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A father, a son, and a storybook: a case study of discourse during storybook reading
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A father, a son, and a storybook: a case study of discourse during storybook reading
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A FATHER, A SON, AND A STORYBOOK:
A CASE STUDY OF DISCOURSE DURING STORYBOOK READING
by
Anita Taylor Webb
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTORATE OF EDUCATION
May 2007
Copyright 2007 Anita Taylor Webb
ii
Acknowledgments
Writing this dissertation was a life-changing event that took place during a time
when everything in my life was changing. I was amazed by the support that was
given to me from fellow graduate students, professors, advisors, friends, and
family during this experience. When the Oscars are presented, the winners are
quick to thank the people who are closest to them emotionally and I will start
with thanking those people first too. At the top of the list is my husband, Robert
Webb. When I got the AA degree, I said that I was through with school, when I
went back for a BA degree he said that I would never be through with school. He
has always been at my side to care for me and encourage me. I must also
acknowledge my parents, Gene and Mazelle Taylor, and their contribution to my
college education; they both wanted me to have a college education. My father
finished seventh grade and my mother finished ninth grade. I was the first in my
family to finish high school and to attend college. My father, at the end of his
life, encouraged me to finish what I started with the doctorate degree and my
mother asked everyday until the end of her days, “Did you get any writing done
today?” My dad always read to me and it mattered that he did; it influenced the
topic for this dissertation about a father reading to his child.
Cecilia Huckestein and Gloria Zappaterreno, two of my fellow graduate
students are dear to my heart for their continued support while we were taking
courses and even after they were graduated. My dearest friend and steady
confidant for many years, Karen Vinje, who was always ready with a word of
iii
encouragement and her words were cherished. Another valuable friend who held
me up when I was down was Beverly Franco, who helped make sense of Rossier
School of Education at a time of many changes. A group of people who prayed
with me and prayed for me throughout the doctoral program was my pastor, Dr.
Beverly Muffin and our Bible study class.
Now to acknowledge the professional support and direction that made the
completion of the doctorate degree possible. My dissertation committee included
three outstanding professors of education. I give thanks to Dr. Gigi Regusa,
Dissertation Committee Chair, who gave generously of her time and knowledge
to guide me in the writing of this dissertation. More than once, we were at her
desk editing until late at night. I was fortunate to have Dr. David Yaden,
Dissertation Committee Member, as my advisor and professor during my
doctoral program. His teaching inspired my dissertation and his insight directed
my study. Dr. Eugenia Mora-Flores, Dissertation Committee Member, was
gracious in her support for my dissertation. My gratitude goes to each of these
people. Finally, I am grateful for the guidance from the Doctoral Support Center
and Nadine Singh, my Ed.D Program Advisor.
iv
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments.................................................................................................ii
List of Tables .......................................................................................................vi
Abstract ...............................................................................................................vii
Chapter 1. Introduction to the Study...............................................................0
Problem Statement..................................................................................0
Background of the Study ........................................................................7
Significance of the Study........................................................................9
Exploratory Questions ..........................................................................10
Theoretical Framework.........................................................................11
Definition of Terms ..............................................................................12
Organization of the Study.....................................................................13
Chapter 2. Review of the Literature..............................................................15
Documentation......................................................................................17
Literature Review .................................................................................18
Storybook Reading ........................................................................18
Purposes for Storybook Reading ...................................................20
Practices for Storybook Reading ...................................................26
Discourse and Storybook Reading ................................................32
Developmental Parameters of Storybook Reading........................47
Children’s Literature Genres and Storybook.................................55
Family Literacy and Storybook Reading.......................................65
Participants in Storybook Reading ................................................73
The Storybook Debate...................................................................85
Conclusions...........................................................................................88
Chapter 3. Research Methodology ...............................................................89
The Researcher .....................................................................................93
Participants ...........................................................................................95
Design...................................................................................................96
Procedures.............................................................................................98
Instrumentation..............................................................................98
Figure 1: Concordance ................................................................100
Data Collection............................................................................111
Validity and Reliability ...............................................................114
Data Analysis...............................................................................116
Chapter 4. Findings and Analysis...............................................................122
Findings ..............................................................................................122
Descriptive Interaction Patterns during Storybook Reading .......124
v
Decontextual Interaction Patterns during Storybook Reading ....142
Gender Influences during Storybook Reading ............................157
Genre Influences during Storybook Reading ..............................173
Control Patterns during Father-son Storybook Reading .............183
Summary.............................................................................................205
Chapter 5. Discussion .................................................................................209
Implications for Further Research ......................................................209
Implications for Practitioners .............................................................215
Recommendations for Further Research ............................................219
Conclusion ..........................................................................................224
References.........................................................................................................226
Appendices........................................................................................................249
Appendix A: Control Patterns Examples ...........................................249
Appendix B: Key to Coding Symbols and Notations ........................250
vi
List of Tables
Table 1: Control Directions of Message Types ..........................................41
Table 2: Text Stats Summary from Amazon.com Website Data..............103
Table 3: Characteristics of Storybook Texts in This Study ......................104
Table 4: Characteristics of Storybook Text in This Study........................105
Table 5: Summary of Conversation/Relationship Control Patterns..........196
Table 6: Summary of Functions of Language Utterances Frequencies ....198
Table 7: Summary of Speaking Turns Frequencies..................................200
Table 8: Summary of Question Style Frequencies ...................................202
Table 9: Summary of Answer Style Frequencies .....................................204
Table 10: Pronoun Matrix..........................................................................210
vii
Abstract
Conversations between a father and his four-year-old son during their storybook
reading sessions were audiotape recorded by the father. The sessions were
recorded in the family home, at the family’s convenience, over a six-week time
span in 1995. The purpose for this study was to examine the nature of
interactions between a father and his son during initial and subsequent readings
of different storybook genres. Of interest was the role gender and genre played in
storybook reading, the nature of decontextual interaction patterns, and the role
adult power played in this situated literacy. Conversation analysis systems by
Grice (1989), Halliday (1975), Millar and Rogers (1976), Sacks, Schegloff, and
Jefferson (1974), and Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson (1967) were used. This
case study provided evidence that gender, genre, repeated book reading, and
adult power were intricately related to this dyads communication patterns in
contextual and decontextual literacy experiences.
Chapter 1
Introduction to the Study
Theodore Roosevelt said, “Nobody cares how much you know, until they
know how much you care.” The truth of that bears out in most relationships but
maybe more so in education. Caring seems to be a particularly important aspect
of storybook reading between parents and their children. Allor and McCathren
(2003) and Bus (2003) found that parent-child attachment relationships strongly
influenced their interpersonal relationships during storybook reading. Others
wrote that interpersonal relationships are enhanced by the inherent joint attention
of parents and children during storybook reading (Snow & Ninio, 1986;
Tomasello & Farrar, 1986). Storybook reading is a socially constructed activity
that relies on adult-child interpersonal and relational interaction (Sulzby & Teale,
1991). The social context of communication in parent-child relationships is
central to the social-construction hypothesis that claims book reading is an
interactive, socially created activity (Sulzby & Teale, 1991) and Vygotsky's
(1978) socio-historical theory, which as reported in Pellegrini (2002), is the
central focus for emergent literacy.
Problem Statement
The research about storybook reading does not present a discrete study
focused on father-son discourse in terms of how the communication in their
storybook reading is experienced; consequently, mother and child or female
teacher and child(ren) research dominates the literature. This study looked into
1
the communication between a father and his son during storybook reading, an
area of study which has had limited published research.
The research by Keleman, Callanan, Casler, and Perez-Granados (2005),
which reported on conversations between parents and their preschool children,
focused on the kinds of answers parents gave to different types of questions
asked by their preschoolers. The study was based on extant data from two
different but related previous studies with a similar inquiry; a large study that
included forty-eight Mexican families and a case study of one father and his
preschool child. They questioned when parents provided teleological (the
purpose for the phenomena), causal (the cause-effect of phenomena), and
ambiguous (either no answer or neither teleological nor causal) answers in
response to five categories of questions. The categories with representative
examples of types of questions are: (1) Biological—“Why are there black kids?”
(2) Non-living natural—“Why is the sun hot?” (3) Artifact—“What are seatbelts
for?” (4) The behavior of others—“Why is my brother bad?” (5) The child’s own
behavior—“Why can’t I sleep with you guys?” (pp. 254-255). They found that
natural phenomena, of both biological and non-biological, were the primary
categories of questions asked by the children. Furthermore, they found that
ambiguous questions (Why does X occur? which could be answered with either a
causal or a teleological response) “substantially exceed” unambiguous questions
of both causal (How does X occur) and teleological (What is X for?) kinds (p.
257).
2
Of particular interest for this dissertation, was the second data set
Keleman et al. (2005) examined for the questions and answers in conversations
between a father and his preschool son, Abe, from age three to age five. The
father recorded the conversations for the specific purpose of research on
questions and answers between himself and his child. The child was only
recorded in his home and generally during collaborative activities such as
dinnertime (there was no indication that storybook reading was among their
activities) while maintaining a stationary situation that allowed for tape
recording. The Abe conversations showed similar results when the
question/answer paired utterances were compared to the larger study of the forty-
eight families. The father was more likely to give causal answers to questions
than teleological answers even though Keleman et al. (2005) concluded that
children seem to have a natural intrinsic orientation toward teleological bias, i.e.,
the child is interested in the purpose for all kinds of things. To illustrate Keleman
et al. provided the following example: A question about why rocks are pointy
could be explained in terms of a physical causal action that results from “stuff
piled up” over many, many years or a teleological cause for the purpose of
preventing animals from sitting on rocks and smashing them (p. 252).
Laminack (1990) did a retrospective analysis of himself and his preschool
age son Zackary (from 1.4 to 4.3 years of age). The article discussed Zackary’s
experiences with emergent literacy and his own sense of discovery in
understanding the emerging reading skill of his son. Laminack identified the
3
functional purposes of Zackary’s use of language using Halliday’s (1973)
functions of language as a sorting mechanism (discussed in Chapter 2 of this
paper). While he did focus on emergent literacy and father-son conversations, he
did not include storybook reading but rather he reported on natural conversations
in everyday experiences. He explained his son’s “reading” of two different sets
of commercial logos. One example was the MasterCard logo and the North
American Van Lines logo, each of which had a Venn diagram like image. The
other two logos were the blue Ford logo and blue Roses logo; which each had an
oval shaped image. In each case, Zachary “read” the logo adding meaning to the
symbols and not relying on their text. The title of the article, “Possibilities,
Daddy, I think it says possibilities” captures the nature of Zachary’s reading the
logo on the moving van as it related to the slogan in an advertisement associated
with MasterCard. The child used the cue he understood from a commercial about
MasterCard for making meaning of the images he encountered in his
environment.
A number of studies have advanced research on programs to include
fathers in literacy activities with their children, for example, Stile and Ortiz
(1999) reported on sixty fathers in their Project DADS program. The program
sought to involve fathers with their young children (ages three to eight) who were
considered at-risk or exceptional in some way. The plan of the program was to
increase paternal engagement in their children’s lives in response to a perceived
lack of father-child literacy interactions perhaps because the predominant focus
4
was mother-child relationships. They specifically included four areas of
involvement. (1) Early social interaction (infant reciprocal play—imitating
parental actions such as smiling, naming objects, etc.); (2) reading books (from
as early as a few month of age—rhyming, board books, picture book, etc.); (3)
incidental preliteracy activities (attending to environmental print—billboards,
television, signs, etc.), and (4) school involvement (school related home
activities—homework, lesson extensions, field trips, etc.). The intervention did
include reading books; however, the references were in general terms without
specific attention to father-son storybook reading or conversations during
storybook reading events.
Fathers Reading Every Day (FRED), another reading program for father-
child participation in reading with young children was discussed with a focus on
the amount of time spent reading storybooks by Green (2002). This program,
developed by Texas Cooperative Extension, operated on the assumption that
father-child reading on a daily basis contributed positively to the child’s success
in school. The program encouraged reading together for fifteen minutes per day
during the first two weeks and at least thirty minutes during the second two
weeks. Parents registered for the program and took a pre-survey that requested
information about the father-child relationship, father-child time together, father
school involvement, and the reading efforts of his child or children. FRED
provides a prepackaged set of materials to the fathers which contained three
items: a booklist of recommended books for reading together, a reading log,
5
suggestions for how to read aloud (but no specific instruction was conducted),
and an introduction to the FRED program was presented. A literacy celebration
for the participants was hosted by FRED to conclude the four-week program.
Reading logs were turned in and exit surveys were completed as part of the
celebration activities. Green noted that the FRED program was piloted in more
than forty-five counties in Texas.
Anderson, Anderson, Lynch, and Shapiro (2004) reported on effects of
gender and genre as those two factors influenced shared book reading contrasting
mother-child and father-child behaviors. The participants were twenty-five
parents and their four-year-olds (seven mother-daughter, five mother-son, eight
father-daughter, and five father-son pairs). The reading pairs were recruited from
preschool families, who spoke English and read books in English at home for this
study; although, it is noteworthy that ten of the participating families spoke
English as a second language, (first languages were Swedish, Slovene, Danish,
German, French, Cantonese, and Mandarin). The authors provided the following
information regarding the texts used in their study.
Four high quality children’s books—Mr. McMouse and Swimmy by
Leo Lionnni (1992; 1963), A New Butterfly by Pamela Hickman and
Heather Collins (1997) and Halloween by Gail Gibbins (1984) were
chosen by the researchers in consultation with an expert in children’s
literature (p.6).
Anderson et al. (2004) sought to answer three research questions through
their study. The research questions directing the study asked if there were
differences among the interactions between the four adult-child pairs related to
6
gender difference or genre difference. Data were collected through
questionnaires following reading events that consisted of two reading events
followed by two additional reading events several weeks apart. They reported
that fathers and mothers’ reading behaviors did vary with genre. These
researchers found that parents responded differently to their children based on
gender and parents interactions varied with the genre of books read to their
children. Two distinctions found through this study were (1) generally, fathers
were more interactive than mothers were during book reading and (2) mothers
elaborated more (twice as much) when reading narrative texts to boys
Schwartz (2004) also investigated differences in the interaction between
mother-child and father-child dyads during story reading. The participants in her
study were twenty-seven mother-child dyads and thirty-six father-child dyads;
the children were ages thirteen to forty-six months (thirty boys, thirty-three girls).
Families were predominately white, married, middle socio-economical status,
and included only one child. The study was conducted over three years beginning
in 1997. Graduate students served as observers of parent-child dyads among their
acquaintances. A graduate student met informally in the family’s home before
beginning the formal sessions to observe the parent-child reading behaviors. The
observers had training in observation procedures, recording observations,
transcription conventions, and video recording equipment. Transcripts were
coded and there was a range from eighty to ninety percent inter-observer
reliability.
7
There were some differences found between the dyads. Schwartz wrote
that less stimulating strategies were used by mothers and fathers when reading to
their sons. She also found that fathers relied on “more literal strategies with less
potential for stimulating dialogue” (p. 111) between the father and the child.
Terms used to do searches for literature included: (1) emergent literacy +
father, (2) storybook reading + father, (3) father reading, (4) family literacy +
father, (5) parent-son reading, (6) fatherhood + literacy, and variants. Searches
were conducted using ProQuest, Expanded Academic ASAP, PsychARTICLE,
PsychINFO, FirstSearch, ERIC, JSTOR, A9, and Google Scholar. Hand searches
in journals and professional publications for the social sciences included the
areas of reading, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, communication, sociology,
and education.
Background of the Study
In spite of the growing body of literature on storybook reading, father-son
storybook reading studies were lacking. This study stems from a curiosity about
the interpersonal communication between a father and his son during their
storybook reading experiences. Knowledge that there were differences between
father-child and mother-child dyads existed (Crain-Thoreson, Dahlin, & Powel,
2001; Schwartz, 2004; Stile & Ortiz, 1999). This study looked at patterns of
storybook reading behaviors by a father-son dyad without making comparisons
to other adult-child readers (i.e., women, unrelated adult, female, or other male
family members not the child’s father). Because the debate continues regarding
8
how storybook reading contributes to emergent literacy (Bus, van IJzendoorn, &
Pellegrini, 1995; Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994), it was useful to persist in the
exploration of the questions related to its practices. Scarborough & Dobrich
found that storybook reading had a low correlation with emergent literacy skills.
Bus et al., in a follow up study, found that positive effects resulted from
storybook reading on emergent literacy skills. Examining the communication
between one father and son’s verbal interactions provided additional insight into
emergent literacy and the storybook reading debate with regard to boys and their
early literacy accomplishments.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose for this dissertation was to study communicative behaviors
between a father and his son during their six weeks of repeated storybook
reading. Observation was focused on at least two types of communication that
demonstrated purposes for and management of conversational interactions. One
kind of observation was at the level of individual utterances identified as, for
example, interpersonal, instructional, or regulative statements (Halliday, 1975;
1978). Another type of observation was at the conversation level of turn-taking
(McLaughlin, 1984; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 2001).
Storybook reading between a father and son for the purposes of this study was
situated in the emergent literacy area of language and learning; therefore, the
theories of both Halliday (social functions of language) and Vygotsky (zone of
proximal development) were relative to understanding the process of literacy
9
learning. Wells (1999) established a theoretical framework for his work on
dialogic reading based on the works of both Halliday and Vygotsky.
Significance of the Study
Parents are particularly interested in providing educational experiences
for their preschool children to ensure they start schooling ready and eager to
learn (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001). This study followed one father and
his son through their experiences to show ways they talked about storybooks and
ways they talked with each other during six weeks of storybook reading.
Storybook reading is a means to what Pellegrini (2002) called literate language
(p. 55). He defined it as a kind of language used by teachers in standard
classroom discussions of literacy topics. He explained that literate language is
necessary for a students’ success even at the earliest stages of formal education, a
reason for learning the language of literacy before beginning school. Boys seem
to struggle more with literacy and language and they are more resistant to
learning through storybook reading activities (Hengen, 2004).
Gender and genre appear to be differentiated by both male and female
children and by adults in terms of a male preference for pragmatic purposes to
read and of a female preference for leisure purposes to read. (Millard, 1997) used
a questionnaire to research topics such as “Who reads most in the family?”,
“What kinds of books do you enjoy most?", and “Can you remember any of your
first books?” Her study included two hundred fifty-five British schoolchildren
(one hundred twenty-one boys and one hundred thirty-four girls) to understand
10
differences in boys and girls’ literacy habits and interests. Both boys and girls
reported female member of their households were seen as the person who read
the most. Children who answered that their father was the family member who
read the most were about half as many as children who answered that their
mothers read the most. When boys were asked in follow-up interviews about
what their fathers read, Millard reported that the purpose was practical (to find
specific information) rather than reading for pleasure (a leisure activity). Mothers
were reported to read more, read for pleasure, and to be the parent who helped
with schoolwork.
Exploratory Questions
This study examined questions about storybook reading between an
emergent-literacy level child and his father. Audio-recorded sessions between
them were taped by the father in the family home at the family’s convenience.
Questions for investigation included:
1. What was the nature of interaction during authentic storybook reading
experiences between a father and his son in initial and subsequent
readings of storybooks?
2. What was the nature of decontextual interaction patterns during storybook
reading for preschoolers?
3. What role did gender play in storybook reading during early childhood?
4. What role did genre play in storybook reading between a father and son
during early childhood?
11
5. What role did adult power play in the kinds of answers that a child
provided during storybook reading events?
Theoretical Framework
Barton, Hamilton, and Ivanic (2000) explained that a social theory of
literacy has both practices and events. They wrote that the starting place for this
theoretical framework is the recognition that “literacy is a social practice” (p. 7);
a theory which provides the basis for their discussion of situated literacies, e.g.,
situated in a family home (Pitt, 2000). This research is premised on the
assumption that storybook reading is a situated literacy.
Situated literacy, associated with social theory of literacy, according to
Tusting, Ivanic, and Wilson (2000), lends itself to qualitative study of small-scale
research in space and time as it compliments/contrasts with text and its practices
and events that are observable. This case study of father-son storybook reading
events and practices occurred in a socially specific setting for the purpose of
identifying individual characteristics of discourse which yielded relevant
information. Tusting et al. (2000) advocated that elaboration on current research
in literacy worthy of study should include “relationships between texts, literacy,
and social practices” (p. 215) and seek to explain (1) the motivation for actions;
(2) how sub-sets of literacy fit into the broader realm of literacy; and, (3) how
discourse and text are interrelated aspects of literacy.
There is an assumption according to McNaughton (2006) that based on
socio-cultural theory, learning may take various paths, and that diversity comes
12
from both social and cultural factors in the learners’ community. The family in
this case study can be examined as part of situated literacies per the definition of
Barton and Hamilton (2000), who categorized literacy according to discourse
communities that are situated in different domains with a family home being
distinct but certainly not inseparable from neighborhood or community.
Yaden, Rowe, and MacGillivray (2000) explained that the theoretical
framework for emergent literacy was at a crossroad and they called for
researchers to declare how their study advances the understanding of this area of
inquiry. They suggested that theoretical connections between socio-cognitive and
socio-cultural aspects of storybook reading were important to consider. Stone
(2004) wrote that a socio-cultural approach generally assessed learning based on
“wholistic [sic] patterns of activity rather than on discrete skills” (p. 16); while
discrete elements were examined, the whole of the storybook reading situation
that includes practices and events were included in the study.
Definition of Terms
Many researchers use the term storybook reading (Allor & McCathren,
2003; Sulzby, 1985; Taylor & Strickland, 1986; Yaden, Smolkin, & Conlon,
1989). Other similar terms for storybook reading are included in the emergent
literacy literature. The commonality among the terms is at least one literate
person (an adult or older child), one preliterate person (a child), , and a book
(genre and age specific for a child, e.g., storybook, concept book, or ABC book).
The participants are not adults reading storybooks to adults; although children
13
reading or play reading stroybooks to one another is not unusual. A distinction
was made between reading books to children and sharing the reading of books
with children. These categories have considerable overlap and are not mutually
exclusive.
Book sharing (van Kleeck, 2004), joint-book reading (Aram & Biron,
2004; Perry, Nordby, & VanderKamp, 2004), and shared reading (Anderson et
al., 2004; Ezell & Justice, 2005) imply that children help or assist in the telling of
a story as part of using storybooks in literacy events. Picture book reading
(Pantaleo, 2004), parent-child or adult-child reading (Huebner & Meltzoff,
2005), in-home/at-home reading, (Cook-Cottone, 2004), or lap reading (Lamme,
Sabis-Burns, & Gould, 2004) include experiences that may be performances of
oral reading in which the child or children are audience to the reader rather than
participants in the reading.
Organization of the Study
Chapter 1 of the study presented the introduction, the statement of the
problem, the background for the study, the purpose for the study, the significance
of the study, the questions to be answered, the theoretical framework, and
definitions of terms.
Chapter 2 provided a reviewed the of relevant literature. It addressed the
following topics: Storybook reading—purposes for storybook reading, practices
of storybook reading; discourse and storybook reading, developmental
parameters of storybook reading, children’s literature and storybook reading,
14
family literacy and storybook reading, participants in storybook reading; and
concluded with the storybook debate.
Chapter 3 presented the methodology used in the study, including the
researcher’s reasons for interest in the study and relevant background; the
participants in the study; the selection process and rationale; the research design;
and the procedures used.
Chapter 4 presented the findings and analysis of the dissertation research.
Chapter 5 presented a discussion of this study with implications for future
research, implications for practice, and recommendations.
15
Chapter 2
Review of the Literature
Storybook reading is typically a collaborative activity between an adult
and a pre-school-age child; however, preschool children may be independently
involved with a storybook and simulate reading or may playact reading together
or with others. Much of the study of storybook reading centers on either a mother
and her child reading at home or a teacher and several students during storybook
reading experiences in classroom settings. Pellegrini (2002) wrote that there were
extensive studies in these areas of storybook reading and research needed to
move beyond those interests. Approximately three decades of storybook reading
studies exist, but as van Kleeck (2003) wrote, there was more to learn about other
aspects. She specifically cited the need for study of other kinds of interactions
between participants, the kinds of materials for storybook reading, and the means
of assessment used for storybook reading. Furthermore, Teale (2003) stated that
by observing different children, a better understanding of the individual
differences between children can be discerned and a better understanding of the
complex nature of the developmental process can be gained. Father-son as
participants in storybook reading was within the parameters of suggested studies.
There is a conflict as to how important storybook reading is and how
storybook reading is important. Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) conducted a
meta-analysis of thirty-one studies, representing both qualitative and quantitative
16
methods, on storybook reading. They learned that storybook reading may have
less benefit than was taken for granted based on the national promotion for
reading to young children at home before beginning school. A Nation at Risk
(1983) was an open letter to the American people from the National Commission
on Excellence in Education. They wrote that reading to children was among the
most important activities parents could do to prepare their children for school.
Bus et al. (1995) responded to Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) the
following year with their findings from their meta-analysis of twenty-nine
studies. Their concluding remarks stated that storybook reading was beneficial
for emergent literacy. There appears to be a continuum from positive to negative
effects for storybook reading based on many factors. Some of those factors were
identified in the literature. (1) The style of the adult reading (Whitehurst &
Lonigan, 2002), (2) parent educational level (Reese, Cox, Harte, & McAnally,
2003), (3) family socioeconomic status (Aram & Biron, 2004; Aram & Levin,
2002), (4) cultural identity (Gill & Smith, 2005), (5) ownership of books and
library cards (Lamme et al., 2004), (6) parent or child wellness (Roberts &
Burchinal, 2002), and (7) “(dis)abilities” of the child (Scarborough, 2002).
The purpose for this literature review was to document the current
understanding of storybook reading as a unique form of emergent literacy. The
literature review directed attention toward the study of father-son conversations
during storybook reading.
17
Documentation
This study primarily explored the discourse between a father and his four-
year-old son but also his two-year-old son who was occasionally included during
storybook reading, an area of study with limited documentation. As noted earlier
in this document, Laminack (1990) did a retrospective analysis of himself and his
son’s experiences with emergent literacy in the form of journal entries. Stile and
Ortiz (1999) reported on sixty fathers in their PROJECT DAD program for
getting fathers involved with their children’s early literacy that included book
reading. Crain-Thoreson et al. (2001) reported on father-child dyads as compared
to mother-child dyads in three contexts including book reading. Anderson et al.
(2004) reported on effects of gender and genre as those two factors influenced
shared book reading, again contrasting mother-child, and father-child behaviors.
There are studies that include preschool boys and early literacy (Froschl &
Sprung, 2005; Hengen, 2004) with a focus on gender and equity in education
detailing the need for better means of educating boys in literacy skills and with
an emphasis on fathers interactions in intact families (Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-
Kean, & Hofferth, 2001). None of these studies focused on conversations during
situated literacy experiences between the father-son dyads with storybook
reading as the literacy event. Haden, Reese, and Fivush (1996) studied mother-
child storybook reading conversations; but they did not study father-son
storybook conversations. Schwartz (2004) observed the interaction between both
18
mother-child and father-child dyads during story reading noting some difference;
her study did not include conversation analysis.
Literature Review
Storybook reading was discussed with attention to purposes for storybook
reading, practices of storybook reading, discourse analysis of storybook reading,
developmental parameters of storybook reading, children’s literature and
storybooks, family literacy and storybook reading, and participants in storybook
reading. The debate about storybook reading concluded the literature review.
Storybook Reading
The Three Rs for early literacy are relationships, resiliency, and readiness
according to the Early Childhood Division of the U.S. Department of Education
(Rosenkoetter & Barton, 2002). The first of the Three Rs is relationship and
relational communication is basic to storybook reading; however, an
understanding of the character of relational communication depends on an
understanding of the systems within which it operates (Littlejohn, 2002).
A system has individual parts (objects), the parts have differentiated
aspects (characteristics), the system has boundaries (environment), and the
individual parts of the system interact (internal relationship) in ways that create
an entity greater than the parts of the system. Hall and Fagen (1986) explained
that systems could be open or closed. A system that allows crossover at its
boundaries into or out of the system is an open system. A closed system does not
allow interaction across its boundaries. Additionally, Koestler (as cited in
19
Littlejohn, 2002) wrote that systems are embedded within other systems and the
systems are hierarchic in the sense that there are smaller systems (subsystems)
within larger systems (suprasystems).
Families are open systems (Bochner & Eisenburg, 1987) in that they are
defined by four elements. (1) They are within the larger socio-cultural system of
community and each system affects the other. (2) The members of the family are
individuals whose actions affect the other members of the family and the family
affects each of its members. (3) The members of the family together are more as
a family system than the individuals are independent of the family. (4) The
family members have unique characteristic that at the same time make them
independent, dependent, and interdependent on their family. By extension,
storybook reading is a parent-child activity within a family system. The parts of
the system are the parent and the child. The attributes are the specific
characteristics of the adult and the child. The social environment is the storybook
reading setting and other factors in the household environment that has an effect
on the storybook reading. The parent and child relationship intricately relates to
relationships with other family members. Finally, understanding the system
contributes to making sense of the storybook reading experience as part of the
larger socio-cultural system. Thus, these open systems are the environment for
the father-son storybook reading events to take place; these are situated literacy
events and practices.
