Journal of Pragmatics 3 (1979) 305-320 0 North-Holland Publishing Company

THE WEST AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL CHILD, AND CLASSROOM INTERACTION: A SOClOLINGUiSTiC APPROACH *

IAN G. MALCOLM

In Western Australian primary schools the teaching of Aboriginal pupils often falls to inexperienced teachers who have had no previous interaction with Aboriginal people. Educatiori in these circumstances is often hampered by communicatidn problems. This paper shows how sociolinguistic analysis of naturalistic recordings in a large number of classrooms throughout the state has been used to clarify the nature and structuring of teacher pupil interaction in these schools. Teacher and pupil behaviours have been described in terms of communicctive acts of seben basic functions. Distinctive communicative acts of the Aboriginal child and distinctive pattcrninp of communication between the teacher and the Aboriginal child have been observed. It is suggested that the communicative patterns reveal an ongoing process of renegotiation of communicative terms on the initiative of the Aboriginal pupil.

One way in which applied so::al science is currently making its presence felt in education is in the increasing use of observational approaches in the study of classroom behaviour. A number of kvestigations of this kill$ have been sociolinguistitally based. This paper [ 11 refers to a study in which sociolinguistic concepts and methodology have been applied in a situation of educational need and hex led to a means of analysing classroom interaction which helps to clarify prohiems of crosscultural communication in the domain of the school. En tha.t it offers a ready means of characterking interactants discourse strategies, this study may have implitations for more general sociolinguistic inquiry. The Australian continent, fox thousands of years the preserve of up to several hundred thousand Aborigines, is now populated by some fourteen million

* The original document was read at the 5i.h International Congress of Applied Linguistics, August 1978, Montreal. An abstract appeared in Lawuuge- rrnd Language Behathu Abs~mYs and a microfiche of the paper as read at the Congress is auailabke as no. 322. [ 11 The field data on which this paper draws were gathered with the assistance of jl grant from the Australian Department of Aboriginal Affairs. I acknowledge with thanks the benefit of comments made by Dr Robert Hedge on an earlier version of this paper. 305

inhabitants of diverse, but predominantly European ethnic origins&, among xvhom the Aboriginal minority is what has been described as D remarkably unobtrusive 1 per cent(Grey 1971 : 16). The western third of the continent, the state of W.stern Australia, with a land are;& of about a quarter of that of Europe contains less than one tenth of the Australian population, a mere 1.2 million. More than hdf of this population lives in the metropolitan area surrounding Perth and Fremantle. The remainder of the state is unevenly populated, but concentrations of more than ten thousand inhabitants in one tawn are relatively rare, and confined, for the most part, to the south-west comer of the state. Aboriginal and part-Abariginai West Australians, wiha> number less than five per cent of the states population, are more evenly distri. uted throughout the state than the non-Aboriginal majority, so that in the greater part of the state they form d signiEical:t , if not preponderant, proportion of the population. :This iacr is of no little significance to primary eliucatio!l in the state. The teaching service is almost exclusively non-Aborigiraal. _k4p~pnfntments state schook to are centrally administered. Most teachers first prolonged contact with Aborigir.es comes when they meet them in the classroom. If they :3re primary teachers, this i: more than likely to occur sooner or later, since, though only less than five percent of pupils in priina*T school classes are Aboriginal, they ilre to be found in sixty per cent of the states government primary schools 121. The teacher may well have omly one or two Aboriginal pupils in a class of tI irty, since the number of Aboriginal pupils i:n nearly twenty per cent of the states government primary schools is only from one to three. On the other hand, since the Educslian Departments staffing policy is to make rural appointments early in a teachers career, the teacher on first appointment may have a predominantdy aboriginal class. In a situation where preservice teacher preparation courses contain no compulsory components in intercultural studies, most teachers dre ill-prepared to deal ladequately with this situation. From the point of view of the Abloriginal primary school child, school may provide his first inescapable experience of sustained non-.Aboriginal contact, and his fiist involuntary subjection to the norms of interaction of the dontinant culture. If he comes from a rem&e area in the north or east of the zitate, he may be among the 20 jzier cent of the states AboriginrJ primary school pupils who are in a special Aboriginat school with a population of between 80 an.d 100 per cent Aboriginal pupids. But it is more likely that he will be in an ordinary primary school or a district high school, oriented primarily to the needs of l:lupils who do not share his backgrotind. In either case, he wili be mainly in the charlge of non-Aboriginal staff, assisted in some cases, b)#,Aborigimd aides. The (domain of interaction will be new,

