James Collins | SUNY: University at Albany (original) (raw)
Papers by James Collins
Language, Class and Education
Encyclopedia of Language and Education
The twentieth century saw some significant efforts to redistribute wealth and income throughout m... more The twentieth century saw some significant efforts to redistribute wealth and income throughout most of the century, but over the last 25 years, material inequalities have persisted and in many ways increased. Traditionally,'class' has been a term used to define ...
Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
Engaging Raymond Williams’ argument (1977: 112) that “[a] lived hegemony is always a process ... ... more Engaging Raymond Williams’ argument (1977: 112) that “[a] lived hegemony is always a process ... [that] can never be singular,” this paper examines contrary tendencies toward domination and autonomy in national debates about education, classroom-based reading practices, and students’ formation of literate identities. In particular, I explore the dynamics of inequality and reflexivity through an ethnographic-and-discursive analysis of a US urban middle school undergoing pedagogical reform. The school presents a balance, roughly 50/50, of students living in poverty and not living in poverty and from majority and non-majority ethnoracial backgrounds. Because of statewide pressures to “improve test scores,” the school has agreed to an ambitious English Language Arts curriculum initiative which encourages reflexive self-guidance among teachers and students. The paper presents analyses of public debates about literacy and of classroom interactional dynamics as well as case studies of ‘str...
Bernstein, Bourdieu and the New Literacy Studies
Linguistics and Education, 2000
This essay discusses early and contemporary work by Basil Bernstein, comparing it with that of Pi... more This essay discusses early and contemporary work by Basil Bernstein, comparing it with that of Pierre Bourdieu, the other major theorist of social and educational reproduction. I argue that their work jointly represents a legacy of neoclassical social theory with continuing relevance for educational research. It presents substantive analyses of institutional differentiation within contemporary societies, empirically robust arguments about class-specific
Journal of Pragmatics, 1984
Michael Silverstein, Dialectical developments in Chinookan tense-aspect systems: an areal-histori... more Michael Silverstein, Dialectical developments in Chinookan tense-aspect systems: an areal-historical analysis. (International Journal of American Linguistics, Memoir 29.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. ii + 50 pp. $6.00. * "Why," the reader may reasonably ask, "review a memoir now nearly a decade old?" The answer, it seems to me, is that the issues raised in this specialist work are of such generality that they stand the test of time. Using particular Amerindian evidence, the memoir advances strong claims about the nature of linguistic change, the requirements of historical explanation (as against historical description), and the play of system vs. event in what might be called the teleological unfolding of language-internal development. This publication will * I am indebted to Johanna Nichols and Michael Silverstein for careful reading and criticism of an earlier version of this review. All errors are of course my own.
![Fig. 1. The geographical distribution of Chinook dialects. system (p. 49). He argues that similar study is basic to the most successful traditions in historical linguistics, in particular the Indo-Europeanist studies of Benveniste, Jakobson and Kurylowicz, among others. In section 1, S describes the major dialects of Chinook — Shoalwater, Kathlamet and Kiksht [3] — and discusses the morphophonemic processes which justify their division into two language-like units, Upper and Lower Chinook. He then discusses the data base. His Labovian reasoning is that both elicitation task and genre, as well as age of informants (Labov 1965), skew the ‘apparent’ age of materials. In particular, he argues that myth narratives provide a large number of archaic formations for comparative reconstruction. Section 2 describes the variation in the tense-aspect systems of the different dialects, discussing which categories are basic to all dialects — for example, present-continuative — and contrasting those which differ. In this section, S also introduces a method of establishing the complementarity of category morphemes across dialects. The method uses an order-class charting of morpheme combinations as a reference point from](https://figures.academia-assets.com/82612568/figure_001.jpg)
](
Pronouns, Markedness, and Stem Change in Tolowa
International Journal of American Linguistics, 1985
. 1979. Phonemic contrasts and distinctive features: Caucasian examples. The Elements: A Parasess... more . 1979. Phonemic contrasts and distinctive features: Caucasian examples. The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, ed. PR Clyne, WF Hanks, and CL Hofbauer, pp. 307-21. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 1981. Typological parallels between Proto-...
