Bakhtin in the Classroom: What Constitutes a Dialogic Text? Some Lessons from Small Group Interaction

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Bakhtin in the Classroom:What Constitutes aDialogic Text? SomeLessons from SmallGroup InteractionAvril HaworthVersion of record first published: 29 Mar2010.

To cite this article: Avril Haworth (1999): Bakhtin in the Classroom: WhatConstitutes a Dialogic Text? Some Lessons from Small Group Interaction,Language and Education, 13:2, 99-117

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Bakhtin in the Classroom: WhatConstitutes a Dialogic Text? Some Lessonsfrom Small Group Interaction

Avril HaworthCrewe School of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, Crewe GreenRoad, Crewe CW1 5DU, UK

At a time when powerful agencies in the UK are advocating whole class teaching as anelement of successful classroom practice (particularly directed at primary classroomsin relation to the teaching of numeracy and literacy), I seek in this paper to examinethe potential of Small Group Interaction (SGI) to provide significant linguistic oppor-tunities which, I argue, whole class teaching is less well placed to deliver. To do this,I shall compare data of two groups of children from the same classroom engaged onthe same small group activity. Drawing on the work of Bakhtin (and Wertsch’s inter-pretations of Bakhtin) I shall seek to identify both monologic and dialogic features inthe children’s discourse, tracing the origins of monologic discourse in the practices ofWhole Class Interaction (WCI) — the dominant genre of the classroom. FollowingBakhtin’s account of addressivity and speech genre, I shall claim a role for dialogic talkin any classroom based on sociocultural principles of learning.

Bakhtin in the Classroom: Some Central ConceptsWhilst Bakhtin’s theories of language have influenced literary theory for many

years, their impact on educational enquiry has been more gradual. Wertsch (1985,1991) has done much to locate Bakhtin’s theories in pedagogic settings andsubsequent studies have confirmed the potential of ‘dialogic’ readings ofclassroom practices (see for example Maclean, 1994; Maybin, 1991; Tappan &Mikel Brown, 1996; Wertsch & Bustamante Smolka, 1994).

Bakhtin’s theoretical commitment to the particularity and plurality of every-day verbal interaction and to the specificity of experience — what he termed‘heteroglossia’ (1981) — offers fertile territory for those who seek to make senseof classroom discourse. He gives educationists theoretical cause to celebrateheterogeneity in discourse and some analytical categories to help identifydialogic talk in the classroom. In this paper I seek in particular to invokeBakhtinian categories to account for the discourse features of Small GroupInteraction (SGI).

One of these categories is that of ‘addressivity, the quality of turning to someoneelse’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 99, my emphasis) which requires that the speaker’sutterances connect with previous utterances (which might transcend boundariesof space and time) in the chain of speech communication. Addressivity wouldthen seem to entail the articulation of personal perspective in relation to othersand in relation to knowledge; a concept which I equate with Halliday’s (1994)account of the ‘interpersonal’ function of language.1 A capacity to respond to‘otherness’, to signal reciprocity (not necessarily harmonious or tolerant), in

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relation to a speaker or text is what makes an utterance dialogic — and hencemeaningful.

Clark and Holquist (1984: 217) define addressivity as ‘the awareness ¼ of theotherness of language in general and of given dialogic partners in particular’.This two-layered representation of addressivity carries particular resonance forstudies of children’s language, making explicit a distinction between the liveinteranimation of voices in dialogue and the more general appropriation of voicetypes from the language environment. Bakhtin’s characterisation of addressivityassumes a mature adult speaker immersed in the alterity of experience; this studywill use Clark and Holquist’s distinction (see Figure 1) to explore children’s oftenhesitant attempts to express their awareness of ‘the other’ in formal classroominteractions.

The requirement to ‘address’ others in our words also implies growth:

¼ the unique speech experience of each individual is shaped anddeveloped in continuous and constant interaction with others’ individualutterances. (Bakhtin, 1986: 89)

In the ‘traditional’ Socratic-inspired classroom, this dialogic encounter wouldbe realised in the teacher-pupil dyad with teacher and pupil engaged in a jointenquiry to negotiated outcomes — the idealised model of ‘direct instruction andwell-paced, interactive oral work’ which appears in current government require-ments for the training of teachers (DfEE, 1997: 18). Teachers however are only toomindful of the ‘heteroglossic’ tensions in classrooms which shatter this ideal (orperhaps more accurately this chimera) at every turn.

A second Bakhtinian category which can shed light on the notion ofaddressivity is that of social languages or speech genres (1986). The concept of thespeech genre is Bakhtin’s counterbalance to the forces of ‘heteroglossia’, hisacknowledgment of the systematicity of language and the organising principlewhich makes communication between speakers possible. According to Bakhtin:

We speak only ¼ in definite speech genres, that is all our utterances havedefinite and relatively stable typical forms of construction of the whole. (1986:76, original emphasis)

We acquire these social languages from birth in every encounter in thecommunity, at work and at play, through books and across generations by‘ventriloquating’ (Bakhtin, 1981) through the voices of others, by adopting voicetypes available to us in the social environment. The distinctive and habitualdiscourse features of Whole Class Interaction (WCI) reported in research indiverse socio-economic contexts provide sufficient grounds for regarding formalclassroom interaction as one such speech genre (see for example Arthur, 1995;Brice Heath, 1983; Edwards & Mercer, 1987). In subsequent data analyses I hopeto establish a case for regarding SGI as a distinctive classroom genre.