[2/i 4@res relate to the year 1977 and were made avaikble by the Aboriginal Education 3nuch, Education tlepartment of Western Australia.

I. C. Malcolm /Speaking wms in aboriginal classrooms

307

and his past experience will have given him little precedent for the understanding of

its sociolinguistic structuring. When we add the linguistic dimension to this description, we see that the communication difficulties of Aboriginal children and th,eir teachers may be exacerbated by language and dialect differences. Some fifteen Aborigir,al languages are still in regular use in Western Australian communiti.:s, and an English creole is widely spoken by Aborigines in the extreme north of the state. Many Aboriginal children in primary s&ools speak a dialect form of English, bearing in its strangest form recognisable influence from Aboriginal languages in phonological, discourse
and sometimes morphological features, and from creole in morphological, syntactic and lexical features. There is ample evidence of the facet that the educational system has a poor record of success with Aboriginal pupils (see, cg. Dunn and Tatz 1969; Wright 1973; Eedle 1977). Traditionally, Western Australian educators have seen this as the fault of the Aboriginal child. To quote from the Annual Report of the Western
_4llctralinn 'I;Arkr\stinn nnn ++*a-+ -.zI.sU.L uuuIus~v,I uwPagrllrrrrr For the

year 1C&+0 I

Inspectors repax: that the coloured child is educable up to a standard, usually about lVth or Vth grade, that they show ability in manual work, drawing, and sport, but generally have limited capacity in number work and English. (Hayaes et al. 1WO: 148).

More recently, the curriculum and the syslem have come under clojser scrutiny (Wright 197.3,:. The fat that in Western Australia it is likely that relatively inexperienced teachers who have had no prior commuuication with Aborigines will be responsible for the education of Aboriginal children is however a little-recognised educational problem for the state. It is a problem which depends for resolution on knowhdge which must come from applied SC ,cit,jiinguistic research. Prior to 1913 no systematic studies had been undertaken to investigate the sociolinguistic dimension of communication relating to Aboriginal children in primary school classrooms in Western Australia. In hat year, Kaldor and Malcolm began collecting sociol.inguistic data for what was to become, with the granting of funds from the Department of Aboriginzll Affair?, in extended study covering the 6 whule state. (See Kaldor and Malcolm I978.) 111rhe course of this study, thirtynine Western Australian primary and district high schoc4s from all areas of the state _- some of them as far as twp thousand miles apo,rt - were visited for periods of up to three weeks, in which time data on the language and language use of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children were obtained by a number of we%established sociolinguistic observational and elicitative techniques [3]. The preset t paper is concerned with one aspect of this study: that which concerns the sociolinguistic [ 31 Principally, sr& group interviews and strl.r...u.red individual interviews with samples of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal s&o01 populatjons,; participant observations in classrooms and informal settings; free speech with Aboriginal informant interpretation; teacher and teacher aide interviews.