20
Purposes for Storybook Reading
A pragmatic reason for storybook reading and other related early learning
experiences is to support readiness for school (Lonigan, Anthony, Bloomfield,
Dyer, & Samwel, 1999; McGee & Richgels, 2000; Snow, 1983; Stahl & Yaden,
2004). A purpose for storybook reading is to introduce children to literacy
(Wells, 1985). Taylor and Strickland (1986) wrote that storybook reading aids in
a child’s ability to follow and construct stories, basic elements of literacy.
Storybook reading leads the way to what Pellegrini (2002) called literate
language (p. 55). He defined literate language as a kind of language that comes
before standard classroom literacy. Having literate language means the ability to
talk about literature, books, story genre, story grammar, being able to tell or retell
stories, and other similar skills. It is also the ability of the child to communicate
knowledge about those topics to teachers and classmates as part of school
performance. That is what Pellegrini meant about the use of storybook reading as
an instructional tool that leads to conventional literacy.
McGee and Richgels (2000) wrote that when people talk about literacy
they generally think of word identification, vocabulary, and comprehension;
however, that does not encompass the whole of literacy. Phonemic awareness,
fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension are just some of the areas assessed to
judge the level of literacy that a child has reached in kindergarten (Clay, 1979,
2002a; Rhodes & Shanklin, 1993; Walker, 2000). Listening comprehension
(Berne, 2004) and other oral language skills include vocabulary, use of narrative
21
in talking, and both phonological and print awareness as elements of emergent
reading (Allor & McCathren, 2003). Teachers and parents can gauge the
performance of a child by these skills. Descriptions of phonemic awareness,
fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension vary but the following summaries
provide a basic sense for each term.
A succinct explanation of the purpose for shared reading was provided by
Ezell and Justice (2005).
Shared reading is not intended for teaching preschoolers to read. Instead,
it is a vehicle for children to acquire greater knowledge of and
proficiency in oral and written language, which constitutes a foundation
for formal reading instruction (p. 17).
Based on her eighteen-month study of 100 storybook readings, Cochran-
Smith (1986) wrote that adults and children talking about pictures and words in
storybooks appeared to have byproducts of increased knowledge in at least these
four domains. They are (1) knowledge about the world (expressed in ability to
label things, acts, and actors; and in ability to make connections with their world
and the text), (2) conventions of literacy, (3) structure of narrative, and (4)
behaviors appropriate for storybook reading events and environments.
Phonemic awareness. Phonemes are the sounds in a language that are
used to speak. The /b/ in BAT is an initial phoneme. Phonemic awareness is being
aware that the /b/ is a part of the word BAT and that it is the beginning sound of
the word. Recognizing that the word BAT has three phonemes, /b/, /a/, and /t/, and
that the phonemes can change places in words (BAT to TAB) is also phonemic
22
awareness. Phonemic awareness is basic to decoding written words for emergent
reading skills (Richgels, 2002; Williams, 1995). The beginning of phonemic
awareness may come from storybook reading of nursery rhymes according to
Dolch & Bloomster's (1937) study, in which they researched preschool
children’s knowledge of nursery rhymes, concluding that there is a relationship
linked to developing phonological awareness, “and…emergent reading abilities”
(p. 43).
Fluency. Fluency refers to the rate and flow of communication; it can
refer to speaking, reading, or writing. Walker (2000) listed three measures that
could be used by an evaluator of reading to assess fluency. Her guidelines were
that fluent reading would be relatively smooth, the student would have a sense of
understanding what was being read, and the paralinguistic details (e.g., pitch,
stress) would match the passage being read. Young children pretend to read
before they actually begin to read. They exhibit the rhythm and fluency of good
readers including pauses for emphasis, pacing reading with turning pages,
pointing to pages, and so forth (Clay, 2002b).
Vocabulary. The numbers of words a child can say, read, understand, or
otherwise demonstrate knowledge of, equal the child’s vocabulary. Harris and
Hodges (1995) listed a number of types of vocabularies. They included lists of
words that could be found in a dictionary, words used by a person or a group of
people (e.g., teacher talk, motherese, idioms, English) and nonverbal expression
of ideas (e.g., facial expressions, gestures, pictures, and signs). Researchers have
23
reported that storybook reading does increase verbal abilities (Aram & Biron,
2004; Aram & Levin, 2002).
Early literacy, as mentioned earlier, has Three Rs, relationship, resiliency,
and readiness (Rosenkoetter & Barton, 2002). Another purpose for storybook
reading is readiness—readiness in the sense that children are being prepared for
reading, becoming ready to read. This readiness extends to being prepared for
talking about things read and learning ways to interact orally based on auditory
input; i.e., listening skills. This is a time for learning about the things people read
and learning why they read Additionally, it is a time for learning ways to
understand oral language usage in the specific context of listening to storybooks
being read to them and accompanying discourse (Carlisle & Rice, 2004).
Comprehension. Listening (oral communication) comprehension and
reading (written communication) comprehension contribute to early literacy.
Vocabulary, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension were found to
be predictive of early literacy success (Sénéchal, Ouellette, & Rodney, 2006) in a
longitudinal study that tested vocabulary knowledge to listening comprehension.
Their research was based on a sample of eighty-four English speaking K-1
students from middle-class homes, sixty-seven percent of them were not yet
readers, and the rest read only one or two words. Sénéchal et al. (2006) wrote
that lexical knowledge contributed to listening comprehension for “a statistically
significant 8% of variance in listening comprehension” (p. 176). Reading
comprehension refers to understanding written language (Gest, Freeman, &
24
Monitrovich, 2004). Heath (1986) explained that comprehension referred to the
understanding of what was read by the reader. An assessment for comprehension
judgments could be made based on the accuracy of the interpretation or the
ability to answer questions about the text. A definition of reading comprehension
provided by Cooper (1997) explained the process of comprehending as the by-
product of constructing or assigning meaning to written text based on prior
knowledge or information related to the text being read. Cooper wrote that
comprehension does not come from the printed words; it comes from the
meaning a person attaches to the words. Storybook reading may provide a vast
array of topics that are beyond the realm of the child’s natural or local experience
thus introducing many vocabulary words with the potential to build on prior
knowledge about literacy and to assist children in comprehension.
Listening comprehension refers to attending to language that is orally
transmitted and aurally interpreted. Pinnell and Jaggar (2003) advanced the
proposition that oral language is fundamental to learning and literacy for
schooling and the ability for people to interact socially in their daily lives. They
referred to the work of Vygotsky (1978) regarding the use of language as a tool
for learning and the important role it plays in social and intellectual development
of children. They pointed out that in spite of the importance for listening “it is
largely ignored in instruction” even though it is entwined within the whole of
communication comprehension (p. 886).
25
Another important purpose for storybook reading is to teach listening
skills that lead to communication comprehension as well as conversational
competence. Interpretation of discourse relies on the receptive skills needed for
understanding what the reader is saying about or reading from a text (Olshtain &
Celce-Murcia, 2001). Clay claimed children benefit from listening to parents or
others reading aloud (2002b). Researchers have reported that storybook reading
especially increases oral and written language comprehension (Aram & Levin,
2002). Berne (2004) summarized the leading comprehension strategies used by
learners of a second language and referenced comparable strategies used by
primary and middle school students in their native English language.
Emergent literacy can be assessed at early levels of understanding of
books and reading (Sulzby, 1985, 1988; Valencia & Sulzby, 1991). Children can
show their knowledge of emerging reading literacy by talking about the pictures
or telling a story that relates to the pictures. Clay’s (1979 2002a, 2002b)
assessment begins by determining if children know how to handle a book. Can
they identify the front or the back of a book? Do they know that we read from the
front to the back of books, from left to right and from top to bottom on pages?
Can they discriminate between print and pictures? Do they know letter names?
Can they identify printed letters by name or sound? Can they tell a story based on
pictures or independent of a book? Do they ask questions related to the pictures
or the reading of the story? Clay wrote several small books (e.g., Stones, Follow
Me, Moon) expressly for her early literacy assessment program. Some pages are
26
upside down, on other pages the words are in backward order or the words are
spelled wrong (e.g., “cmoe” for “come” and “fololw” for “follow”), and she
included other features that allow children to demonstrate their understanding of
“concepts about print” by their recognition of these peculiarities.
Not all of storybook reading time is for teaching, sometimes reading is
just for the fun of it. According to Yont, Snow, and Vernon-Feagans (2003)
storybook reading is a communication experience that at best creates a
pleasurable experience for children. Parents see it as personally pleasing to read
to children and they incorporate it as a part of being a good parent. It is
anticipated that, by this socially constructed interaction, the children enter school
with a sense of literacy and literature, and that they are better able to succeed in
their transition to conventional literacy. It was pointed out by Cochran-Smith
(1986) that even though understanding was a basic reason for reading storybooks
to preschool children, “the goal was enjoyment itself” (p. 48).
In conclusion, this dyad (father-son) in this literacy event (storybook
reading) in this domain (home) was valuable to study relevant to their discourse
purposes and patterns (instructional). Purposes for storybook reading were
examined in this dissertation to explain the nature of the pair’s storybook reading
behaviors.
Practices for Storybook Reading
In practice, storybook reading is as individualized as its participants are;
however, classroom teachers and parents rely on a small number of storybook
27
reading behaviors that are remarkably uniform (Pressley, 2004). Beals, Temple,
and Dickinson (1994) described teachers reading storybooks purposely without
any interruptions until the end of the story. A performance-oriented style of
storybook reading generally involves a highly dramatized presentation of the
story by the teacher (characterizations of vocal variety that attempts to give a
different voice for each character with props and realia, e.g., puppets, costumes,
items mentioned in the storybook). Under this rubric the conversation or
discussion is reserved for time slots before and after the storybook reading.
Cochran-Smith (1986), Dickinson and Smith (1994), and Reese and Cox (1999)
described those different styles of reading storybooks as ways to foster diverse
literacy and linguistic achievements in children.
Ortiz, Stile, and Brown (1999) suggested that because fathers read to their
children less often than mothers did, it may be a matter of practice for boys and
fathers to become more accustomed to reading, and even this type of storybook
reading could become more amenable. Pollack (1998) suggested that the
orchestrated style of listening without interaction was probably a less effective
reading style for boys, who seem to prefer active participation in literacy-related
activities, thus suggesting that storybook reading would also be better received in
an active and interactive manner. Pollack, in his book titled, Real Boys, advanced
the notion that it is important for little boys to see men in roles that celebrate
learning and literacy so that they recognize that these are “things men do” (p.
28
268). Often the only storybook reading a child experiences is with women and,
indeed, in grade school the only teachers they often see are women.
Text and genre selection governed the style of storybook reading
frequently. An interactive storybook reading style, similar to a conversation,
included questions with discussions based on the content of the book being read
aloud (Dickinson & Keebler, 1989; Morrow & Brittain, 2003). Dickinson and
Keebler (1989) found that some teachers and parents created an environment that
encourages conversations throughout the reading of the storybooks. They
reported that teachers vary their reading behaviors, sometimes not having many
interactions, but at other times, making entire storybook reading times interactive
literacy events more focused on using language and vocabulary than the story
text in the storybook.
One purpose for using storybooks as teaching tools in emergent literacy is
to advance the learning of young children. Allor and McCathren (2003), Cooper
(1997), Rhodes and Shanklin (1993) have described typical activities for teaching
with storybooks. Cooper (1997) discussed previewing storybooks by doing
picture walks or text walks—the reader shows the pictures and introduces the
vocabulary to the children before reading the story. Belloon and Ogletree (2000),
Herb and Willoughby-Herb (1998), Simpson, Stahl, and Francis (2004), Yaden et
al. (1989) discussed reading aloud—either reading old favorites or introducing
new storybooks—the reader reads and rereads familiar storybooks to provide
experiences with narrative style, vocabulary, familiarity with text, and
29
opportunities to revisit topics. Hansen (2004) and Speaker, Taylor, and Kamen
(2004) discussed literacy celebrations tied to storybooks—to encourage
excitement about reading and included retelling the story, making pictures about
the story or pretending (play acting) related to the story. Wells (1985) discussed
playing with sounds in the words from the storybook—providing opportunities
for children to hear the sounds in the words to build phonemic awareness. Aram
& Biron (2004), Blazer (1986), and Ortiz et al. (1999) discussed working with
letters—teaching the names and the shapes of letters to learn that letters are used
to write words and the words are the graphic representations of sounds as a way
to developing print awareness.
A practice promoted by some reading scholars is dialogic reading (Arnold
& Whitehurst, 1994; Hargrave & Sénéchal, 2000; Lonigan et al., 1999; Wells,
1985; Whitehurst et al., 1988). Arnold & Whitehurst wrote that dialogic reading
includes evocative techniques, parental feedback, and progressive changes.
Evocative techniques, such as asking the child WH-questions (who, what, when,
where, why, and how questions) are used to encourage the child to interact with
the parent or adult during storybook reading. They recommended utilizing
parental feedback, such as adding to the answers the child gives to the WH-
questions. Progressive changes to increase the quality and quantity of the child’s
part in the verbal exchanges are recommended as the child’s literacy skills
mature. This process is guided by Vygotskian principles using the zone of
proximal development; that is, ushering the child into the next level of
30
knowledge through scaffolding (Belloon & Ogletree, 2000; Morrow & Brittain,
2003; Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky wrote that the adult supports the child by
providing the needed information to help the child work to the next level of
understanding without pushing the child to the point of frustration that could put
the child’s success in jeopardy.
Arnold and Whitehurst (1994) explained that as the practice of dialogic
reading progresses the parent-child roles change until finally their roles are
reversed. In their research, the parent begins by reading the storybook to the child
and modeling how to tell the story. The parent praises the child’s ability to
answer questions about the story, the parent helps the child to expand the
meaning of the story, and when necessary the parent corrects errors about telling
the story or the content of the story. There is gradually a reversal of roles,
whereby the child becomes the storyteller and the parent takes the child’s role as
the audience; in this manner, the child’s level of literacy is elevated overtime.
Ownership of books, library visits, and having a library card all contribute
to practices related to storybook reading. Children who own children’s books are
more likely to experience storybook reading (Aram & Biron, 2004; Lyytinen,
Laakso, & Poikkeus, 1998). According to library related research by Lamme et
al. (2004) children who have library cards are more likely to visit the library and
to have positive experiences with books, to enjoy many kinds of books and
opportunities for more first readings of books and less repeated reading of books,
and to attend story time in the library. The idea that books are reread less often
31
may be attributed to the frequency books are checked out or the availability of
copies of a popular book in the library versus the books always available for
rereading that children have in their personal library at home. Additionally,
having book-related activities in the child’s environment favorably effected the
literacy engagement of young children and increasing literacy accomplishments
(Farran, Aydogan, Kang, & Lipsey, 2006)
Few assessments for observing parent-child storybook reading exist; the
Adult-Child Interactive Reading Inventory was developed by DeBruin-Parecki
(1999) and the Parent as Reader Scale was developed by Guinagh and Jester
(1972). The procedure for the use of these measures is to observe and evaluate
the reading of an adult and a child that is based on predetermined criteria. The
DeBruin-Parecki instrument directs the evaluator to a dozen factors sorted into
three categories of interaction: (1) to enhance attention to text, (2) to promote
interactive reading and support comprehension, and (3) to use literacy strategies.
The interactions are measured by the adult action and the child reaction to the
adult. The Guinagh and Jester scale examines the reading style of adults looking
at ten questions.
In conclusion, this dyad (father-son) in this literacy event (storybook
reading) in this domain (home) was worthy of study relevant to their discourse
purposes and patterns (instructional). Literacy practices and interactional
behaviors were an important area of study in this dissertation.
32
Discourse and Storybook Reading
Discourse analysis (Schiffrin, Tannen, & Hamilton, 2001) is a field of
research that deliberately studies the way people talk to one another. Within the
area of discourse analysis, there is the field of conversational analysis.
Conversational analysis (Goodwin, 1984; Sacks et al., 1974), analysis of
conversation (Markee, 2000), talk-in-interaction (Psathas, 1995; Schegloff,
2001), cooperative principle and conversational maxims (Grice, 1989), functional
language patterns (Halliday, 1975; 1978), and axioms of relational
communication (Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 1967) were used to identify
utterances between the father and his sons in this study. Research that explores
the conversation within the realm of human communication focuses on the talk in
context (Tracy, 2001) and uses sections of conversation for the units of analysis
as “the central means to make a scholarly argument” (p. 727).
Turn-taking. “A Systematic for the Organization of Turn-taking” laid out
fundamentals of conversational analysis (Sacks et al., 1974). In their writing,
Sacks et al. listed what they termed the “apparent facts” that describe the nature
of conversation. They are (p. 700-701):
1. Speaker-change recurs, or at least occurs.
2. Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time.
3. Occurrences of more than one speaker at a time is common, but brief.
4. Transitions (from one turn to a next) with no gap and no overlap are
common. Together with transitions characterized by slight gap or
slight overlap, they make up the vast majority of transitions.
5. Turn order is not fixed, but varies.
6. Turn size is not fixed, but varies.
7. Length of conversation is not specified in advance.
33
8. What parties say is not specified in advance.
9. Relative distribution of turns is not specified in advance.
10. Number of parties can vary.
11. Talk can be continuous or discontinuous.
12. Turn-allocation techniques are obviously used. A current speaker may
select a next speaker (as when he addresses a question to another
party); or parties may self-select in starting to talk.
13. Various ‘turn-constructional units’ are employed; e.g., turns can be
projectedly ‘one word long’, or they can be sentential in length.
14. Repair mechanisms exist for dealing with turn-taking errors and
violation; e.g., if two parties find themselves talking at the same time,
one of them will stop prematurely, thus repairing the trouble (p. 700-
1)
These rules of discourse analysis capture the essence of discourse between and
among speakers in conversational settings. Storybook reading between this father
and his son followed these interactional rules. Cochran-Smith (1986) cited turn
taking as a normal pattern of conversations during the storybook reading events
she observed between kindergarten children and teachers.
Education research in discourse analysis has looked at the turn-taking
behavior in classrooms with special attention given to instructional discourse
(Adger, 2001, p. 504). This study examined the discourse outside of the
classroom and between two persons. A sequence of teacher-student talk that
contains a teacher initiation (I) of talk, perhaps a question; a student response
(R), perhaps an answer to the question; and a teacher evaluation (E), perhaps an
acknowledgement of the correct answer to the teacher’s question (IRE) was
identified as a basic unit for study in discourse analysis.
34
Hypothetical example of IRE:
Teacher: What color is the bird?
Student: Blue
Teacher: Yes, it is a blue bird.
Wells (1985) recognized this particular discourse pattern as a request-for-
knowledge sequence. The sequence is a question (Q) from the teacher, the
response (R) by the child, and an evaluation (E) by the teacher.
Hypothetical example of QRE:
Teacher: What color is the bird?
Student: What kind of bird is that?
Teacher: It’s a blue bird
This is not conversational according to the rules listed by Sacks et al. (1974) for a
number of reasons:
• Rule 5 states that, “turn order is not fixed, but varies”; however, IRE
is (I) teacher turn, (R) student turn, and (E) teacher turn.
• Rule 6 states that “turn size is fixed, but varies”; IRE turn size is
fixed, but does not vary very much.
• Rule 7, length of conversation is not specified in advance, and Rule 9,
relative distribution of turns is not specified in advance; IRE does not
follow rules for length and relative distribution of turns in classrooms,
adults often say, “You have had your turn” and “Wait your turn”
statements.
Functional theory of language. Halliday's (1975) functional theory of
language study grew out of his study of the ways young children “learn how to
35
mean” as they learn to communicate with words. He studied his son Nigel, from
birth through age eighteen months recording what he coded as Nigel’s language
(NL). NL 0 was the first data set and NL 6 was the final data set. Halliday found
that Nigel used language for functional purposes and he identified the specific
functions. Rather than seeing a child’s language as immature adult language, he
saw it as a prelanguage that was eventually abandoned as the child adopted the
adult language. The functions for the child’s prelanguage remained in place as
NL was replaced with the adult community language, in Nigel’s case, British
English. Halliday (1975) wrote that when a child had learned “how to mean”
then the basis for sharing meaning was established, and that was the “distinctive
characteristic of social man in his mature state” (p. 36). Halliday's functional
theory identified two primary categories: pragmatic functions and mathetic
functions. The active language of pragmatic utterances are for getting things
done (action), while reflective language of mathetic utterance are for gaining
understanding (reflection).
Pragmatic utterances have the functions of being instrumental, regulatory,
interactional, or personal. Pinnell and Jaggar (2003) explained that the pragmatic
functions are for maintaining relationships and the mathetic functions are for
reflection on ideas and experiences. In addition, there is a textual function that
they explained, “involves the use of language resources to construct oral texts
(e.g., stories, conversations) that are coherent within themselves and within the
36
context of the situation” (p. 897). The following summation statements provide
brief descriptions and examples of each pragmatic function.
1. Instrumental utterances are to satisfy a physical need and may use an
“I want…” phrase.
2. Regulatory utterances are to manage someone else’s actions and may
use a “(You) do that” phrases.
3. Interactional utterances are to build relationships to do things jointly
and may use “us” and “we” phrases.
4. Personal utterances are to express individualism and may use “I am…”
phrases.
Mathetic utterances have the functions of being heuristic, imaginative, or
informative. The following summation statements provide example of each
mathetic function.
5. Heuristic utterances are to understand or learn about the environment
and may use “why?” phrases;
6. An imaginative utterance is to create a unique world and may use
“Let’s pretend.” phrases; and,
7. Informative utterances are to give information and may use “tell you”
phrases.
Drum (1990) explained, with regard to Halliday's categories, that children
develop language functions for both purposes (action and reflection). Drum
added that children develop language functions for speech routines for social and
37
interpersonal goals to express themselves as well. These functions are part of the
everyday talking examined using conversational analysis in this case study of
father-son discourse during storybook reading.
Multiple classification systems were considered in this dissertation that
include turn-taking patterns as formulated by Sacks et al. and functional language
patterns as presented by Halliday. Other explanations of conversational
relationships were found to be useful to describe the nature and character of this
parent and child discourse. Barton and Hamilton (2000) explained, “there are
different literacies associated with different domains of life” (p.11), which they
identified as discourse communities.
Axioms of relational communication. The nature of communication is
more than taking turns talking. There are interpersonal management aspects
related to conversational interactions that shape the relationship. Watzlawick,
Bavelas, and Jackson (1967) identified five “basic axioms of relational
communication.” They advanced the idea that “one cannot not communicate” (p.
51) because any action or behavior has the potential to communicate something
including not meaning to communicate anything. Littlejohn (2002) offered an
example of this axiom, to avoid a conversation with a fellow passenger on an
airplane a person might begin reading from a book, thus indicating that the
person is busy and not available to talk with the fellow passenger without
actually saying, “I do not want to talk to you now.”
38
Another axiom proposed by Watzlawick et al. (1967) was that there are
always two messages in conversation; a content message and a relationship
message. This axiom includes the concept of metacommunication, that is,
communication that provides information about the people communicating and
about the relationship between those people. “Metacommunication is a form of
communication that means different things at different levels” (Veryard Project,
2004). The meaning of a message depends on the relationship—“Time for bed”
said by the father to his son carries the context meaning of the words that might
have the intent for the son to prepare for going to bed. The father could be
saying, I am in control here, I am doing what is important for your (his child’s)
wellbeing, I need to oversee your behavior and health, I am acting on the
authority of being your parent, or other relational messages. The child on the
other hand might accept the statement at face value as a matter-of-fact it is time
for bed and simply comply or he might become defiant. To the child the
statement might be the beginning of a ritual that starts with a protest, includes a
series of complaints and negotiations, and an eventual surrender depending on
the father-son relationship.
A third axiom from the work of Watzlawick et al. (1967) was that people
punctuate their communication, or as Littlejohn (2002) explained, they organize
their communication into meaningful patterns. The father who takes part in the
evening ritual of bedtime that sounds more like “let’s make a deal,” might
39
punctuate their communication as the father’s request for the child to go to bed
with the child’s counteroffer of read me a story first as: request-counteroffer.
Another axiom contrasted the digital and analogical nature of
communication. Littlejohn (2002) explained that the digital coding contains the
“relatively precise meanings” and the analogical coding caries the relational
meaning (p. 237). If a father were watching his child at the playground and he
saw her scrape her knee he would likely respond quickly with a statement to tell
the little girl not to cry because Daddy is coming. Littlejohn offered the
following example.
Suppose a father at a playground sees his daughter fall and scrape her
knee. Immediately, he says, “Don’t cry. Daddy is coming.” The content
meaning is clear, but what is the relationship message? It depends on how
the message is delivered. The father might communicate his own fear,
worry, anger, boredom, or dominance. At the same time, he might
communicate a number of possible perceptions, including, “You are
careless,” “You are an attention getter,” “I was paying enough attention,”
and so on (p. 237).
The sixth of the axioms explained by Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson
(1967) was the comparisons they made among symmetrical, complementary, and
transitional communication in relationships. This axiom was further developed
by Millar and Rogers (1976) as control transactions in interpersonal
communication. The axioms of interpersonal communication were important in
the analysis of the conversation between the father and son in this dissertation
study during their situated storybook reading experiences.
40
Control transaction in interpersonal communication. Millar and Rogers
(1976) studied sixty-five husband and wife dyads and evaluated approximately
fourteen thousand messages between the couples. They sorted the verbal
exchanges on the concepts of “paired control directions” (p. 97) as: (1)
complementary transactions—directionally opposite, accounted for about ten
percent, (2) symmetry—directionally the same, about thirty percent, and (3)
transitional—directionality that is not opposite and not the same, about sixty
percent. When two people interact in a symmetrical fashion, they act in similar
ways. When the interaction is different from one another the communication is
said to be complementary. The axiom is closely associated with control aspects
of interpersonal communication. They described nine configurations of control in
relationships. Massages can be one-up ( ↑) taking control in the relationship, one-
down ( ↓) accepting being controlled in the relationship, and one-across ( →) not
taking control and not accepting being controlled in the relationship .Millar and
Rogers (1976) devised a method to determine control directionality; their matrix
of Control Directions of Message Types (p. 96) was recreated in the following
table.
41
Table 1: Control Directions of Message Types
Support
Nonsupport
Extension
Answer
Instruction
Order
Disconfirmation
Topic Change
Initiation /Termination
Other
Assertion ↓ ↑ → ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ →
Question ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↓
Talk-over ↓ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↓
Noncomplete ↓ ↑ → ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ → →
Other ↓ ↑ → ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ →
One-up ( ↑), on-down ( ↓), and one-across utterance were used to classify the nine
types of control patterns in interpersonal transactions. Littlejohn (2002) presented
examples of Millar and Rogers’ control patterns to illustrate the control direction
of a first speaker (A) with that of a second speaker (B). One example was
competitive symmetry (one-up/one-up) (p. 239).
Competitive Symmetry
A: ↑ You know I want you to keep the house picked up
during the day.
B: ↑ I want you to help sometimes.
For Littlejohn’s (2002) other nine examples of Millar and Roger’s (1976) control
pattern transactions see Appendix Table 1. Watzlawick et al.’s (1967) axiom of
42
communication relationships and the classification of transactions in
relationships were of particular importance for the study of the father-son dyad in
this dissertation. Although the work by Millar and Rogers was focused on
married couples it was applicable to the familial relationship of the parent and
child during their negotiation of storybook reading as associated with the dyads
personal rules for conversation in their home.
Cooperative principle: Maxims of conversation. The label cooperative
principle was introduced in Grice's (1975/1989) work titled “Logic and
Conversation.” He explained the concept of the cooperative principle in this way:
Make your conversational contributions such as is required, at the stage at
which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange
in which you are engaged (Grice, 1989, p. 26).
Based on this principle, Grice presented conversational maxims (quality,
quantity, relation, and manner). Each maxim provided for a particular
expectation by people as they talked with each other. First, speakers are expected
to provide enough information but not excessive information, that maxim is
bases on quantity. Second, the maxim of quality concerns the expectation that
what is said is also true or at least it is not false. The third Gricean maxim is
called relation, meaning that a statement should be relevant to the conversation.