However the process of ‘ventriloquation’ involves a complex social adjust-ment — itself a form of addressivity — to the generic patterns in discourse whichis only productive for speakers if they can ‘reaccent’ a given speech genre for theirown purposes, or as Bakhtin puts it:

The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only

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when the speaker populates it with his [sic] own intention, his own accent,when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic andexpressive intention. (1981: 293–4)

The relationship between speaker and speech genre is then the seconddimension of discourse to be explored in this paper — a relationship whichBakhtin (1981) suggests can be more or less empowering for the individual. Thesubject can either accede to the authority and status of a genre as a given, ‘weencounter it with its authority already fused to it’ (1981: 342); or the speaker mayresist, reshape and reaccent a speech genre so that it becomes ‘half-ours andhalf-someone else’s’ (1981: 345), thus making new meanings possible. In dialogicdiscourse one might therefore expect interaction to be multi-voiced, versatile andplayful with the ‘authority’ of generic forms. In what I shall call ‘monologic’discourse, speakers would tend to accept the fixity of meanings, ventriloquatedthrough single-genre ‘authoritative’ texts. The variable capacity of pupils toadopt and adapt speech genres in their discourse will be a key determinant inmy account of dialogic talk.

In the following analysis I shall try to trace both monologic and dialogictendencies in children’s talk (or in Bakhtin’s terms the ‘authoritative’ and the‘internally persuasive’ forces (1981)), which incline the speaker to hitch her/hiswords to the ‘authoritative’ text of the classroom whilst simultaneously requiringthe speaker to reshape words in order to register as an active member of theclassroom’s speech community. In the classroom I argue that the ‘authoritative’text is that of teacher-directed WCI, the prevailing genre in any classroomenvironment. I am not, however, suggesting that the classroom is a single-genresite, offering only teacher-directed information. Rather it is a question of whichgenres are given ‘authority’ by participants. The status of formal classroominstruction as ‘the privileged genre’ is as likely to be confirmed by pupils asteachers (there is comfort in ritual). It therefore seems predictable that theconventions of WCI will percolate through the words of children even in lessformal settings, as they unconsciously accede to the ‘authoritative’ discourse ofthe classroom. I seek in this paper to explore what resources children use to resistthese conventions and ultimately to claim an educational role for such resistance.

I have invoked two key Bakhtinian concepts — addressivity and speechgenres/ social languages — to support the characterisation of dialogic talk set outin Figure 1. This taxonomy has resulted from the study of data collected over asix month period and provides the framework for the subsequent analysis ofchildren’s talk in small-group settings.

Conversely, monologic discourse (in a classroom setting) would have a singleor limited genre-orientation, privileging what Wertsch calls ‘the formal instruc-tional speech genre’ (1991: 135). Knowledge would be constructed as fixed ratherthan provisional, the domain of the adult-teacher and not the child. Interpersonalmeanings would be signalled only weakly, with limited reference to personal andcollective perspectives.

Voices in a Year 3 Classroom: The Research SettingThe data presented below were part of a year-long case study of small group

Bakhtin in the Classroom: The Dialogic Text 101D

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interaction in a Year 3 classroom (UK: ages 7–8). Most of the children hadpreviously attended the same-site infant school, serving a predominantlyworking-class area of a large town with industrial origins. I worked alongsidethe class teacher who had expressed an interest in my proposed study whilstworking with me on a Masters’ programme. She had previously made a studyof the role of talk in learning and was professionally committed to the notion ofa ‘multi-voiced classroom’. Subsequently I spent one day per week with her classand began recording small group collaborative talk at the beginning of the secondterm, when we judged that the children accepted me as ‘co-teacher’, andcontinued for six months. Groups were selected by the class teacher on eachoccasion according to their current working groups (usually single-sex) andrecordings were made in an adjacent workroom regularly used for small-groupactivity. The children were fully aware of the microphone and my interest in theirtalk and had become familiar with and accepting of this weekly event.

The data presented here were selected as a representative sample of thecollaborative work of two groups of four at the half-way point in the researchproject; both groups were excited by the topic and keen to collaborate and eachhad been recorded regularly during the term. (Seven of the children had alsogained similar scores on recent reading and non-verbal tests.) I have selectedsome 30–40 turns from each data set to represent the most collaborative andinteractive (and thus dialogic) phases of much longer recorded discussions; theseare presented in three sequences as follows: Group 1: Sequences 1.1, 1.2, 1.3;Group 2: Sequences 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 (transcription conventions are included in theAppendix). In each case I ask the reader to accept my judgement of whatconstituted ‘successful’ interaction based on my considerable knowledge of thechildren’s oral work over time. I shall argue that Group 1 illustrates the featuresof dialogic discourse central to this paper, whilst for the most part Group 2 isoriented monologically to the genre of Whole Class Interaction.

