AMERICAN SCHOOL LANGUAGE

Culturally Patterned Conflicts In a Suburban High School

by Hervé Varenne

with a foreword by George Spindler

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD (by George Spindler). . . . . . . . . . . xi

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

NOTE ON SYMBOLIC CONVENTIONS. . . . . . . . . .          xviii

 

PROLOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

• High School: Native Knowledge and Uncertainty, 2
• The Americanness of Sheffield High School, 6
• The Making of an Ethnographical Monograph, 8

 

PART ONE.
INTRODUCTION

1. ACTION, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC . . . . . . . . 15

• Saying and Doing, 17
• The Ordering of the Saying, 19
• The School's Language, 23
• The School's Rhetoric, 27
• An Analytic Vocabulary, 31
• A Note on the Analytic Process, 34
• An Ethnography of American Rhetorical Performances, 36

2. THE TRADITIONAL TELLING OF THE SCHOOL . . . . 41

• The Town, 41
• The School and its People, 45
• Suburban School and Mass Society, 50
• Doing Conservatism, 54

 

PART TWO.
TOWARDS THE SIGNIFIED SCHOOL:
INSTRUCTORS INSTRUCTING

3. NAMING THE SCHOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

• Beyond Ethology, 62
• Production, 68
• An Analytical Note, 71

4. TEACHING AS JOB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

• Tenure and Salary, 73
• The Evaluation of Teaching, 79
• Good and Bad Teachers, 88
• Ideal and Real Behavior, 92
• The Quality of Teaching, 95
• The Image of Teaching, 100
• Image Building, 107

5. THE LOGIC OF REWARDING . . . . . . . . . . . 112

• A Brief Retrospective on the Analytical Process, 112
• The Logic of Monetary Rewards, 114
• Naming the Rainbow: Some Theoretical Comments on the Process of Discovering Significant Rhetorical Units, 120
• The Rhetoric in Use: Shared Values, Paradoxes and Dilemmas, 124

 

PART THREE.
THE SIGNIFIED SCHOOL

6. TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS . . . . . . . . . 132

• The Principal Talks, 132
• Collectivization and Personalization, 141
• The Authority of the Principal, 148

7. IMAGES OF THE LABOR OF THE SCHOOL . . . . . . 154

• The Structure of Evaluation, 154
• The Production of Statements about Structure, 160
• A Variety of Discourses, 162
• The Gift of the Schol, 165

8. FRIENDS AND BUREAUCRATS . . . . . . . . . . . 172

• A Teacher and his Friends, 172
• The Place and Nature of Administrative Discourse, 183
• Manipulation, 189

9. THE VOCABULARY OF INTERACTION BETWEEN ADMINISTRATORS AND TEACHERS   . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

• Morphology, 193
• Syntax, 197
• An Analysis of Text, 203                        

 

LIVING THE SIGNIFIED SCHOOL:   STUDENTS  WITH STUDENTS

10. THE STUDENTS AND THEIR WORLD . . . . . . . . 213

• The Students as Agents, 213
• The School Day, 219
• The School as Community, 221
• "You Gotta Know the School," 224
• The World the Teachers Make for the Students, 228
• The World the Students Make for Themselves, 232

11. THE STUDENTS' PLAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

• /Kliks/, 236
• Jocks and Freaks: An Overview, 246
• The Experiential Basis, 251
• The Senior Lounge: A Case Study, 257
• Jocks and Freaks: Organization and Rhetoric, 261
• I, We and They, 266
• The Semiotic Reality of Cliques, 270

 

PART FIVE.
THE STRUCTURING OF CONFLICT

12. THE CASE OF INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION . . . 279

• Behavior as Dramatistic Expansion, 279
• Individualized Instruction, 283
• The Place of Disagreement in Rhetoric, 293

13. TEACHERS AND STUDENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

• "Do you know John?," 296
• The "Senior Projects," 303
• Evaluation and Education, 312
• Discipline and Individualization, 317

14. THE EXPERIENTIAL CORRELATIVES OF RHETORICAL

     INDIVIDUALIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

• The Process of Student Identification, 326
• Indeterminacy and Arbitrariness, 331
• Friendship and Fairness, 334
• Friendship as Fairness, Fairness as Friendship, 344
• Rhetoric and Existential Dilemma, 347

PART SIX.
CONCLUSION

15 FROM RHETORIC TO CULTURE . . . . . . . . . . 353

• What We Have Done, 353
• Writing the Results of a Structural Analysis, 359
• From /I/ to 'Individualism', 366
• From American Rhetoric to American Culture, 371

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

INDEX OF PARTICIPANTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388

INDEX OF TEXTS    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

INDEX OF AUTHORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

INDEX OF SUBJECTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

 

April 2002

Copyright 1983 by Irvington Publishers. Inc. All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-8290-1337-7 ISBN 0-8290-1338-5 (pbk.) Printed in the United States of America

in Teachers College Library:

CALL #       LC5133.N4 V37 1983.
 AUTHOR       Varenne, Herve, 1948-
 TITLE        American school language : culturally patterned conflicts in a
                suburban high school / by Herve Varenne ; with a foreword by
                George Spindler.
 IMPRINT      New York, N.Y. : Irvington Publishers, c1983.
 DESCRIPT     xix, 408 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
 BIBLIOG.     Bibliography: p. [377]-387.
 NOTE         Includes indexes.