3OR
structuring

I. G. Malcolm1 Speaking rerms irraboriginalclassrooms

of classroom interaction in which Aborigin.al primary school children are involved. The principal data to which reference w.!ll be made are lessons and intl;xactions from those observed and recorded in one hlJndred classrooms or other tea&ing locations in schoois of Aboriginal enrolment acr DSS the state. The parameters of this study, which were partly determined by its association with the wider investigation, meant that there was no ready precedent in the soc.iolinguistic literature which could serve as a guide to research methodology. It was, investigating a speech community state-tide, and including in its purview a hundred different teachers in a hundred different classrooms. This might have suaested a macro-study of the correlational type (Gumperz 1972 : 12), yet t,he essential need at this stage of our knowledge was for Nzomprehensive descriptive datn, which could only be adequately gair;ed by the microapproach of participant oblzrvation and the analysis of interactions in naturalistic situations. The concept of .ipeech domain, as Fishman and others (see Fishman 1968) have helped to devu:fop it, proved useful at this point in enabling the macro and the micro to be pro!itably brought tagether. In studying Aboriginal childrens interactions with their teachers in classrooms statewide, we are studying behaviour in a constant dontain, that is, a communicative setting in which the constancy of the social time anid space and of the role relations which co-occur there will be associated with characteristic sociolinguistic behaviours. While we may study a hundred different teachers and a hundred different classrooms, our analyses of these interactions may be unified ty the fact that in each case the socially recognised setting (the classrooln) and the role relationships (teacher,pupil, and at a further remove, nonAb,ciriginal - Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal) are the same. We may anticipate that this soci.11 consistency will be associated with a linguistic consistency which will be observable in the sociolinguistic units of spelech acts and speech routines. From research within a number of frameworks and disciplines [4]. a reasonably con&tent pictu.re of classroom behaviour is emerging which seems to hold good for North America, Britain, Europe, New Zealand and Australia at least. Teachers in all these places tend to dominate classroom c:ommunication. In Bellacks terms the teacher makes the most moves in the game, though that doesnt always mean the gam: goes his way (Bellack et al. 1966 : 238). In Flanders formulation, the two thirds rule operates: two thirds of every lesson is made up of talk and two thirds of
(4 J Predominant among these are (a) systems for the coding of cla.isroom behaviours as they OCW:, according to selected psychologically or pedagogically sigr:lificant categories, so that teact.er styles can be chxacterised and related to pupil attitudes and behaviours (e.g. Flanders 197Clj;(b) systems for analysis and quantification of basic pedagogical/communicative acts of leacfilers and pupils (e.g. Bellack et af. 1966); (c) observational/descri:ptive approaches within or derivlzd from anthropology and cognitive sociology (e.g. Henry 19;55; Stubbs and Dclamont i976; Jackson 1968; Cicourel 1973; (d) descriptive approaches basad on a more or less loose lingubstic analysis directed towards answering questions of essentially pedagogical significance (e.g. Barnes et al. 1971; Barnes 1976; Barnes and Todd 1977; Martin etaf. 1976); (e) discourse antilysis on a lin@stic base (e.g. Sirxlair and Co&bard 1975).

