articulating the auditory imagination: when children talk about poetry they hear ‘rhythm in all...
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Articulating the auditory imagination:
when children talk about poetry they hear
‘rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere’Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Interpreting classroom
responses to poetry
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
The details outlined here are more fully outlined in papers published in English Teaching: Practice and Critique, available here:
http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php?author=true&id=673&p=1
Map
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Not understanding poetry - experience
Nature of poetry
Auditory imagination
Poetry in schools / curriculum
Pupil responses
Empirical research : Conversation Analysis
Fleur Adcock
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
It was rhythm that seduced me into liking poetry in the beginning: clearly identifiable rhythms at first, in my early childhood, when I fell for nursery rhymes and Sunday school hymns …
and then, in my teens, the more subtle rhythms of poets I was taught at school or discovered for myself.
(It’s sometimes hard to separate rhythm from tone, in its effects. I remember being transported, at about fourteen, by the poignancy of Blake’s line in The Book of Thel: ‘Art thou a Worm? Image of weakness, art thou but a Worm?’ I’d repeat it to myself until it seemed to be nothing but rhythm; but perhaps it was the tender, pitying tone that so appealed
to me. To talk of one element in isolation is always a little risky.)’
Preminger and Brogan
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetryDr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Two traditions of poetry:
1 ‘the referential, propositional, and mimetic aspect of language’
2 words as ‘pure sound form or visual form or both’
One tradition in schools?
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
the substantial realisation of poetry in the graphic mode delimits the nature of poetic encounter allowed to pupils in the classroom, with the consequence that the knowledge and experience substantiated only in the phonic mode is not available to them
T.S.Eliot: auditory imagination
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word…
Basil Bunting
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Do not let the people who set examinations kid you that you are any nearer to understanding a poem when you have parsed and analysed every sentence, scanned every line, looked up the words in the Oxford Dictionary and the allusions in a library of reference books. That sort of knowledge will make it harder for you to understand the poem because, when you listen to it, you will be distracted by a multitude of irrelevant scraps of knowledge. You will not hear the meaning, which is in the sound.
Liz Lochhead
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Liz Lochhead
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Men Talk (Rap)
WomenRabbit rabbit rabbit womenTattle and titterWomen prattleWomen waffle and witter
Men talk. Men Talk.
Women into Girl TalkAbout Women’s TroubleTrivia ’n’ Small talkThey yap and they babble
Men talk. Men Talk.
Women gossip Women giggleWomen niggle-niggle-niggleMen talk.
Women yatterWomen chatterWomen chew the fat, women spill the beansWomen aint been takin’The oh-so Good Advice in themWomen’s Magazines.
A Man Likes A Good Listener.
Oh yeahI like A Woman
Who likes me enoughNot to nitpickNot to nag andNot to interrupt ‘cause I call the treasonA woman with the Good GraceTo be struck dumbBy me Sweet Reason. Yes –
A Man Likes A Good ListenerA RealManLikes a Real Good Listener
Women yap yap yapVerbal Diarrhoea is a Female DiseaseWoman she spread she rumours round sheLike Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
OhBossy Women GossipGirlish Women GiggleWomen natter, women nagWomen niggle niggle niggle
Men talk.
MenThink First, Speak LaterMen talk.
Liz Lochhead
Poetry Matters: Interpreting classroom responses to heard poetry Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA
Wo:men (0.5) > rabbit rabbit rabbit < women ta:ttle and titter (.) .h women pr*attle women waffle and witter (0.7) .hh↑me::n talk: (0.5) .hh°↑me::n talk:°(0.7) >wo↑men< into girl talk! about women’s trouble(.) .hhtri:::via:ansmall talk they yap and they babble(.) .hhh ↓me::n talk:: (0.5) me::n talk:: wiiii↑men ↑↑>gossip women giggle women ↑>niggle,niggle,niggle!<<(.) men talk:.(.02) women ↑↑yatter(0.2) women (0.2) ↑chatter (0.2) women ↑chew the fat (0.2) women spill: the ↓beans .hhh wo↑men aint been takin the ↑↑>ohsogood advice .hh in<(.)↓them womEN’S MAGAZINES:: (0.5) .hh a man (.)↓likes:: (.) a (.) GOOD:: (.) LISTENER:. .hhh oh yeah .hh i ↑>like a woman who likes me enough >not to nitpick not to nag< (0.3) .hh ↑and not: to ↑INterrupt cos: i >↑call that treason< (.).hhh a ↓woman with ↑the (.)>ggood grace to be struck dumb (0.5) .hh by mah:::: ↑sweet reason .hh yeehhhremember (1.0) ((swallowing noise))=
Conversation Analysis
• representation of intonation, volume and pace• affords attention to poems as audio texts for analytic
purposes• renders children’s collaborative responses in
situated, social and public contexts of classrooms• representation of talk-in-interaction• appropriateness for scrutinising pupils’ responses to
poetry
Conversation Analysis Match of a verbally-oriented method to the
oral mode of poetry
>> can inform poetry pedagogy
The voiced performance of the poem as the first turn in each extended interaction
- by implication to regard the voice as a participant and as a likely origin of content and topics to which listeners might orientate
Douglas Barnes
• Language in the Secondary Classroom (Barnes et al, 1969).