Conversation and knowledge in bureaucratic settings
Discourse Processes, 1987
ABSTRACT An account of discourse and bureaucratic process must of necessity confront the question... more ABSTRACT An account of discourse and bureaucratic process must of necessity confront the question of linkages between the macrostructures of a social order and the microstructures of any communicative act. Focusing on theoretical and analytic issues, this paper discusses how the concept of index can be used to provide a capacious yet coherent account of communicative context, one which can be integrated into the more general characterization of social relations provided by the study of institutional ideologies. The argument is illustrated with materials taken from educational studies. It concentrates on ability grouping and prescriptivism, analyzing both as ideologies which engender a structuring practice with demonstrable effects on the organization of face‐to‐face communication as well as on the general form of bureaucratic institutions.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 1989
and the Myth of CuZturuZ DecZine is stimulating reading. It addresses the recent conservative dis... more and the Myth of CuZturuZ DecZine is stimulating reading. It addresses the recent conservative discourse about cultural decline and the failures of education, proclaimed by William Bennett, Allan Bloom, and E. D. Hirsch, and argues that the account of "de
Dell Hymes and the New Language Policy Studies: Update from an Underdeveloped Country
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2011
Skip to Main Content. Wiley Online Library will be unavailable 17 Dec from 10-13 GMT for IT maint... more Skip to Main Content. Wiley Online Library will be unavailable 17 Dec from 10-13 GMT for IT maintenance. ...
You Don't Know What They Translate": Language Contact, Institutional Procedure, and Literacy Practice in Neighborhood Health Clinics in Urban Flanders
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2006
... The problem is when they chose, when they [the doctors] pick out a question, er, Hoe zeg je ... more ... The problem is when they chose, when they [the doctors] pick out a question, er, Hoe zeg je er? Do you have stomach pains? then the people start to explain in Slovenian [laughter from all at the table] their whole situation; but the doctor only asked one question [for the patient ...
Social Reproduction in Classrooms and Schools
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2009
Social reproduction theory argues that schools are not institutions of equal opportunity but mech... more Social reproduction theory argues that schools are not institutions of equal opportunity but mechanisms for perpetuating social inequalities. This review discusses the emergence and development of social reproduction analyses of education and examines three main perspectives on reproduction: economic, cultural, and linguistic. Reproduction analyses emerged in the 1960s and were largely abandoned by the 1990s; some of the conceptual and
Differential instruction in reading groups
The Social Construction of Literacy, 2006
Introduction: texts, power, and identity
Texts, Power, and Identity, 2003
Indexicalities of language contact in an era of globalization: engaging with John Gumperz's legacy
Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies, 2000
This article engages with John Gumperz's research legacy by examining his statements regardin... more This article engages with John Gumperz's research legacy by examining his statements regarding indexicality at different stages in his career: the “Introduction” to
Language & Communication, 2005
This paper draws upon arguments about scale and spatial analysis in order to rethink multilingual... more This paper draws upon arguments about scale and spatial analysis in order to rethink multilingualism in an urban, diasporic-globalized context. Introducing space and scale allows us to reexamine two important bodies of the literature-Erving Goffman and Pierre Bourdieuthat both address the political and historical situatedness of linguistic competence and the centrality of interactional perspectives in social-linguistic analysis. While very influential, neither GoffmanÕs not BourdieuÕs work engaged in a sustained way with questions of multilingualism. Space and scale offer a connection between macro-conditions and micro-processes, which allows us to focus on multilingualism as a matter of conditioned resources as well as interactionally ÔframedÕ practices. This perspective has important effects on our view of competence. Criticizing existing accounts of both linguistic and communicative competence, we argue for reversing the usual order of thinking: multilingualism is not what individuals have and donÕt have, but what the environment, as structured determinations and interactional emergence, enables and disables. Consequently, multilingualism often occurs as truncated competence, which depending on scalar judgments may be declared Ôvalued assetsÕ or dismissed as Ôhaving no languageÕ.
The culture wars and shifts in linguistic capital: For combining political economy and cultural analysis
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 1999
... That is, whether put forth by conservatives or left-liberals, the culture war arguments and .... more ... That is, whether put forth by conservatives or left-liberals, the culture war arguments and ... composition programs ± a practice of writing disconnected from familiarity with high culture texts ± is ... for this diåering sense of what was expected, but one was diåerence in pedagogy. ...
