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Cohesion In Spoken And Written Dialogue: An Investigation Of Cultural And Textual Constraints, Johanna Destefano, Rebecca Kantor

Rebecca Kantor

Interactions of language, culture, minority group membership, and literacy instruction in schools have evidently spelled success for some children but not for others. The purpose of this study was to explore an area of intersection among language use, ethnolinguistic group membership, and literacy learning materials to provide additional insight into the higher rates of literacy problems in urban black and Appalachian cultures. Specifically, it investigated how the informal discourse modes, exemplified by mother-child dialogue in a child's home environment, compared and contrasted with more formal discourse modes, exemplified by dialogue among characters in basal reader stories and in children's storybooks. …