I. G. Malcolm / Speaking terms in aboriginal classmoms

309

the talk comes from the teacher (Barnes 1976 : 173). We have a fairly clear idea of what this teacher talk tends to be about: dirEction and recitation, , . . the two main parameters of traditionally Western classroom life (Davidson 1977 : 3, quoting Dreeben). The teacher talks to monitor the classroom communication, to keep in touch, as Stubbs (1976) puts it. He does this partly by giving direct&s and partly by channeling communb:ation through himself, selecting speakers and nominating recipients (Philips 1976 : 87), and most of all, by asking a constant stream of questions. For questions are not simply indicators of the questioners lack of information: they possess, as Labov has reminded us (Labov 1970 : 57, after Skinner), mandatory iforce. The question-and-answer routine (or *recitation) is used by %achers as a means of controlling pupils attention (Barnes 1976 : 172-3). The kinds of questions which teach,ers ask vary, but a number of studies have shown that they have a prefierence for questions involving recall of factual material rather than more innovative thinking (Tisher 1970; Barnes 1971; Prficha 1973). Not all children in the classroom have an equal chance of being asked (Adams 19701, or of being interacted with in the same way (Walker and Adelman 1976; Gumperz and HernandezChavez 1972). By the same token, it seems that not all teachers will be interacted with the same way by the same children (Furlong 1976). And when the pupils reply, we can predict with silrne confidence that the childs reply will be repeated by the teacher (Gumperz a:.d Herasimchuk 1973; Sinclsir and Coulthard 1975;Martin etal. 1976; Moss 1976). Most of these observations derive from studies in which the teacher has been dealing with some kind of curriculum content in a whole-class situation. In fact, of the estimated one thousand interpersonal interchanges which a teacher engages in each day (Jackson 1968 : 11) many will occur in quite different situations from this. There is a basic distinction, as Walker and Adelman have pointed out, between formal and informal situations in the! classroom, and, though there has hitherto been little attempt to document this [S], we can expect situational shifts of this kind to be sociolinguistical!Iy marked. What has impressionistically been described as the impersonality of teacher language (e.g., Jackson 1968 : 29; Moss 1976 : 54) might be expected to be a function, for example, of the size of the group being addressed. When we turn to the intercultural c1;1ssroom, we find that it is consistently reported that some of the fundamental norms of classroom interaction acc0rdin.g to the pattern we have described are not observed. The pattern of non-observance seems to be fairly comistent across cultures. The teach,ers near-instinctive means of exercising communica.tive control - his eye contact and his questions - are not responded to. Eye contact is not return.ed and questions are not answered (see e.g. Burnett 1973 ; Philips 1970, 1972 ; Wolfgang 1977). Teacher-initiated talk is taken up minimally, if at all (see, e.g. Dumont 1972; Dumonh and Wax 1972; Boggs 1972). Communicatians are deliberately pitch.ed just below classroom oludibmility
[5] Philips studies of behaviour in different participant stnctures (1970, 1972) show some concern with this question.

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I.G. htalcdm /Speaking kwm in abo@ind classmom

level, and not repeated (Phitips 1970; Boggs 1972). The teacher is accorded silence whlen he wants speech, and speech when he, or his nominee, hrrs the floor, and he wants silence (Philips 1970). Instead of determining the lines of communication for i:he class, the teacher finds that the lines have been drawn already and that he may be subject to exclusion (Dument and Wax 1972; Boggs 19723. hly adoption of a sociolinguistic approach [6] in the study of interaction involving, ,lboriginal children in West Australian classrooms reflects my interest, in relation to tirat scene, in those questions which ethnographicafly-orien ted sociolinguistic methodology and analysis are best suited to helping us to answer. In particular, it has 9een my intention in this initial descriptive study to look for answers to four ques8tions: (1) I)o different communicative acts characterise Aboriginal interaction (as opposed TV:, of non-Aboriginal interactants) in the classroom? that (2) 110 different communicative acts characterise teacher behaviour with Aboriginal Fupiis (as opposed to non-Aboriginal pupils) in the classroom? (3) Do Aboriginal pupils participate differently (from non-Aboriginal pupils) in communicative routines in the classroom? (4! Do teachers participate differently in classroom communicative routines with Aboriginal pupils? When these questions are answered, a fifth must be asked, and answered on the basis of ethnographic research: can Aboriginal childrens communicative behaviours in tn; classroom be related to communicative patterns in Aboriginal society? The questions I have raised call for an analysis within the domain of the school in t,erms of two units of sociolinguistic interaction: the communicative act and the routine. This is not, of course, to say that other levels of sociolinguistic structuring do n43t also occur in that domain: I am simply trying to face fir!;t the questions which in my estimation have most bearing on teacher-pupil communication problems. I have suggested elsewhere that sociolinguistically speaking, communication
161 A. ,sociolin~uistic approach to observational study of the classroom is likely to have ens or more of the following distJngui&ingcharacteristics: (i) Description in sociolinguistic units, such as speech events, speech acts, exchanges, routines, Jrrteractional tasks (Cumperz and Herasimchuk 1973), communicati.ve acts (Stubbs 1976). (ii) Concentration on interactions. (iii) Cancem v&h the total picture of classroom interaction, rather than only with lessons or interactions with the teacher. (~9 Siitntatcd interpre:&tion,or the interpretation of behaviours to the investigator by the participants (Gumperz and liemsimchuk 1973: 105). fv) Relating of classroom patterns of interaction to patterns of interaction in the wider context.