The constitution of the groups (Group 1: boys/Group 2: girls) working with afemale teacher–researcher raises important questions about gender inequalitiesin respect of classroom discourse experience. Much educational research (see forexample Bousted, 1989; Fisher, 1994; Swann, 1992) has shown that the inter-actional routines of teachers, boys and girls combine to create ‘[a] consensus ¼where an unequal distribution of talk is seen as normal’ (Swann & Graddol, 1994:166). However, there is insufficient space here to address this issue in full. Rather,

ADDRESSIVITY: THE INTERANIMATION OF ACTUALVOICES IN UTTERANCES

ADDRESSIVITY: THE APPROPRIATION OF VOICETYPE/SPEECH GENRES

At least some group members can:Articulate interpersonal meanings, signifying social identity and social relations explicitly

Articulate a range of voice types andrelated genres

Use a range of strategies to signal a perspective on knowledge e.g. modalitymarkers

Adapt and reaccent genres to generateown meanings

Figure 1 Dialogic talk


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I seek in this paper to offer a Bakhtinian-derived analysis of the collaborativepotential of each group’s discourse as a contribution to the debate about whatconstitutes ‘quality’ pupil–pupil and teacher–pupil talk in small-group settings.(See Fisher, 1996; Lyle, 1996; Westgate & Hughes, 1997; Wegerif & Mercer, 1996for other contributions to this debate.)

The Case Study Data: An Encounter with A Midsummer Night’sDream

The classroom teacher had previously introduced the children to A MidsummerNight’s Dream via the BBC Animated Tales in book and video form. At the timeof this recording, the class knew the plot very well, were all working on variouswritten projects and could talk about the play in whole class discussion withenthusiasm. Their task was to create ‘a script’ to introduce a puppet show fortheir classmates as audience set in the ‘magic’ woods of Shakespeare’s play.Taking the role of ‘good spirits’, they were asked to do three things: (1) use wordsto make the audience feel the magic of the woods; (2) select a charm which wouldmake the audience dream ‘fantastically’; (3) describe the dream which theaudience would enjoy. To help them do this I had prepared a list of objects whichShakespeare used in his evocation of the magic of the woods — and gave theman opening line to suggest an appropriate tone for the script (‘greetings childrenwelcome to the enchanted forest’). As was the custom I acted as the scribe andasked them to explore ideas together which I would then write down as a draftof their intended script.

In Shakespeare’s forest: Establishing a focus: Sequence 1 [1.1, 2.1]Group 1: Sequence 1 [1.1]

Turn no.

Child Children’s script Turnno.

Adult script Contextual comments

1 Daniel yeh but (.) I (.) we’vegot to judge about that‘owls twooting hooting’

At (1) Daniel refers toan earlier line in thescript they arecomposing.

2 Dayne yeh júdge (.) secondround (I do not want)

At (2) Dayne speakswith exaggeratedemphasis imitative ofan adult with an upperclass accent.

3 Daniel I don’t like this4 Martin I object [ 5 Daniel [do you

wan’ it do you wan’ itAt (5) and (8) Daniel ispointing at the othersand raising his voice.

6 Dayne + no 7+ you object8 Daniel do you wan’ it,

9 don’t point your

10 Daniel [do you wan’ itfinger that’s aggressive[10 like that =


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Group 2: Sequence 1[2.1]

In these opening sequences the orientation of each group is strikingly different.A surface reading would suggest that Group 2 discourse is more collaborativeand less individualist, free of the competitive impulse which drives Group 1.However a Bakhtinian reading would imply that it is precisely this sometimesantagonistic articulation of self in relation to others, this two-way traffic ofmeanings which can generate (fruitful) dialogic exchange, as one voice

is questioned, [¼] is put in a new situation in order to expose its weak sides,to get a feel for its boundaries [¼] (Bakhtin, 1981: 348)

Turn no.



12 Dayne [I object 11 = lets (.) hang [12 on aminute you don’t needto worry about that yet

(....) Humming during 4second pause. Jan isre-reading the scriptthey have composed sofar.

13 Dayne ( ) we’ve had‘whizzing’

Group 1: Sequence 1[1.1] cont.

Turn no.

Child Children’s script Turn no.


2 Roxanne [er you did that one 1 (give me) [2 somethingyou’d like to put in doyou want to put the be-

3 Roxanne a beanstalk yeh4 Gemma yeh From (4) to (7) there are

several inaudible singleword utterances.

5 Lorna yeh6 ? a magic’s better7 Gemma that’s Roxanne’s idea

(write R) on the end8 All magic beanstalk and At (8) they ‘chant’ the

phrase together9 Nicci skeleton and (rocks) (.)

10 make it a nice woodbecause if you if they’relying there imaginethey’re in the room andits dark and you’re

At (10) AH reminds thechildren of the task theyhave been set (thepuppet show designedfor their classmates)

11 Gemma [ah miss I’ve gotanother idea

behind there [11 andyou see spirits

12 ? ( ) [12 & 13 we try to13 Roxanne [beanstalk and if you tell them it’s a At (13) & (14) Gemma

joins Roxanne to speakas one voice

14 Gemma climb[and if you [climb up ityou

[14 nice (.) forest


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Group 1 is focused on the articulation and definition of individual rights inrelation to a specific ideational focus — ‘that owls twooting hooting’ —introduced by Daniel in turn 1. Three members of the group appear confident inthe expression of feeling, preference and opinion articulated around the verbs ‘towant’, ‘to like’ and ‘to object’ and the emphatic reconfiguration of the pronounsI/we/you to contest meanings. (The adult/teacher is not addressed or invited tospeak by the children in this sequence.) Daniel and Dayne are explicit about theinsertion of the first-person singular pronoun throughout the opening sequenceand equally careful to shift to more inclusive terms when solidarity serves theircause, as in this self-conscious shift:

1 Daniel: yeh but (.) I (.) we’ve got to judge about that owls twootinghooting.

The impulse driving this sequence would appear to be the negotiation (orperhaps more accurately the contestation) of interpersonal status. The ideationalfocus is either unstated or taken as a given, whilst single-clause utterances whichseek to establish personal perspective take precedence: ‘I object’/‘do you want it’/‘Idon’t like it’, etc.