The fourth maxim has to do with the manner not referring to “what is said but,
rather, to how what is said is to be said” Grice's (1989, p. 26). Here the idea of
how does not mean nonverbal cues to meaning (vocal quality, intonation, etc.),
but rather, that speakers should be forthcoming—not be obscure or ambiguous in
43
their contributions to the conversation and the speakers should get to the point in
an orderly manner. These maxims were relevant and included for the the
conversation analysis of the father and his son in this dissertation.
The interaction between the father-son dyad during literacy events
(storybook reading) in their home was studied relevant to turn-taking aspect of
conversation (Sacks et al., 1974). As well as axioms of communication
(Watzlawick et al., 1967), message control aspects of interpersonal
communication (Millar & Rogers, 1976), cooperative principle and maxims of
conversation (Grice, 1975/1989), and what Wittgenstein called language games
(Ambrose, 2001). These different ways of examining conversation are concerned
with understand the purposes and actions of speakers through the analysis of the
words they use and how they use those words. Sanders (2004) used the broad
categories of language pragmatics, conversation analysis, and ethnography of
communication to describe the multidisciplinary approaches to the study of
spoken language and social interaction.
Storybook reading includes both reading from books and asking questions
about the content of the texts in addition to questions/answer topics semi-related
to the storybooks and unrelated to the storybooks. Cordon, Saetermoe, and
Goodman (2005); noted that saying “I don’t know” is a common response for
children. In storybook reading questioning was prevalent and encouraged as
mentioned previously in the discussion of practices advanced for emergent
literacy, such as Wells’ (1985) promotion of dialogic reading, that is, a question,
44
response, and evaluation technique. Question and answer adjacency pairs were
analyzed in the conversational analysis of turn taking (Sacks et al., 1974).
There is a benefit for a child to understand that saying “I don’t know” is a
valid response when it is true that the child does not know the answer to a
question. It is not clear that young children understand the meaning of saying the
words: “I don’t know.” Cordon et al. (2005) conducted a research study of
nineteen girls and twenty-one boys, ages three to six years old. The children
included middle- to upper-middle socioeconomic level families from Caucasian
(75%), Latino (17.5%), and Asian (17.5%) families. The researchers wanted to
examine the effects of teaching young children conversational rules for
responding in eyewitness testimony. Knowing if children adjust their testimony
according to conditions that can be controlled could, they indicated, increase the
accuracy and validity of their reports of remembered events.
Cordon et al. (2005) set up a test to analyze the effects of using three
rules for oral responses and three rules for physical behaviors. The three
conversational rules that applied to oral responses were (1) “I don’t know,” –the
child was told to answer, “I don’t know” when the child did not know the
answer, (2) “I can’t help you”—the teaching assistant (TA) would not help with
the answer; and (3) “I may trick you”—the TA could say something inaccurate
on purpose. Three more rules that set the conditions for the interviews were: (1)
the interviewer and the child would take turns talking (2) they would speak face-
45
to-face when they talked, and (3) they would not move around while they were
talking.
The children interacted with (TA) for five minutes in a play area that was
set up for the experiment. The area had a variety of things to play with (e.g.,
puppets, coloring books, and crayons) and a radio. The interviewer greeted the
child and told the child that she or he would be back in few minutes. The child
was told to stay with the TA. The TA encouraged the child to play with the toys
and named each of the items for the child. The play interaction was staged and
lasted about five minutes. Among the five activities of the TA were turning off
the radio and playfully touching the child’s face with a puppet. The child had met
the TA before their five-minute play area activity.
Following the experience in the playroom with the TA the child was
interviewed by the researcher who left the child with the TA. The interview was
about the child’s memories of that experience; about fifteen days later, the child
was interviewed again. Open-ended and closed-ended scripted questions were
used in the interviews (Cordon et al., 2005). An example of an open-ended
question for factual recall was “[Child’s name], what did the TA do while I was
gone?” Two of the closed-ended leading questions were “When the TA was in
here with you, did she turn the radio off?” which did happen and “Did the TA
kiss you?” which did not happen. Two types of closed-ended misleading
questions were used, one type was tag questions, e.g., “The TA yelled at you,
didn’t she?” which did not happen. A second type of closed-ended misleading
46
question was a two-part question and neither part of the question was true, “Did
the TA throw the Simon game across the room or did she throw it in the trash?”
The three interview styles used were repetitive, accusatory, and neutral.
The repetitive style was characterized by asking the same question but with
variations. Did X happen? If the child said, “yes” the interviewer said, “Are you
sure X happened?” If the child said, “I don’t know,” the interview repeated the
question. Cordon et al wanted to see if the child would change the answer by
implying that the answer given was inaccurate. The accusatory style interviewer
reinterpreted the answer given by the child to indicate that the TA had done
something wrong. Did the TA do X? If the child said, “Yes,” the interviewer
would say, “She shouldn’t have done X, that [sic] was wrong.” The interview
spoke with a calm voice, but a disapproving facial expression. This interview
style was to see if the child changed the answer to match what the interviewer
was indicating by the behavior. Third, the neutral interviewer style did not repeat
question or attempt to influence the child with negative statements; the questions
were uninterrupted for comments by the interviewer.
The results for teaching the conversational rules showed that even with
training the children were reluctant to say, “I don’t know.” Cordon et al reported
that they did not expect this result. They stated that in parent-child conversations
it was a common occurrence for a child to say “I don’t know”; but, it was not
clear whether it is “a stereotypical canned response…learned to use but which
47
they do not really understand” or if they actually do understand and they are
reporting on “a lack of knowledge” (p. 262).
The study of father-son conversations during storybook reading as unique
literacy events was relevant to the understanding of this father-son relationship.
Father-son storybook reading conversations were studied with attention given to
question/answer adjacency pairs when the response was “I don’t know.” The
power structure and use of transactional interpersonal communication to control
conversations were examined with respect to when the phrase “I don’t know”
was used.
Developmental Parameters of Storybook Reading
Current studies in child development build on the theories of various
scholars (Mooney, 2000) including theories of Dewey (progressive education),
Piaget (stages of cognitive development), Vygotsky (zone of proximal
development), Montessori (child-sized and child-centered environments), and
Erikson (stages of psychosocial development). Each of these theoretical
perspectives provides important avenues of research in emergent literacy.
Emergent literacy is an interval of language, learning, and literacy
development that encompasses the changes in reading and writing preceding
conventional literacy (Sulzby & Teale, 1991, 2003; Teale, 1995). Teale wrote
that emergent literacy “views reading and writing development from the child’s
point of view” (p. 71). Children, he explained, have their own ways of making
sense of literacy that are unlike the means used by people who have reached
48
conventional levels of literacy development. A sampling of definitions by
scholars show a variety of ways to explain what they mean by emergent literacy.
Menyuk (2003) wrote that emergent literacy has to do with knowing that
meaning (or language) can be represented by print and that the child’s attempts at
writing are attempts to create written representations of their language.
Emergent literacy is not a well-defined stage or phase but rather, it
morphs from one level into another. Justice and Kaderavek (1998) wrote that
there is a broad range of skills from emergent to conventional literacy. Many
factors come into play with literacy; some deeply embedded in the cultural and
social community of children (Wells, 1985). Literacy does not just happen
(McLane & McNamee, 1991); it is formed by the relationships children have
with family, friends, and caretakers.
Emergent literacy is also a period of developmental changes in reading
and writing that precedes conventional literacy (Teale, 1995). A 1998 report
entitled "Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for
Young Children” defined the standards and provided a framework for teaching
children literacy skills from preschool abilities through third grade matching the
students actual ability rather than grade or chronological age. The first item in the
report’s “continuum of children’s development in early reading and writing” (pp.
200-201) was reading and talking about storybooks. They recommended that
teachers and parents read storybooks to children to illustrate how to handle
books, engage them in discussions of stories, and to talk about books. Justice and
49
Kaderavek (2003) wrote, “shared storybook reading appears to be a singularly
important context for developing early language and literacy skills … and
studying parent-child relations” (p. 137). Their reasons for the importance of
storybook reading include the rich language interaction between parent and child,
the routine established for storybook reading, and the joint attention of the parent
and child with each other.
Socioeconomic factors (SES). Along a different path of study, researchers
have examined the effects of poverty on the development of emergent literacy
(Aram & Levin, 2002; Chall & Curtis, 2003; Paris & Hoffman, 2004; Stahl &
Yaden, 2004). The lack of relevant medical services to treat and prevent illness,
environments that are not conducive to stimulating early learning, and the
experiences of poor or disenfranchised children were compared with middle-
income children in educational settings (Vernon-Feagans, Hammer, Miccio, &
Manlove, 2002). Often low SES and low parent education levels work in tandem
as negative effects on literacy.
Many studies about storybook reading relate to development focused on
deficits, such as children at risk of failure to succeed in school. Ramey and
Ramey (2006) provided an explanation of the term “at risk” as meaning, “an
increased probability that a child will not meet minimal or normative
achievement levels in school” (p. 447). A contrastive term associated with
middle to upper socioeconomic dimensions is low risk. These researchers wrote
that “high risk” and “disadvantaged” were used interchangeably with “at risk.”
50
At-risk studies in the area of emergent literacy have examined low
socioeconomic status, non-English speakers, medically or psychologically
challenged children, and other factors that impede literacy acquisition (Aram &
Biron, 2004; Lonigan et al., 1999; Pellegrini, 1991; Skotko, Kippenhaver, &
Erickson, 2004; Yaden et al., 2000).
Psychological factors .There was psychological effects reflected in the
area of family literacy and storybook reading. One factor was a difference in the
emotional attachment between parents and their children. A secure emotional
attachment was characterized by a sense of safety or security that was felt by the
child because the parent (or other caregiver) was reliably “available and
responsive” to the child’s needs (DeKlyen, Speltz, & Greenberg, 1998, p.7).
Byway of contrast, an insecure relationship is characterized by less
responsiveness. DeKlyen et al. (1998) noted there was a father-child emotional
attachment that operated independently from that of a mother-child dyad;
however, there was an “extremely limited” amount of empirical evidence (p. 8)
about it. Bowlby’s concept of the “internal working model” (as cited in
Svanberg, 1998) which addressed the issue of attachment and summarized the
concept as follows was provided by Svanberg (1998):
[S]ecure children learn to develop a balanced state of mind
integrating both cognitive and affective memories into a coherent
whole, to build trust that a caregiver will be available when needed
and that protection will be forthcoming in situations of danger
(p.546).
51
The concept, according to Svanberg (1998), has been linked to several other
theories and approaches including neuropsychological approaches, family theory
and interpersonal processing, complexity theory, and non-linear dynamics (p.
546). The importance of emotional attachment for the purpose of this dissertation
relates to how storybook reading is influenced by the emotional attachment of the
parent and child. Bus and van IJzendoorn (1988) and Bus (2003) reported that
the insecurely attached pairs were apt to have a history of unhappy events in their
interpersonal relationships. Those distressing experiences, they noted, transferred
to the social context of storybook reading. In instances where parent and child
were emotionally distant or estranged, Bus and colleagues detected behaviors
that were counterproductive to advancing the child’s literacy development;
examples of children pushing, hitting, and squirming to flee the storybook
reading events were observed. The uneasiness was expressed by the parent in
over controlling the child’s actions (highly regulated behaviors related to text
content and book handling) and over stimulating the child’s senses (demanding
physical obedience and attention to parent initiated questioning).
Physiological factors. Physiological circumstances contribute to children
being “at-risk.” Identification of causes was examined from various perspectives
including how the brain and body function. Reading disability was characterized
by Pugh, Sandak, Frost, Moore, and Mencl (2006) as a state in which a child did
not acquire age-specific reading ability even though the child was of normal
intelligence and the child was given ample instruction to learn to read. In their
52
discussion of neurobiology of reading they wrote that using modern technologies,
e.g., positron emission tomography (PET), scientist are able to visually monitor
brain activity that allows them to better understand what happens during
cognitive behaviors such as reading. Pugh et al. concluded that their study using
functional neuroimaging techniques did not explain but did describe some brain-
behaviors as they related to reading, specifically, as an example, phonological
awareness and the rapid decoding which is absent in some people with reading
disabilities.
Roberts and Burchinal (2002) wrote about problems children encounter
due to otitis media (ear infections) and Skotko et al. (2004) studied girls with
Rett syndrome and using storybooks to aid in literacy. Rett syndrome is a
genetically governed disability primarily found in girls. The disability may lead
to negative changes in girls’ language and gestures for communication. It has
severe results that leave girls with only a few words, phrases, or simple sentences
to communicate. Skotko et al. (2004) concluded, “storybook reading provided
both content and context for joint attention and interactive communication by
mothers and their daughters with Rett syndrome” (p. 163).
In a discussion presented by Olson and Javier (2002) there are important
aspects of genetic differences that contribute to individual reading abilities. They
reported that even between twins in the same environment, one twin might have
normal reading abilities and the other have reading disabilities. They argued that
two distinguishable factors account for individual differences in reading
53
disability: genetics and environments. They did not elaborate on environment but
did note a dichotomy of either shared family home or not shared family home.
DeFries, Fulker, and LaBuda (as cited in Olson & Javier, 2002) reported on same
sex, English as first language, eight to eighteen year old identical twins (n = 223)
and fraternal twins (n = 169) with reading disabilities in a study conducted with
the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center (CLDRC). They reported
that there was etiological evidence for genetic influences being related to reading
disability of statistical significance of (p < 10
-12
) based on the twin studies. It was
noted that studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) and
positron emission tomography (PET) made it possible to see differences in the
brain activity of good and poor readers.
Samuelsson et al. (2005) conducted a study of preschool age twins that
included children from Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States. These
researchers were interested in genetic and environmental factors that related to
reading skills behaviors. They found that verbal memory and rapid naming were
strongly linked with genetic influences where as vocabulary and grammar-
morphology were strongly linked with environmental influences. Print
knowledge, general verbal ability, and phonological awareness highly correlated
with genetic and environmental influences. Scandinavia children in this study
had lower print knowledge, which the researchers contributed to difference in the
print environment in their preschools. When children have a genetic propensity
(a family history) to poor reading abilities, environmental factors could further
54
exacerbate successful learning of reading skills. Samuelsson et al. (2005)
concluded that whether the cause or origin of the disabilities were genetic or
environmental children with reading disabilities needed to have extensive,
continuous support during early literacy development.
Pediatricians have studied the use of storybooks with toddlers and
preschoolers to aid in early learning experiences (Walker, 2000). Reach Out and
Read (ROR) is a reading program (Wasik, Dobbins, & Hermann, 2002;
Weitzman, Roy, Walls, & Tomlin, 2004) that was coordinated with pediatricians
to provide books and literacy education to parents of young children during
pediatric visits from about age six months to age six years. A basic premise of
the program was that reading aloud to children reduced health risks as children
matured because they were able to participate in literacy related activities;
moreover, pediatricians recognized that brain-function from very early in a
child’s mental development was enhanced from someone reading aloud to them
(Neddleman, Klass, & Zuckerman, 2006). This program was implemented as part
of the well baby clinical visits with doctors, nurses and other health care
professionals.
These areas of research further articulated the importance for the study of
father-son dyads in storybook reading at home relevant to discourse purposes and
patterns. Developmental factors were considered as part of the overall study of
the family investigated as they related to the age, gender, and family
demographics.
55
Children’s Literature Genres and Storybook
Studies refer to storybook reading and genre, stating that different genres
result in different storybook reading experiences and ways for using storybooks
to teach (Anderson et al., 2004; Stadler & McEvoy, 2003). Some of those
differences were included in practices and purposes of storybook reading. This
section of the literature review covers the types of books that make up the genre
of storybooks. Pappas and Pettegrew (1998) wrote that genre might have critical
implications for reading that have not been adequately studied. These researchers
found that genre both limits and gives direction to what is expected in written
text. They were not writing about emergent literacy or beginning readers;
however, the genre of a storybook limits what is expected in its text, so that a
child familiar with fairy tales for example could guess that the story ends with
‘they lived happily ever after’ and not ‘the end of the world’ as a science fiction
story might end. The child could learn from reading fictional and factual text that
there are natural world stories and fantasy world stories, each having characters
and events unique to the genre. There is also valuable information for learning
vocabulary and for learning how to tell stories. The category of storybook takes
into account many forms of children’s literature.
Pellegrini (1991) wrote that parents and children respond differently to
different genres. Narratives or stories generated fewer questions from the parents
or children and parents read them more fluently than expository texts without a
story or message. Pellegrini wrote that expository texts lead to more questions
56
because the topics were discrete, as in ABC books that provide a letter name and
something that is related to the letter, and not necessarily related to the next thing
read. Selection of storybooks directly links to the conversations between parents
and children (Pappas & Pettegrew, 1998) and ties to the purposes related to
emergent literacy.
Today children’s literature is a huge enterprise with many authors and
illustrators specializing in the market. The number of publishers range from
small presses that specialize in short runs of books, such as Dover Publications
for preschool and older children including a variety of activity books, to mega-
publishing houses, such as Random House that has a massive children’s’
collection including Dr. Seuss books, Golden Books, Disney books, and Sesame
Street books. Children’s literature is a relatively new form of writing (Brown,
2000). The first books written specifically for children were published during
Queen Victoria’s reign, 1837-1901. Brown wrote that during that period talented
authors and illustrators began to create books that would appeal to children.
Previously books for children, as she explained, were favorite adult books
children enjoyed on the occasions when someone read to them. The most popular
books of the time were Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1605/1998), Pilgrim's Progress
(Bunyan, 1678/1984), Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, 1719/2001), and Gulliver's
Travels (Swift, 1726/2001). Among the first books written specifically for
children to read on there own, were Alice in Wonderland (Carroll, 1865/1997),
Treasure Island (Stevenson, 1883/2001), and Little Women (Alcott, 1868).
57
It is important to acknowledge that the term children’s literature is not
synonymous with the term storybooks (Mitchell, 2003). Storybooks are written
for children with easily identified patterns of storytelling and highly illustrated
for the most part. Cochran-Smith (1986) presented a four-part statement
delineating what seemed to be the goals of storybooks writers, illustrators, and
publishers for young children. Some design features and goals for these books
are:
1. To entice the child to look at and talk about the topics, pictures, and
printed text on the pages of the storybooks
2. To select material that was appropriate for young children to
experience new ideas that encourage commenting and questioning
3. To provide interactive opportunities to conversations between the
reader and the listener during storybook reading with unlimited
parameters for discussion when incorporated as part of the child’s
daily life experience
4. To create storybooks that invited the use of pre-established
conversational patterns of communication while scaffolding meaning
making during literacy events particular to the environment of adult-
child storybook reading
Storybooks can include fairy tales or folk tales; tall tales, myths, legends
and fables; ABC books, counting books, and concept books; nursery rhymes,
poems, and songs; picture books, books with no words, touchy-feely books,
58
board books, cloth books, and bath books all written and produced expressly for
children. Contemporary storybooks may include narrative or expository texts
about contemporary topics ranging from daily living experiences to world
changing events that are produced in all shapes and sizes. New settings,
characters, and stories continue to be created in the storybook genre. Storybooks
fit into the categories described by Pellegrini (1991), Mitchell (2003), and others
as either narrative, expository, or hybrids that incorporate other combinations of
categories. These categories within the genre “storybooks” are identifiable and
specific ways to use the types of literature as teaching tools are explicable. Some
examples from a storybook taxonomy follow. Three types of storybooks selected
for this dissertation include ABC books, picture books with elaborate illustrations
on each page, and narratives with varying amounts of print per page.
Fairy tales and folk tales. Many storybooks are the retelling of classic
fairy tales and folk tales. Some stories, such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding
Hood, have hundreds of versions recorded from around the world (Brown, 2000).
Hans Christian Andersen, a Dane, and the Brothers Grimm, Germans, recorded
many European fairy tales by writing their versions of popular tales of their times
(EnTechne Vision, 2003a, 2003b). “The Ugly Duckling” and “The Emperor's
New Clothes” are familiar tales by Andersen; “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Hansel and
Grethel” are fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm (McFarland, 1954). Their work to
preserve the fairy tales allowed the stories to become a part of cultures around
59
the world with countless versions and many kinds of “adaptations in song, dance,
and film” (Bartleby.com, 2001).
Poveda (2003) wrote that children learn that stories begin with “once
upon a time” or “long, long ago” from storybooks and children know that when a
story begins that way it ends with 'they lived happily ever after’ or an emphatic
‘The End”. These storybooks are at least useful for boosting vocabulary, teaching
themes of stories, how to tell stories, and improving understanding of abstract
ideas.
Tall tales, myths, and legends. Other kinds of tales retold in storybooks
are tall tales, myths, legends, and fables. Tall tales come from folklore and are
about extraordinary characters like Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan. Tall tales have
big, strong, powerful characters who can accomplish great deeds through their
hard work or skill. These tales are lighthearted, colorful tales that capture
American folklore in all its ethnic diversity and in fanciful ways (Stoutenburg,
1976). Myths have remarkable characters too; however, the characters are
demigods, heroes, or magical beasts and myths tell the stories of the beginning of
the world, the beginning of people, and the relationships between god and man.
Familiar myths are Ulysses, the Greek hero, and Pegasus, the flying horse
(Mitchell, 2003). Legends are stories situated in history and handed down as
accounts of history (Harris & Hodges, 1995); but not verifiable stores, for
example, the legend of Robin Hood or of the Loch Ness monster. There is
enough believable information in the story that it continues to be passed on by
60
members of culture. Fables are morality tales, that is, they tell a story that ends
with a moral or a lesson that teaches values. “The Tortoise and the Hare” and
“The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing” are examples of Aesop’s fables (Scrocco, 1988).
These genres, when written and read as storybooks, provide children with
ways to learn words and concepts about their world and their culture. Each has its
own story grammar and form of telling a story. They provide fodder for play and
make believe when children act out stories they have heard read to them. They
can build vocabulary and comprehension about other times and places that are
only known through literature (Heath, 1986), such as, dragons and unicorns and
magical beings.
Alphabet books, counting books, and concept books. ABC books,
counting books, and concept books are not stories usually but they can be when
used as if they were storybooks. ABC books or alphabet books have words or
pictures that represent each letter of the alphabet in alphabetical order to read and
talk about with children. Typical of the content is A is for apple, B is for boy, C
is for cat, etc. ABC books are useful for teaching the letters and the sounds of the
letters. Counting books are to numbers what ABC books are to letters. The
purpose is to teach the order of the numbers and the names of the numbers,
usually by counting things on the pages. Concept books include colors, shapes,
sizes, sorting objects, and all kinds of categorizing skills.
The purpose for using these is to extend the child’s knowledge of ways to
organize things and thinking about objects and ideas in their world. Using these
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genres target specific sets of information, phonemic awareness, vocabulary
acquisition, degrees of differences, patterns, and more. Titles used from the ABC
storybooks category in this study were Chicka Chicka ABC, Alphabear, and
Alphabatics, and a counting storybook, one wooly wombat.
Nursery rhymes, poems, and songs. Nursery rhymes, poems, and songs
are distinguished from other genres by their rhythm and rhyme. Mother Goose
stories and other nursery rhymes include such poems as “Little Miss Muffet” and
‘Humpty Dumpty” and hundreds more. Ashliman (2003) wrote that the original
title, Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère
l'Oye. (Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals, Tales of Mother Goose)
was originally published in 1697. Mother Goose is one of many examples in this
genre. Green Eggs and Ham (Seuss, 1960) and Where the Sidewalk Ends
(Silverstein, 1974) are other examples of poetry written for children. Many
nursery rhymes have been set to tunes, “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and “Three
Blind Mice” are examples, and there are books of songs for children. These
styles of writing capture the rhythm and lyrics of language to provide children
with word play, an invaluable teaching method for learning initial and final
sound in words and syllabication. Even the alphabet becomes a song of rhymes
that children learn as preschoolers.
Contemporary Storybooks. Current writers and illustrators of children’s
books incorporate richly illustrated stories that may be pure picture books
without text (e.g., A Boy, a Dog and a Frog) to picture books with limited texts
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and full-page illustrations on every two-page spread. One storybook in this study
is Alphabatics, which has seventy-eight pages with only three words of text per
two-page spread. Others have fewer illustrations and significant amounts of text
(e.g., Alexander and the Magic Boat, also used in this study) that may be
designed for early readers or may be written with the intent that an adult read the
text to the child. Storybooks with limited text and elaborate illustration are used
in this study, included A House Is a House for Me, Hi, Cat, Chickens Aren’t the
Only Ones, On Mother’s Lap, and Hay, Get off Our Train. Additionally, books
the family selected from their home library were part of the study.
Activity books, interactive books, and other forms of literature for young
children. Finally, this catchall category of books used as storybooks, but the
farthest from books with stories. Examples of these types of books are touchy-
feely or other activity books, board books, cloth books and bath books. Also,
included in the group are audio books and books with toys. These are unique in
their production or publication rather than their content. Touchy-feely books
have textures and contrasts in textures for teaching tactile discrimination; so, they
fit into the concept books category as well. Touchy-feely books work well for
teaching very young children and children with special needs because they
contain multiple-sensory information. For example, in the touchy-feely, board
book, That’s Not My Truck (Watt, 2002); a two-page spread reads, “That’s not
my truck” (p. 2). “Its hubcaps are too rough (p. 3).On the pages there is a picture
of two tires with hubcaps. The hubcaps have sandpaper patches inset in the
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pages; the hubcaps feel rough to the touch. The child can hear the word, see the
word, feel the example of the word, and sort the concept into a category of
textures; all that beyond the story theme that there is a truck that is mine, but this
one is not it. The word “rough,” the concept “rough,” and the feel of “rough” is
presented in three ways at once aiding in better and faster understanding of
“rough”; a teaching device that also aids in second language learning of concepts
like these.
Interactive books typically include some kind of action the child does
with them in some way. Children do something with the pages, for example they
may lift a flap to see something, e.g., Usborne Lift-the Flap Birds (Khan, 2005).
They may search for something on the page, e.g., Where’s Waldo (Handford,
1992) or I Spy Christmas: A Book of Christmas Riddles (Wick & Marzollo,
1992), or a scene may pop-up when the pages are opened flat to display a 3-D
image, e. g., Dinosaurs (Sabuda & Reinhart, 2005). Second, there are activity
books that have the child actively complete pages in them (e.g., workbooks, dot-
to-dot, paper dolls, cut-and-paste, coloring books) that may have a theme with a
story or a teaching tool for concepts or a means to teach a skill—cutting, pasting,
etc.
The terms board book, cloth book, and plastic books refers to the material
used to make them. Board books have thick, sturdy pages that are easy for young
children to handle without damaging the books; they are just as easily classified
as toys because babies often bite or chew on them just as the do other playthings
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they are learning about by mouthing them. Cloth books have soft pages made of
durable fabrics that are usually safe to wash with the laundry to keep them clean
for small children. Last, bath books are books with plastic pages that are water
safe and designed to play with in the tub, often having bath time themes.
The storybooks in this dissertation are not exclusively one genre but
generalize to ABC books, highly illustrated books, and print rich illustrated
books—some feature concepts; as do two of the storybooks in this study,
Chicken’s Aren’t the Only Ones is about animals that lay eggs; one wooly
wombat is a counting book with numbers from one to fourteen.
Studies of school-aged boys and their preferred genres for reading
(Maynard, 2002; Millard, 1997) reported that boys chose to read non-fiction,
factually based materials; they enjoyed books about boys, and stories about
adventures, sports, and funny or humorous events. Boys read action comics and
magazines related to hobbies, sports, and computers. Millard’s study reported
that boys claimed they preferred adventure or action stories twenty-four percent
of the time; the next closest genre was only six percent and that accounted for the
choice of comedy and humor (including jokes and cartoons). It was interesting
that the action/adventure category “war” was one and one half percent of the self-
reported favorite genres read by boys and poetry was at three percent on the list
of favorites; that is the boys in the study reported preferring poetry at a higher
rate than war stories which are filled with action but not necessarily adventure. In
a broader sense, even though there are some preferred genres, reading as a
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preferred activity is not reported by the boys according to Millard in her study
and by far the boys named no particular favorite genre for reading (35.8 percent).
Maynard (2002), noted that boys read to find answers and look for facts to help
them make sense of their world. Boys identify with the masculine characters in
stories, they “lagitimise [sic] their experiences and support their views of
themselves” (p. 39) through the actions of the characters. Barrs' (1993) study of
boys’ reading habits reported (as cited in Maynard, 2002) this strong
identification with characters is linked to the rejection of books or stories that are
specifically feminine in nature by boys in general.
In conclusion, genre was deemed an influential element in storybook
reading and was afforded considerable attention in this dissertation. The father-
son dyad in this genre specific storybook reading experienced in their family
home proved to be helpful for understanding their discourse purposes and
patterns.