I. G. Mdcolm / Speaking terms in aboriginalchrooms

311

takes place as participants engage in the mutual act of selecting and sequencing speech acts according to agreed rules (Malcolm 1977 : 41). The speech act, or communicative act, as I shall refer to it in the remainder of this paper, is the smallest unit we may isolate in terms of its function in an interaction. It may be realised by linguistic, paralinguistic or non-linguistic means, or by combinations of such mans. The communicative repertoire of an interactant includes an indefinite and constantly changing number of communicative acts, determined by the everchanging communicative demands of speech events in the domains in which the interacts. Communicative acts do not occur in isolation, but as parts of sequences. The sequences are not random, but constructed on a principled basis. Such sequences I am calling routines, according to Hymess definition: sequential organizations beyond the sentence, either as activities of one person or as the interaction of two or more (Hymes 1972 : 290). Botli communicative acts and routines are relative to the speech event and to the domain. Where there is unequal familiarity with or acceptance of the expec:tations of the dalmain on the part of one or more of the interactants, communicative interference is likely to occur. This will show in the occurrence of communicative acts which1 are uncharacteristic of the domain or realised in an unfamiliar way, and in the modification of the patterning of routines. In order to investigate classrooms on this basis, it was necessary for me first of all, on the basis of transcripts and field notes, to reduce the interactions I had observed and recorded to communicative acts, allowing for a fine enough differentiation of acts to enable the effects of cNommunicativeinterference to be shown. About one hundred kinds of act were identified in this manner, forty-odd performed by the child, and sixty-odd performed by the teacher (see table 1). The interactions were then coded into the fo.rm of sequences of communicative acts, and patterns of acts were studied and considered in relation to the interactants, the subject-matter, the formality or informality of the speech event and other features of the situation consGered sociolinguistically relevant. Certain routines of the classroom were thus identified, and bases for therrvariation were observed. The communicative acts and the routines identified could be grouped according to function. The communicative acts were related to seven basic interactive functions as listed in table 2. The most elaborated categories are those which most dcminate the communicative behaviour of the respective interactants. Thus we can se: that the teacher, in the classroom interactions observed, is heavily engaged in as.king questions, nominating respondents, acknowledging responses and giving directions. The child spends much of his time in the respondmg role, replying to the teachers elicitations. This bears out what has been reported in many other studies of classroom behaviour. When we look at the differentiations within some of th.e groups of acts, we discover a number of sets which essentially characterise Aboriginal children. These include, for exl;;fl*Ztfe, Proxy Eliciting, where a child makes an elicit,ation of the teacher by mea.ns of another child; Empty. Bidding, where a child bids to answer but does not speak when called upon; Deferred Replying where a child. Pauses for

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I. G. Malcdm / Speaking terms in obwiginai classrooms

Table 1 Inventory of classroom speech acts Type of act

----

Teacher speech acts TE 1 TE2 TE3 TE4 TE5 TE6 TE7 TE8 TE9 TE 10 7-E 11 TE 12 TE 13 TE 14 did ting Check eliciting Suggestive eliciting Conjoined &citing Linked eliciting Relayed elicit@ Multiple eltci ting Vocabulary regulating Formula regulating Checking reception Looping Gee ting Terminating Reading eliciting

Child speech CE 1 CE 2 CB 3 CE 4 CES CE 6

WE

Hi& iw acts

Eli&in8 Prox,y eliciting MuItilpleeliciting Looping Cree ting Terminating

Biddir rg acts

CB 1 CB 2 CT?3 CB4 CR 5 CB6

Solicited bidding Unsolicited bidding Counter-bidding MulIiple bidding Bid Ireinforcing Empty bidding Nominating Negotiating

