Children's Voices

JANET MAYBIN is a Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication at the Open University, UK. She has written extensively for Open University courses on language, literacy and learning, and also researches and writes on children's and adults' informal language and literacy practices. She originally trained as a social anthropologist.

• Acknowledgements Transcription Conventions INTRODUCTION Focussing on the Margins Conceptualising Voice and Meaning-making Outline of the Chapters PART 1: SETTING THE SCENE Shifting the Lens The Researcher in the Data From Context to Contextualisation From Dialogue to Dialogicality Evaluation, Socialisation and Identity Towards a More Dynamic Language of Description PART 2: CONTEXT, GENRE AND FRAMES Switching Contexts The Generic Production of Meaning The Intertextual Construction of the Present Microcontexts: Manipulating Frames Conclusion PART 3: DIALOGUE AND COLLABORATION: GIRLS AND BOYS The Duet of Friendship Producing Unformalised Knowledge in Group Talk Gender, Communicative Style and Identity Conclusion PART 4: REPORTED VOICES AND EVALUATION Representing Voices: Grammatical and other Cues Invoking and Evaluating People Recreating Events Evaluation in Projected Speech and Reported Thought Conclusion PART 5: ARTICULATING DIALOGUE: AGENCY AND GENDER IN CHILDREN'S ANECDOTES Representing Experience and Exploring the Self Three Levels of Narrative Meaning Indexicalisation and Dialogic Relationships Conclusion PART 6:NARRATIVE REFLECTIONS AND MORAL COMPLEXITIES Articulating Moral Stances Beleaguered Positions Divided Loyalties Conclusion PART 7: SCHOOLED VOICES A Framework for Understanding Reproduced Voices Repetition and Appropriation in Teacher-Pupil Dialogue Reproducing Authoritative Voices: Appropriation and Styling Framing Work and Play Conclusion PART 8: OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL LITERACIES Official Literacy: Power, Procedure and Product Hybrid Practices Unofficial Literacy Personal Writing: Identity and Regulation Conclusion CONCLUSION Notes References Index

'It is not often that you are gripped by an academic book. I read Janet Maybin's book through in almost one reading, gripped by the range of insights she offers into children's off-record talk, her judicious use of social and cultural theory, her many new insights into the significance of styling and voicing emotion and evaluation in everyday dialogue, her careful building of new ways of talking about and describing talk among children. This is a highly significant contribution to language in education, to our understandings of language use and multiple but hitherto unnoticed aspects of the ways knowledge is constructed. It is a book that is likely to refocus educational research for many years to come, shifting the research landscape to the importance of talk outside the classroom for our understanding of 'official' talk inside the classroom. It is a book that is written in a lively and engaging style. In fact, it is a book that is not just gripping; it is genuinely groundbreaking.' - Ron Carter, Professor of Modern English Language, Nottingham University, UK'Most impressive are the ways in which the work brings to life hybridity, emotion, and moral evaluation...Children's Voices serves as an important exemplar of the artful ways young people fashion lives and learning through dialogue, and of the compelling need for ethnographers, educators and linguists to find equally artful ways to render their accounts of language and learning.' - Deborah Hicks, Professorof Education and Women's Studies at Duke University, North Carolina, USA'This book will be a valuable resource for educational researchers as well as teachers seeking to understand the importance of informal talk and the complexities of different forms of children's talk across official and unofficial school spaces and throughout the school day.' - Dennis Kwek, Language and Education, 22:2, 2008