Family Literacy and Storybook Reading
The heart of most family literacy is parent-child interaction focused on
storybook reading, but also other print related activities (Purcell-Gates, 2000). A
review of family literacy by Purcell-Gates (2000) provided a description of
family literacy; although she pointed out it is difficult to define. Generally, it is
specific literacy behavior either naturally acquired or through instruction (often
as part of a program of instruction) used by parents and children in their homes
with the goal of increasing literacy skills. The nature and the frequency of
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literacy experiences were important factors in family or intergenerational literacy
as it is sometimes called (Gadsden, 2000). A distinction between family literacy
and intergenerational literacy was that the latter includes unrelated people but a
part of a child’s community, for example a high school student who reads stories
to a child after school. Many of the studies cited in her review were based on
variables such as the frequency of storybook reading, how many books were
available to the family (ownership or library use), and the literacy level of the
adults in the household.
A number of studies concentrated on one of three types of programs for
improving early literacy. Nickse’s (1991) Typology of Intergenerational
Programs (as cited in, Purcell-Gates, 2000) included the following categories.
Type 1—the parent and child jointly are instructed in practices that are expected
to improve the child’s early literacy skills; Type 2—the parent only is given
direction and the child is expected to benefit from the parents instruction, and
Type 3—the child only receiving instruction in literacy skills from which
benefits are expected. These programs seem to focus on changing, or as Gadsden
(2000) put it, “fixing” the family to fit the society—a family deficit perspective.
Both privately and publicly funded programs for early literacy are
plentiful. Reading is Fundamental, Inc. (privately funded since 1966), Project
Head Start (federally funded program since 1964), National Center for Family
Literacy, Even Start Family Literacy Program (federally funded), Reading First
and Early Reading First (federally funded ), and Project FLAME for Spanish
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speaking families (university funded/sponsored ). Purcell-Gates noted that
research in this area was not keeping up with the policies and practices and she
recommended ethnographic and descriptive studies “to capture the relevant
nuances of individuals” (p. 867), as well as continued experimental studies.
Family literacy is the learning of language and literacy in the home. Early
Child Care Research Network (2004) reported that many factors act together in
early literacy but the strongest single predictor was parenting. Reading to
children as well as labeling, explaining, instructing, regulating, teaching about
and using language along with other things written, spoken, or experienced in the
child’s environment all contribute to emergent literacy (Beals et al., 1994;
Ferreiro, 1986; Teale, 1986).
McGee and Richgels (2003) wrote about environmental print explaining
that ordinary items are the first things children begin to read. Environmental print
encompasses an infinite range of things in a child’s early experiences with
literacy. Specific examples of environmental print include television
programming, videos, computer games, road signs, logos, and mail. Teale (1986)
studied literacy artifacts found in the home and their influence on children’s
literacy development. Children may start by reading the packaging of their
favorite food—bread wrapper, can label, soda bottle; logos in the community—
car names, maps, road sign, names of businesses, billboards; household printed
items—mail, newspapers and magazines, calendars, cleaning products; and their
own things—storybooks, games, television shows, toys, cell phones, video
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games, computer screens. They also are reading things they write and things that
are written with them or for them—their names, family names, letters, stories,
and much more. Naturally, if some of these things are not in the child’s
environment, the child may not have experience with them. That could be
disadvantageous for the child in relation to children who benefit from literacy-
rich environments; thus, a basis for the recognition that literacy begins at home
and it is mediated through the kinds of print in the child’s environment (Gunn,
Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995).
Carrington and Luke (2003) wrote that the Anglo-European nuclear
family has served as the measure by which literacy studies were evaluated. The
notion of family; however, is changing as family demographics and dynamics are
changing. The stereotypically American family was described as having one
working parent (the father), heterosexual, relatively demographically stable,
English-as-a-first-language and possessed of sufficient surplus income,
education, and leisure time to engage in print-rich socialization and verbal play.
The number of families that meet this hypothetical description continues to
change in America.
The 2000 U.S. Census Report reported that only one fourth of American
families fit that profile; furthermore, the families with children were more
represented by the population growth of immigrants, which accounted for more
that one third of couples with children. The ethnicity of immigrants was not
defined in this U.S. Census report; however, a high number of non-English
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speaking families are part of many American communities. According to the
Center for Immigration Studies (Camarota, 2004), diversity among immigrants
has changed over the past twenty years. Currently thirty-one percent of the new
immigrant, including those who legally and illegally enter the U.S., are from
Mexico, ten years ago they represented twenty-two percent and twenty years ago
only sixteen percent. Camarota wrote that forty-five percent of immigrants to the
U.S. live in poverty or near poverty. Both of these factors (non-English speakers
and poverty) are acknowledged as indicators that the children in these
circumstances may be at-risk of not succeeding in schooling (Chall & Curtis,
2003).The changes in family characteristics influence changes in how family
literacy and storybook reading are assessed (Yaden & Paratore, 2003); a better
understanding of how family characteristics influence literacy is needed.
Much of the research in early literacy focused on intervention for children
in situations that would indicate they might be at risk (Reese & Cox, 1999;
Yaden et al., 2000). There is so great an interest and need for research in
intervention for children at-risk that the area of study has its own journals, e.g.,
Intervention in School and Clinic. The topics associated with intervention are
throughout the literature related to early literacy studies (e.g., Allor &
McCathren, 2003; Aram & Levin, 2002; Beals et al., 1994; Bus, 2003; Hargrave
& Sénéchal, 2000; Huebner & Meltzoff, 2005; Lonigan et al., 1999; McGee &
Richgels, 2003; Scarborough, 2002; Stile & Ortiz, 1999; Wasik et al., 2002).
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Storybook reading in the classroom and in middle class households is
alike in some ways. Wells (1999) and others have referred to request for display
of knowledge questions, that is, questions used for checking and reinforcing
learning. Teachers and parents rely on wh-questions to encourage and engage
children in conversation about storybook reading. Children become skilled in
using, that is they become socialized into, this pattern of teacher talk (Hansen,
2004) to interact in literacy events. Barton and Hamilton (2000) defined literacy
events as activities in which literacy has an important function. That function
usually involves written texts and some kind of talking about the text in a social
context that is observable.
The teacher-talk pattern for verbal interaction is familiar to school
children and teachers. It is referred to as the three-part-questioning sequence
(Mehan, 1979) practiced by adult’s, especially teachers. For example, when an
adult shows a child a picture of a bird and then asks the child, what it is. The
adult expects the child to say that it is a bird or something relevant about the bird.
If the child says what the adult accepts as a correct answer, the adult rewards the
child with praise or some other recognition. If the child gives an answer that is
inconsistent with the answer the adult has in mind, the adult corrects the child
with a statement that more precisely reflects the target response. This pattern of
communication is repeated throughout the storybook reading events.
Culture influences storybook reading both at home and in school. Forty-
four percent and thirty-nine percent of African American and Hispanic families,
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respectively, read daily to their preschoolers as compared with sixty-four percent
of the white families, demonstrating a clear difference between mainstream
culture and minority cultures (Vernon-Feagans et al., 2002). Culture has an effect
on most social action and with regard to reading storybooks; it has at least two
obvious effects. One is the value placed on literacy and another is the family
expectations for schooling (Goldenberg, 2002; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2002).
Whitehurst and Lonigan (2002) summarized an understanding of early
literacy development indicating that children learn a great deal in their homes
about literacy before they begin formal schooling. That learning includes, in
many instances, knowledge about print and an understanding of phonemic
structure of language; additionally, they increase their vocabulary—all the
child’s literacy abilities in these areas of literacy development seem to be aided
by storybook reading. They used the terms “inside-out” and “outside-in” to
explain two domains of literacy: Inside-out being such things as phonemic
awareness and letter knowledge and outside-in being such things as story
schema, concept knowledge, and vocabulary.
Often low SES and low parent education levels work in tandem as
negative effects on literacy. Goldenberg (2002) reported that while there was
strong evidence for practices that appeared to increase success in literacy
achievement the practices were not fully utilized. He referenced the National
Education Goals for All: The Rhetoric-to-Reality Gap identifying several goals
of particular importance for his discussion; among them Goal 1 that children are
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ready to learn when they start school and Goal 3 that parents are involved in the
literacy growth of their children. These goals stress preschool attendance in
conjunction with plans to involve parents in their homes and schools with
literacy practice to prepare their children for formal schooling. Early literacy
practices for both home and school, Goldenberg noted, would promote learning
skills ranging from phonological awareness to knowledge about literacy. These
skills often can be augmented by family storybook reading practice. His primary
purpose was to point out the importance of identifying and providing intervention
for at-risk children who were often in low-income families.
Socioeconomic status influenced storybook reading and other aspects of
literacy, according to Pellegrini (2002), who discussed the nature of socialization
into literate communities (e.g., schools) in the context of literacy events, social
contexts, and interpersonal relationships. He called for further study related to
these interacting variables moreover he specifically encouraged the study of
qualitative differences of “adult-child contexts and the corresponding
implications for early literacy development” (p. 54). He wrote that literacy is
taught, not acquired and there are some social environments that meet the needs
to learn literate language more successfully than others do. He concluded that in
homes where children were engaged in literacy events that mirrored those
encountered in schools (middle-class families), children were more successful in
literacy related activities. This dissertation was on the subject of storybook
reading as a literacy event, in the specific social context of a middle-class family
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home, and the interpersonal relationship of a father-son dyad so engaged. This
dyad (father-son) in this literacy event (storybook reading as an element of
emergent literacy) in this domain (home) was worthy of study relevant to their
discourse (relational or instructional) purposes and patterns.
Participants in Storybook Reading
Storybook reading is a joint activity between an adult and a young child.
The adult is usually a caregiver for the child and often the child’s mother but may
be other adults or older literate children (Wasik et al., 2002). Storybook reading
most typically involves a preliterate child, whose level of literacy is emerging,
that is, beginning to develop in somewhat predictable ways. The participants in
storybook reading studies generally included at least one preschool child and one
adult or other person who was literate and able to read a storybook to the child.
The two primary sites for studies were in the family home or in a classroom.
Home literacy studies. Generally, studies conducted in family homes
were parent-child and they were descriptive studies of what was observable in
the family storybook reading or instructive in the form of teaching parents
storybook reading methods. Barton et al. (2000) explained a social theory of
literacy; “[I]n the simplest sense literacy practices are what people do with
literacy” (p. 7). The parent and child may be reading for pleasure primarily but
there could also be deliberate teaching from the storybook reading. The
following summaries of research demonstrate the range of participants taking
part in home literacy studies.
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Whitehurst et al. (1988) studied parents and 21-35 month old children in
their homes. The researchers presented a literacy intervention plan. The
hypothesis they tested was that maternal picture book reading would increase the
language acquisition of her child or children in significant ways. The subjects in
their study were middle-class American (New York) families with a mother and
child, the child having normal language skills and all the families were
volunteers who responded to a newspaper story about the study. The thirty
families were subdivided into a control group and an experimental group with an
equal number of boys and girls in each group. The experimental group received
four weeks of instruction in dialogic reading practices. The pretests and posttests
were conducted in a university setting; the mothers taped sessions of picture
book reading with their children in their homes. The audiotapes were transcribed
and coded and then utterances were sorted by categories for statistical analysis to
record the number of instances of oral communication behaviors (e.g., labeling,
kinds of questions, repetitions, vocalizations). Whitehurst et al. (1988) reported
that there were dramatic increases in the experimental group in linguistic skills
related to how the mothers read to their children. They concluded that literacy
activities of this type contributed to language development; that children respond
to differences in reading practices; and, that child-directed speech (motherese) is
part of the children’s language development
Heath (1986) studied story telling as an anticipated precursor to literacy
in families with preschoolers in their homes. The researchers wanted to learn
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more about the ways conversation styles in family homes contributed to reading
and writing in school. Her direct focus was to understand how children develop
an imagination, which she defined as a critical factor for more advanced literacy
activities. She argued that “through imagination—the recombining of ideas into
new wholes” (p. 158) readers can interpret what writers create and enable them
to use words to make new images. Halliday (1975) identified imagination as a
mathetic function of language tied to how children attach meaning to learning;
“let’s pretend” types of phrases exemplify this function. The participants in her
ethnographic study were families from a black community (Trackton), a white
community (Roadville), and mainstream communities in the Piedmont Carolinas.
She observed face-to-face talk between adults and children and listened to tape
recordings of conversations. She reported that the different communities had
different linguistic norms for storytelling and conversations between adults and
children.
Skotko et al. (2004) studied four mothers and daughters ages three to
seven years old with Rett syndrome as their primary diagnosis but in addition,
the girls were mentally retarded. Their approximate mental age ranged from five
to 19 months; they were believed to have normal hearing and vision; they had
severe communication disabilities that consisted of very little or no oral
communication that was meaningful and nonstandard gesturing although their
primary mode of communication was vocalizations. The intervention and study
took place over four months in their family homes. Skotko et al. were interested
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in three topics. (1) The actions of the girls in terms of the amount of labeling or
commenting they exhibited when their mothers requested that more predictions
and inferences be provided during storybook reading. (2) The changes in their
operation of devices used to communicate. (3) Whether the girls exhibited
behaviors that indicated they were paying greater attention to the storybook
reading. They concluded that using storybooks was beneficial for teaching
content and providing a context to engage the mothers and daughters in this joint-
attention activity that encouraged interactive communication with the use of
appropriate assistive technologies. Two of the technologies used were
augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices used to help
children with speech or language disabilities and three-picture communication
systems (PCS) used on computer screens that operate on an eye-pointing
program of recognition.
Rashid, Morris, and Sevcik (2005) studied sixty-five African American
and European American first and second grade students with learning disabilities
and the study was about reading behaviors in their homes. They studied children
who had been diagnosed with reading disabilities by examining the children’s
home literacy environments. The researchers argued that the experience a child
has with reading is a better indicator of that child’s success in reading than the
literacy environment in the child’s home. They concluded that literacy rich home
environments and parental participation in literacy activities with their children
(such as storybook reading) seem to increase vocabulary and general language
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use but, they concluded, literacy rich home environments do not seem to support
acquisition of skills for the process of decoding text.
School literacy studies. The studies of storybook reading in schools cover
more topics than home literacy studies and generally includes more than parent-
child experiences. An adult, usually a teacher, reads to a group of students and
the purpose is likely to be instructive. The following reviews of research
demonstrate the range of participants taking part in school literacy studies
nationally and internationally.
Cochran-Smith (1986) examined adult-child conversational turn taking
during group storybook reading in a Philadelphian private nursery school. The
findings reported in this paper were a subset of a larger study conducted by the
researcher in 1984 in which she spent eighteen months audio recording,
interviewing, and gathering data as a participant-observer. She argued two
premises: (1) Storybook reading events were scaffolded in two ways—the child’s
“prior achievement of norms of conversational turn-taking” (p. 38) and the
structure of storybooks (picture books) themselves; and (2) storybook reading
was a “joint-venture” in which a reader provides a context for decontextualized
text by acting as a mediator between the text and the child. She also described
ways the readers modeled sense-making strategies for children during their
storybook reading conversations. She observed that the oral communication
between adults and children during storybook reading was more conversational
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in the sense of taking turns to talk rather than a strict reading of the text with the
adult performing and the child passively listening.
Valdez-Menchaca and Whitehurst (1992) conducted a six-week
experimental intervention with Spanish speaking, middle-class, two-year-old
children in a Mexican day-care center. They extended the work of Whitehurst et
al. (1988) on dialogic reading to include Mexican preschool children with below
average language abilities in a low-income community in Mexico using dialogic
reading methods and picture books. Previous work had been mother-child versus
teacher-students situations in the United States and had not been restricted by
low-language scores, assigned to groups, or a homogeneous experience of all
children interacting with one adult and the same picture books together as this
study did. Their data was based on transcripts of the individual children speaking
during audio-recorded sessions of picture book reading with a trained assistant.
The transcripts were coded for linguistic functions that had categories for
grammar, semantics, pragmatics, and vocalizations. They reported that the
difference found favored the intervention group in the posttest analysis of their
data. Valdez-Menchaca and Whitehurst (1992) reported that this study was
valuable for three reasons. (1) It was the first to show a causal relationship
between the development of preliteracy and language skills and picture book
reading in the home. (2) It added to the research on how “motherese” affects the
learning of language. (3) It points to the importance of conversational
interactions (e.g., dialogic) between adults and children to expand the child’s
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language use. Valdez-Menchaca and Whitehurst indicated that picture books and
dialogic reading, as a program is a viable, small-scale type of intervention to use
in underdeveloped nations like Mexico that cannot launch a Head Start style
program for economic or other reasons. They concluded that shared reading of
storybooks (picture books) may only be a part of the solution to improve literacy
skills but it is a good practice to start with and it should guide the research and
policy decisions related to early literacy.
Huebner and Meltzoff (2005) studied ninety-five families (parents and
two to three year olds) looking at intervention practices for literacy. Their
intervention was teaching parents to use dialogic reading practices for reading
with their children. Families were selected from Jackson County, Washington
and recruited in various ways with word-of-mouth being the most effective. They
tested three teaching methods to try to project the possibility of implementing a
“universal” program of instruction in dialogic reading practices; which, they
argued, could benefit approximately half our population of two to three year old
children because they do not attend preschool or have other compensating
provisions for reading readiness. One of the three groups (thirty-three families)
met with a teacher for about one hour of instruction as part of a small group (two
to six parents); they took part in roll play. They were given personal copies of a
video (“Hear and Say Reading with Toddlers” that explained and demonstrated
dialogic reading practices) and children’s books, plus directions to use the
dialogic reading practices. A second group of thirty families was mailed the
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video and books then left to teach themselves the reading practices with one
follow-up phone call during each of the four-week sessions by a teacher to
discuss the materials and directions for completing the reading tasks. A third
group of thirty-two families had only the experience of learning on their own
from the video without the telephone calls from a teacher as follow-up. All
participants met initially for an orientation meeting to the study. A fourth control
group of twenty-five families was used to examine naturally occurring dialogic
reading practices without instructional intervention. Audio recordings of parent-
child (six fathers were among the participants) reading were transcribed and
coded for use in analysis. Huebner and Meltzoff (2005) concluded that the in-
person instruction model was most effective but significant gains were made in
each of the participant groups.
Aram and Levin (2002) studied low SES mothers and their kindergarten
boys and girls in intact families in Israel. This research focused on both
storybook reading and collaborative writing separating the two as distinct but
related fundamentals for emergent literacy; indicating that storybook reading was
especially supportive in learning language and collaborative writing was more
helpful for orthographic/phonemic knowledge. Forty-one mothers and their five-
year-old boys (nineteen) and girls (twenty-two) in a small Israeli township were
the study participants. Aram and Levin videotaped parent-child writing sessions
in family homes—one session each pair was videotaped while writing an
invitation to an imaginary party and during another session while writing four
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pairs of dictated words. Storybook reading was evaluated using a Title
Recognition Test (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1990; Echols, West, Stanovich, &
Zehr, 1996) that listed thirty books, adapted to Hebrew.
The Title Recognition Test, and two additional similar tests—Author
Recognition Test and Magazine Recognition Test (Stanovich & West, 1989),
were developed to: (1) Measure exposure to print with administrative ease, (2)
provide an acceptable level of reliability for its purpose, and (3) avoid a problem
related to self-report types of questionnaires. The researchers noted that people
tended to report on their own reading habits in exaggerated ways related to their
perception of the social importance of literacy. The types of test items used are
actual titles or authors intermixed with manufactured titles or authors and the
task for the person tested is to identify the ones he or she recognizes. The persons
taking the test are told that some of the items are made up and they should not
guess at answers; they should only identify the ones they know are titles or
authors.
Additional literacy skills assessments used were word
writing/recognition, phonological awareness, and orthographic awareness.
Teacher evaluations of the children’s literacy skills and the children’s home
environments (literacy-related materials in the home) were part of the study.
Aram and Levin concluded that when collaborative writing and storybook
reading were used together there was greater progress in orthographic/phonemic
learning suggesting that joint reading and joint writing be practiced jointly in the
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homes by mothers with their children. This study may be biased by the titles
selected, that is, a child could have a vast knowledge of books and still none, or
only a few, of the titles known by the child may occur on the list even when
adapted to a specific culture. Storybook reading seems to be highly idiosyncratic
in many ways including storybook selection.
Reese and Cox (1999) studied four-year old boys and girls in a state-run
preschool in New Zealand. The purpose for this study was to examine three
styles of adult-child book reading in terms of the quality of the reading behavior
and its affect on early literacy. The three styles of reading were the “describer
style,” “comprehender style,” and “performance-oriented style.” Fifty children
age four who were enrolled in public preschools were read thirty-two narrative
storybooks by their parents. These researchers reported that they administered a
pretest and posttest in the children’s homes using the following assessments
Dunn and Dunn’s (1981) Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised Form L
(PPVT-R), Jaztak and Jaztak’s (1987) Wide Range Achievement Test—Revised
WRAT-R), Clay’s Concepts of Print (CAP), and a story comprehension
assessment. The storybook reading was done in one of the three preschools by
one of the four teachers over the six weeks of the intervention phase. Each child
was read the thirty-two storybooks by the same teacher using one of the three
reading styles. An elaborate plan, based on a scripted reading with the sites for
five questions and five comments prearranged and marked in the text for the
reader was devised to ensure each child had the same experience with each
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storybook. If a child initiated a question, the reader was instructed to turn the
question back to the child and if the child made a comment, the reader was
instructed to offer an affirmation but not to otherwise discuss the comment. The
authors noted that the scripts reflected naturally occurring storybook reading
events for each of the reader styles. They concluded that the style of reading was
dependent on a number of factors related to the child’s skill levels but that in this
study the performance-oriented style seemed to benefit preschoolers who were
more advanced and the describer style seems to be responsible for more
improvement in vocabulary and children’s print skills.
Poveda (2003) studied a kindergarten teacher, her students, and her
classroom storybook reading in Madrid, Spain for two years. The community
included Spanish Gypsy and Spanish non-Gypsy children, African and Latin
American immigrants, and reflected the demographics of the neighborhood. The
parents were unskilled or semiskilled workers. There were eighteen students (ten
boys, eight girls) with a high number of new immigrants. His ethnographic study
of a kindergarten teacher and her class, focused on literature socialization, that is,
literacy events centered on storybook reading as a means for socialization to
literature. He collected data as a participant observer taking field notes and using
video/audio recording, as well as interviewing the children and the teacher.
Poveda learned from the teacher that she included storybook reading for several
reasons. (1) She felt the children did not experience storybook reading or
storybook conversations in their homes. (2) She associated book reading with
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other literacy skills, including vocabulary knowledge, the structure of discourse,
and knowledge of the world. (3) She believed in the importance of the
intergenerational transmission of storytelling in families and communities.
Poveda (2003) concluded that the teacher’s practices illustrated her
awareness of the storybook genre, but also the genre of discourse associated with
storybook reading. He offered examples of knowing about storybooks as a genre;
they often begin with “Érase una vez”[once upon a time] and end with “y
vivieron felices” [they lived happily ever after] (p. 243). He added that these
statements from text are matched with behaviors taught by the teacher; this
teacher specified that children were to cross their arms, close their mouths, and
make theirs ears ready to listen when the storybook was about to be read. The
teacher encouraged children to comment on the story as she read and at the end
of the story the children would say in chorus, “colorín colorado este cuento se ha
acabado” [and little color red this story is finished] or other similar conclusions
that are equivalent to “they lived happily ever after” (p. 256). Poveda uses the
term entextualization devices (as opposed to decontextualization or
contextualization; which he argued did not allow for the complexity of the
process) to explain the social context of physical behaviors and the beginning of
a storybook reading as managed by the teacher in her classroom. The genre
specific text and the genre specific behavior learned for the literacy event
storybook reading are inseparable; they are “tied only to certain forms of literacy
85
use” (p. 267) that are different from other literacy events that take place in the
classroom.
Clearly, the participants in storybook reading include all varieties of
homes and schools. Children from eighteen months through age twelve, boys and
girls, low and average socioeconomic status, children with and without
disabilities, one parent and two parent homes, public and private schools and
preschools, international and multi-ethnic backgrounds, that is, most everyone in
the literate community. The varied participants discussed in this section of this
literature review highlighted situated literacy events by adults and children in
classrooms and homes. A research question for this study was to describe the role
gender plays in storybook reading during early childhood between a father and
his son.
The Storybook Debate
In 1985, the National Academy of Education Commission on Reading
reported that reading to children was more important than any other activity for a
child, if the child was to become a successful reader. Reading to children was the
way to improve general education progress by providing a knowledge base upon
which to build the children’s education. After a decade of acceptance at face
value, research to examine the hypothesis was undertaken.
Two studies standout in the research about storybook reading. The first,
“On the Efficacy of Reading to Preschoolers” (Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994)
reviewed the extant research on parent-child reading practices and outcomes as
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they related to learning language and literacy skills. Scarborough and Dobrich
found that there was some evidence for storybook reading leading to literacy, but
less of an effect than was taken-for-granted. In fact, they found that individual
differences in children, parental attitudes toward reading, and family
characteristics seemed to be better measures to predict children’s later reading
abilities (p. 245).
The second study, “Joint-Book Reading Makes for Success in Learning to
Read: A Meta-Analysis on Intergeneration Transmission of Literacy” (Bus et al.,
1995) also reviewed the then current research on storybook reading. After
conducting their analysis of studies, Bus et al. found that preschoolers who were
read to exhibited measurable achievements in their skills related to learning to
read and use language. More than a decade of study has gone into this debate and
there continues to be a division as to what benefits emergent reading skills
more—storybook reading, phonics instruction, or combinations and permeations
of ideas from many schools of thought.
The proponents of storybook reading are encouraged by the effect it has
on literacy and praise its value for developing comprehension and language
development (Bus, 2002, 2003; Bus et al., 1995; Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1988).
In contrast, the opponents find storybooks useful for attaining literacy skills but
they note that it is limited in its ability for vocabulary acquisition and phonemic
awareness (Scarborough, 2002; Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994). The vocabulary
acquisition debate related to storybook reading continues. Collins (2005)
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examined English language vocabulary acquisition among Portuguese preschool
children who were learning to speak English. She concluded that storybook
reading significantly increased new vocabulary learning.
The need for continued research in the area of storybook reading had
turned to the quality of the storybook reading as a contrast to the quantity of
storybook reading that happens as a child becomes literate. Reese and Cox
(1999) pointed out that there may be disagreement on how much storybook
reading is the right amount; it is accepted that storybook reading does contribute
to expanded vocabularies, a better understanding of print concepts, and verbal
abilities, all of which improve a child’s literacy skills.
This argument continues partly because scholars and educators need
guidance in making decisions about how to teach early literacy. Questions about
where the dollars for education should be invested and when children should
begin formal education persist. There are continued discussions about the proper
age for formal education to begin and when interventions should be considered
as well as who should decide how or when interventions should happen. It has
not yet been decided what should be taught and how and by whom. Other
questions about what assessments or outcomes should be used to demonstrate
success continue to need research. Because there are many questions still need to
be answered, the debate regarding storybook reading and its value goes on.
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Conclusions
The review of literature addressed the following topics: Storybook
reading—purposes for storybook reading, practices of storybook reading;
discourse and storybook reading, developmental parameters of storybook
reading, children’s literature and storybook reading, family literacy and
storybook reading, participants in storybook reading; and concluded with the
storybook debate. Each section contributed to the explanation of storybook
reading and provided a basis for understanding the study of father-son storybook
reading in this study.
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Chapter 3
Research Methodology
A case study may be bound by time, space, or the components of the case
(Enomoto & Bair, 2002). Each of these qualities was present in this study. The
study was bound by time because the recordings cover a specific interval of time
between this father-son dyad. It was bound by space because the storybook
reading was in the family’s home and the recordings were made there. The
components of the case, the storybook reading of the father and his son, were
recorded by the father with the intent of formal analysis to follow; the specific
data set is not replaceable (Yaden, 2005, personal communication).
Conversational analysis, a subset of discourse analysis, was used to look
at natural human communication (Littlejohn, 2002); as opposed to, for example,
public speeches, computers, or mass media; none of which have the quality of
two-way interactive conversation. Looking at communication by this means of
analysis grew out of ethnomethodology, research methods commonly used in
sociological studies (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Markee, 2000; Psathas, 1995).
An ethno-methodologist carefully observes and reports on ways people manage
their daily activities (Green, Dixon, & Zaharlick, 2003). This discourse analysis
study attended to turn taking as described by Sacks et al. (1974) and functions of
language as a meaning-making system (Halliday, 1975). Further analysis was
conducted using Grice's (1989) cooperative principle and maxims of
conversation, Millar and Rogers (1976) control patterns interpersonal
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communication, Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson. (1967) axioms of
conversation, and Wittgenstein’s notation of language games (Ambrose, 2001)
The data for analysis was from audiotape recordings. Psathas (1995)
wrote that regularly occurring categories of speech are evident in conversations.