Nomiuating acts

TN 1 TN2 TN3 TN4 TN5 TN6 TN7 TN8 TN9 TN 10 Th 11 TR 1 TR2 TR3
TR4

Setting-up Determining priority coaxing Prompting Evaluating participation Nominating Wpholding priority Response slotting Response synchronising Regulating channel Cueing Replying Unsolicited replying Reacting Deferring

CN 1 CN 2

Replying acts

CR 1 CR 2 CR 3 CR 4 CR 5 CR 6 CR 7 CR 8 CR 9 CR 10 CR 11 CR 12 CR 13

Replying WhLpered replying DeWred replying She.dowedreplying Declined replying Un~rolidted replying Supportive replying Inr errogative replying Dilscted echoing Reading aloud Rr~eiting Directed singing Rc~ctin g

LG. Malcolm / Speaking tejrtisin abo@inal classrooms

Table 1 (continued) Type of act Teacher speech acts TA 1 TA 2 TA 3 TA4 TA5 TA6 TA7 TA8 TA 9 Tl 1 Tl 12 TI 3 TI 4 T15 Ti 6 TI 7 T18 TI 9 Acknowledging Unqualified accepting Qualified accepting Refusing Relaying Modified relaying Evaluating Referring Incorporating Informing Commenting Extcndit, Commentating Demonstrating introdWing Summing-up Correcting Misinforming Directing Multiple directing Regulating audience posture Regulating .eceiver posture Regulating sender posture Regulati,~g volume Regulating time Demonstrating authority Disallowing communication Retrieving audience attention Retrieving receiver attention Retrieving sender attention Marking boundary Repeating _ -___ Child speech acts CA CA CA CA I 2 3 4 Acknowledging Relaying Modified relaying Evaluating

313

Acktowledgiug acts

CI 1 CI 2 CI 3 CI 4 CI 5 H.*J u1 b

Informing Commenting Extencling Commentating Demonstrating Correcting

Dirertiq acts

TD 1 TD 2 TD 3 TD4 TD5 TD6 TD 7 TD8 TD9 TD 10 TD 11 ID 12 TD 13 TD 14

CD 1 CD 2 CD 3

Directing Multiple directing Reporting

-_______

much longer than normal before giving a response; Declined Replying, where a child does not respond to a direct elicitation; Shadowed Replying, where a child delays his reply until he can give it in the shadow of the next speaker; and Unsolicited Replying, where a child gives a reply without having been nominated to do so. It is necessary to study whole interactiorss to see that such communicative acts are not random lapses, but part of an alternative communicative strategy on the part of the children whr, use them. Routines ,dso fall into groups. But we shall consider here only the one predominant classroom routine which forms the basic pattern for ,teacher-child interaction.

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I. G. Malcolm / Speakahg terms in ab0rfgJnelc/awwms

Table 2 Interactive functions Teacher acts 14

-Child acts 6

Eliciting acts (those intended to prodwe a verbal or quasi-verbal response from one or more interactants) Bidding acts (those intended to signify a willingness

to an eliciting act)
Nominating acts (those intended to engage and identify an appropriate respondent) Replying acts

11
4

2
13

(those intended to provide a response to nn eliciting or directing act)

Acknowledging acts (those intended to provide a response to an informing or replylag act) Informing acts (those intended to volunteer information) Directing acts (those intended to produce a change in the bchaviour of the receiver not requiring a verbal response) 9 5

9 14

6 3

This is sequenced as follows:

1eTE 2. CB 3. TN 4. CR 5. TA

An eliciting act by the teacher A bidding act by the children A nominating act by the teacher A replying act by the nominated child An acknowledging act by the teacher.