• Exploratory talk• Differentiated attentiveness
An enquiry into the distinctive ‘pedagogical invitation’ (Segall, 2004) of any poem encountered in sound.
T1: differentiated attentiveness
2 Daniel on the (0.2) erm side where (yknow:) it begins (.) the third column down (you’ve got) him
sing si:ngs softly.
3 Teacher which bi:t’s that?
7 Teacher = this one here and he sort of sings it =
8 Daniel = sings it softly=
9 Teacher =sort ofsings it softly what sort of effe:ct do you
think that ha:s on the listener?
16 Jason erm in the last paragra:ph he-he sort of like erm he says like like all the sentence apar:t
from one jus one wor::d and he says one word sort of like s::low::: by himse:lf as if it’s it’s
in a new sentence sort of
17 Teacher perfect what’s that doing?
18 Jason it’s like emphasising it=
Douglas Barnes
Differentiated attentiveness
• Pupil A refers to where the ‘singing’ occurs - sensitivity to shift in the manner of performance.
• position of this contribution (first volunteered item) implies salience of this perception for pupil
• Pupil A elaboration (? ) that ‘the song sor:t of ge:ts people involved’ (Turn 15)
• Turn 16 - pupil locates word exemplifying manipulation of sound. Elongation of initial ‘s’ sound and ‘ow’ sound in ‘slow’ as if to embody the qualities of ‘slow’ in his utterance.
• illustrates awareness of variations of sound in the performance.
• understanding of function of variation: ‘it’s like emphasising it’.
Douglas Barnes
Differentiated attentiveness
Pupils can attribute meaning to the manipulation of sound in response to heard poems, taking an interest in the ‘slowness’ of the performance at times to reveal interpretations of the mode of presentation within the frame of their own knowledge.
Their attention has been directed by sound: ‘differentiated attentiveness’ is a matter of learning, not just control.
T2: public language / pedagogic device
10 Joe = we:ll (0.2) theyyerr basically saying men are borrri:ng=
11 Mark =PFFYEAHH! =
12 Joe =Men just talk=
13 Ben =.men DO: ju:st ta:lk…
14 Joe They’re li:ke men just ta:lk about no:thing in parti[cular.
15 Graham and ???
[hhcchiccuhnff!
16 ??? and then =
17 Mark = Mme:n ta:lk =
18 Teacher = George?
19 Mark Mme:n ta:lk
20 George Oh well in a wayyy (0:2) whoe:ver it is wrote the um (.) poem is being er-kind of negative about men (.) cos they’re saying (.) wo:men a:re >talkative< and men are boring.
Basil Bernstein
the pedagogic device (1996, p. 39)
the how of pedagogic discourse - more interest in the “relay” of pedagogy than information itself.
public language (1958/2010)
“social relationship where meaning is implicit, where what is not said, when it is not said, and paradoxically, how it is not said, form strategic orienting cues”.
linguistic codes
Bernstein’s codes
restricted code “ritualistic modes of communication”, precludes signalling of individual difference other than “through variations in extra-verbal signals”, emphasis on “here and now” (Rosen 1974, p. 5), context-bound and tending to the particular.
elaborated code - prediction less possible at a syntactic level, requiring “its members to select from their linguistic resources a verbal arrangement which closely fits its referents”.
• universalistic and context-free, aiming at meaning for all, creating condensed symbols, and tending towards rationality. Such a code is favoured in the pedagogic device.
Restricted?
10 Joe = we:ll (0.2) theyyerr basically saying men are borrri:ng=
11 Mark =PFFYEAHH! =
12 Joe =Men just talk=
13 Ben =.men DO: ju:st ta:lk…
14 Joe They’re li:ke men just ta:lk about no:thing in parti[cular.
15 Graham and ???
[hhcchiccuhnff!
16 ??? and then =
17 Mark = Mme:n ta:lk =
18 Teacher = George?
19 Mark Mme:n ta:lk
20 George Oh well in a wayyy (0:2) whoe:ver it is wrote the um (.) poem is being er-kind of negative about men (.) cos they’re saying (.) wo:men a:re >talkative< and men are boring.
Restricted? Necessary.
The transcript: appears pupil is operating within a restricted code:• his response, in repeating exactly a phrase from Lochhead’s
poem, has a ritualistic character;• he appears to communicate within limited syntactic options;• he does not enter into the extended verbal signalling associated
with the elaborated code;• his contribution is context-bound, directly related to the heard
poem and the immediate discussion;• his contribution may assume that his peers understand his
intent due to the shared context
Articulating the auditory imagination:
when children talk about poetry they hear
‘rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere’Dr John Gordon, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, UEA