American Ethnologist, 1998
American Anthropologist, 1992
Literacy and Literacies
Annual Review of Anthropology, 1995
An analysis of the elite and popular responses to the call for new 'educational standards' that e... more An analysis of the elite and popular responses to the call for new 'educational standards' that emerged with the Clinton- and Bush-era education- policies. It analyzes articles from American Educator, as well as teacher and education activist responses to the unfolding new education regime. It uses analytic concepts from Critical Discourse Analysis and the Linguistic Anthropology to develop a critical, nuanced, investigation of the relation between education reform and social inequality.
Language, Class and Education
Encyclopedia of Language and Education
The twentieth century saw some significant efforts to redistribute wealth and income throughout m... more The twentieth century saw some significant efforts to redistribute wealth and income throughout most of the century, but over the last 25 years, material inequalities have persisted and in many ways increased. Traditionally,'class' has been a term used to define ...
Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
Engaging Raymond Williams’ argument (1977: 112) that “[a] lived hegemony is always a process ... ... more Engaging Raymond Williams’ argument (1977: 112) that “[a] lived hegemony is always a process ... [that] can never be singular,” this paper examines contrary tendencies toward domination and autonomy in national debates about education, classroom-based reading practices, and students’ formation of literate identities. In particular, I explore the dynamics of inequality and reflexivity through an ethnographic-and-discursive analysis of a US urban middle school undergoing pedagogical reform. The school presents a balance, roughly 50/50, of students living in poverty and not living in poverty and from majority and non-majority ethnoracial backgrounds. Because of statewide pressures to “improve test scores,” the school has agreed to an ambitious English Language Arts curriculum initiative which encourages reflexive self-guidance among teachers and students. The paper presents analyses of public debates about literacy and of classroom interactional dynamics as well as case studies of ‘str...
Bernstein, Bourdieu and the New Literacy Studies
Linguistics and Education, 2000
This essay discusses early and contemporary work by Basil Bernstein, comparing it with that of Pi... more This essay discusses early and contemporary work by Basil Bernstein, comparing it with that of Pierre Bourdieu, the other major theorist of social and educational reproduction. I argue that their work jointly represents a legacy of neoclassical social theory with continuing relevance for educational research. It presents substantive analyses of institutional differentiation within contemporary societies, empirically robust arguments about class-specific
Journal of Pragmatics, 1984
Michael Silverstein, Dialectical developments in Chinookan tense-aspect systems: an areal-histori... more Michael Silverstein, Dialectical developments in Chinookan tense-aspect systems: an areal-historical analysis. (International Journal of American Linguistics, Memoir 29.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. ii + 50 pp. $6.00. * "Why," the reader may reasonably ask, "review a memoir now nearly a decade old?" The answer, it seems to me, is that the issues raised in this specialist work are of such generality that they stand the test of time. Using particular Amerindian evidence, the memoir advances strong claims about the nature of linguistic change, the requirements of historical explanation (as against historical description), and the play of system vs. event in what might be called the teleological unfolding of language-internal development. This publication will * I am indebted to Johanna Nichols and Michael Silverstein for careful reading and criticism of an earlier version of this review. All errors are of course my own.
Pronouns, Markedness, and Stem Change in Tolowa
International Journal of American Linguistics, 1985
. 1979. Phonemic contrasts and distinctive features: Caucasian examples. The Elements: A Parasess... more . 1979. Phonemic contrasts and distinctive features: Caucasian examples. The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, ed. PR Clyne, WF Hanks, and CL Hofbauer, pp. 307-21. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 1981. Typological parallels between Proto-...