The specific content of the communication changes but the management of the
conversation is organized and observable as has been demonstrated by specific
studies on conversations such as Norrick's (2003) study about joking, Speaker,
Taylor, and Kamen's (2004) study of storytelling, and Justice and Kaderavek's
(2003) study of topic control. An area for further study in storybook reading is
teacher-student questions or teacher talk that requests children to verbally display
their knowledge (Hansen, 2004; van Kleeck, 2003). Discourse analysis provides
a system for question-response turn-taking analysis (Sacks et al., 1974;
Schegloff, 2001; Silverman, 1998).
The purpose for this study was to observe and analyze what happened
during a series of authentic storybook reading experiences between a father and
his son. The researcher concentrated on the communicative behaviors used by the
dyad during storybook reading activities. Occurrences and reoccurrences of
observed discourse behaviors were selected from the recorded data of repeated
storybook reading between a father and his son over six consecutive weeks.
There were five questions guiding this case study. (1) What was the nature of
interaction during authentic storybook reading experiences between a father and
his son in initial and subsequent reading of storybooks? (2) What was the nature
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of decontextual interaction patterns during storybook reading for preschoolers?
(3) What role did gender play in storybook reading during early childhood? (4)
What role did genre play in storybook reading between a father and son during
early childhood? (5) What role did adult power play in the kinds of answers that
a child provided during storybook reading events?
Much of the documentation about storybook reading is qualitative and
this study followed from that background of research. A case study has more to
do with picking what to study than it does with picking a methodology (Stake,
2000). Case-study research may be single-case or multi-case designs (Yin, 2003);
this study is a single-case design. Yin provided five potential reasons for using a
single-case design. Those reasons were (1) a critical case—to test a specific
theory, (2) an extreme or unique case—to study a specific phenomenon; (3) a
representative or typical case—to study everyday occurrences; (4) a revelatory
case—to study phenomenon that is usually inaccessible; or (5) a longitudinal
case—to study the same single case over time. This single-case study is a
representative case of the everyday occurrence of storybook reading in a family
residence. It is a situated literacy in the context of family reading practices
(Barton, Hamilton, and Ivanic, 2000; Pitt, 2000). The unit of analysis for this
study was the reading triad of the father and his two preschool aged sons. The
second child of the triad was Edward, a two year old. He was only referred to in
the analysis secondarily as an influence in the reading events; the child focused
on was Andrew, age four years.
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Furthermore, a case study may be bound by time, space, or the
components of the case (Merriam & Associates, 2002); each of these qualities
was present in this study. It was bound by time—the records covered
approximately six weeks; space—the storybook reading was at home and the
recordings were made in the family home; and, the components of the case—the
storybook reading was recorded by the father who was reading to his son during
the early 1990s. For this study, the father made the recordings with the intent of
formal analysis to follow. Cook-Cottone (2004) advanced the use of a case study
for reporting on literacy. Cook-Gumperz and Kyratzis (2001) have explored child
discourse in broader terms focusing on ordinary elements of conversations such
as gossip, pretending, playing, and chitchat. Yaden's (2003) research employed a
mathematical representation of the discourse patterns in a case study of
storybook reading that illustrated the complexity of graphing the discourse
during even brief conversations between participants.
Stake (2000) wrote that a case study ‘is not so much’ about picking a
method to do the study, all the same a method was needed to study the data
collected. A branch of sociology identified as ethnomethodology was originated
by Garfinkel (1967), who used the method to study peoples’ social behaviors in
their daily lives. The methodology is especially appropriate for the study of
human communication to make sense of the spoken social interactions (Ellis,
1997; Littlejohn, 2002; Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997) between people, such as,
father-son communication during storybook reading.
93
The purpose for case study research may be to explain, to describe, to
illustrate, to explore, or to do a meta-evaluation. Yin (2003) wrote a description
of a case study and identified the nature and expectations for the methods
employed in the research of this form. Briefly stated, Yin explained that case
studies are empirical and that case studies are suitable for researching real-life
context and contemporary phenomenon when it was difficult to define the
boundaries between them. His second point was that case studies allow for
expanded options in situations when there were many variables and points of
interest that needed to be considered, “and as another result benefits from the
prior development of theoretical propositions to guide data collection and
analysis” (pp 13-14). The case study method provided the most useful means for
this multifaceted research project. The study explored joint-storybook interaction
between a father and his son during early childhood and before formal instruction
in literacy. Descriptions, illustrations, and explanations provided understanding
for the phenomenon of the study.
The Researcher
A compelling motivation for this dissertation was to undertake the
analysis of gender and genre as it influenced discourse during situated literacy
practices and purposes by analyzing transcripts of naturalistic speech transcribed
from audiotape recordings. Of importance to this research project was the fact
that these audiotaped storybook readings were recorded and preserved for the
express purpose of future research. The tapes were not spontaneously created by
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the family as a record of the events in the sense that videotapes are currently
made to record a child’s birthday party or a grade school performance. The
researcher was not a participant in the original tape recording of the storybook
reading; however, the complete documentation for the study was available for
analysis. The researcher was a graduate student who used the data originally
collected by a member of the student’s doctoral committee who provide
instruction and guidance for the analysis of the data.
Storybook reading continues to be a vital part of literacy scholarship in
the area of early or emergent literacy and a primary interest of the researcher for
this dissertation study. It may be that there are fewer studies of father-son
storybook reading because it is rarer for them to participate in this activity. If
there are fewer occurrences, it may have something to do with the nature of the
social interactions between fathers and sons or it may be that fathers and sons are
not observed as often. The researcher assumed that fathers and sons have unique
ways of interacting when reading storybooks just as they do in their other
activities together. Stereotypically, they are more likely to participate in active,
physical play together than in the calmer, quieter pastime of reading together.
When they do engage in book reading, they are more likely to engage in reading
stories of adventure and action (Millard, 1997). Millard, a female scholar,
advanced the argument that male preferences’ at all ages tended (but not
exclusively) to be toward using literacy skills for practical and pragmatic
purposes.
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Participants
The participants in this case study were a father and his two sons, ages
four and two. The data for this study included primarily the father and the four-
year-old boy because the research was about a father and the son whose
conversational level was on par with three- to five-year-old preschool children
associated with emergent literacy studies about storybook reading experiences.
The participants were self-selected based on an invitation to take part in a
university based research project on storybook reading. The pool of participants
was faculty/staff parents and their child/children enrolled in a common
preschool. The families were associated with a large private university in
California and their preschool children who were enrolled in the university
sponsored preschool. The father in this study was a faculty member for the
university. The family had a high regard for literacy and literature as expressed in
their book reading activities and ownership of children’s books. Audiotape
recordings of the father and his sons during storybook reading were made over a
six-week period by the father in the family home. The family demographics were
American-English speaking, mainstream, upper-middle class, Caucasian, two-
parent, household (Yaden, personal communication, May, 2005) and the child
was not “at risk” for social, physical, or psychological reasons.
Previous studies of father-son storybook reading focused on the types and
number of questions the son asked during storybook reading (Yaden et al., 1989).
Other elements of the data set, independent of or in conjunction with other
96
similar data, were reported on in other studies by Yaden (1988) and Yaden and
McGee (1984).
Design
The primary goal of this case study was to explore the nature of
storybook reading as it was experienced by one father and his son in order to
understand what happens as the dyad reads together. This study included
secondary analysis of an existing data set (consisting of storybook transcripts and
audiotapes) collected as a part of a planned storybook study of kinds of questions
asked during storybook reading by parent and child. To manage this study, a
qualitative design that incorporated features of a case study and
ethnomethodological standards of discourse analysis were chosen. Birnbaum,
Emig, and Fisher (2003) wrote that the boundaries between case study and
ethnomethodology were blurring and becoming less distinct, so this study was
aligned with on-going research that was not only of a blended quantitative-
qualitative type; but also, of a blended qualitative study. This method of study
depends on the transcriptions of tape recordings of actual talk-in-interactions
(conversations) that occur naturally, i.e., not under laboratory-like conditions or
otherwise contrived (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998).
The data collection phase of the case study was completed prior to the
researcher’s participation in the study. The audio tapes were recorded as part pf
an ongoing interest for other researchers in early literacy (Yaden, 2005). The
subsequent phases were described in Chapter 3 through Chapter 5 that follows.
97
Labov (as cited in Bothamley, 1993) described the Observer’s Paradox as a
problem that exists in sampling natural conversations the “goal is to observe the
way people use language when they are not being observed” (p. 382). Cameron
(2001) explained that when talk takes place because the researcher arranged for it
to take place and for the express purpose of observation of that talk, “it is entirely
an artifact of observation” therefore it is not natural talk and “it cannot be good
data” (p. 20). An attempt to avoid this paradox was made by having the father
and son record their storybook reading conversations in their home. All the same,
the use of the tape recorder and predetermined storybooks may have changed the
natural context because the tape recorder served as a surrogate observer, still
obtrusive in the sense that the tape recorder was part of the context and the
recording was a factor in the behavior of the participants. Cameron (2001) wrote
that when talk was observed and recorded, the process became part of the
context. Additionally she wrote that the behavior of being tape-recorded is a part
of the communication competence, i.e., knowledge of acceptable behavior for the
conversional situation of the speakers—how to talk when being tape recorded, in
this case while trying to act like there was no recording being done. This became
an unexpected issue for the son and a conditional factor for the father’s
conversation on tape, which was discussed at length in the following chapters.
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Procedures
Instrumentation
The instruments for gathering data were the researcher, audiotape
recordings, and the transcripts. There were eleven one-hour cassette tapes made
on a personal tape recorder. There was no professional quality technology
employed during the taping. There was a concern that because of the age of the
tapes there could have age related problems (e.g., possibly being fragile and
easily damaged even with normal handling). Although there were no apparent
physical problems with the tapes, prior to new analysis, the tapes were
transferred to CD disks. As part of the preservation of the data, the original print
transcriptions were photocopied. The original documents, therefore, were not
marked or otherwise corrupted by the current research based on them. The
researcher worked with copies, reproductions, and edited data based on the
original documentation.
Storybooks provided for the family reading sessions are listed here. There
were three representative genres of storybooks in each set supplied for the study;
an ABC book, a richly illustrate book, and an expository book with more print.
The data for this study was collected to replicate a previous study conducted by
Yaden et al. (1989) to extend knowledge regarding questions preschoolers ask
during storybook reading. The selection of storybooks therefore reflected the
choices made for that study. Three sets of three storybooks were used by the
family for this research, they were:
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Set A:
Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones by Ruth Heller
Hey, Get Off Our Train by John Burningham
Alphabatics by Suse MacDonald
Set B
A House Is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman
Hi, Cat by Ezra Jack Keats
Chicka Chicka ABC by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
Set C
On Mother’s Lap by Ann Herbert Scott
One Wooly Wombat by Rod Trinca and Kerry Argebt
Alphabears by Kathleen Hague
Other storybooks from the family’s home library were read and recorded
on the audiotapes. A list of those books follows.
Alexander and the Magic Boat (Holabird, 1990)
Green Eggs and Ham by Theodore “Dr. Seuss” Geisel
Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr. and John
Archambault
Grandma and the Pirates by Phoebe Gilman
Christopher Columbus by author unknown
Mousekin’s Easter Basket by Edna Miller
Ms. Spider’s Tea Party by David Kirk
These storybooks varied in content, pages, word counts, and the mean,
mode, and median number of words per two-page spread (P2PS) in the books.
The pages are considered by two-page spreads (2PS) because when reading a
storybook, the two pages are commonly viewed as one page and illustrations
often spread across the two pages. Only one book had numbered pages, On
Mother’s Lap (Scott, 1972). The title pages in the books were not included in the
calculations of storybook statistic. Several readability measures were used for
further descriptions of the genres used for this research. Tables that provide
descriptive date were included on the following pages (See Tables 2 through 4 on
pages 105-106 below).
The Internet website www.amazon.com has added a hyperlink that is
especially useful for comparing readability. Clicking on the test stats link opens
the information below (that was copied from the site) and other interesting and
useful data about children’s books.
Figure 1: Concordance
anywhere boat box car dark eat eggs fox goat
good green ham house let may mouse rain sam
say see thank ti train tree try
The sample above comes from data about Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, a
text read by the father for his son during the storybook reading in this study. The
100
101
size of the print represents the number of times a word was used in the text. In
this example, “eat” was the most frequently used word in the book. On a live
screen when the curser was moved over the word a pop-up shows the number of
times that word was in the book, “eat” was used twenty-five times, “Sam” was
used three times. This is a powerful tool for describing the text of a book and
valuable for teachers and parents for selecting and teaching with storybooks.
Another interesting feature was SIPs—statistically improbable phrases. Many of
the books for sale at amazon.com have an option to “look inside,” a feature that
allows for finding unique phrases in the text of the book. An illustrative example
from Chicka Chicka ABC (a text provided to the family for this study) was
“coconut tree.” The phrase “coconut tree” was a hot link to a list of books that
also have that phrase. The books listed for “coconut tree” included diet and
health books, adult fiction, and other children’s books; a wonderful way to pull
together a lesson plan on coconuts, trees, or coconut trees.
Other interesting “text stats” were reported in a separate section on the
page. Three readability measures (Fog Index, Flesch Index, and Flesch-Kincaid),
three complexity measures (complex words, syllables per word, words per
sentence), number counts (characters, words, sentences), and fun stats (words per
dollar – based on the cost of the book, and word per ounces – based on the
weight of the book). Amazon.com also has a feature that allowed automatic
comparison of books based on each of the measures reported. The comparison
102
used in the following table was based on the criteria (1) Green Eggs and Ham,
(2) children’s book, (3) ages 4-8, and, (4) general.
Of the nine books used in this research, five were not listed in their
inventory or they did not have text stats for them. However, this information was
instructive for the analysis of Green Eggs and Ham. The readability levels for
Green Eggs and Ham was grade 2.7 (Fog Index), 100 percent ease of reading
(Flesch Index) and 0.7 grade (Flesch-Kindcaid). The complexity index shows
one percent of books in this category have less complex words, the average
number of syllables per word is 1.2, and the average number of words per
sentence is 5.6. The exact number of characters is 3,477 (97 percent of text
compared had more characters), words are 761 (96 percent had more words), and
sentences are 136 (94 percent had more sentences). The fun stats showed that
there were 85 words per dollar and there were 159 words per ounce.
103
Table 2: Text Stats Summary from Amazon.com Website Data
for the Storybook Green Eggs and Ham
Readability
Levels:
Fog Index
2.7
Flesch Index
100.3
Flesch-Kincaid
0.7
Complexity: Complex
words:
1%
Syllables per
word:
1.2
Words per
sentence
5.6
Number of: Characters
3,477
Words
761
Sentences
136
Comparison: 97% have
more
96% have
more
94% have
more
Fun Stats: Words per dollar: 85 Words per ounce: 159
Tables 3 and 4 that follow provided additional descriptive statistics for the text
storybooks used in this study and the tables will be discussed next in this
dissertation.
104
Table 3: Characteristics of Storybook Texts in This Study
Words per two-page spread
Set Title
Total 2PS with
text/illustrations
Range
Mean
Mode*
Median
A Alphabatics 26 3 3 3 [26] 3
Hey, Get Off Our
Train
24 0-56 18 5 [6] 14
Chicken’s Aren’t
the Only Ones
21 0-59 9 17 [3] 16
A Summary61 10 8
B Chicka Chicka
ABC
8 4-33 18 33 [2] 17
A House Is a
House for Me
24 9-54 30 30 [3] 30
Hi, Cat 14 0-48 21 0 [4] 21
B Summary 46 23 21
C Alphabears 14 18-39 33 33 [3] 34
One wooly
wombat
16 0-8 6 7 [8] 7
On Mother’s Lap 16 0-32 13 0 [3] 9
C Summary 46 17 13
*Example: 3 [26] indicates 26 2PS have 3 words per page.
105
Table 4: Characteristics of Storybook Texts in This Study
Set Title
Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level
Fry’s Estimated
Readability Level
Number of words
typed from text
Number of sentences
Average umber of
words per sentence
Total number of
words in storybook
Set
A
Alphabatics 0 * 0 0 0 78
Hey, Get Off
Our Train
2.5 2.5 267 30 8.9 437
Chicken’s
Aren’t the Only
Ones
3.6 6 327 28 10.5 385
Set
A
Summary 900
Set
B
Chicka Chicka
ABC
0 1 101 13 7.2 101
A House Is a
House for Me
2.5 2.5 409 45 9 726
Hi, Cat 3.1 3.1 325 32 6.5 293
Set
B
Summary 103
3
Set
C
Alphabears 4.7 6 202 12 16.8 456
One wooly
wombat
5.5 * 95 14 6.7 97
On Mother’s
Lap
3.9 2 207 24 8.6 210
Set
C
Summary 759
*Fry’s Readability Graph requires 100 words to estimate reading
level; some of the storybooks had fewer than 100 words. The
maximum number of sentences that can be plotted on the graph
is 25.
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There is considerable variation within the genre of storybooks. An
illustration of the variance among these three ABC books is shown by comparing
them using the data in these two tables. Table 1 provides the word count statistics
and Table 2 the readability statistics.
Set A: Alphabatics has twenty-six two-page spreads (2PS) of
text/illustrations and, based on the word count data per 2PS, there is a range of
three words per 2PS, a mean of three words, a mode of three words [twenty-six
2PS have three words each], and a median of three words per 2PS. A Microsoft
Word function allows for the measure of readability in Word documents. By
typing text from the storybooks into a Word document, several statistical
summaries are automatically generated. (They can be accessed by running the
Spelling and Grammar check if Show Readability Statistics is enabled.) Flesch-
Kincaid Grade Level is one measure it reports; which indicates the approximate
grade level for the text and it is not restricted by the number of words in the text
as is Fry’s graphing system. The reading level for Alphabatics is below first
grade by the Flesch-Kincaid scale. The number of sentences is zero; however, “IS
FOR” is implied when a letter is written and a word is linked to it in an alphabet
book—A “is for” ark begins Alphabatics by Kathleen Hague. With that
consideration, twenty-six four-word sentences would be in the storybook. With
no sentences, the words per sentence are zero. There are a total of seventy-eight
words in the storybook. A paperback edition of the book was used in this
research.
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A second measurement for reading level was calculated using Fry’s
Graph for Estimating Readability—Extended (Fry, Kress, & Fountoukidis,
1993). Calculations based on Fry’s graph require 100 words of text. If the 100-
word count is met, there is a minimum of 108 syllables and a maximum of
twenty-five sentences required to apply the formula to rate readability of text.
The 100 words are counted from the beginning of a sentence. The number of
sentences are counted and when the 100 words does not come to the end of a
sentence an estimate of the portion of the sentence is made in term of tenths of
segments in the sentence. All syllables in the 100 words are counted. The number
of sentences is on the side of the graph and the number of syllables is across the
top of the graph. The plot on the graph where the two points intersect fall in an
area that begins with first grade and ends with seventh plus. Alphabatics had
seventy-eight words and twenty-six sentences; therefore, the Fry graph was not
used.
The uniqueness of this book is the creative way the illustrator uses the
shape of a letter to connect it to an illustration of a noun that starts with the letter.
While the page can read “A is for ark,” one child read it, “A is becoming and
becoming and becoming that boat” (Webb, 2002). The pages could also be read,
“Big a, little a, ark.” In this example for the letter A, the illustrator creates a
sequenced, wordless story in four frames that move across the bottom of the page
from left to right in comic-strip fashion. Frame 1: The letter A is a normal
printed, sans serif, block, capital A (A) in a square frame. Frame 2: The letter A
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is floating on water and tilting to the right at about a thirty-degree angle hinting
that it might tip over. Frame 3: The letter A has completed a 180-degree flip on
the water so that the top of the A is under water; it has capsized. Frame 4: The
letter A has taken on the bowed shape of an ark (typical of illustrations of the
Biblical Noah’s ark) with a cabin atop. A reader’s eyes naturally move to the
right side of the 2PS with the strip of aligned frames leading right on which is
written one word ARK and a picture of what depicts, Noah’s Ark with two
giraffes, a roaster and a hen, and an ox aboard. Although the ark illustration
could just as easily be the beginning of the transformation story moving from
right to left ending with the letter A. The water shows the wake of the ark and
there is a fish jumping out of the water to catch a flying bug. A considerable
amount of background information is needed to make meaning of this example
from the text.
Set B: Chicka Chicka ABC has eight 2PS. Each 2PS has a range from four
to thirty-three words, a mean of eighteen word, mode of thirty-three words [two
of the 2PS has thirty-three words], and mean of fourteen words. The book had
101 words and they were all typed to yield the readability statistics for Chicka
Chicka ABC. The Flesch-Kincaid measure shows a reading level of below first
grade. There were thirteen sentences with an average of 7.5 words per sentence.
Fry’s graph indicated a readability level of below first grade as well. It was
interesting that their Flesch-Kincaid statistic for grade level was six for Chicka
Chicka ABC while the statistic generated from typing the text in Word was grade
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4.7. The grade level of six was plotted on Fry’s Graph. It may be necessary to
type the entire text to get an accurate measure because the grade level changed
with the word counts and sentence counts.
The little board book has a lyrical chanting text reminiscent of traditional
lyrical types of children’s’ literature, for example, the ABC song “…now I’ve
said my abcs…” While the text includes the alphabet, it does not follow the
expected “A is for ___” format. The first 2PS shows a coconut tree on the
centerfold of the spread that has foliage and coconuts equally distributed on each
side of the tree. In the written text, the letters of the alphabet are all capitals in
Times Roman Bold, setting them off from the rest of the printed text in Times
Roman Normal. The illustration letters are Futura Bold, small case (a) in red and
purple across the bottom of the pages, a and b to the left of the tree and c to the
right of the tree; they seem to be falling the way coconuts fall from a coconut tree
and perhaps making a booming sound. Although when a coconut lands on the
ground it is with a thud, if any sound at all—boom boom is perhaps more
entertaining than thud thud for this context, thus the repeated Chicka chicka
boom boom. Chicka chicka boom boom is no more than rhythmic sounds that are
fun to chant. The text on the left side of the 2PS is, “A told B, and B told C, ‘I’ll
meet you at the coconut tree’.” The appeal of this storybook was the language
play and the simple illustrations. An immediate, obvious literary extension for
the text would be to use the shapes in the illustration of the tree and the letter
shapes to make coconut trees with letters on the ground under them; the book’s
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collage-style artwork could be duplicated easily by preschool or kindergarten
children.
Set C: Alphabears has fourteen 2PS. Each 2PS has a range from eighteen
to thirty-nine words, a mean of thirty-three words, a mode of thirty-three word
[with only three pages actually having thirty-three words], and median of thirty-
three words. Of the 456 words in the Alphabears, 202 words (in the order they
appear in the text beginning on the first page of the book) were typed to yield the
following readability statistics: Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 4.7, 12 sentences,
and 16.8 average words per sentence. A grade level of six was calculated using
Fry’s graphing method; showing more than a grade level difference in the two
measures of readability of this text. The Fry grade level was grade six. Unlike
Alphabatics and Chicka Chicka ABC, Alphabears had complex, detailed pictures
and a sense of story in that all the pages featured a bear and its uniquely
individual qualities. A paperback edition of the book was used in this research.
Each letter of the alphabet was for the name of a bear, e.g., “A is for
Amanda.” The right side of the 2PS tells about the bear named Byron. Then a
discussion of the bear with its qualities and a description is printed under the
finely detailed illustrations. Using the same example, (Line 1) “A is for Amanda,
a good teddy bear (Line 2) Who carries sweet apples everywhere” and the
illustration shows a teddy bear pushing a wooden wheelbarrow filled with ripe,
red apples. She is wearing a pastel colored country dress, on her head is a wide-
brimmed hat with a long, plumed-feather, and she seems to be wearing klompen-
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the Dutch style wooden shoes. Behind her, a knoll hides part of a country cottage
that may belong to her. Good qualities may be a smile on the teddy bears face,
living in the county, harvesting season, apples taste good and are said to keep the
doctor away when eaten once a day, dressing pretty in an old fashioned way, or
other things the child or adult might question or comment on.
Data Collection
The storybook mediated conversations were the primary data source. The
records of the conversations were the audiotapes. The transcripts of the
audiotapes became written records of the conversations. The written records were
coded to identify events in the conversations that were marked for further
analysis. Cameron (2001) explained that the primary data is the audiotape
recordings and that the transcript is for documenting the data; that is, “spoken
data is not usable for analytic purposes until it is transcribed” (p. 40). Ochs
(1979/1999) referred to the transcriptions of speech as a naturalistic database.
The conversations were manually transcribed from the audiotapes in three
phases. A first transcription was typed. A subsequent, amended transcription was
created with handwritten notations. The transcript were retyped with the addition
of the handwritten notation and further amended with the aid of computer
software for auditing the digitally edited tapes.
The study was based on analysis of secondary data. Secondary data is
defined or described as existing data, which was created by someone other than
the person using the data for research and it may or may not be used for the same
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purpose for which the primary data was designed. Typical sources for secondary
data are official or governmental (vital statistics, census, etc.) and unofficial or
general business (annual reports, journal articles, etc.) sources that may be paper-
based (conference papers, research reports, etc.) or electronically based (on-line
data bases, CD-ROMs, etc) (Culbert, 2006; Sedgwick, 2003). In this dissertation
secondary date consisted of transcripts and audiotape recordings of one of the six
families included in the primary data collection. The primary data was collected
with the intention of replicating a previous study Yaden and his collogues
published (Yaden et al., 1989) that focused on questions asked during storybook
reading with preschool age children and their parents. While questions between
the father and son were evident, the data was not used exclusively to examine
questions asked but instead, the data was analyzed on a variety of linguistic
features of conversation that consequentially included questioning by the father
and his son. The principle investigator was a committee member for this
dissertation who was instrumental in the direction of this dissertation.
A pre-transcript refers to the actual recorded information (O'Connell &
Kowal, 1998), that is, the audiotapes, in a sense, the performance of the
storybook reading conversations. The body of materials to be analyzed was made
up of audio recordings (pre-transcript), the storybooks used during the storybook
reading, and post transcripts (O'Connell & Kowal, 1998); post transcripts are
verbatim written accounts of audio (or video) recordings that can be used for
research. Additionally, post transcripts are used when a verbatim record is
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desirable for marking paralinguistic details of the spoken information (O'Connell
& Kowal, 1998; Psathas, 1995). Pauses, changes in the intonation of utterances,
and lengthening of vowels in speech are examples of paralinguistic information
(Harris & Hodges, 1995).
Original transcripts were typed by a professional transcribing service.
Subsequently, amendments were made by graduate students making handwritten
notations on copies of the typed transcripts, adding approximately twenty percent
more data to the original content. For this study, the transcripts were scanned
using an optical scanning program and saved as Word documents, the
handwritten data were edited into the transcripts. The original audiotape
recordings were transferred and transformed from cassette tapes to computer data
files using MAGIX audio cleaning lab 10, a software program designed for
editing the quality of audio- or video-recorded data files. Further discrimination
of conversational information from the tapes was possible after using the
cleaning lab functions. The process for transferring the data required the use of a
tape player connected through a microphone jack to save the audio output on the
hard drive. The saved data was manipulated (cleaned) to remove background
noises and to optimize the sound quality of the spoken data. The edited sound
files were saved to standard CDs for use in this study.
The father and son shared readings of storybooks during the recordings
that lasted about twenty-five minutes per session equaling about thirteen hours of
audio recordings. All thirteen hours of data were reviewed and processed
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according to the methods described above. The researcher for this study drew
examples for analysis primarily from two tapes, approximately two hours of the
total data set. The storybooks were read to the sons by the father between March
17 and April 23, 1995. The readings included specific books provided for the
study and personal storybooks from the family library of children’s books.
Validity and Reliability
Often, as Merriam (2002) wrote, the trustworthiness or authenticity
becomes apparent by the process of how the data is collected and how the data is
used to explain the case being studied. How the data is handled gives credence to
what can be interpreted from the data. The researcher, through immersion into
the experience of the matter of the study, discovers what is in the data. Validity
for this study was shown through the depth of inquiry into the data collected and
the data was analyzed in a manner similar to other qualitative studies (Birnbaum
et al., 2003; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Markee, 2000; Merriam, 2002; Psathas,
1995; Schegloff, 2001) that used transcripts and audiotape recordings of
conversations.
The audiotape-recorded materials and the transcripts were used
simultaneously during the analysis. A great deal of the information necessary to
understand the conversations was based on paralinguistic elements of the
conversations that included such things as pauses between speaking turns, it was
important to listen to the conversations as well as to read the transcripts. The dual
channels of information contributed to the analysis of the conversations.