However, the antagonistic tendencies are leavened by the interplay of voicetypes/genres in this phase of the talk. Daniel’s opening turn is cast in the genreof SGI; his voice is that of the schooled small-group leader who has learnt theprinciple of reasoned collaboration:

1 Daniel: yeh but (.) I we’ve got to judge about ¼

In sudden juxtaposition, Dayne introduces the genre of ‘playground sparring’at turn 2 as he plays on the meaning of ‘judge’ introduced by Daniel; in doingthis he seems to mix the discourse of the boxing ring and the courtroom usingboth word and intonation (see contextual comments in the transcript):

2 Dayne: ‘yeh judge (.) second round (I do not want)’.

Martin seems to read in Dayne’s words an invitation to continue the mockformality with words, shifting between the genres of playground and courtroomand introducing a new refrain ‘I object’ which figures predominantly in the restof this sequence. (Their classroom teacher recognised this phrase as a charac-teristic motif of hers which she had been using in class to induct her pupils informal discussion. Their grafting of this phrase onto the genre of playgroundsparring is a specific instance of ‘ventriloquation’ and indicative of the group’screative experimentation with words across genres.)

So whilst the central thrust of the interpersonal engagement appears at first tobe exclusive rather than inclusive, dialectic rather than dialogic, the mixing ofgenres acts as counterpoint recasting the exchange in a more playful, creativeform signalling relaxed and more equal relations among the interactants. Theirplayfulness with generic form suggests a capacity to move between classroomand community discourses and harness both to their purposes.2

In Group 2, on the other hand, the children construct both interpersonal andideational relations through the teacher/adult. There is only one assertion of thefirst-person perspective (at turn 11) and three instances of ‘you’ (two of which


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use the pronoun in its generalising sense). The children seek to establishthemselves as pupils rather than individuals (and certainly not as a collective)using the conventional forms of classroom address and referring to each otherby name for teacher approval:

7 Gemma: that’s Roxannne’s idea (write R) on the end11 Gemma: [ah miss I’ve got another idea

They make no concerted attempt to establish a peer group identity, theircollective instinct only extending to the generous presentation of each other’sideas for teacher approval — itself a submissive acknowledgement of the‘authority’ of the teacher’s discourse. Group 1’s discussion was driven bypronouns and verbs securing agency and status for the peer group as discrimi-nating agents; Group 2’s parallel data offer few verb forms always in simple tenseform (‘did’ ,‘is’, ‘got’ and ‘climb’) outlining a world of simple actions and fixedtruths over which they have little control. Their impulse is to provide a chain ofexotic noun forms as contingent responses to the teacher’s task ‘a [magic]beanstalk’, ‘skeleton and rocks’ which in effect replace the children as participantsin the interaction. The noun phrases are proffered as gifts without the label ofpersonal or collective attribution, privileging the classroom task and downgrad-ing their role in the interaction.

Nor is there any experimentation with genre and voice in Sequence 2.1; thechildren construct their responses in the genre of WCI casting themselves asteacher-dependent learners consistently oriented to the teacher’s agenda — eventhough my utterances signal to them their discrepant reading of the task. Theyare nonetheless cheerfully compliant, accepting that the rules of WCI often castthem as inexperienced players in an adult game. My utterances in both sequencesare encoded in the genre of WCI, reprimanding in the first and redirecting in thelatter; but Group 1 operates independently of my words whilst Group 2 dependsupon them for focus. I read Group 2’s reluctance to establish shared knowledgeand their privileging of the adult’s agenda as indicative of a ‘monologic’ text.

Towards collaboration: Sequence 2 [1.2, 2.2]Group 1: Sequence 2 [1.2]

Turnno.



38 Daniel ( ) I can say somethingelse and it is gonna bewith owls ‘magic barnowl soars through thesky’

At (38) Daniel mentions‘a barn owl’. I hadintroduced the motifearlier in the talk.

39 ? (I can )40 Jan yeh

41 alright?42 Dayne no At (42) Dayne speaks

bluntly44 Dayne [glídes 43 cos I think you [44

should have45 Daniel glides yeh ‘a magic barn

owl glides’


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Group 2: Sequence 2 [2.2]

Turnno.