Many variations may be introduced into this pattern at the teachers initiative. For example, the teacher may dispense with bidding if the group is small and the situation informal, or he may deliberately attenuate the delay between acts 1 and 3, his elicitation and his nomination, in an attempt to maximise biddingbefore nominating his iespondent. However, the variations which are of most interest in the intercultural context are those which take place because of some kind of apparent failure in the communicative chain. Let us suppose that the teacher nominates a child but the child does not reply. Such a situation requi,res immediate action by the teacher, in Goffmans (1972) terms, to save face. Will he encode his alicitation as a command, and insist on an answer? Will he attempt to elicit the answer by physical means? Will he leave his question unanswered? Will he pass on to ano,ther

child? Will he answer it himself? There are various ways in which the child and teacher may jointly modify the routine. By means of sociohnguistic analysis in terms of routines composed of communicative acts, it is pssible to observe the various solutions the teacher will turn to and the consequences they have in terms of the interaction. For example, one posdbility is that the teacher will employ a multiple eliciting act, freezing the interaction while he tries a number of linguistically different elicitations with the same child. The child, afforded this unwelcome prominence, usually sends the ball back into the teachers court by remairring silent. Then, perhaps, a displaced replying act will occur, in which the teacher replies to his own elicitation. At this point, as soon as the focus is removed from the child, he may speak at last, under cover of the teacher. The teacher, asking the child to repeat what was said, will be gret,ted with silence. It becomes apparent as WC study interactions in this way that bl>th child and teacher are communicating not only by the way in which they operate within an assumed system of interaction, but by the way in which they, in their different by ways, 1 OO~C the terms on *which they will iriieraci. This suggests that tlre CTOSScultural encounter which takes place in the classroom may not yield to adquate explanation in terms of a static model of sociolinguistic interference. Rather drawing on an alternative linguistic model for comparison, we could see what is occurring in the classroom as a dynamic system (Corder and Roulet 1977 : 11) - even (in some aspects) a sociolinguistic interlanguage. The appendix ccl:l.ains two extracts from the tapes which show routines being of modified with Aborisinai children. It is ain the !XS~S an accumulation of data of this kir;d from classrooms in many parts of Western Australia that it is becoming possible to piece together a picture of ;ommunication ii) the Aboriginal classroom in which it is clear that the terms rf communication I ezd there to be renegotiated on the initiative of the Aboriginal child. The implication for the teaeher is to make sure the renegotiation of communicative terms is going to retain the Aboriginal child as a positive participant in the interaction, rather than, as is often the case, the shy, silent one who, it is assamed, hasnt got what it takes, or the rebel who is always ending up outside the classroom door [7].

Appendix: Annotated transcriptions [8f 1. Utzgmdedupper primary chss in special Ahorigimd school In a relatively informal excharq;e on a familiar topic (football) the teacher is making repeated efforts to move ir the direction of the basic teaching routine by
171 As Philips (1970: 88) has poirrted out, it is not necessarily in tile interests of the minority ahjld for the teacher tn conform toa closely to his (the d&ls) preferred patterns of ClasSrOOm

interaction. ~81AU names have bean changed in the transcripts.