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Repeated listening to the audiotape-recorded material is central to discourse
analysis (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Sacks et al., 1974) and is the means for the
researcher to become intimately aware of details that become significant for a
case study of conversation or discourse. At the outset, it is not always apparent
where the data will take the study. This dissertation was designed to analyze the
nature of the conversation between a father and his four-year-old son however as
the study progress in became apparent that the two-year-old was a frequent
participant in the storybook reading session and his interaction contributed to the
holistic experience for the family. The specific interaction between the father and
the younger son was not the focus of the study yet his influence in the situated
literacy changed the dynamic when he was present. Listening to the changes in
the participant’s speaking together contributed to the analysis of the
conversations. The written transcript provided the words (the language or script
of the conversations) the tape recorded data provided the texture (the social or
relational interaction)
The important question regarding reliability for qualitative studies is not
about replicating studies, for it is unlikely that what happens can again be
precisely observed. “Reliability lies in others’ concurring that given the data
collected” they could agree that there was a consistent, dependable report that
leds to the conclusions presented (Merriam, 2002, p. 27). Validity is managed in
qualitative studies by including “rich, thick descriptions” of what is being studied
(Birnbaum et al., 2003). This idea of validity does not look for generalizability as
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a product of the study, but instead produces a specific, in depth examination with
enough samples of a phenomenon to show that the claim is warranted. A specific
area of examination in this study was the nature of gender and genre as the two
factors influenced the conversations between the father-son dyad during their
storybook reading sessions.
Data Analysis
Markee (2000) wrote that there were four assumptions basic to
conversation: (1) conversations have structure; (2) the meaning of a conversation
is contextual; (3) it is not assumed that any part of a conversation is “disorderly,
accidental or irrelevant”; and (4) conversations are natural occurrences (p. 40).
Conversational analysis in this study (1) was the identification of conversational
structures between son and father, (2) the meaning of the conversation was in a
storybook reading context, (3) examined with the assumption that each
conversational element was purposeful (functionally intended); and (4) the father
and son were speaking naturally and unscripted.
The conversations were transcribed using transcription conventions
adapted from previous studies conducted by (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998);
Markee (2000); Psathas (1995); Silverman (1998)) and the pioneering works in
conversational analysis Sacks et al. (1974) and Ochs (1979/1999). These
researchers included in their sets of transcription analysis ways to identify and
differentiate speakers, a means to mark and explain paralinguistic details; a
system to show speaker turns in conversation, a method to provide editorial
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information about what can be heard on the audiotapes, and measures for
cataloging and referencing transcript. The conventions in this dissertation most
closely followed those advised by Ochs in her discussion of “transcription as
theory,” to describe the naturalistic speech in this case study of situated literacy,
i.e., father-son, home, storybook reading.
Audiotape recordings were the source for the data; therefore, the
transcripts reflected only auditory information from the conversations. Other
means of gathering data are observation and videotape recording and
combinations of all or any of the three methods. In accordance with Ochs (1999),
a researcher must identify what to mark, how to mark it, why include it in the
transcripts and then adhere to recognized conventions to produce a transcript that
“reflect[ed] the research goals and the state of the field” (p. 168). In her
discussion, covering the procedures for transcribing data; she cautioned that
overly complicated coding might reduce the utility of the transcription thereby
reducing its readability; selectivity and simplicity are viewed as good guidelines
for preparing the transcripts for conversation analysis.
Ochs (1999) recommended a modified but generally standard
orthography—thus, “going to” in standard spoken speech in its contracted form
sounds like “gonna” so the modified orthography “gonna” is in the transcription.
Some pronunciations of utterances may not be appropriate or necessary to
transcribe for conversation analysis. As an example consider, “Djeet yet?” or
“jeetyet,” for “Did you eat yet?” This transcription would reduce the utterance to
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a caricature, or as Preston (1985) argued in his article on “The Lil’ Abner
Syndrome” with respect to how speech is represented in writing, “nearly ALL
[sic] respellings share in this defamation of character” (p328). He referred to
three categories of respellings: (1) allegro speech—“gonna” for “going to”
“jeet”for “did you eat,” “snice” for “it’s nice” were offered as examples; (2)
dialect respellings—“dat” for “that”, “win” for “when”, “Hahvuhd” for
“Harvard”; (3) eye-dialect—“sez” foe “says”, “wuz” for “was”. The implication
is that spelling does not need to be invented for conversation analysis.
The analysis of the data that is transcribed is subject to the manner it is
recorded in the transcript. Struggles with the depiction of speech in transcription
bring to the forefront ethical concerns about how to represent participants in
transcription. Research focused on dialectology or sociolinguistics would
appropriately transcribe such examples of speech (e.g., eye-dialect); but they
would use phonetic or phonemic transcription to provide specific data applicable
to the understanding of spoken language and society; a practice, which Preston
(2000) recommends for conversation and discourse research of that kind. He
argued that often in transcribers’ attempts to give a realistic sense of speech-as-
spoken they turn to peculiar spellings that do not increase readability of the
transcript nor contribute to the sense of the dialect. Thus, a modified orthography
is preferred to phonemic or phonetic transcription, he argued, because it is more
familiar to researchers who do not have a background in disciplines that regularly
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use phonetic or phonemic transcription conventions, e.g., linguistics or speech
therapy.
The original transcripts for this research include allegro spelling. That
convention was continued along with the use of phonemic transcription for
verbalizations or utterances that contribute to the conversations but are
unintelligible although at sometime the context may provide a sense of their
meaning. Agreement for the actual utterances comes from the auditing and
transcribing of the tapes by three different contributors.
In Sacks et al.'s (1974) seminal work on turn taking in conversations; the
transcript notation conventions of Jefferson were used. Some elements of her
system do not lend themselves to word processing. Her work with conversational
analysis began before computer word processing using a manual typewriter. A
manual typewriter allowed for using brackets to show when two speakers began
to speak simultaneously by rolling the carriage half a line space, a feat that
cannot be accomplished with Microsoft Word software. A modified version of
Jefferson’s transcription conventions were used in this dissertation. (See
Appendix Table 2 for the set of codes and symbols used for transcription in this
dissertation.)
The analyses focused on what was said, but also, how and why the son or
father said something in the conversation. What was said meant the words
spoken, how it was said meant the manner of speaking, and why it was said
meant what the function of the speaking was. Adjacency pairs are two utterances
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matched for relationship to one another and congruent (Sacks et al., 1974). A
question by a first speaker and its answer by a second speaker when the two
utterances are paired, and other examples: answer-comment, initiation
response/feedback, greetings-response, compliments-response, etc. These
functions for making meaning (Wells, 1985) of the talk between the father and
son were involved in the storybook reading situations. Other types of
conversational interactions include pre-, post-, or side sequences, repairs, and
beyond two-part adjacency pairs (Tsui, 1989, as cited in Taboada, 2005) in which
a follow-up turn clarifies some part of the conversational intent of the speakers.
The coding was of conversations about the storybook reading and other
topics of discussion within the setting, but not necessarily about the reading of
the storybook text itself. The information coded began with the start of the audio
tape and ended with the end of the taped session, approximately thirty minutes
per side of each two-sided tape.
This analysis provided instances of speaking turns that demonstrate how
the father-son dyad managed taking turns, getting turns, or giving turns for
speaking as described by Psathas (1995) and Sacks et al. (1974) during
conversations. The analysis found examples of language used for functional
purposes to manage learning how to mean (Halliday, 1975). The analysis
provided a record of how the interactions happened during ordinary talk by the
father-son dyad. This type of analysis only applies to everyday talking where
speakers regulate the speaking turns themselves and the speakers are using
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language in naturally occurring settings. As mentioned earlier, the observer’s
paradox describes a problem that exists in sampling natural conversations. An
attempt to avoid this paradox is made by having the father and son record their
storybook reading conversations in their home; however, the use of the tape
recorder and predetermined storybooks, change the natural context because the
tape recorder serves as an observer. The son, Andrew, was intently focused on
the tape recorder at times and the father regularly include explanatory remarks
with the only purpose being to explain to the researcher what was occurring or
for identifying the date, time, setting, participants, etc. Those utterances would
not have been expected if the events were not being recorded for someone other
than the father to hear and make sense of later. Since the father was not part of
the analysis phase of the research study, he appeared to be providing what data
he felt would assist the researchers in his absence.
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Chapter 4
Findings and Analysis
Findings
This study examined questions about storybook reading between a father
and his emergent-literacy-level sons, who were referred to by the pseudonyms
Andrew, age four, and Edward, age two. Audio-recorded storybook reading
sessions between them were taped by the father in the family home at the
family’s convenience within a six-week period. Five research questions were
investigated. (1) What was the nature of interaction during authentic storybook
reading experiences between a father and his son in initial and subsequent
reading of storybooks? (2) What was the nature of decontextual interaction
patterns during storybook reading for preschoolers? (3) What role did gender
play in storybook reading during early childhood? (4) What role did genre play in
storybook reading between a father and son during early childhood? (5) What
role did adult power play in the kind of answers that a child provided during
storybook reading events?
Illustrative examples for each of the categories of research relevant to the
exploratory questions were introduced, exemplified, and shown to be relevant in
the following discussion of the findings from this case study. Studies of
storybook reading are predominantly between preschool aged children (three to
five years) and adults. The dyad of interest for this study was the father and his
son Andrew. Edward’s comments, verbalizations, and frequently unintelligible
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utterance were of less importance for this study; therefore, the findings and
analyses are confined almost entirely to Andrew and his father. This case study
represents the examination of situated literacy conversations between a father
and his son that occurred as part of their storybook reading experiences. The
taped conversations were translated into transcripts that provided the data from
which the examples were drawn. The answers found in the course of this study
were presented in the order of (1) descriptive interaction patterns of engagement,
(2) decontextual interaction patterns, (3) gender influences, (4) genre influences,
and (5) power or control in this father-son relationship within the context of
storybook reading.
The storybooks featured in the examples selected for analysis in this
chapter were Hey, Get off Our Train (a narrative story), Alexander and the Magic
Boat (a narrative story), Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones (a concept book), and
Alphabatics (an ABC book). Alexander and the Magic Boat was a storybook
from the family library of children’s books and a familiar text. Hey, Get off Our
Train, Chicken’s Aren’t the Only Ones, and Alphabatics were unfamiliar text and
they were selected by the researcher to be used during the audio taped storybook
reading sessions.
The examples were selected from Tapes 1, 2, and 3 that were taped from
March 17 to March 19, 1995. The tapes included the father and his two sons;
however, the examples represent primarily the father and the older son who was
four years old when the tapes were recorded. Much of the conversational input of
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the younger child was unintelligible, sometimes random vocalization, at times off
topic, and not always acknowledged; all of this interaction is worthy of analysis;
but not the focus for this study as it did not address the study’s research
questions.
Descriptive Interaction Patterns during Storybook Reading
The nature of oral communication interaction during authentic storybook
reading experiences observed between this father and his sons, Andrew and
Edward, during their initial and subsequent readings of storybooks was described
in this section. Interaction for the purpose of this study was restricted to audible
conversation or discourse. Storybook reading experiences are situated literacy
events in which a child’s book is read by an adult to the child.
One notable pattern of interaction was father-son question and answer
turn taking. The two-way communication between the father and his son when
focused on a concept storybook predominately consisted of the father asking his
son questions and the son responding. Less frequently, the son asked questions of
his father. The conversation between the father and his son followed the system
for turn taking as described by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974). The father
and son as speakers alternated speaking turns regularly and rapidly, seldom
allowing for even one second of time to elapse between speaker changes.
The father began each storybook reading event with the negotiation of the
storybook selection. In this example, the father began to read the titles of the
three books provided for this study. Since Andrew has one of the books, the
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father appears to have offered the books to him for examination and the father
asked to see which book he had. The following conversational turns were taken
from the transcript to demonstrate the nature of this exchange.
Conversation Segment 1a
Father: Here is Alphabatics and then you have. Andrew,
what book do you have? Let’s see what that one
says.
Andrew: Chickens.
Edward: (unintelligible Uh, uh.)
Father: Chickens Aren't the Only Ones.
Andrew: Yea, that’s what it is.
Here the father addressed his son by name and then asked him, “…what book do
you have?” The father continued his speaking turn without a pause for his son to
answer the question. The father may not have anticipated an answer because it is
customary in a conversation to ask a question and then to stop talking so that the
other person has an opportunity (an opening in the conversation) to reply.
Andrew interjected, “Chickens,” and the father continued his turn saying, “Let’s
see what that one says.” Edward said something that was unintelligible, but
seemed to have the nature of conversation although no one responded to him.
The father then read the title of the book. Andrew agreed with his father, “Yea,
that’s what it is.” His likely meaning was that the picture on the cover of the
book was a chicken because he demonstrated knowledge of the concept (chicken)
as the book was read. Sacks et al. (1974) wrote that turns were allocated by the
speaker selecting the next person to speak. In these talking turn the father
initiated the topic of conversation with a question directed to Andrew. The
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anticipated response was for Andrew to say the name of the book or to in
someway identifying the book he had. There was no pause to allow Andrew to
respond but the rhythm of their conversation appeared to be well established
because Andrew interjected his response and his father followed up with a
statement that clearly indicated to his son that he had heard him answer,
“Chickens.”
If the five turns were written in narrative style, the flow of the
conversation would be as follows. His father said, “Here is Alphabatics.”
Andrew’s father was about to say the titles of the other new books, when he saw
that Andrew had already picked one of the new books. His father said, “Andrew,
what book do you have?” “Chickens,” said Andrew. Then Andrew’s father said,
“Let’s see what that one says.” Edward, who was only two, said something too.
Neither Andrew nor their father understood what Edward said, even though it did
sound like he was meaning to say something. Their father read, “Chickens Aren’t
the Only Ones.” “Yea, that’s what it is,” said Andrew.
These patterns of interaction can be identified using the “apparent” facts
(Sacks et al., 1974, p. 700) regarding the way people take turns as they carry on a
conversation. Andrew and his father regularly took turns talking. There were
many interruptions, frequently there were two people speaking at one time, and
there were regular repairs to the rules of turn taking in their conversations.
However, for the most part they adhered to the one person speaks at a time rule.
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The following one-minute segment of conversation between Andrew and
his father demonstrates the discussion of a page in the book, Chickens Aren’t the
Only Ones. The two-page spread that the dyad was talking about pictured
vibrantly colored eggs decorated in the fashion of Easter Eggs. The illustration
showed dozens of whole eggshells, two boiled egg (cut in halves), and one fried
egg. An illustration of a standing chick is near the array of eggs. The text on the
page was, “the eggs you boil or fry or…” A note of explanation is needed to
follow the transcription provided below. Pauses in the speaking turns are notated
with numbers in parentheses, e.g., (.3) means there was a pause of approximately
three tenths of a second and (.) equals a pause of less than a tenth of a second, but
discernable to the ear and able to be marked using digital analysis of the audio
files. Most pauses are less than a second and pauses are rare within or between
speaker turns. The conversation segments follow with ongoing discussion of
lines from the transcript. Additionally, segments of conversations excerpted from
the transcripts of the father-son storybook reading tape recordings are labeled
Conversation Segment (CS). For example, the previous CS is CS 1a, which
indicates that CS 1a continues and this is the first in a series of talking turns, the
conversation continue to CS 1b.
Conversation Segment 1b
Andrew: What is, what is happening to that egg there?
Father: That’s a fried egg. (.3) See, when we eat eggs we
take the yolks out, so we don’t eat the yellow part. (.)
See, an egg is, when you cook it some of it is yellow
and some of it is white. (.5) “Dye or leave alone.”
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The father directly answered Andrews question in this adjacent pair of turns. The
son asked what was happening to the egg and his father replied that the egg was
fried. Andrew’s father provided information that was meant to aid in his son’s
understanding of the concept, ways to cook eggs, by making a personal
connection to their lives. This supportive activity (scaffolding) gave Andrew a
foundation for making sense of the topic in the storybook. Subsequently, the
added information encouraged discussion about the father’s and the mother’s
ways of doing the same task. The conversation continues below as Andrew
continued the discussion about their cooking with eggs.
Conversation Segment 1c
Andrew: Daddy, do you only put one egg in-in th-th-the white
stuff?
Father: I put one egg in pancakes. (.1) What's happening
over here? (.)
Edward: Chicken.
Andrew: What?
When Andrew asked, “What?” in this turn, he was not asking for the question to
be repeated. He was asking about what was happening as related to his father’s
question, “What’s happening over here?” The father may have expected that
Andrew knew the answer. Andrew may not have known what his father was
referring to, so he asked, “What [is happening]?”
Conversation Segment 1d
Father: Where ‘s the chicken come from?
Andrew: What Daddy? (.) Daddy, mommy put the yellow
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Andrew again asked, “What,” this time adding “Daddy.” His father did not
answer him the first time he said, “What?” The lack of response from his father
resulted in Andrew’s second request for information. This time he allocated the
next turn (Sacks et al., 1974) to his father. Andrew’s direct address of his father
when he said, “Daddy,” was a demand for his father’s attention. In effect, he was
saying, “Daddy, I’m talking to you. Listen to me. I have a question. Answer me.”
Edward’s turn was glossed over while preference was given to Andrews’s
insistent request for information in CS 1e.
Conversation Segment 1e
Edward: Does my egg (unintelligible)
Father: She does? Remember, I take the yellow out, don’t I?
(.1) Put it down the garbage disposal.
Andrew completed his turn (CS 1d) by saying, “Daddy, mommy put the yellow
stuff in the white stuff.” This differentiation of male and female behavior was
recognized by Andrew as was evidenced by that statement. His father reinforced
that there was a difference and, more than different, it was odd, even a surprise
that Momma cooked eggs in a different way, a way that “she” does it, when he
responded to Andrew, “She does? Remember, I take the yellow out. Don’t I? (.1)
Put it down the garbage disposal.” The father’s statement ends with a tag
question, “Don’t I?” Tag questions are used to get a consensus of agreement for
the statement that precedes the tag. In this instance, the consensus sought by the
father was that he (the father) “take[s] the yellow out and that Andrew
“remember[s]” that he (the father) “take[s] the yellow out.” The
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metacommunication (Watzlawick et al., 1967) indicated the unstated relational
message that she (Momma) does one thing—puts the yellow in and he (Daddy)
does another thing—takes the yellow out and puts it down the garbage disposal.
Andrew’s next turn clarified the meaning of his “What?” question in his previous
turn and as the conversation continues (CS 1f) Andrew accentuates the difference
noted about the way his mother cooked eggs.
Conversation Segment 1f
Andrew: Know what Dad? ►Momma puts lots, a lot of
yellow eggs in.
Father: She does? (.) Oh, boy. (.) Where’s that baby chicken
come from?
Andrew: From the egg.
Father: That’s right. Where do peacocks come from?
Andrew said, “Know what Dad?” It became clear that in the previous turn when
he said, “What Daddy?” (CS 1d) he was not saying, “What [happened] Daddy?”
Instead, he was saying, “[Know] what Daddy?” By saying, “Know what?” the
expected response is “What?” The anticipated adjacent pair would be
question/question with the next turn allocated to the first speaker so that the
person who said, “Know what?” gets to tell the other person some bit of
information thereby adding that new information to the conversation. In this
example, the father did not say, “What?” Andrew added the information anyway.
When the father responded, “She does? (.) Oh, boy. (.) Where’s that baby
chicken come from?” Andrew succeeded in getting his father to attend to his
topic—the matter of what his mother did with the “yellow” stuff. However, that
the father did not contribute further to the discussion about the cooking of the
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eggs demonstrated another aspect of the nature of this dyads relationship. The
father’s statement, “She does? (.) Oh, boy” was dismissive in its nature and his
immediate question about a different topic trivialized the value of Andrew’s
contribution to their conversation. Andrew took this in stride and obligingly
reported his answer to the question, “Where’s that baby chicken come from?”
The extent of the interaction on that question was, “That’s right.” The father was
back on task and he completed his turn with the next question to identify (label)
the next illustration, “Where do peacocks come from?”
The functional purposes of CS 1a through CS 1f were heuristic and
interactional (Halliday, 1973). Heuristic functions are used by speakers to gain
information; i.e., the answers to “tell me why” or “explain it to me” types of
questions. Interactional utterance are used to build a sense of unity by using “we”
or “us” phrases are stated in or inferred from the context of the conversation. The
first line of this conversational segment was a heuristic inquiry. The father and
his sons were exploring the concept “eggs” with direct questions to understand
the nature of that concept. Andrew asked, “...what is happening to that egg
there?” The father explained that one of the eggs was fried. He continued his
speaking turn with information that connected the content of the storybook with
what his son knew from their personal experiences related to eggs, cooking eggs,
parts of eggs, and their use of eggs. Andrew conveyed additional background
information from his personal knowledge to the discussion when he told his
father, “Momma puts lots, a lot of yellow eggs in.”
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Andrew’s father acknowledged what his son said but he did not extend
the discussion of Andrew’s topic; instead, he introduced his own. The father’s
topic required Andrew to demonstrate that he knew chickens came from eggs.
This closed-question format was not continuous but it was regularly repeated as a
style of interaction. The father confirms Andrew’s response, “From the eggs,”
and with no pause for another statement by Andrew, he asked Andrew the next
closed question, “Where do peacocks come from?” Additionally, there was rarely
an instance when identification of objects or animals in the illustrations generated
discussion by either the father or the son beyond the closed question-yes/no
response behaviors when reading the concept storybooks with the exception of
the extended discussion about dinosaurs (to be discussed later in this paper).
Generally, pauses during the storybook reading sessions were less than
one second, but in the father’s first turn of this example, there were two longer
pauses, one was approximately three seconds and the other approximately five
seconds. The interaction between this father and son was marked by its swiftness
within and between speaking turns. The second pause appeared to be a function
of turning the page to continue reading. The father did not make regulatory
comments (Halliday, 1975; 1978), for the page turning (i.e., utterance to manage
someone else’s actions, “[You] do that” phrases); therefore, it appeared he was
turning the pages and holding the storybook during the exchanges discussed in
conversation segments above (1a -1d).
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The following except from the transcripts illustrated their practice of
question and answer turn taking that was common throughout the father-son
storybook reading conversations. In this example, the father began by
acknowledging that he did not know the names of something, as was evident by
his first statement, “Boy, I wish I knew the names.”
Conversation Segment 2a
Father: Boy, I wish I knew the names. Okay, Andrew,
where’s the flamingo? Do you see the flamingo?
Andrew: I don’t know (.) that.
Father: Where’s the ostrich? (.1) Yea, Where’s the eagle?
No, (.) no, no. There’s the eagle, Where’s the
penguin?
Andrew: There and there.
Father: Yes, Those are two different types of penguins.(.1)
Where is the
A good deal of the conversation during the storybook reading was the father
asking questions and his sons answering the questions followed by the father
either confirming, refuting, or ignoring the answers. Andrew at times promptly
replied with, “I don’t know.” Precise quantitative information about that data set
(the number of “I don’t know” responses) was not calculated for this dissertation;
however, on the first of the audiotapes there were over twenty examples of “I
don’t know” responses by Andrew. Edward did not ever respond by saying, “I
don’t know” during any of the thirteen hours of tape-recorded sessions. The
father admitted that he did not know information, as was illustrated in the first
line of CS 2a, but he was not asked a question to which he answered, “I don’t
know.” The father demonstrated that it was appropriate to acknowledge not
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knowing the names (labels), in this case to identify the names of the animals
pictured in the storybook. It is possible that Andrew learned to say, “I don’t
know” to acknowledge not knowing; however, it is difficult to know the reason
the child responded with “I don’t know.” As Cordon, Saetermoe, and Goodman
(2005) discovered, it is difficult to teach young children to say, “I don’t know”
when it was the correct response, that is, the child actually did not know the
answer. Cordon et al.’s research was directed toward teaching young children to
testify in court cases regarding events to which the child was an eyewitness to
some event or activity. They found that even with careful coaching on the
importance of saying, “I don’t know” when that was the truth, children often
provided false testimony to please the adult who was posing the questions. The
children were eager to please the adults and adjusted their answers according to
how they perceived the adults wanted them to respond. In the transcripts of this
father-son dyad, there were many meaningful uses of the phrase, “I don’t know.”
Samplings of “I don’t know” are presented in the following excerpts from the
father-son conversations in this dissertation study.
Conversation Segment 2b
Father: Boy, I wish I knew the names. Okay, Andrew,
where’s the flamingo? ►Do you see the flamingo?
Andrew: I don’t know (.) that.
In CS 2b, Andrew first said he did not know the answer to his father’s question.
It was not clear what the contextual meaning of the word “that” was in this
utterance. One interpretation could be, “I don’t know that [answer].” An alternate
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interpretation could be, “I don’t know. [Is it] that?” A third interpretation could
be, “I don’t know. [It is] that.” The problem of interpretation lies in the word but
also in the intonation of the utterance. The word “that” is said softly without
punctuation.
The father had asked in CS 2b, “…where’s the flamingo? Do you see the
flamingo?” Andrew said that he did not know and his father did not tell him the
answer or help him find the answer. The next turns (CS 2c) follow and serve to
illustrate the nature of the name-that-thing questions.
Conversation Segment 2c
Father: Where’s the ostrich? (.1) Yea, Where’s the eagle?
No, (.) no, no. There’s the eagle. Where’s the
penguin?
Andrew: There and there.
Father: Yes, Those are two different types of penguins.(.1)
Where is the
These exchanges did not adhere to the principles for dialogic reading methods
(Wells, 1999), that recommend the three-part IRE format: (1) the adult asks a
question, (2) the child answers or responds to the question, and (3) the adult
evaluates the response given by the child. In CS 2c, there were three questions
asked by the father in less than a minute (23 seconds). Andrew’s father asked
him where the flamingo was and if something was the flamingo. Andrew
answered that he did not know but after a brief pause, he identified something,
probably he pointed to a picture on the page, and said, “that.” It is possible
Andrew pointed to the flamingo because his father moved on to the next
question. The father asked Andrew to indicate the location of the eagle next. It
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appeared that Andrew pointed to different illustrations, which he incorrectly
identified as the eagle because his father responded, “No.” His father paused a
moment, probably Andrew pointed to another illustration, his father said, “no,
no” and then Andrew must have pointed to the correct illustration because his
father said, “There’s the eagle” confirming to Andrew that he had correctly
identified the eagle with intonation of approval and congratulations. He then
swiftly moved on (without a pause) to the next question which was to identify the
penguin. The father did not spend any more time on correct answers than he did
on incorrect answers. His emotional response was generally about equal
regardless of the answers provided, low key and a matter-of-fact sense of right or
wrong information. The celebratory response for providing a correct answer,
“There’s the eagle” was elaborate for this dyad. The quest for identifying discreet
items was evident. Millard (1997) reported in her study of male reading habits,
that boys and men used written texts for pragmatic purposes, i.e., to answer
specific questions leading to specific answers. This father-son dyad followed that
pattern of reading behavior (Where is X?), which supports her analysis for
gendered literacy behaviors.
Another example of descriptive interaction was captured in CS 3a -3c,
which began with the father’s tangential remark that Edward was pointing to the
chicken. Tangential remarks were evident in these conversations for explaining
and describing relational elements not associated with the discussion of the
storybook reading per se. Tangential remarks were provided exclusively by the
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father to apprise the researcher of actions that were visible or otherwise apparent
to him. The father’s inclusion of the explanatory information contributed to the
perspicacity of the total storybook reading sessions. These kinds of statements
would not be expected under normal storybook reading conditions, but were
there for the purpose of clarification, there would be no reason to announce that
the child was pointing to something to advance the conversation between them.
The father’s tangential response, (Edward is pointing to the little chicken.)
preceded his question directed to Edward and Edward’s pointing to the chicken
was treated as a conversation turn. His father responded with a question
regarding the thing toward which Edward was pointing, “What’s that?” Before
Edward could answer, the father supplied the answer, “That’s a chick.” Edward
echoed the word “chick” while his father continued, “That’s a baby chicken,” to
further explain what a chick was and without a pause the father continued his
turn by asking a second question, “Where did that chicken come from?” The
following lines from the transcript reflect the conversation of the father’s
tangential comment and a brief interaction between Edward, Andrew, and their
father. Edward was not given the attention Andrew was and in this conversation,
Edward did not demand attention; his relationship to his brother was subordinate.
Note that the parenthesis in the following segment are to indicate that the
statement is tangential, not a part of the father-son conversation. The first line of
CS 3a is based on the father’s tangential statement.
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Conversation Segment 3a
Edward: --Points to the little chicken.--
Father: (Edward is pointing to the little chicken.) What’s
that? That’s a chick.
Edward: Chick
Father: That’ s a baby chicken. Where did that chicken come
from?
Andrew: That chick’s from the egg. From the egg, Daddy.