46 I’d say you should have owls in becauseyou haven’t got anyactual animals have you you’ve got‘creatures’ but they’re general aren’tthey = [4747 Jan [yeh

48 Dayne [( ) yeh but that’s still = so I don’t [48er that’s still ‘the barnowl’s rooting [49 49 Is that all right with youswooping round’

50 Daniel ( ) animal51 Dayne the barn owl’s rooting

round52 Daniel ( ) a magic barn owl a

magic barn owl =53 Martin no-54 Daniel = magic55 Martin a magic barn (.) [56 owl

hooting cos weshouldn’t have the‘tweeting’ in this=

56 [what do we ( ) barnowl

Group 1: Sequence 2[1.2] cont.

Turnno.



19 Nicci = I know (.) pretendit’s a bubble and youwent through it andyou came to this shipand there was nopirates in it and theyfound some gold

20 pirates and gold well21 Gemma [yeh and (.) and miss [21 that takes [2222 Roxanne [yeh beanstalk miss you to the sea doesn’t

it straightaway23 ? and then when you

climb up it it takes thetreasure


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In this section I shall seek to characterise and then compare the mostcollaborative phases of Group 1 and Group 2 interactions, where the childrenseem most consistently able to make the agenda serve their purposes.

Group 1The strongly coded interpersonal positioning noted in Sequence 1.1 is absent

in this sequence; the group is now focused on ideational resolution still in relationto Daniel’s first overture. It is as if the competition for interpersonal space hasbeen resolved, or at least articulated sufficiently to release other energies. In thissequence they seem able to balance interpersonal and ideational interests tooperate creatively as ‘one voice’ committed to a common goal. After Daniel’sinitiating utterance at turn 38, there are no examples of first person pronoun intheme position which typified Sequence 1.1. I would argue that Sequence 1.2represents a very fluid exchange structure in which the prefacing pronouns ofownership go underground to be replaced by a relaxed trading of nouns andverbs offered as possible ‘ways of wording’. Between turns 38 and 55 the childrenabsorb each others’ words within their own utterances, continuously recyclingmaterial in different forms, without the competitive edge noted in the earlier

Turnno.



24 Roxanne erm er it’s got a bubbleand we all went to popit after we’d gone upthe beanstalk and all ofus went to pop it andthen and then whatNicci said that wewent into erm a pirateland

25 Lorna yeh or26 I think we’re just

27 ?Gemma [yeh with loads of ( ) going to get (.) [27 cos Iwant to work it roundMidsummer Night’sDream but let me holdonto that what wereyou going to sayGemma

28 Gemma you might see likeloads of flowers and itmight smell nice soyou might se- likeanother a bride gettingmarried = a wife or [29something like that

29 Roxanne =or [you could go (upthe) beanstalk

Group 2: Sequence 2 [2.2] cont.


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sequences. Daniel establishes the framework for their interplay at turn 38 withthe strongly signalled initiation:

( ) I can say something else and its gonna be with owls ‘magic barn owl soarsthrough the sky’.

The children take his emphasis on the word soar as an invitation to exploreother permutations as follows:

38 Daniel: soars 44 Dayne: glides48 Dayne: rooting swooping round55 Martin: hooting

There are also more direct ‘borrowings’ of single words at turns 44–45 (glides)and 52–55 (magic/magic barn owl), the latter being so closely aligned as to effectone voice.

This mutuality is possible at least in part because the children are able to signalmodality — a speaker’s capacity to make explicit her/his commitment to anyproposition or representation of knowledge.3 At turns 38, 48 and 55, three of thespeakers are able to indicate an explicit relationship to the ideas in circulation,signalling to their peers that words do not have fixed values, that propositionsare negotiable. In turns 38 and 55 modal auxiliaries do much of the work; in turn48 the combination of ‘hedging device’ and hesitation phenomena produce whatKress (1989a: 54) has called ‘a modality of tentativeness’:

38 Daniel: I can say something else and it is gonna be ¼48 Dayne: yeh but that’s still er that’s still ¼55 Martin: ¼ we shouldn’t have the ‘tweeting’ in this=

Arguably, these strategic expressions of modality, what I shall call interpersonalcueing serve to reduce interpersonal rivalry and allow the free flow of ideas whichI have characterised as dialogic. Coates (1994) describes this kind of interactionas ‘a shared floor’ — a discourse space created by speakers to facilitate thejoint-construction of meaning across several turns (see also Edelsky, 1981;Maybin, 1991). She suggests that this discourse style is a function of a shared andsecure knowledge base which allows ‘intimates’ to predict the intentions of otherspeakers accurately and thus to operate temporarily and productively as a singlevoice of enquiry. This is a matter of fusion rather than homogenisation, thedialogic process which Bakhtin has elsewhere described as the meeting of ‘twoconsciousnesses, two language-intentions, two voices’ (quoted in Holquist, 1990:360).