316

f. f;. Malcoh / Sp&gklng tcms in abcwighaI

clpssnooms

nominating respondents to his elicitations rather than receiving multiple rey-ties simultaneously. T,\?isgroup successfully resists the ~eacherspressure. The only way for the teacher to maintain the communicative structure he has set up in the latter part of the exchange is for him to reply to his own elicitation, since he has forbidden a class response and his nolnlinee remains silent. Right Somebody said before they go away to play
football1 somewhere, they have a wash. Where do they go for a wash? Here. They come down here, dont they. Then what happens, where do they go then? Dey get de clothes, n dey get de, get in de football clothes, gear Yeah . . . n t.hen what happens? How bout the girls? N%at happens then? (no response) Tony? (no response) (There is an intexuption as Lily enters the room) were talking about the footbali, Lily. Right, how . . . what . . . Theyre going to Mawton, how are they going to get there, walk? (several) Truck . . . truck Which truck? (sevieral) Big red truck Who drives the big red truck? Bob? (no ,responsej Bob Kevin Cousins (laughter) And what about er lunch, or food or anythinlr, like that . . . Do they take lunch or food? They get it in .Mawton TD 13 TI 6 TE2 CR 1 TA3 TE 5 CR 1 TA 1 TE 5 TN6 TE 5 CR5 TN 6 CR5 TI 4 TD 13 TE 3 CR 1 TE 5 CR 1 n TE 2 TN 6 CR5 CN I CR 3 TE S CR 1 Marking boundary Introducing Check eliciting Replying Unqualified accepting Linked eliciting Replying Ackr o~l*iedging Li:..&d eliciting Nominating Linked eliciting Declined replying Nominating Declined replying Commentating Marking boundary Suggestive eliciting Replying Linked eliciting Replying Check eliciting Nominating Declined replying Nominating Replying Linked eliciting Replying

317

Ih som! pcopfe take money to buy lunch? Ronnie? (inaudible) Then what happens, Patricia? (Patricia looks aside with her hand over her mouth) I-lowdoes the game start, you tell us how the game starts . . , (several begin to speak) Ssh . . . No, Patricia
.. .

TE 2 TN6 CR2

Check eliciting Nominating Whispered replying Linked eliciting Nominating Declined replying Multip.le eliciting 1Jnsolicited replying Disallowing communication Declined replying Multiple eliciting

(7 utterances intervene) TE 5 TN6 CR5 TE 7 CR6 TD9 CR5 TE 7

(Patricia is silent) Dyou want to tell us how the game starts? Do they run on? Who runs on? . . . Everybody?
. . . Just soixie of them . . .

(no response) Right, Everybody runs on, dont they, both teams
..

CR5 TD 13 TR2

Declined replying Marking boundary Unsolicit ed replying

2. Bredomtnant/y Aboriginal year 2 class in ordinary primary school This teacher is in the course of a picture discussion where she is urisg il~ picture OI the nursery rhyme This little pig went to market to stimulate the childrens oral expression. Ironically, as the analysis shows, she is employing a strategy likely to inhibit expression rather than stimulate it, because her elicitations are %hec:selicitations where she is prepared to receive only the answer she has in mind, and not even to acknowledge to others. (She uses 5 eliciting and 3 nominating a :ts, but, though she receives 8 replying acts she only acknowledges 2.) In particular, seseral legitimate answers from Aboriginal children which derive from a (Different fc :us from the one she is pursuing, are treated essentially as if they occur ornside of thle interaction. It is clear that the teacher (who is in her first year out from College) is handling the routine somewhat uncertainly, moving Ibetween moments where she insists on the strict observance of the basic teaching routine and moments where she f&s to fill the slots between successive childrens speech acts which would normally fall to her. This interaction also illustrates, incidentally, the communicative disadvantage under which the Aboriginal child may operate in a

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%C Maiedm / Speaking .:erms aborigtna? in classrooms

mixed class, where other children are I:eadtiy able to pu: words to what he/she has

to grope to express (that ting Whatshe doing, sally? &VI: E e got nothing Wy: Hesgoin to market Hesgoing to
market

. . .).

TE2 TN6 CR6* CR 1 TAS TE2 CR 1 TE 2 CR 1 TE 2 Cl2 CR I* CR 1 CR 1 n TN 1 TE 2 TN4 CR 1 TA 5

Check eliciting

Nominating Unsolicited replying Replying Relaying Check eliciting Replying

Check eliciting Replying Check eliciting Commenting Replying Replying Replying Setting-up Check eliciting Nominating Replying Relaying

How do you know hes going to market? E gotta e gotta follow the road
And how would you know hes going to market? We can see im gain to market But what hashe got that shows us %at hes going to market? Oh yeah,
A

basket

That ting that ting dere

(seven@ A basket Not everyone just one Whats he got,
Sylvia?

Sylvia:

A basket

A basket . . .

References
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