Edward initiated the discussion of the little chicken and his father appeared to be
speaking to him. The father provided the answer, “That’s a chick.” Edward
echoed, “Chick.” His father added, “That’s a baby chicken,” then he continued
his turn but he did not encourage any further response and effectively ended the
talk about what the chick was and moved to a question about where that chicken
came from. Any number of other questions or comments could have enriched the
storybook reading experience, which could have extended the child’s
understanding of the concept. A few examples of things he could have talked
about are (1) the body parts of the chick (eye, beak, legs, feet, and such), (2) a
comparison or contrast of the boys feet and toes to the chick’s, or (3) how
different the chick looked compared to the roaster and the hen on the previous
page. The father did continue to talk about the chick, but the conversation was
redirected to a narrow discussion about all of these animals coming from eggs
and that point was reinforced firmly at the jeopardy of supplying scaffolding for
the child to learn about the individual animals as unique organism with the
commonality of being hatched from eggs. Andrew stated that the chick was from
the egg, in fact, he said it twice ending with the direct address, “Daddy.” The
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father’s means of acknowledgement that Andrew had given a correct response
was to ask a new question.
The conversation about the chick continues with the father asking two
more question one CS 3b and the other in CS 3c. These segments are included as
additional examples of Andrew’s “I don’t know” answers to his father’s
questions.
Conversation Segment 3b
Andrew: That chick’s from the egg. From the egg, Daddy.
Father: Where did this come from?
Andrew: I don’t know.
Edward: Egg
It was not clear from the tape-recorded conversation if the father asked a second
time about where the chick came from or if he asked about some other animal. If
the question was repeated, perhaps he had not heard Andrew’s answer. That
could account for Andrew’s father not acknowledging Andrew’s answer. When
the father asked in CS 3b, “Where did this come from?” Andrew said that he did
not know. It is conceivable that he said, “I didn’t know,” because he thought he
had already answered the question and his answer must have been wrong. The
father’s question may have referred to some other animal and Andrew really did
not know what the other animal was? If it were true that Andrew doubted his
answer in light of the lack of confirmation provided by his father, it is possible
that he was avoiding offering a second wrong answer to the same question and
his acquiescence was to allow his father to supply the “right” answer. This
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question/answer format appeared to parallel the guess-what-I-am-thinking
strategy sometimes employed by teachers during classroom instruction. The
teacher, in this kind of activity could be requesting the display of specific
knowledge (Hansen, 2004; van Kleeck, 2004), for example, fill-in-the-blank
worksheets when the list of possible answers was provided or a list of vocabulary
words being reviewed. Where did that chicken come from? Was it from a
farmyard, a zoo, or maybe Kalamazoo? In this father’s storybook reading
interaction, he did not allow for those kinds of beyond-the-book responses. He
had a restrictive measure for the allowable correct answers to his questions. The
nature of the questions were (1) label the thing illustrated—which was usually an
animal, or (2) identify where the animal came from—which was always from an
egg. As the next turn by the father illustrated (CS 3b - 3c), the second question
was actually about some other creature because he said that this (whatever “this”
is) also came from an egg. The following segment also illustrated another
seldom-used storybook reading behavior that characterized the nature of this
father-son dyad.
Conversation Segment 3c
Father: From the egg too. (.2)
Edward: It’s a egg. Egg
Father: Oh, that’s a baby chicken or a chick. And, that’s
going to grow up to be ___ (.) What?
Andrew: I don’t know.
Father: May grow up to be a rooster or may grow up to be a
hen
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The father left an opening for either son to fill in the blank in his statement,
“…that’s going to grow up to be ___ (.) What?” The pause for either child to
respond was less than a second before the father added, “What [is it going to
grow up to be]?” Andrew said, “I don’t know” almost as a default response. He
did not appear to hesitate a moment based on the time lapse of the taped
conversation. His voice did not express intonation features to indicate
contemplation about the possible word or words that might complete his father’s
prompt, “[What is that] going to grow up to be___.” Andrew may have
experienced a fear of failure (he tried unsuccessfully to answer the question in a
previously turn), a lack of interest (the storybook reading experience was not
entertaining or exciting the way it was being managed at the moment), or it may
be that he really did not know that the animal in question came from an egg. The
last suggested explanation would be peculiar in light of the number of times the
father asked the same question page after page while reading the concept
storybook Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones.
Descriptive interaction patterns continued as a framework for the
discussion of decontextual interaction patters, the nature of gender and genre
influences and control of language and social interaction during the analysis of
this study of a situated literacy. The multiple areas of investigation undertaken
are subsumed under two areas of storybook reading practices and conversational
analysis. The following section begins an explicit discussion of decontextual
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interaction patterns and further contributed to the analysis of this father-son
dyad’s storybook reading behaviors
Decontextual Interaction Patterns during Storybook Reading
A decontextual interaction pattern (Cochran-Smith, 1986) in this
dissertation refers to conversation between the father and his son that was
focused on matters not directly related to the written text or the subject matter of
the storybook. Conversation that occurred in the opening segments of the taping
of the storybook reading and in the closing of storybook reading events had
communication centered on procedural aspects. The opening utterances were to
move the participants into the main event, the storybook reading. These action
oriented pragmatic statements (Halliday, 1975; 1978) were decontextual in that
no storybook text, storybook context, or storybook content were discussed. The
father spent time describing the conditions for the storybook reading.
At the first juncture (CS 4), when a storybook was about to be read
Andrew loudly and emphatically declared, “No, the tape is going to come on,” in
what was an attempt for him to make sense of the tape recorder being part of the
book reading. Andrew’s statement was sandwiched between two statements by
his father. The father said, “…Edward wants to read Alexander and the Magic
Toad.” Andrew’s statement “No, the tape is going to come on” logically
followed his father’s. If the tape was related to the book reading, then it was a
problem that the tape had not yet come on or that is was about to come on. The
father’s next turn does not respond to Andrew; instead, the father pointed out to
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Edward that there was an “A” in the title of the book—an “A” for Andrew. At
this point in the conversation, the participants were following the rules of turn
taking but the rules of turn taking do not explain another important part of
conversation—the cooperative principle was not met. Grice's (1989) explanation
of the cooperative principle is to “[m]ake your conversational contributions such
as is required, at he stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction
of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (p.26). His cooperative principle
includes maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The maxim not met
by the father in this exchange was relation—his response to Andrew was not
related to what Andrew said, it was not relevant. In effect, Andrew had a
speaking turn according to the rules of turn taking, but his turn did not count
because his contribution was ignored. The transcript upon which the preceding
discussion of decontextual interaction was based (CS 4) follows.
Conversation Segment 4a
Father: Okay, Edward wants to read Alexander and the
Magic Toad
Andrew: No. The tape is going to come on.
Father: Oh, look! Edward, this is for Andrew. This is A.
In this exchange, it was interesting that the father did not speak to Andrew about
the letter “A” for Andrew but instead pointed it out to Edward. The father’s
utterance was unusual for at least two reasons. First, there would be an
expectation that a reference regarding the child whose name began with “A”,
who was a participant in the conversation, would be addressed when speaking
about the letter-name connection for his name. Second, it was peculiar to use “A
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is for Andrew” as an attention gaining mechanism directed toward Edward,
whose name began with “E.” Andrew did not respond, or at least he did not
respond orally, about “A” being in his name or the grapheme “A” associated with
the book text. That may have been because Andrew’s father was talking to
Edward about the “A.” Perhaps Andrew thought his father was teaching Edward
that “A” is for Andrew.
The father did not respond to Andrew’s statement about the tape coming
on and Andrew did not immediately follow up with another turn to get an answer
for the use of the tape recorder. His bid for topic control was unsuccessful.
However, a minute later (CS 4b) Andrew again drew attention to the tape
recorder. He continued to be concerned about the tape coming on. The
conversation segment that follows demonstrated the insistence by Andrew to
make his need to know clear to his father during the first taping experience with
his sons explaining that they were going to read some new books. The older son,
Andrew, was absorbed in the mechanics for using the tape recorder and he had
many related questions and remarks about it. Andrew’s utterances were mathetic,
that is, they were for gaining understanding (Halliday, 1975; 1978). His
understanding for using audio tapes during storybook reading did not match his
current experience.
Conversation Segment 4b
Andrew: You start that thing later.
Edward: I want to read this book
Andrew: Wait. This okay?
Edward: Please, now. I want to read this book
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Father: Can we, can we read, let’s read this book first and
then we can read Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones.
Andrew: No. The tape is going to come on.
Father: No, no. We have enough time for this book and then.
Why don’t you Andrew, I want Andrew, you read
this book to Edward, and then we’ll read Chickens,
the chicken book. Okay?
Andrew: Okay.
During this exchange, the father paid attention to Andrew’s comments about the
tape recorder. Andrew evidently was concerned (1) about the tape recorder not
being turned on and (2) about there not being enough time for the tape recording
before reading the book. When Andrew directed his father to “start that thing
[tape recorder] later” his statement was not acknowledged. Andrew again
referred to the tape recorder in his next speaking turn. He attempted to direct his
father’s actions and he made a request for information, “Wait. [Is] this [tape
recorder] okay?” Andrew became progressively more insistent that his concerns
about the tape recorder should be addressed. These conversational turns began
with the pragmatic regulatory statement (Halliday, 1975; 1978), “Wait.” The
functional purpose, for it, was to manage the actions of his father. In that same
turn, Andrew continued with a mathetic heuristic utterance “[Is] this [tape
recorder] okay?” He was trying to understand the tape recorder’s function in this
storybook reading environment.
Not until Andrew’s third attempt for topic control did he get his father to
respond. Andrew’s fretfulness about the taping process continued as his father
stayed with the task of reading from the storybook. In his third attempt, Andrew
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said, “No. The tape is going to come on.” The father’s response did not match
Andrew’s because the father said that they had enough time to read; which is a
nonsequitor in the sense that the tape recording was simultaneously happening
with the reading, that is, it was not sequential and therefore illogical to say that
one thing could be done and then the other. That there was enough time to read
the book (Andrew’s father’s statement) and that the tape was coming on
(Andrew’s statement) did not follow Andrew’s logic for this conversational
exchange. Again, Grice’s (1989) maxim of relation was not met, that is,
utterances necessarily need to be relevant to one another; the utterance in
response should be relevant to the utterance to which it is in response.
The following talking turns (CS 4c) by Andrew and Edward (introduced
in CS 4a) are not accurately defined as conversational. They are each taking turns
talking but they are each talking about their own topic. Andrew continues to be
preoccupied with the tape recorder and Edward is focused on getting to read the
book he chose; the actual title of the book Edward picked was Alexander and the
Magic Boat, a book from the family library. The referenced four talking turns
follow.
Conversation Segment 4c
Andrew: You start that thing later.
Edward: I want to read this book
Andrew: Wait. This okay?
Edward: Please, now. I want to read this book
The four turns in the immediately preceding segment (CS 4c) demonstrated a
breach of Grice’s (1989) cooperative principle in a different way; in the previous
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example (CS 4b), the father attempted to be relevant when he answered, but he
was not because he did not understand what Andrew was meaning. Here (CS 4c)
there was a different dynamic operating. The boys are taking turns talking but
they are not taking turns talking to each other. Each of these statements was
addressed to the father; the two boys were not conversing with one another even
though they were taking turns talking. Both of Andrew’s statements were about
the tape recording and both of Edward’s were about reading a book. As the
conversational turn taking continued, (CS 4d below) their father asked if they
could read one book first and then another afterwards.
Conversation Segment 4d
Father: Can we, can we read, let’s read this book first and
then we can read Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones.
Andrew: No! The tape is going to come on.
The father said, “…let’s read this book first and then we can read Chickens
Aren’t the Only Ones.” The father appeared to be at ease with the relational
interaction between himself and his sons. Each of the boys was vying for
attention, Andrew was becoming more forceful in his need for an explanation,
and Edward was becoming more pleaful as he pushed to get what he wanted. A
relationship power hierarchy was established for this father and his sons. The
father held the highest level of real power with the two sons competing for
perceived power between themselves in different ways and at times with their
father. The father’s proposal was firmly protested by Andrew, “No! The tape is
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going to come on.” The father offered an appeasement solution that did not solve
the confusion Andrew was experiencing about the operation of the tape recorder.
Andrew kept trying to understand the use of and operation of the tape
recorder as it was being employed during this storybook reading episode. Again,
his father’s contribution to the conversation did not follow the cooperative
principle of relevance. The father and son continued talking (CS 4e below) at
cross-purposes; they were taking turns in the conversation, but they were not
communicating. The father’s next turn addressed Edward’s request for the book
he wanted, but the father did not agree to read it; instead, he countered with a
request for Andrew to read the book to Edward. The first recorded storybook
reading was by Andrew, not by the father. Andrew read or more accurately,
Andrew pretended to read, Alexander and the Magic Boat (a familiar book from
the family’s collection of children’s books) to Edward and his father. The father
ended his speaking turn when he said, “and then we’ll read Chickens, the chicken
book. Okay?” With this turn, the father had pacified the situation. (1) The book
Edward wanted to read was to be read (2) Edward’s book would be read by
Andrew. (3) The book Andrew wanted to read was to be read later. (4) To gain
consensus the father asked if that plan would that be okay. The fathers question
was directed to Andrew in the utterance, “Why don’t you Andrew…you read…,
okay?. Andrew accepted the next allocated turn, as is illustrated in CS 4e, the
example that follows.
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Conversation Segment 4e
Father: No, no. We have enough time for this book and
then. Why don’t you Andrew, I want Andrew, you
read this book to Edward, and then we’ll read
Chickens, the chicken book. Okay?
Andrew: Okay
In this exchange (CS 4e), when Andrew answered, “Okay” it could have been
that he was agreeing to read to Andrew, that the Chicken book would be read
later, or to both propositions. Later on the tape Andrew did read part of the book
to Edward. Andrew was not satisfied with the conundrum of the tape recorder
and several minutes later (CS 5 below) Andrew once more asked about the tape.
After several failed attempts to get the information he needed to make sense of
the tape recorder, which was not operating according to Andrew’s expectation,
Andrew’s father finally responded to him about the tape recorder. In this next
exchange (CS 5), they began to unravel the mystery surrounding the tape
recorder that had become a staggering obstacle to proceeding with the storybook
reading session.
Conversation Segment 5
Andrew: Daddy, who wants this? But, Daddy, the tape is not
playing.
Father: Yes it is. We’re making our own tape. Look at this.
What is this Edward?
Andrew strongly stated that the tape recorder was not playing. He may have
thought that he should have heard something if the tape were actually playing.
The father did not ask why Andrew thought the tape was not playing, he did deny
Andrew’s claim when he said, “Yes it is.” For the first time, the father added
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information related to the tape-recorder, telling Andrew that they were making
their own tape. That they were making a tape of their own does not give an
adequate response (Grice’s maxim of quantity) but it did stop the discussion
about it for a few minutes before Andrew returned to the topic. The follow
excerpt between Andrew and his father (CS 6a) continued a few minutes later.
Conversation Segment 6a
Andrew: No. You can’t stay on that page. You have to stay at
this page to the tape comes on.
Father: Oh, you know what, we are making our tape,
Andrew. (.3) See there’s a couple of book that have
tapes, (.1) and when the tape (.) plays (.) we can read
along (.) and look at the pages of the book. So
Andrew is waiting for the tape to come on. But,
Andrew, we’re actually, we’re making our own tape
here. (.3) Okay, so let’s read the book and we can
come back and listen to ourselves read the book (.) if
we want (.) Okay, the “chickens lay the eggs you
buy, the eggs you boil or fry”
This segment of conversation (CS 6a); illustrated a change in the kind of
response Andrew’s father gave as he began to understand Andrew’s continued
talk about the tape recorder. Andrew’s father understood at this point, what
caused his son to say the tape was not on or not playing. The father gave a
thoughtful, slower-paced response with longer pauses (the pauses are marked in
tenths of second, e.g., (.1) is a one-tenth second pause) between phrases. The
father’s response appeared to meet Grice’s (1989) maxims of quantity—to make
the response as informative as is required and to not contribute more than is
required for the circumstances.
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The father made an effort to return to the storybook reading task (CS 6b);
however, Andrew was still not satisfied with the depth of information regarding
the tape recording and he redirected with a different line of questioning
Conversation Segment 6b
Father: How many egg yolks?
Andrew: What is this for Daddy?
Father: That’s a microphone.
To better understand the communication in this exchange (CS 6b) it is useful to
refer to the research by Keleman, Callanan, Casler, and Perez-Granados (2005)
that reported on conversations between parents and their preschoolers. They
focused on the kinds of answers parents gave to different types of questions
asked by their preschooler children. They found that parents provided
teleological (the purpose for the phenomena), causal (the cause-effect of
phenomena), and ambiguous (either no answer or neither teleological nor causal)
answers in response to five categories of questions. The categories of questions
posed by the preschoolers in their study were: (1) Biological, (2) non-living
natural, (3) artifact, (4) behavior of others, and (5) the child’s own behavior (See
p. 10 of this document). In Andrew’s question, “What is this for Daddy?” the
word “this” referred to the microphone. Andrew evidently did not know the label
“microphone” and he did not appear to understand the use of a microphone for
tape recording. His father provided the label but not the purpose for the
microphone in the following lines of dialogue (CS 6c).
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Conversation Segment 6c
Andrew: What is this for Daddy?
Father: That’s a microphone.
When Andrew asked, “What is this for Daddy?” he was not asking for the label
“microphone” that was given by his father, as was evident from Andrew’s next
turn (CS 6d). Keleman et al. (2005) categorized these questions (CS 6c-6e) as
asking for information about an artifact—in the sense of a manufactured thing
used in a culture or society, in this case the microphone. The father’s answers
were ambiguous, in the terms of Keleman et al., that is, the answers were neither
teleological (giving the purpose for the microphone) nor causal (giving the cause
and effect for the microphone). The answers were insufficient for providing the
purpose, perhaps Andrew’s father heard, “What is this Daddy” instead of, “What
is this for Daddy?” Andrew used his next turn to talk (CS 6d for a follow-up
question, “[Is it for] to talk on it?”
Conversation Segment 6d
Andrew: (Unintelligible) to talk on it?
Father: Yes, so we can talk into it.
Andrew’s father confirmed Andrew’s speculation that the microphone was “to
talk on” by saying that they could talk “into” the microphone. The father still did
not provide an answer to Andrew’s initial question about the purpose for the
microphone. Based on the previous two adjacent pairs of talking turns, Andrew
was able to say, “Why Daddy?” with the expectation that his father would
recognize that he wanted to know the purpose for the microphone and the
purpose for talking into the microphone—for making a tape recording. Andrew’s
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utterance, “Why Daddy?” was an example of Halliday's (1975; 1978) heuristic
mathetic function of language—for the purpose of understanding or learning
about something in the child’s environment. Although his father’s response
answered the purpose for the microphone in CS 6e, he still did not explain the
reason for making the tape recordings of the storybook reading. Grice’s maxim
of quality was not met—that is, although the response was orderly and brief it did
not avoid obscurity and ambiguity. The information given by his father in this
segment of conversation satisfied Andrew’s curiosity about the mechanics of the
tape recording and the purpose for the tape recorder; Andrew did not return to the
topic during this session.
Conversation Segment 6e
Andrew: Why Daddy?
Father: So we can record, when we are reading we can hear
our voices (.1). When we get done reading the book
we’ll stop and then we’ll turn it back and we can
listen to our voices.
It was clear that Andrew was working toward making meaning of the elements
related to using the microphone. Andrew appeared to be satisfied with the answer
from his father (CS 6e) because he began his next turn (CS 6f) with, “Okay.”
Andrew continued, “…then we can hear [you read] to me?” His father
interjected, “Yes.” Then Andrew finished his turn, “I going to read it?” The
discussion of the microphone ended and a new topic was introduced. This
example shows a similarity to the question/answer paired utterances discussed in
Keleman et al. (2005).
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Conversation Segment 6f
Andrew: Okay, (unintelligible) and then we can hear
(unintelligible) to me? I going to read it?
Father: Yes. (.3)
Andrew: I going to read it?
Father: I can have you read the book too, and then we can
tape the way you read. (.2) And then, maybe other
children can listen to you read the book.
Andrew’s father explained that when they made the tape of Andrew reading they
could later listen to the tape. He went on to explain that the tapes would be
something other children could listen to him read too. These statements by the
father give a purpose for what they were doing, for how the tape recorder was
being used, and possible outcomes related to the use of the storybook tape
recordings. He could have told his son that the tapes were for their true purpose,
for research on father-son dyads reading storybooks together, but that would
have been a breach in Grice’s cooperative principles. Moreover, it would be
unlikely that Andrew would be able to make sense of that explanation in the way
that the father’s explanation provided a purpose for what they were doing.
The example presented next (CS 7) was taken from the first storybook
reading session. It was typical of the statements made by the father and
conditions reported by the father that led to the conclusion of the taped sessions.
The father was recording tangential remarks about the process and behaviors
associated with stopping this session. The father concluded the storybook reading
session with a reference to the tape recorder when he said, “I’m going to go
ahead and turn this off (.) and save it (.) for (.) next (.) session.” Andrew did not
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react to that statement. The conclusion of the taping was functional (Halliday,
1975; 1978) in nature. Since the reading sessions were predominately at bedtime
or naptime, often the taped events ended because there were changes in the boys’
behaviors. The father observed his sons’ behaviors and either asked the child if
he was tired or he stated that it was time for bed citing the behavior as a reason,
for example, the child began to whine.
There are noteworthy relational interactions in this family schema for
bedtime and the conditions developed around the storybook reading sessions
recorded. Watzlawick, Bavelas and Jackson (1967) explained that all
communication carries interpersonal management aspects. They reported that
there were five axioms of relationship in communication; which were: (1) One
cannot not communicate, (2) messages contain metacommunication, (3)
communication is punctuated, (4) communication is digital and analogical, and
(5) communication has control patterns. In CS 12, there were statements that
indicated the relationships among these family members. Edward could be heard
in the background at the beginning of this conversation segment. It was not clear
what he was doing but he was vocalizing quietly and it appeared he was playing
and he also appeared disinterested in the storybook reading or involvement with
storybook reading or his brother. That one cannot not communicate was
exemplified by the inattention of Edward to the family joint activity in which he
had previously taken part. He did not say that he was no longer interested in the
storybook reading; however, Edward’s changed behavior was a message his
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father understood to mean, “…Edward got bored…” and “Edward can’t
concentrate.” Andrew said to Edward, “Hey, [baby], you stay where you are.”
Edward continued with his play activity as though Andrew had not said anything
relevant.
Conversation Segment 7
Edward: (playing)
Andrew: Hey (unintelligible) (baby), you stay where you are.
Father: Well, we started out with (.) Andrew reading to
Edward. And, then Edward got bored after about half
way through this book (.) so they started torturing
each other. So, (.) I have Andrew sitting on one side
and Edward sitting on the other side of me, (.2) but
Edward can't concentrate. (.) So,
Edward: (whining)
Father: All right, (.) we're going to stop reading then. (.1)
No, what a start what we'll have to read a book
another time. It's a little bit too late, five minutes
after nine on Friday (.) ► I'm gonna go ahead and
turn this off (.) and save it (.) for (.) next (.) session
Edward was playing and chattering in the background but he had stopped
whining; his vocalizations had speech-like intonation but he did not seem to be
speaking or attempting to engage in conversation. Andrew’s statement, “Hey,
you [baby] stay where you are” may have been directed toward Edward or a
comment about the text but there was not a clear connection to what came before
or after the comment. The father offered tangential remarks to explain what was
happening as the boys were expressing their loss of attention through various
behaviors. Although there was no discussion or directions given by the father to
separate the two boys, the following statement gave evidence for the fact that
they were separated from each other and the father stated the reason, “…Edward
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got bored after about half way through this book (.) so they started torturing each
other. So, (.) I have Andrew sitting on one side and Edward sitting on the other
side of me, (.2) but Edward can't concentrate. (.) So…” This indicated that book-
reading time was over. It appeared that the boys did not attend to the ancillary
comments and that perhaps they realized the statements made by their father
were not conversation directed toward them, but rather the talk was directed
toward someone other than them. The younger boy, Edward, returned to his
whining behavior and the father concluded the taping session. The father
reported (via the tape recording) that he was turning off the recorder and he
indicated that he would continue with the book another time. Neither of the boys
commented on those statements, which was odd because it was doubtful that the
father typically ended storybook reading in that manner.
Gender Influences during Storybook Reading
Gender has been shown to plays a role during early childhood for father-
son literacy interactions (Millard, 1997; Pollack, 1998). A striking difference was
found in research that contrasted fathers and mothers reading to children, in that
there were far fewer children who reported that their fathers read to them.
Additionally, there were fewer children who reported that their fathers were
readers (Maynard, 2002). Furthermore, the manner of reading to boys was found
to be different from that for girls by both fathers and mothers. The preferences
for types of reading materials were different—boys preferred action stories about
men and boys. The studies about father-son literacy and especially about
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storybook reading and early childhood education focused almost exclusively on
intervention programs (Fathers Reading Every Day, FRED; or Project DAD) to
encourage fathers to read to their sons. This dissertation study of this father-son
dyad described some practices and behaviors observed during their storybook
reading that appeared to be influenced by their gender.
The specific gender interaction observed in this dissertation was between
Andrew and his father with the younger brother, Edward, occasionally. This
family of four included the father, the mother, Andrew, and Edward. The mother
was not included in any of the reading events and was only talked about rarely,
as in this example, referring to her as a person who “puts the yellow stuff in the
white stuff” in the eggs. This excerpt (CS 8) was introduced earlier in this
chapter to discuss descriptive interaction patterns of this father-son dyad. An
example of a gender influence in this dyads storybook reading follows in CS 8.
Conversation Segment 8
Andrew: What Daddy? (.) Daddy, mommy put the yellow
stuff in the white stuff.
Edward: Does my egg (unintelligible)
Father: She does? Remember, I take the yellow out, don't I?
(.1) Put it down the garbage disposal.
Andrew: Know what Dad? Momma puts lots, a lot of yellow
eggs in.
Father: She does? (.) Oh, boy. (.) Where's that baby chicken
come from?
This segment of conversation was pragmatic interactional (Halliday, 1973), i.e.,
“me and you or me against you” with the function of establishing the uniqueness
of the relationship and differentiating between what the mother did and what the
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father did. Note that the father did not explicitly state that men cook eggs in one
way and women in another way. In this instance, however, it could be inferred
that there was a male and female way. Andrew recognized the difference
between what was done by each parent and he drew attention to the difference.
The tone of the father’s responses was no more than a statement of fact. He did
not imply that either keeping or discarding the egg yolk was right or wrong.
Andrew’s father replied with an interrogative of surprise, “She does?” He added
a tag question, “Remember, I take the yellow out, don’t I?” He then concluded
his speaking turn with “[I] [p]ut it down the garbage disposal.” These three
utterances together gave the impression that the egg yolk was something
undesirable that should be disposed of as garbage. The tag question was to illicit
agreement with the statement, “Remember, I take the yellow out, don’t I?”
Andrew picked up on the degree of unacceptability his father expressed for the
yellow stuff and in a statement of unity with his father he added that, “Mommy
put lots, a lot of yellow in” thus showing even more how mommy was not like
them, the father and son, in terms of what to do with the “yellow stuff.” This
understanding about egg yolks was his father’s perspective and therefore in this
family the male point of view. There is not a societal rule about the manner for
cooking eggs relative to gender. If a stereotypical rule about cooking exists, it is
that women do the cooking. The exception to the rule, and another stereotype, is
that men do the outdoor cooking, such as, “manning” the barbeque. The father
was the only adult male in the family’s household; he was his son’s only male
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role model for social behavior in their home. Andrew’s first statement,
“…Mommy put the yellow stuff in the white stuff” was revised to “Momma puts
lots, a lot of yellow eggs in” after his father’s clear statement regarding the “male
way” to cook eggs. The father did not say at any time that there was a thing
wrong with what the mother did, only that what he did was different.
The following conversation segment (CS 9) was part of a discussion
between Andrew and his father about dinosaurs. The pictures of dinosaurs in the
Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones storybook provided a more appealing topic of
conversation for the father and his son than did other pictures in that book. The
judgment that the dinosaur page in the storybook was more appealing was based
on the number of statement by each of the speakers while reading that page and
by Andrew insistence that when the page was skipped they needed to return to it.
Each time the family came to the dinosaur pages, they talked about who would
be which dinosaur. Every dinosaur was matched to some family member by the
person’s name. When Andrew, Edward, Mom, and Dad had all been matched to
a dinosaur on the page, there were still more dinosaurs—so they, the father and
his son, made other matches with people not present in their household at the
time, in this example Rebecca and Brian were named in absentia.