I would argue that 1.2 provides further evidence of a creative reaccentuationof generic forms, prompted by Daniel’s opening turn [38] in the genre of SGIechoing the tone of turn 1. Across Sequence 1.2 the pupils construct largelywithout adult support a distinctive form of collaboration which seems to blendthe genre of Intimate Conversation with that of WCI, creating a kind ofintellectual forum where they parade and trade ideas freely and sometimescompetitively. (As teacher/adult I am allowed ‘my say’ at turn 46 but none ofmy contributions affect their line of enquiry.) Amongst the turns which seem


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generically closest to formal classroom instruction are the children’s ‘teacherly’contributions at 38, 48 and 55 already discussed; the fast-flowing latched andoverlapping utterances throughout Sequence 1.2 are features of intimateconversation. The adaptation and reaccentuation of genres is empowering for thechildren; their apparent ease with a range of genres allows them to positionthemselves as largely self-sufficient interlocuters and the teacher-researcher asumpire/scribe.4

Group 2This sequence of talk in this group represents their most collaborative and

productive phase — three of the children sustain lengthy utterances withoutteacher/adult talk as a central focus. Whilst they share with Group 1 the commongoal of ideational resolution, Sequence 2.2 provides the first evidence of thisgroup’s emergent capacity to make interpersonal meanings explicit. This isreflected in a new willingness to assert individual and collective perspectivethrough first-person pronoun usage and a hesitant capacity to communicateprovisionality in relation to propositions. In Bakhtinian terms the children beginto give expression to a sense of ‘otherness’ or addressivity.

Roxanne is persistent in the use of the first person pronoun (plural) to establishpeer group solidarity and all three major interactants deploy the generalisingpronoun ‘you’ across the whole sequence to reduce exclusivity or individualclaims. However the children use these forms without conviction so that thedynamic of their utterances tends to shift to external objects in rheme position.Utterances 19, 24 and 28 are typical; Nicci’s turn (19) can stand as an instance:

=I know (.) pretend it’s a bubble and you went through it and you came to this shipand there was no pirates in it and they found some gold.

The utterance begins with Nicci positioning the group as active participants,both individually and collectively: ‘I know, (let’s) pretend’. This position is steadilyweakened by the introduction of non-animate participants functioning as theme(it’s, there) and ending with ‘they’ (the pirates). The confusion in the themefunction threatens to eclipse the children as participants and the focus shifts tothe array of ‘seductive’ new information presented in rheme position from whicha narrative is to be constructed (bubble, ship, pirate, gold); ‘the pirates’ literallyoust the children from subject-position in the utterance. This pattern is repeatedin the subsequent, lengthy turns (24 and 28) where in each case the articulationof interpersonal perspective is threatened by multiple ideational focii. This kindof talk is described by Mercer (1995: 104) as ‘cumulative’ and associated with anuncritical but supportive mode of thinking amongst interactants.

Just as the children in Group 2 signal ideational perspective in less confidentways, their articulation of modality is somewhat restricted. Roxanne and Gemmause a small number of modal auxiliaries repeatedly to convey hypotheticality(could, might, can’t), seeming to appreciate the importance in groupwork ofmaking propositions negotiable. However ideational elements always threatento overwhelm expressions of provisionality. The following utterances encapsu-late the struggle:


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28 Gemma: you might see like loads of flowers and it might smell nice so you mightse- like another a bride getting married = a wife or something like that.

To cast her utterance in modal form, Gemma uses the modal auxiliary ‘might’three times and ‘like’ and ‘something like that’ as hedging or distancing devices.But whilst this utterance is heavily coded for modality, it also introduces twoelaborated new items at the ideational level which have no lexical relationshipwith previous turns. Gemma’s proposal has no dialogic relation with thecommunity of ideas her peers are seeking to set up; she unwittingly threatensgroup cohesion — as though she were unable to hear and ‘address’ prior voicesfrom within her group.

Nor is there any real change to the pattern of single-voiced discourse encodedin the genre of WCI which was first noted in Sequence 2.1. Use of the conventionaladdress ‘miss’ in turns 21, 22 confirms the orientation to the teacher’s agenda,although the insistent use of the generalising pronoun ‘you’ with the first personplural pronoun does suggest they are attempting to realise the voice of the groupas distinct from the voice of the pupil-in-response mode.

Before drawing together my observations about the parallel interactions I shallcomment briefly on two final sequences which confirm the direction and style ofeach group’s collaboration. Neither represents the end-point of the tapeddiscussion but in each case I intervene as teacher/adult in an attempt to redirectthe children’s line of enquiry.

A postscript to collaboration: Sequence 3 [1.3, 2.3]Group 1: Sequence 3 [1.3]Turnno.



93 Daniel and soars94 Martin no and flies away and [(

)95 Daniel [and soars97 Jan [wide w(ings) 96 (¼) [97 we’ll leave it98 Martin [no like [98 that for the

moment99 Dayne yeh just leave it how it

is for (.)100 Daniel magic barn owl=101 Martin? = ‘til we finish it right

102 yeh let’s leave that for amoment =

103 Daniel = magic barn owl104 = ‘now children At (104) I read from the

written script they havecomposed

105 Martin [the magic ( ) think [105 wise andwonderful th-things

106 Daniel = (wise and wonderful) wondrous things [106tell them what’s goingto happen to them

At (106) Daniel iswhispering


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Group 2: Sequence 3 [2.3]

Group 1 has sustained the improvisatory exchange of words on ‘the owltheme’ across 40 turns which can still be seen in turns 93–97. Their response tomy attempt at closure in turn 96 shows clearly their sense of collective ownershipof the task and indeed an implied right of appropriation. First children’s voicesseep into my utterance in overlapping moves as they resist the closure, afterwhich first Dayne then Martin assimilate and reaccentuate my words for groupapproval:

