LINGUIST List 17.575

Tue Feb 21 2006

Books: Applied Ling/Socioling: Smith, Whitmore

Editor for this issue: Megan Zdrojkowski <meganlinguistlist.org>

Directory         1.    Elizabeth Gangeri, Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and Juvenile Court Communities: Smith, Whitmore
Message 1: Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and Juvenile Court Communities: Smith, Whitmore
Date: 31-Jan-2006
From: Elizabeth Gangeri <Elizabeth.Gangerierlbaum.com>
Subject: Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and Juvenile Court Communities: Smith, Whitmore


Title: Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School, and
Juvenile Court Communities Published: 2006 Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
                http://www.erlbaum.com/

Author: Debra Smith, Northeastern State University Author: Kathryn F. Whitmore, University of Iowa Hardback: ISBN: 080585598X Pages: 224 Price: U.S. $ 69.95
Paperback: ISBN: 0805855998 Pages: 224 Price: U.S. $ 24.50
Abstract:

The goal of this book is to encourage educators and researchers tounderstand the complexities of adolescent gang members' lives in order torethink their assumptions about these students in school. The particularobjective is to situate four gang members as literate, caring students fromloving families whose identities and literacy keep them on the margins ofschool. The research described in this book suggests that advocacy is aparticularly effective form of critical ethnography. Smith and Whitmoreargue that until schools, as communities of practice, enable children andadolescents to retain identities from the communities in which they arefull community members, frightening numbers of students are destined to fail.

The stories of four Mexican American male adolescents, who were activemembers of a gang and Smith's students in an alternative high schoolprogram, portray the complicated, multiple worlds in which these boys live.As sons and teenage parents they live in a family community; as CRIPmembers they live in a gang community; as "at risk" students, drop-outs,and graduates they live in a school community, and as a result of theirillegal activities they live in the juvenile court community. The authorstheorize about the boys' literacy in each of their communities. Literacy isviewed as ideological, related to power, and embedded in a socioculturalcontext. Vivid examples of conversation, art, tagging, rap, poetry, andother language and literacy events bring the narratives to life in figuresand photographs in all the chapters. Readers will find this book engagingand readable, yet thought provoking and challenging.

Audiences for "Literacy and Advocacy in Adolescent Family, Gang, School,and Juvenile Court Communities" include education researchers,professionals, and students in the areas of middle/high school education,at-risk adolescent psychology, and alternative communityprograms--specifically those interested in literacy education,sociocultural theory, and popular culture.

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics                             Applied Linguistics                             Sociolinguistics
Written In: English (eng )

See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=18182


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