Conversation and knowledge in bureaucratic settings
Discourse Processes, 1987
ABSTRACT An account of discourse and bureaucratic process must of necessity confront the question... more ABSTRACT An account of discourse and bureaucratic process must of necessity confront the question of linkages between the macrostructures of a social order and the microstructures of any communicative act. Focusing on theoretical and analytic issues, this paper discusses how the concept of index can be used to provide a capacious yet coherent account of communicative context, one which can be integrated into the more general characterization of social relations provided by the study of institutional ideologies. The argument is illustrated with materials taken from educational studies. It concentrates on ability grouping and prescriptivism, analyzing both as ideologies which engender a structuring practice with demonstrable effects on the organization of face‐to‐face communication as well as on the general form of bureaucratic institutions.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 1989
and the Myth of CuZturuZ DecZine is stimulating reading. It addresses the recent conservative dis... more and the Myth of CuZturuZ DecZine is stimulating reading. It addresses the recent conservative discourse about cultural decline and the failures of education, proclaimed by William Bennett, Allan Bloom, and E. D. Hirsch, and argues that the account of "de
Dell Hymes and the New Language Policy Studies: Update from an Underdeveloped Country
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2011
Skip to Main Content. Wiley Online Library will be unavailable 17 Dec from 10-13 GMT for IT maint... more Skip to Main Content. Wiley Online Library will be unavailable 17 Dec from 10-13 GMT for IT maintenance. ...
You Don't Know What They Translate": Language Contact, Institutional Procedure, and Literacy Practice in Neighborhood Health Clinics in Urban Flanders
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2006
... The problem is when they chose, when they [the doctors] pick out a question, er, Hoe zeg je ... more ... The problem is when they chose, when they [the doctors] pick out a question, er, Hoe zeg je er? Do you have stomach pains? then the people start to explain in Slovenian [laughter from all at the table] their whole situation; but the doctor only asked one question [for the patient ...
Social Reproduction in Classrooms and Schools
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2009
Social reproduction theory argues that schools are not institutions of equal opportunity but mech... more Social reproduction theory argues that schools are not institutions of equal opportunity but mechanisms for perpetuating social inequalities. This review discusses the emergence and development of social reproduction analyses of education and examines three main perspectives on reproduction: economic, cultural, and linguistic. Reproduction analyses emerged in the 1960s and were largely abandoned by the 1990s; some of the conceptual and
Differential instruction in reading groups
The Social Construction of Literacy, 2006
Introduction: texts, power, and identity
Texts, Power, and Identity, 2003
Indexicalities of language contact in an era of globalization: engaging with John Gumperz's legacy
Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies, 2000
This article engages with John Gumperz's research legacy by examining his statements regardin... more This article engages with John Gumperz's research legacy by examining his statements regarding indexicality at different stages in his career: the “Introduction” to
Language & Communication, 2005
This paper draws upon arguments about scale and spatial analysis in order to rethink multilingual... more This paper draws upon arguments about scale and spatial analysis in order to rethink multilingualism in an urban, diasporic-globalized context. Introducing space and scale allows us to reexamine two important bodies of the literature-Erving Goffman and Pierre Bourdieuthat both address the political and historical situatedness of linguistic competence and the centrality of interactional perspectives in social-linguistic analysis. While very influential, neither GoffmanÕs not BourdieuÕs work engaged in a sustained way with questions of multilingualism. Space and scale offer a connection between macro-conditions and micro-processes, which allows us to focus on multilingualism as a matter of conditioned resources as well as interactionally ÔframedÕ practices. This perspective has important effects on our view of competence. Criticizing existing accounts of both linguistic and communicative competence, we argue for reversing the usual order of thinking: multilingualism is not what individuals have and donÕt have, but what the environment, as structured determinations and interactional emergence, enables and disables. Consequently, multilingualism often occurs as truncated competence, which depending on scalar judgments may be declared Ôvalued assetsÕ or dismissed as Ôhaving no languageÕ.
The culture wars and shifts in linguistic capital: For combining political economy and cultural analysis
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 1999
... That is, whether put forth by conservatives or left-liberals, the culture war arguments and .... more ... That is, whether put forth by conservatives or left-liberals, the culture war arguments and ... composition programs ± a practice of writing disconnected from familiarity with high culture texts ± is ... for this diåering sense of what was expected, but one was diåerence in pedagogy. ...
American Ethnologist, 1998
American Anthropologist, 1992
Literacy and Literacies
Annual Review of Anthropology, 1995
An analysis of the elite and popular responses to the call for new 'educational standards' that e... more An analysis of the elite and popular responses to the call for new 'educational standards' that emerged with the Clinton- and Bush-era education- policies. It analyzes articles from American Educator, as well as teacher and education activist responses to the unfolding new education regime. It uses analytic concepts from Critical Discourse Analysis and the Linguistic Anthropology to develop a critical, nuanced, investigation of the relation between education reform and social inequality.