Amy, Wendy, and Beth, the 1980 recipient of the New York Academy of Sciences Edward Sapir Award, is a lively in-depth study of how three young children from an urban working-class community learned language under everyday conditions. It is a sensitive portrayal of the children and their families and offers an innovative approach to the study of language development and social class. A major conclusion of the study is that the linguistic abilities of working-class children are consistent with previous cross-cultural accounts of the development of communicational skills and, as such, lend no support to past claims that children from the lower classes are linguistically deprived. Instead, Amy, Wendy, and Beth emerge as able and enthusiastic language learners; their families, as caring and competent partners in the language socialization process. Sound scholarship and original findings about a hitherto neglected population of children lend special value to this work not only for scholars in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, but for educators and policymakers as well.

Little Women with a twist: four sisters from a blended family experience the challenges and triumphs of life in NYC in this beautiful full-color graphic novel perfect for fans of Roller Girl and Smile. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are having a really tough year: with their father serving in the military overseas, they must work overtime to make ends meet...and each girl is struggling in her own way. Whether it's school woes, health issues, boy troubles, or simply feeling lost, the March sisters all need the same thing: support from each other. Only by coming together--and sharing lots of laughs and tears--will these four young women find the courage to discover who they truly are as individuals...and as a family. Meg is the eldest March, and she has a taste for the finer things in life. She dreams of marrying rich, enjoying fabulous clothes and parties, and leaving her five-floor walk-up apartment behind. Jo pushes her siblings to be true to themselves, yet feels like no one will accept her for who she truly is. Her passion for writing gives her an outlet to feel worthy in the eyes of her friends and family. Beth is the shy sister with a voice begging to be heard. But with a guitar in hand, she finds a courage that inspires her siblings to seize the day and not take life for granted. Amy may be the baby of the family, but she has the biggest personality. Though she loves to fight with her sisters, her tough exterior protects a vulnerable heart that worries about her family's future.

“[An] affectionate and perceptive tribute.”—Wendy Smith, Boston Globe In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Anne Boyd Rioux brings a fresh and engaging look at the circumstances leading Louisa May Alcott to write Little Women and why this beloved story of family and community ties set in the Civil War has resonated with audiences across time.

Units, rules, codes, systems: this is how most linguists study language. Integrationalists such as Michael Toolan, however, focus instead on how language functions in seamless tandem with the rest of human activity. In Total Speech, Toolan provides a clear and comprehensive account of integrationalism, a major new theory of language that declines to accept that text and context, language and world, are distinct and stable categories. At the same time, Toolan extends the integrationalist argument and calls for a radical change in contemporary theorizing about language and communication. In every foundational area of linguistics--from literal meaning and metaphor to the nature of repetition to the status of linguistic rules--Toolan advances fascinating and provocative criticisms of received linguistic assumptions. Drawing inspiration from the writings of language theorist Roy Harris, Toolan brings the integrationalist perspective to bear on legal cases, the reception of Salman Rushdie, poetry, and the language of children. Toolan demonstrates that the embeddedness of language and the situation-sensitive mutability of meaning reveal language as a tool for re-fashioning and renewal. Total Speech breaks free of standard linguistics' fascinated attraction with "cognitive blueprints" and quasi-algorithmic processing to characterize language anew. Toolan's reflections on the essence of language, including his important discussion of intention, have strong implications for students and scholars of discourse analysis, literature, the law, anthropology, philosophy of language, communication theory, and cognitive science, as well as linguistics.

This book draws from six years’ work by the Developing Inquiring Communities in Education Project (DICEP) to provide a range of practical, replicable methods for building collaborative communities, in which democratic principles of education may be realized. Recognizing that each classroom is unique in its makeup, its context, and its history, these seasoned teacher-researchers rely heavily on discourse, both spoken and written, to engage students in the active learning process. Their findings are striking and clear, and testify to the exciting potential that dialogic interaction and collaborative knowledge building have for the field of education. Key features of this book are: identification of appropriate research questions; real-life teaching strategies based on extensive hands-on experience in the field; and workable suggestions for facilitating inquiry-based learning and teaching.

The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology is a broad survey of linguistic anthropology, featuring contributions from prominent scholars in the field. Each chapter presents a brief historical summary of research in the field and discusses topics and issues of current concern to people doing research in linguistic anthropology. The handbook is organized into four parts – Language and Cultural Productions; Language Ideologies and Practices of Learning; Language and the Communication of Identities; and Language and Local/Global Power – and covers current topics of interest at the intersection of the two fields, while also contextualizing them within discussions of fieldwork practice. Featuring 30 contributions from leading scholars in the field, The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology is an essential overview for students and researchers interested in understanding core concepts and key issues in linguistic anthropology.

Communication skills are considered extremely important for the development, preservation, and transmission of culture to future generations, and incorporate the complicated relationship between language and culture. This book focuses on an analysis of personal narratives by Japanese pre-school children. The book also analyzes mother-child narratives and joint book-reading activities.