99 Dayne: yeh just leave it how it is for (.)101 Martin: =‘til we finish it right

Their words imply a relationship with the ‘otherness’ of the task and theiragency in relation to both task and teacher. In the terms I have been trying toestablish the children in Group 1 have made dialogic contact with the ‘authority’of the text, finding ‘a counter word’ (Voloshinov, 1973: 102, original emphasis)5

which predicts empowering discourse relations for the group.For Group 2 the collaboration has less productive outcomes. With the

exception of turn 43, the children’s utterances indicate that their talk is stillstrongly coded in the genre of WCI. With the habitual labelling and attributionof ideas for teacher approval, each utterance is framed as a response to teacherinitiations in the conventional I-R pattern associated with formal classroominteraction. The catechistic responses sound increasingly anxious, as though theywere involved in a ritual whose significance lay just beyond their grasp. Theirfrustration is registered by Roxanne’s comment:

43 Roxanne: ( ) oh I can’t do it (prefaced by a half-laugh).

Turnno.



41 now let’s not tell astory

42 + ? Lorna miss I know (one)43 + Roxanne ( ) oh I can’t do it At (43) Roxanne

laughs before shespeaks

44 + ? Lorna miss I’ve got [45 one 45 [‘children’s cave’ youmight find a magicbeanstalk (.) ‘achildren’s cave’

Continued readingaloud from the script

46 Roxanne [that was mine and [46 & 47 but47 Nicci Lorna’s= remember remember

[= with toys inside its Shakespeare’swood that we’re in

48 Gemma ‘a cave’ was hers put a‘L’ on the end miss achildren’s cave Lornagot that

49 ? Roxanne yeh Lorna andRoxanne


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The degree of agency inferred in this utterance is unique in the data set forGroup 2; Roxanne asserts her position as a classroom learner (the self as actor)with the right to state her relationship to the task (coded in explicit modal form).Her very direct statement of position serves two purposes; it acts as a request forthe help of the teacher whilst also signalling a metacognitive awareness of thetask which she feels unable to complete. In Vygotskian terms she is signalling tothe teacher that the task is within her Zone of Proximal Development; she is awareof the dimensions of the task but is requesting help in meeting those ends.6 InBakhtinian terms she is able to signal addressivity, by articulating a relationshipwith the task and the teacher. It is precisely the relationship which Group 2 hasstruggled to appreciate; their utterances have otherwise implied an innocenceabout outcomes, purpose and rights in relation to the teacher/adult’s agenda —an innocence which leads to frustration. The children in Group 2 had sensed theneed for other ways to respond to SGI, other ways to code their understandingsof the world — but their submission to the ‘authoritative text’ of orthodoxclassroom exchange rendered them ‘monolingual’.

Patterns of Domination or Collaboration? Implications forPedagogy

The three samples of data presented for Groups 1 and 2 yield evidence of verydifferent perceptions of relationships between the self, others and knowledge asrevealed in the children’s talk — with significant implications for power andaccess to classroom discourses.

Group 2 members are never confident in establishing their status as partici-pants in the task, finding the collaborative ‘we’ perspective literally hard toarticulate. They defer to the teacher as the natural audience for their utterances,providing very few explicit interpersonal cues. Mutual knowledge (of fan-tasy/narrative) is briefly celebrated, but their limited capacity to accommodateor ‘address’ (in a Bakhtinian sense) each other’s agendas undermines theircooperative instincts. They are generally less confident than Group 1 inexpressing personal taste and judgement and in casting their ideas in proposi-tional form for group scrutiny. Consequently their agency in relation toknowledge as represented by the task is always threatened. In the absence ofwell-defined interpersonal relations, the interactants have acceded to theconstruction of the task as a teacher-governed activity, despite my attempts tocounter this expectation. As Kress puts it:

¼ field always presents itself to each speaker as self-evidently there, asneutral and ideology-free, as simply a description of a particular area of theworld ¼ (1989b: 457–8)

A Bakhtinian reading would trace this compliance through the limited rangeof voice types articulated in the single genre of WCI. The children’s ‘coding-ori-entation’ (Kress, 1989b: 452) is that of teacher-dependent classroom learnerwhose ‘natural’ audience is the teacher not the peer group. Their discourse istherefore characteristic of what I have described as the monologic text with asingle-voiced orientation toward the ‘authoritative’ discourse of the conventionalclassroom.


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Group 1 members (with one exception) provide ample evidence of the capacityto ‘reaccent’ the task in largely empowering ways. From the outset, they signal awillingness to assert both individual and collective perspective and later acapacity to register the provisionality of ideas. In doing this, they manage highlevels of explicit intersubjectivity, whilst also foregrounding the subject matterof the classroom task. These characteristics invite comparison with Wegerif andMercer’s (1996) description of ‘exploratory talk’ which features the explicit useof reasons, a hypothetical mode and constructive exchanges. Their playfulnesswith generic form, their appropriation of teacherly discourse and the importationof community/domestic genres suggest a strong sense of agency in relation tothe task and a Bakhtinian capacity to ‘address’, accommodate and reshape thewords of others in fruitful ways — all the features of a dialogic text.

