Are You With Me

As Isabella stated in her blog, I as well never dealt with different ethnicities in the classroom until I came to college. I went to a small high school with primarily Caucasian students and teachers. Therefore, different “ways of speaking” was never necessarily an issue for me.

After reading this article, I decided to take a different route in discussion- from the perspective of African American women not necessarily in the classroom, but in the community. An interesting quote I found within this article was when Foster states that, “ According to Marcyliena Morgan, studies of African American women’s speech behavior are central to a complete understanding of how the community expresses its reality because it is women who have historically been responsible for the language development of children and consequently the community.” I found this take interesting because of the large amount that we have discussed “gendered social norms” in this course.

Different articles we have read over the course of this semester have discussed women’s speech patterns, and how women are seen as being less dominant in a group setting than men. However, Foster is emphasizing the fact that women have been the primary way that children develop language, not only in the classroom, but also the community, and is referring to African American women specifically. A movie that came to my mind when thinking from this perspective was “The Help.” This film deals with differences between black and white women in the deep south, and I feel that it is a good indication of the amount of influence that the African American women in this movie had on the children in the white homes that they were working within.

Because I couldn’t find a sufficient specific example from the movie, the link for the trailer is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_ajv_6pUnI

This deals not only with racism, but with gendered norms and African American womens’ influence in a specific community. I feel that this can be looked at as an extension of Foster’s article. 

Liz Ream

Are You With Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BTr0evZSis (Youtube clip from How I Met
Your Mother: Revertigo)

This *How I Met Your Mother* clip does not fully touch on the aspects of
African American women's speech that Foster discusses, however it does help
initiate one of her main topics: code-switching.  In the clip Lily is
visited by her old high school friends Michelle, and Lily begins to speak
in a type of African American English.  Similarly Michelle speaks in this
way when she is with Lily but when Lily leaves the table Michelle reverts
to Standard English and tells the group she is working on her Ph.D.  This
clip hints at something else Foster's article touches on, that the Standard
English variant is associated with knowledge and intelligence, while the
African English variant is thought to be a sign of poor education.

In her article, Foster studies teacher-student conversation patterns and
finds that often when the teacher needs to connect more closely with the
student or encourage participation in a conversation the teacher reverts to
African American English from the Standard English variant.  Foster
mentions that by speaking in this way with the student, the teacher makes
the student feel more comfortable and encourages them to respond.  She also
mentions code-switching later in the article when she compares interview
data of other African American teachers.  She notes that at the beginning
of every interview the women spoke in the Standard English variant, but as
they became more comfortable in the situation and more willing to speak
about their experiences they switched over to speaking in the African
American English variant.

Foster also mentions the use of metaphors and how teachers use metaphors in
the classroom to teach the children about social ranks based upon the
students' grades in the class.  The teacher will call on the students also
known as the F-troops, to answer more questions, and make them work harder
to get their grades back up to passing.



Kalyssa Eversman

Are You With Me?

This article was really interesting to me because it made me think about something that I was not often faced with and didn't really realize could be a potential problem. It talks about how African Americans have a different way of speaking than white people do and it can cause a problem in a classroom when it is majority African American students or an African American teacher. Foster goes further by developing on the difference between Standard English and African American English this is done through codeswitching within African American females. I grew up in a school district that was predominantly white and I have never had an African American teacher, but at Indiana University I have had teachers of other ethnicities that spoke a different form of English which made it hard to understand them.

This is a brief clip from a sitcom Modern Family this particular episode does a good job addressing codeswtiching and people talking in different forms of English. One of the main characters speaks Latin-English but can speak Standard English if necessary. Even when speaking standard English though it is hard to understand her because she is used to speaking in a different language. Gloria tries to speak in a Standard English tone throughout the episode but in the end realizes that it is her tone in Latin-English that makes her who she is and defines her background and personality.

Are you with me

The summary that Anna posted on this article, Are You With Me, was well done. Therefore, I won't bore you with a recap on the reading, yet I will give my thoughts. In the conclusion of the reading, Foster wrote, "codeswitching is a deliberate and systematic practice intended to express the speakers' identities and influenced by the social relationships between participants." 


