Ways With Words
The author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities by tracing the children’s language development. Their ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as they do from the pattern of the townspeople, the mainstream blacks, and whites who hold power in the region’s schools and workplaces.
The author raises fundamental concerns regarding the nature of language development, the consequences of literacy on spoken language habits, and the roots of communication problems in schools and workplaces by combining the talents of ethnographers, social historians, and teachers.
Name – Shirley Brice Heath
University – Stanford University
Place – California
Brief Note
Ways with Words is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two villages in the south-eastern United States that are only a few miles apart. ‘Roadville’ is a white working-class neighborhood whose families have been immersed in the life of textile mills for decades; ‘Trackton’ is an African-American working-class community whose elder generations grew up cultivating the land but whose current members work in the mills.