Small Group Interaction: The Bridge to Dialogic TalkI have characterised dialogic discourse by its capacity to register and respond

to ‘otherness’ — its addressivity — which demands that voices and genres meet,mix and interanimate. Taking a Vygotskian perspective on what Wertsch andBustamante Smolka (1994: 90) call ‘the priority of sociality’ in any account oflearning, I would argue that dialogic talk should be a central discourse in anyclassroom based on neo-Vygotskian and social constructivist principles oflearning (see for example Bruner, 1986; Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Mercer, 1994;Wood, 1988).

In this final section, I shall argue that SGI is more likely to foster dialogic talkthan WCI on two grounds. Firstly, the conventional I-R-E routines of WCIconstruct pupils as respondents only; the given of teacher-perspective means thatchildren are rarely called upon to make their perspectives explicit, to provide theinterrelational cues which would locate their utterances in a network of socialrelations to which others must necessarily connect. I would speculate that in WCIit is the teacher who takes responsibility for what Fairclough (1992b: 210) calls‘issues of social identification in texts’, unwittingly limiting children’s discourseopportunities for interpersonal cueing.

Second, the inevitable imbrication of WCI in issues of control and (adult)power casts it as the ‘authoritative’ or single-voiced genre, privileging theteacher/adult and transmitting high-status information. A likely but notinevitable consequence of the privileging of one genre is the displacement of‘community discourses’ — children’s alternative voices — to the margins ofclassroom life. Without explicit teacher-intervention, WCI is unlikely to fosterplurality and heterogeneity in voice and genre on which dialogic talk depends.

I have presented data to suggest that the shadow of WCI falls heavily acrossthe discourse of some children (Group 2) concealing the many voices, nuancesand reaccentuations which classroom interactions might embrace. In contrast, thechildren in Group 1 seem literally to have ‘made light’ of the genre of WCI,marrying the focused explicit language of formal teacher exposition to therelaxed and creative freedom of playground/intimate talk in more productiveways. The genre of SGI is the result of this fusion which is not reducible toeveryday conversation or to normative classroom interaction. Its plurality is itsstrength, offering creative discourse options for children and teachers —


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Bakhtin’s ‘word with a sideward glance’ (1984: 196) — which WCI is less likelyto nurture. I have tried to show how SGI can encourage this playful, part-ironicengagement with language, which prompts children to use words ‘as thinkingdevices, as generators of new meanings’ (Wertsch & Bustamante Smolka, 1994: 87).

In effect, Small Group Interaction can act as a bridging or intermediarydiscourse helping pupils connect more confidently with the formal discourse ofinstruction in ways which can only support learning in every classroom genre.If seven-year-olds have already acquired limited (and limiting) expectations ofclassroom discourse, they need more not less exposure to the different languagedemands of SGI, particularly its demand for explicit interpersonal cueing. In thiscapacity SGI can over time do much to resolve the language tensions whicheducationists have identified as barriers to learning.

These differences between interaction in events inside and outside of theclassroom reminds us that the academic aspect of schooling is enmeshed ina normative web. The fact that there is not a one-to-one correspondencebetween everyday conversation and classroom conversation has educa-tional consequences for children and for classroom organization. (Mehan,1979: 196–7)

My research suggests that dialogic talk in small-group settings can helpchildren and their teachers spin more delicate language ‘webs’ — to the benefitof all involved in learning.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Avril Haworth, Crewe School of

Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, Crewe Green Road, CreweCW1 5DU, UK ([email protected]).

Notes1. Fairclough (1992a) elaborates on Halliday’s ‘interpersonal’ function of language,

usefully distinguishing between ‘identity’ and ‘relational’ function. I use thesedistinctions in Figure 1 and subsequent analyses.

2. Maclean (1994) presents a similar argument for the significance of this fusion of schooland community discourse in children’s school learning.

3. For a fuller account of modality see Fairclough (1992a), Hodge and Kress (1988).4. It will be evident to the reader that one member of the group (Jan) says very little. This

data set provided insufficient evidence to include Jan in my claims about the potentialof dialogic talk to empower group members, although subsequent data samplesprovided strong evidence of a (newly acquired?) capacity to function dialogically inpeer group interaction.

5. Much has been written about the disputed authorship of texts by Bakhtin andVoloshinov (see for instance Todorov, 1984, Wertsch, 1991). In this paper I retain theseparate nomenclature, whilst acknowledging what Hasan (1992: 503) has called ‘thebond of intertextuality’ which implies single or collaborative authorship.

6. Mercer (1994) provides a valuable critical interpretation of Vygotskian theory and itsclassroom implications.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Dr Roz Ivanic and Professor Phil Hodkinson for helpful


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comments on earlier drafts of this article, and Debra Walker for her patience inmaking children’s voices ‘come good’ on the page.

Appendix: Transcription Conventions( ) unintelligible snatches: any attempted transcription inside bracketsB+ simultaneous speech: each utterance transcribed on separate linesR+

?Jan uncertain attribution[5 overlapping utterances: number in bracket used to mark the point

at which another utterance interrupts if it is not otherwise clear in the transcription

= latched or continuous utterances(.) untimed pauses of about one second

(..) longer pauses: the number of dots approximating to the number of seconds

- incomplete utterance

? rising intonation/ words given additional emphasis by the speaker

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Documents

Bakhtin in the Classroom: What Constitutes a Dialogic Text? Some Lessons from Small Group Interaction