Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Literature і 65

The combination of these two constraints may lead to the children being
trained early to attend above all to the command form of questioning, the
securing of information becoming secondary to consideration of status.

In a study comparing the use of questions in three groups in USA
(working class black children in their families / working class white
children in their families / their ’town' white teachers' families, where
teachers were observed interacting with their own children), Heath
(1982a) concluded that:

Vo

- assumptions about the use of questions were different, as their
frequency, purpose, type and topic;

- teachers asked at school the same type of questions they asked their
children at home;

- teachers' children were trained as question-answerers

- teachers as mothers tended to answer themselves the questions they
posed to their children, and they expected them to come out with the
same answers; they did the same at school;

- parents in black families did not use questions to give children the
opportunity to show their knowledge

- in black families, questions where the questioner has the information
were rare, and also those where the answerer has the information were
not frequent, questions being used for other functions like soliciting
story-telling, or verbal games.

A particular type of question considered in ethnographic studies is the
rhetorical question: it shares with the test question the characteristic
of the information being known to the addresser (as it is to the
addressee), but does not require a verbal response, . It is similar to a
directive in that it requires an action response The rhetorical question
may have a challenging value and is more about relationship than
information; it is frequent in situations where consensus is needed and
agreement, not information, is sought (Goody,1977). Rhetorical questions
reveal the Incomplete nature of questions and how reciprocity may not be
met, and so altering the basic characteristic of the adjacency pairing
(Saks, Schegloff and Jefferson,1974).

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