I liked how this reading tied into the previously read code-switching articles. Similar to genders, religions, etc., race is yet another identifier that similar people can code-switch through to relate to one another. 


While pondering my thoughts on where the dialect to which African Americans speak came from, I found the following video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvuWSJI87r8. This video claims that the dialect has evolved from slaves. Many of the words they spoke with have also made their way into standard english.


I think it is interesting to watch this video and understand what gave African-Americans this ability to code-switch through language.

Cameron's article, "Performing Gender Identity: Young Men's Talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity" lists ways in which males interact in speech when surrounded by only other males. Cameron discusses topics such as cooperation (males cooperate with other males by allowing them a turn in the conversation by using phrases such as 'like' or 'you know?'), and competition (the power struggle between males to have control of the conversation).

I would like to take a closer look at competition and cooperation in the following video taken from the movie "Stepbrothers":

The competition in this dialogue is initially between Derek and Dale. Derek is telling his story about fishing and Dale tries to enter the conversation by asking about the type of fish that Derek caught. Both Derek and Robert proceed to pounce on Dale for interrupting the story. Both Robert and Derek are content with sharing the conversation but are not willing to let Dale in. Ultimately Derek is trying to compete with Dale to be the favorite son of Robert.

Cooperation comes into play between Derek and Robert. As Derek goes through his story telling, he asks Robert a question or two, and Robert answers the question and freely turns the conversation back over to Derek. And although Derek is telling a story for the whole table, he is primarily making eye contact with Robert. There is cooperation between Robert and Derek, but there is a struggle to let anyone else in.

Are You With Me

Threw out this article I couldn't help but go back to and think of the other articles about code switching and how women are the teachers and the ones that are softer spoken. In this article it starts off with saying that African American women were often overlooked. This study looked at African American teachers and how they communicated with their students. Also how they used code switching and metaphors both in teaching and interviewing.
When they taught the used the word performance when it came to have class discussions. Foster almost wanted you to feel like you were reading something like a play or a movie. He went into great detail how at the start of class everything was very structured and the teachers did all the talking but when they got into the performance stage of the class everyone was equal. The teacher wanted the students to feel comfortable speaking and giving them plenty of chances to speak. Foster even states that The teacher spoke 296 and the students spoke 211. This tells me the teacher played close attention to the students and wanted to hear them. The teacher also put things in metaphors to help the kids understand and help them relate to what the teacher is teaching and trying to tell them.
During the interviews it went into code switching and how the teachers in one group didn't code switch until later in the interview when they felt comfortable or just couldn't keep up the "proper english" anymore. But how in the other interview group they pretty much started off code switching from "proper english" to "African American english" depending on what they were trying to say and what the conversation was covering.
I chose a clip of students and teachers talking about why they talk the way they do and what it says about them. Also how they feel like talking tells a lot about a person. It tells how they were taught and who taught them. They express how that it brings them closer to old African American language. Their dialect helps identify them and who they are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQrtB7cZDrA&feature=related

Are You With Me?

In the article, Are you with Me by Foster he shows how African American women that are teachers try to communicate with their children on an intimate level.  He breaks the article up in two different scenarios, the first half is him sitting in a classroom with an African American woman teacher and the second half is him interviewing four African American teachers.

The classroom scenario shows the teacher using performance speech to teach and communicate with the class.  Performance speech is shifting from Standard English to a more black style of discourse using elongated vowels, utilizing pitch and stress, repetition, and uses gestures.  She compares this with an African American church she attends, in which she says she always is more involved and people enjoy the service more when the Pastor uses performance speech.

The interview scenario shows the four women using codeswitching deliberately to show speakers’ identities and emphasis.  While the teachers express times when they speak with their students they use a more black style when expressing students’ responses and a more Standard English when developing the story. 

I chose a scene from an African American church service.  From this scene, you can see the performance speech taking place.  The pastor uses repetition by repeating phrases to get his point across.  He uses stress and change in pitch to engage the audience.  He uses a more black style of speaking like discussed in Foster to relate to his audience and to get his point across. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rffwcLVm93w

Anna Frick