning of those language structures and uses which were needed in classrooms and job settings?

      Reminds me of conversations we've had on grounded theory: this seems like a question that originated in the community (was a concern of parents) and that Heath followed up with using empirical means.

    1. They looked to education for the promises their parents had so often mouthed, and they reaffirmed a faith that schooling ought to make a difference in the job a man or woman could expect.?

      A familiar narrative in our nation

    2. Schools were designated to teach mill children everything from manners to morals; schoolteachers became preachers for the culture of the townspeople. They were charged to teach health and sanitation habits, grammar, self-control, neatness, and obedience. If mill children were to grow up and become voters, they would have to learn to read and write and to reform their "barbaric" "wild" ways.

      This reminds me of Catholic missionaries 'saving' third world communities by bringing God (and manners, and English) to them. Fascinating how this process can also proceed within local boundaries amidst a community.

    3. they pursued different values in their homes and held strong attachment to maintenance of what they believed should be regionally accepted moral and religious values. The millworkers, living in company-owned houses in an area set apart from the town and townspeople,

      I wonder how Heath garnered this history (was it from oral histories of the community members? From living/working there for the 9 years that she did?)

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    1. Communication was a central concern of black and white teachers, parents, and mill personnel who felt the need to know more about how others communicated: why students and teachers often could not understand each other, why questions were sometimes not answered, and why habitual ways of talking and listening did not always seem to work.

      So this is why Heath's ethnography is a cornerstone of ethnographies of communication.

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    1. who felt the need to know more about how others communicated

      History/background for why Heath's study is a foundational cornerstone of ethnographies of communication.