Conversation Segment 9a
Father: They're related. The lizard and the snake are related.
Hey, are you going to tell me about that page?
Andrew: Who wants to be the `saur?
Father: Tyrannosaurus rex. That's what I want to be.
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Andrew: Who wants to be this little one? I do.
Father: Oh, that way you can fly up and look down you can
see a lot from the air.
As soon as the dinosaur page became the topic, Andrew and his father began
discussing who wanted to be which dinosaur. Research on men’s and boy’s
reading preferences has been characterized as a more action oriented enterprise
(Pollack, 1998). The interaction between this father and son was heightened
when the dyad turned to animals hatch from eggs that could be perceived as large
and dangerous. The father was energized and Andrew was notably more talkative
about the pages with dinosaur illustrations. Andrew initiated the dinosaur-to-
person matching game that had been established during the first reading of the
text. The father claimed tyrannosaurus rex as the dinosaur he wanted to be.
Andrew asked who wanted to be the little dinosaur and in the same statement, he
said that he did. The father claimed the largest of the dinosaurs pictured in the
text, which corresponded to the father’s relative size to his son. The father began
a “let’s-pretend” kind of discussion about why Andrew chose the flying dinosaur;
even though Andrew had actually opted for the little dinosaur that was newly
hatched from the egg. That was an assumption the researcher made based on the
storybook illustration of the page with dinosaurs and Andrew’s statement, “Who
wants to be this little one? I do” (CS 9a). This “let’s pretend” function for
language exemplifies Halliday's (1975; 1978) mathetic imaginative category of
utterance, that, although it did not use the expression “let’s pretend” did serve as
a catalyst to imagine being a flying dinosaur and the change he, Andrew, would
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experience as a result of being transformed into a flying dinosaur. As a flying
dinosaur, he could move in ways he could not as a boy; his imagination would
free him to experience things in ways beyond his natural world. Heath's (1986)
direct focus in her study was to understand how children develop an imagination,
which she defined as a critical factor for more advanced literacy activities. There
may or may not have been a rationale for Andrew’s choice but his father was
providing a time to talk about the practical purpose for choosing the flying
dinosaur, “Oh, that way you can fly up and look down. You can see a lot from
the air.” Unexpectedly, the conversation did not move on to any kind of
discussion about the imaginary experience Andrew might have as the flying
dinosaur beyond the trip to Grandma Peters, something that a professional
teacher who was reading a storybook would likely do. There were no literacy
extensions tying what Andrew knew about dinosaurs (which at age four may
have been quite a lot) to the concept that dinosaurs are hatched from eggs. In
1995 Barney the purple dinosaur was a huge (dinosaur-sized) franchise and the
star of a popular television cartoon show that the child conceivably knew. During
one taped conversation (Tape 3, March 25, 1995), the father explained that they
did not read one day because they had watched Discovery Channel instead, so
the family did have a television and the child did watch television. Dinosaurs and
boys are a natural match, not just for matching up in storybooks as Andrew and
his father did during the reading of the Chicken book but as a favorite topic of
interest in general. As the conversation continued in CS 9b, Andrew mimicked
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his father in his manner of questing Edward. The following CS includes Rebecca
and Brian who may be other member of the Peters’ family although no
identification beyond the two names was provided in the conversation and the
father did not explain their relationship tangentially as he generally did when
something was not obvious from the conversation itself.
Conversation Segment 9b
Andrew: Edward, you want to be this one?
Edward: Yea.
Andrew: And, Mom will be this one, okay?
Father: Edward has begun to lose his attention; he's standing
up playing
Andrew: You know what, Daddy, Mommy will be this one,
okay?
Father: Okay, Mommy can be that one.
Andrew: Who's gonna be that baby in there, Daddy?
Father: Uh, Rebecca.
Andrew: Who's gonna be the little baby?
Father: Uh, Brian.
Andrew was inspired to assign a person to each of the dinosaurs on the page. He
wanted to know which of the dinosaurs Edward wanted to be. Andrew asked his
father who each would be and his father provided a name for each one as Andrew
pointed to it. The only match Andrew made was for his mother, which took him
two turns to accomplish, first Andrew said, ‘And, Mom will be this one, okay?’
and second, he said, “You know what, Daddy, Mommy will be this one, okay?”
There was no explanation for the relationships the people had to the family and
there were no characteristics or qualities associated with the dinosaur-to-name
couplings. Andrew was focused on the baby dinosaur, first wanting to be
identified with it himself and then he asked two more times about who would be
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the baby, the little baby dinosaur. Oddly, the father first said that Rebecca would
be then he said that Brian would be the dinosaur. During a repeated reading of
Hey, Get Off Our Train, a similar action was record. The CS was about umbrellas
of different colors. In the fashion of this dinosaur matching to person,
demonstrated in CS 9a - 9b, an umbrella-to-person matching took place. As with
the dinosaur matching, there were no text-to-self connections. It was a
mechanical, procedural, get-the-job-done kind of interaction so that they could
get to the next page of things to name or “label” (Snow & Ninio, 1986). They
were playing a game with the goal of matching a person (in name only) with an
illustration on the pages. With each match made and every dinosaur accounted
for, they moved on to the next page in the book.
The second reading of Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones gave rise to the
next conversation segment (CS 10a below) to be analyzed. Andrew appeared to
be holding the book because he was turning the pages as was evidenced by the
father’s statement, “Oh, you skipped the dinosaur page, Andrew.” CS 10a - 10c
demonstrated the dynamics of problem solving enacted by Andrew with his
father to find the dinosaur page, the turns discussing the process, and a return to
the dinosaur matching game previously discussed. The page with the octopus
was five pages after the dinosaur page; the insect page was immediately after the
octopus page. Andrew realized that he had missed the dinosaur page in the
adjacent pair of turns in CS 10a. He stated the problem: Daddy, we didn't go to
the part where the dinosaur is. The father commented on the problem, that is, he
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confirmed the page had been missed and he blamed Andrew for missing it, when
he said, “Oh, you skipped the dinosaur page, Andrew.” This adjacent pair (CS
10a) was interesting for the nature of each of the speaker turns. Both Andrew and
his father each had one turn with two-part utterances in each of their turns. Note
that Edward’s two utterances embedded in Andrew’s turn were ignored by both
Andrew and his father; it was concluded that his utterances were unrelated to the
conversation; therefore, his contributions were not analyzed as part of the father-
son communication in CS 10a. Andrew’s turn began with the labeling of the
octopus, which he named twice before he stated his second thought which was
unrelated to the ongoing labeling process. Andrew declared that they did not go
to the dinosaur part of the book.
Conversation Segment 10a
Andrew: Octopus. [Edward: (unintelligible)] Octopus.
[Edward: We go.] Hey, Daddy, we didn't go to the
part where the dinosaur is.
Father: Oh, you skipped the dinosaur page, Andrew. There's
the insects. Look at all the different bugs.
The father responded to Andrew in the first part of his next turn, but he did not
respond with a statement that suggested they revisit that part of the book. The
interaction was of interest because it provided evidence about the nature of the
dyads interpersonal relationship. Millar and Rogers (1976) identified nine
patterns of control that they observed in interpersonal communication between
married couples (see Appendix A). This father and his son were obviously not a
married couple, but their communication patterns were similar to those Miller
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and Rogers found. CS 10a was reduced to the two relevant statements for
discussing the control pattern demonstrated in CS 10b below.
Conversation Segment 10b
Andrew Hey, Daddy, we didn't go to the part where the
dinosaur is.
Father Oh, you skipped the dinosaur page, Andrew.
This control pattern exemplifies a competitive symmetry interpersonal
relationship. Competitive symmetry means each of the speakers used one-up
statements. Littlejohn (2002) provided the following example for competitive
symmetry.
Competitive symmetry (one-up/one-up)
A: ↑You know I want you to keep the house picked up
during the day.
B: ↑ I want you to help sometimes.
Andrew addressed his father (CS 10b above) by name, “Daddy,” but he used the
pronoun “we.” The father did not say that “we” skipped that part, he said,
“…you…, Andrew,” skipped it. This phenomenon of one-upmanship at this age
between a father-son dyad was an interesting prospect for study but it was
beyond the parameters of this dissertation. The conversation continues in CS 10c
with the dialogue that accompanied the process of finding the part of the
storybook about the dinosaurs. This series of adjacency pairs represents the rapid
interchanges and tenor of those exchanges. Andrew’s first turn in CS 10c
immediately followed the second statement by the father in CS 10b which was,
“There's the insects. Look at all the different bugs.”
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Conversation Segment 10c
Andrew: Oh, Daddy, I want to see the dinosaurs.
Father: Well, just turn the page back then you will find it.
This conversation (CS 10c - 10e) further illustrated the nature of this dyad’s
storybook reading behaviors. In CS 10c, Andrew disregarded his father’s last
turn and declared what he wanted to do, “I want to see the dinosaurs.” Andrew
was still holding the book evidently because his father told him, “Well, just turn
the page back, then you will find it.” Andrew: I want X; his father: then do Y.
The problem was that the page was skipped; the solution was to turn the page
back. There was no evidence of collaboration as a problem solving technique
used in this representative communication between this father-son dyad. The
problem was resolved in CS 10d when Andrew found the page he wanted.
Conversation Segment 10d
Andrew: I want to see the dinosaurs, Daddy.
Father: Yea, you found the dinosaurs.
Andrew’s father congratulated his son on finding the page (CS 10d). Andrew
appeared to be pleased with his success at finding the page he wanted to see. He
said that he skipped to it. Andrew said this in a manner that conveyed he felt he
had accomplished something commendable. Before he skipped it (CS 10b) and
now he skipped to it (CS 10d). This might reveal a semantic confusion by
Andrew of what his father intended when he said, “…you skipped the dinosaur
page…” (CS 10b).
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Conversation Segment 10e
Andrew: I skipped to it.
Father: Yea, you skipped that page.
When Andrew’s father replied to Andrew’s statement that he had skipped to the
dinosaur page, he said, “Yea, you skipped that page.” The father reiterated the
fact that Andrew skipped the page; he did not respond to his son’s actual words.
Andrew’s metacommunication (relational message) was that he had done a good
thing. Furthermore, he solved the problem about the skipped page, he followed
his father’s directions (skipped to the page), and he found the dinosaur page he
wanted to see. Additionally, he was a good boy, a smart person, and he deserved
an at-a-boy for all his success handling the pages of the storybook. The father’s
metacommunication was that Andrew had succeeded in finding the dinosaur
page, that it was expected that Andrew would find the page, and that the
accomplishment was nothing exceptional.
Andrew moved on to the name-to-dinosaur matching game in CS 10f.
The following exchanges included another example of Andrew’s use of the
phrase, “I don’t know.” This CS also provided additional examples of the father-
son relationship as it is manifested during their storybook reading. Note that all
of the segments in the CS 10 sequence were taken from the transcript in the order
they were transcribed and they were presented according to that order. The last
talking turn of CS 10e was the statement proceeding the first turn in CS 10f.
Conversation Segment 10f
Andrew: I want to be this one.
Father: I want to be the big one.
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Andrew: I like this one.
Father: Because you can fly on the air. Edward, what
dinosaur do you want to be?
Andrew: No, you can't fly in the air with this one.
Andrew and his father began the matching game with Andrew making the first
match; himself to whichever dinosaur he was referencing as “this one.” His
father claimed the tyrannosaurus rex, the “big one” for himself, just as he had in
their previous game with the dinosaur page. It was remarkable that the father
only named the tyrannosaurus rex (CS 9), and none of the other dinosaurs.
Previously, Andrew had balked at being matched with the pterodactyl (the flying
dinosaur). It was not clear that Andrew selected the pterodactyl because of his
statement, “No, you can’t fly in the air with this one.” He might have selected
another dinosaur; he selected the baby tyrannosaurus rex that was hatching from
the egg previously and his father pushed him to go with the pterodactyl. If
Andrew was saying that he wanted to be the baby one (CS 9b) as he had in the
previous reading of Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones, then he was simply stating
that the baby one could not fly. If Andrew was referring to the pterodactyl, he
might have been saying that “you” meaning “no one” could fly with that animal.
The indefinite pronoun “you” makes the utterance unclear because it does not
have a referent.
Conversation Segment 10h
Father: Oh, Edward wants to be the one with the sharp horns.
Andrew: And, mommy, will be this one. ↑ Daddy, this one
can’t fly. I want to be this one.
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Father: ↑ That can fly up in the air.
Andrew: Daddy, you said you want to have that.
The one-up/one-up ( ↑↑) relationship control pattern (Millar & Rogers, 1976) was
evident in the exchange between Andrew and his father in CS 10h. The relevant
utterances are marked with up arrows. Andrew said, “ ↑ Daddy, this one can’t
fly.” His father said, “ ↑ That can fly up in the air.” Both of them declaratively
stated their thoughts without flexibility for further negotiation.
The father said in CS 10h that Edward wanted to be the triceratops (the
one with the three sharp horns). The names of dinosaurs are magical for young
children who are able to rattle off pterodactyl, tyrannosaurus rex, T-rex,
brontosaurus, and triceratops (the other dinosaurs on the page) with ease. He had
a perfect opportunity to scaffold his son’s learning about dinosaurs by naming
them, talking about when they lived and that they are extinct, pointing out
differences in the animals beyond saying the tyrannosaurus rex is the big one and
the pterodactyl could fly. He might have told the boys there are other kinds of
dinosaurs. This page provided many layers of rich information for discussion and
education. One of the purposes for storybook reading is to experience things that
are not in the child’s everyday life.
Conversation Segment 10i
Father: You can be that one. If you can fly in the air, where
would you go?
Edward: I want that.
Andrew: ►I don't know.
Father: You don't know. Would you go to Grandma Peters?
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Andrew: No. Yea!
Father: Fly to Grandma Peters. Okay?
The use of the phrase, “I don’t know,” by Andrew was in response to his father’s
question, “If you can fly in the air, where would you go?” This was interesting
because the father asked a question that had alternative answers. Andrew might
have answered any real or imaginary place; he answered, “I don’t know,” in a
detached unemotional manner. It might have been that he was not interested in
providing an answer, in which case saying, “I don’t know,” might be a polite
form of saying something like, I really do not want to put any effort into
formulating an answer to that question. He never relished the pterodactyl match
although his father persisted with it and attempted to add value to the match.
Andrew’s father replied to Andrew with the question form, “You don’t know?”
but the intonation was mildly exclamatory, as if to say that it was a surprise that
Andrew did not have an answer. The father continued his turn by suggesting
where Andrew might fly, “…to Grandma Peters.” Andrew first said, “No,” he
would not fly to his grandmother and then he agreed that he would. However, the
word “no” could have different meanings for the child. In The Synonym Finder
(Rodale, 1978), the following words were listed for the word “no”: deny, refuse,
reject, turndown, disapprove, rebuff, repulse, decline, repudiate, etc. Andrew
could mean something like, No I do not want to. No, I do not want to fly, No, I
do not want to fly to grandmother (denial or rejection). No, I do not want to fly
with that pterodactyl (repulsion). No, because that is what you want me to do,
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No, that is not what I want to do (refusal). No, you are wrong (rebuff) No, thank
you (turndown or declination), and so forth. Andrew did change his response
from “no” to “yes” and that result might be explained by the research finding of
Cordon et al. (2005) on young children and their desire to please adults even
when the answers they provided were not true. On the other hand, it might be that
Andrew was worn down by his father’s persistence to make a case for the flying
dinosaur-to-Andrew match. It would be interesting to know what the child was
thinking when he said that he did not know where he would fly as well as when
he changed his answer from “no” to “yes.” What he was feeling during the
conversation would also be interesting to understand.
Finally, it may be that the dinosaurs were appealing because the father
interacted with the text giving the animals a greater importance by identifying
with them. It is rather difficult to become excited about which egg you want to be
or even which beautifully decorated egg you want to be. Both Andrew and his
father actively participated in the storybook reading when they read about or
talked about a connection they could make to their experiences. When they
talked about and read about the illustrations of chicken eggs, the cooking
conversation turned to the way they cooked eggs in their house. When they
talked about and read about dinosaurs, they created a story to go along with their
understanding of a fantasy world. There was no talk about the dinosaurs being
extinct but instead they talked about them more like dragons, flying beasts that
could travel to other places (to Grandma Peters). In fact they were making sense
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of there storybook according to two different storybook genres—fiction and non-
fiction. The discussion of genres follows in the next section of this dissertation.
Genre Influences during Storybook Reading
The storybook genre differences were monitored during two narrative
storybook readings: one new storybook, one familiar storybook, one concept
storybook, and one ABC book. Pappas and Pettegrew (1998) wrote that genre
might have critical implications for reading that have not been adequately
studied. Distinctive differences became apparent between the two kinds of
storybooks and there were differences in the reading style of the father for the
new storybook and the subsequent rereading of the storybook. The father offered
three new books and his sons picked other books from their own library to read.
In fact, after his father suggested that Andrew read, Andrew insisted on
“reading” the storybook and his father encouraged Andrew to read to Edward.
The following dialogue is based on Alexander and the Magic Boat.
Andrew began “reading” by saying, “Once upon a time…” although the story did
not begin with that phrase. The second line in the story did begin, “One day”
which is similar enough to warrant remembering that it was once upon a time.
Poveda (2003) wrote that through storybook reading experiences children were
socialized in a way that made them familiar with the genre and children extended
the concepts of storybooks; which included the phrase “once upon a time” at the
beginning of many stories. Perhaps, Andrew was familiar with “once upon a
time” beginnings that are often the introductory phrase of a traditional fairy tale
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storybook and he filled in the possible phrase for the genre. By not attempting to
correct Andrew, his father signaled that it was an acceptable reading of the book.
The following examples (CS 11) of conversation were included to advance the
discussion of genre influences during storybook reading by Andrew and his
father.
Conversation Segment 11a
Andrew: ↑ When you read, that book, I have to read it. (.)
Daddy? ↑ So give it to me. ↑ And, I read it. ↑ You
give it to me, Daddy.
Father: ↓ Okay.
Edward: (unintelligible) Daddy
This conversation between Andrew and his father (CS 11) began with the two of
them coming to terms about how the storybook reading was going to proceed.
The father had encouraged Andrew to read to Alexander and the Magic Boat to
Edward, his younger brother. Andrew, upon accepting the suggestion that he
would read to Edward, became insistent that his father should give the book to
him. Edward had the book when he began asking his father to read it. From what
Andrew said in this segment (CS 11a), it might have been that their father was
holding the book. Andrew’s string of uninterrupted utterances was made up of
one-up ↑ transactional statements; his father’s one-down ↓ statement, “Okay,”
completed the a complimentary (one-up/one-down, ↑↓) interpersonal transaction
(Millar & Rogers, 1976) In a previous discussions about interpersonal
transactions (CS 10b and 10h), the father and son had demonstrated competitive
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symmetry (one-up/one-up, ↑↑). Littlejohn (2002) provided the following example
for a complementary (one-up/one-down ↑↓) interpersonal transaction.
Complementary (one-up/one-down ↑↓)
A: ↑Let’s get out of town this weekend.
B: ↓ Okay.
All of the nine interpersonal/relational control patterns of communication
(Appendix A) are available for use by dyads; however, for this father-son dyad
there appeared to be a preponderance of competitive symmetry (one-up/one-up,
↑↑) interactions during the reading of concept books. This example (CS 11a) was
included to show a different dynamic of the father-son dyad which might be
related to the narrative genre.
The father did not approach reading narrative storybooks in the same way
as he did the concept storybooks. The father cleared up the uncertainty about
who was had the book. Edward had the book and his father instructed him in the
way to hold the pages so that they could all see. Edwards whining was ignored.
Andrew began reading, “Once up a time.” As was reflected in the transcript of
this book reading, there were many occurrences of unintelligible utterances.
Andrew was ordinarily easy to understand when he talked. A technical problem
with the tape recording devices might have hampered the quality of this portion
of the audiotape. The segment was included to provide a sense of the storybook
reading experience when Andrew was the reader because it showed how Andrew
mimicked his father’s style of reading.
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Conversation Segment 11b
Father: Shh shh, Edward. You have to hold the pages so
everyone can see it.
Edward: (whining)
Andrew: Once upon a time, the (unintelligible) mother
(unintelligible) went to (unintelligible) to the little
cat. Then he was climbing down, and then he was
(unintelligible) spiders, (unintelligible) mommy it’s
in a jar. And then (.) Edward, where is the
(unintelligible) toadstool? There it is. Where is the
plant, Edward?
Edward: Down (unintelligible, un cut)
Andrew: Yea.
Edward: YEA
After reading, “Once upon a time, the …mother…went to…to the little cat. Then
he was climbing down, and then he was…spiders…mommy it’s in a jar,”
Andrew stopped reading and began asking Edward questions. Andrew said, “And
then (.) Edward, where is the…toadstool? There it is. Where is the plant,
Edward?” He did not pause for Edward to say where the toadstool was but
instead he answered his own question and immediately asked another closed
question. The illustration did not include a toadstool or anything that resembles a
toadstool. Nor did the illustration include any item with a name that could be
confused with toadstool; but it did include potted plants on the bottom of the
page, therefore Edward’s answer, “Down…” made sense within the context of
the illustration. Andrew confirmed Edwards’s response, “Yea” in a manner that
imitated his father’s confirmation of correct responses when reading concept
books. Both of the questions Andrew asked were “Where is X” another similarity
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to the storybook reading he experienced with his father. During this interaction,
the father did not comment on his son’s reading.
To describe further the way Andrew approached storybook reading and
the way he worked to make meaning from the text, the following example is
provided. Andrew was looking at an illustration in the storybook of the main
characters, who were Alexander and his mother. Alexander’s mother was
stepping down the ladder; she had a spider in her hand, which she was putting
into the glass jar Alexander was holding. Andrew’s “reading” of the page was
understandable based on the illustration. In the role of the reader, Andrew
mimicked the behavior that was modeled by his father during storybook reading.
Andrew “read” a little bit of the story and stopped to ask Edward where on the
page an item was. The father did not seem to be monitoring the emergent reading
by Andrew. He did encourage cooperative behavior and encouraged Andrew to
read the story to Edward. The father said, “Shh shh, Edward. You have to hold
the pages so everyone can see it.” Here the father is directing the actions of both
boys. He is directing Andrew to read and Edward to hold the book so everyone
can see the pages.
In the following example of storybook reading, the father read to Andrew
alone. This was the dyads first reading of this storybook. This is in contrast to the
previous conversational segment (CS 11a and 11b) that reflected Andrews
reading of a familiar storybook with his brother. The father introduced the
narrative storybook, Hey, Get off Our Train in CS 12 below. He began reading
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the first page that was about the little boy playing with a train, “You aren’t still
playing with that train are you? (.) Get into bed immediately. You know you
have to be up early for school tomorrow. (.1) See, he’s playing with the train in
his bed room.” The father read a short passage, paused, and then commented on
the illustration. The text did not talk about the train; the train was seen in the
illustration.
Conversation Segment 12
Father: Okay. Andrew, do you want to read a book? (.2)
Okay, I'm gonna read the book and I want you to
look at the pictures as I'm reading. (.2) Okay, so set
the chicken book down. (.2) “Hey, Get Off Our
Train. (.2) You aren't still playing with that train are
you? (.) Get into bed immediately. You know you
have to be up early for school tomorrow.” (.1) See,
he's playing with the train in his bedroom.
Andrew: Why?
Father: Because it's fun playing with trains. (.1) You play
with your train too. (.1) Don't you? (.) Your flip-track
train? (.2) His Mommy's saying, go to bed; it's late.
(.) “Here is your pajama-case dog. I found it under a
cushion in the sitting room. Now settle down and go
to sleep.” (.1) Sometimes we tell you that, don't we?
(.1) So look here. What's he doing there?
Andrew: And right now don't talk about it, right? He’s
sleeping (unintelligible) Right?
Father: Okay, what’s he doing?
Andrew: Going to sleep
The father’s speaking turns included reading the text and commenting on the
story theme, the illustrations, and guiding Andrew’s comprehension of the
storybook by making connections from Andrew’s life experiences to the story in
the book. In this example the father said, “See, he’s playing with the train in his
bedroom.” It was not clear why Andrew had a question about the boy in the story
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playing in his room with the train but what was striking was that Andrew asked,
“Why?” because he seldom did. The father took time to talk about it being fun to
play with trains. He reminded Andrew that he had a flip-track train. The father
was explicitly making the connection for Andrew that the story was about a boy
who had a train and Andrew was a boy who had a train. Andrew and the boy in
the story had in common that they each had a train.
Andrew and his father were working together to make meaning of the
new story that neither of them had read before. There was a story to understand
in this book and not a series of illustrations sorted by a concept, in contrast to the
concept storybook Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones to be discussed subsequently.
Andrew appeared to be relating to the situation in the story when his father talked
about times when Andrew was told to go to sleep. Andrew responded to his
father’s, “And right now. Don't talk about it, right? He’s sleeping…Right?” It
may be that Andrew was considering that there should be no talking when
someone was sleeping or going to sleep. During the father’s turns while reading
the narrative storybook, he consistently paused between statements and most of
the pauses were from one-tenth to two-tenths of a second. The father read slowly
and he read emphasizing meaning with his voice, often lingering on a topic to
examine the illustrations or the ideas presented in the text. This was in contrast to
the nearly complete lack of pauses observed in his reading from the concept
book. The father read the concept book at a faster pace, with less discussion, and
with more closed questions.
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The concept book used for the discussion that follows was Chicken’s
Aren’t the Only Ones. This segment of conversation (CS 13) illustrates a rapid
question and answer sequence that happened while reading a page with
illustrations of a snake, a lizard, crocodiles, turtles, and snake, crocodile, and
turtle eggs. The only interconnection for the illustrations was the concept that
they all lay eggs or perhaps as the father pursued the concept; these animals were
all hatched from eggs.
Conversation Segment 13a
Andrew: Who like that kind of egg, Daddy?
Father: That's a snake egg. (.2) See, where did that snake
come from? (.)
Andrew: I don’t know. (.2) An egg.
Father: And, what's this? (.2)
Andrew: I don't know.
Father: It's a lizard.
Andrew: That's a baby lizard, right?
Father: What's up here?
Edward: Crocodile
Andrew: A crocodile.
Father: Crocodile. And where's other crocodile come from?
Andrew: From the egg.
Father: That's right. And, what's that?
Edward: Turtle
Andrew: Turtle.
Father: And, where does a turtle come from?
Andrew: The egg.
Father: That's right. And, what's this?
Edward: Dinosaur.
The focus of these exchanges was to name the animal in the illustration. There
was a follow-up question about where the animal came from; the answer was
always from an egg. The father probably pointed to an illustration when he asked
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what it was. This conversation was from the first reading of this book. There was
a sense of game playing operating in the conversation. The following segment is
illustrative of the kind of rhythm that developed between them in several
extended segments of conversation. This segment (CS 13) is less than a minute
(recorded running time 11:22 to 11:55) but it includes eighteen speaking turns.
The father had eight turns, Andrew had eight turns, and Edward had two turns.
The conversation was between the father and Andrew with Edward and Andrew
speaking almost as one voice. When Edward answered, he began saying the
name of the animal slightly before Andrew.
Conversation Segment 13a was rewritten in the following example (CS
13b) to show the game-like nature of the turn taking by Andrew and his father.
The description of the game turns were written in place of the conversation that
actually transpired. Consider the nature of a game of chess in which moves were
recorded as, for example, white knight to black queen. Language was compared
to a game of chess by Wittgenstein (Ambrose, 2001). Wittgenstein’s purpose for
using “game” or “games” similes was to explain that concepts are sorted by
commonalities, by their descriptive discriminators (language use is like a game
of chess because they both have rules). In this case, one descriptive decimator
was that the players (father and son) were taking turns (talking). The son’s move
was in reaction to his father’s move; the son’s next turn was in response to his
father’s last turn. It was apparent in CS 11b, that this was actually a private game
between the father and Andrew. Even though Edward was present and acted in
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unison with Andrew, Edward did not get a turn of his own in this game. The
kinds of moves were not predetermined, but they were somewhat regulated in
terms of what was considered an acceptable next turn (Grice, 1989; Holliday,
1975; Sacks et al., 1975; Watzlawick et al., 1967). Like a game of chess, it was
possible to leave the game on the table and return to it later and to take time to
think about the next move; although the way these two played this game there
were nanoseconds between turns.
Conversation Segment 13b
Andrew: question to Father
Father: answer to Andrew, new question to Andrew
Andrew: answer (I don’t know) to Father
Father: question to Andrew
Andrewanswer (I don’t know) to Father
Father: gives answer to Andrew
Andrew: question to Father (not answered by Father)
Father: question to Edward and Andrew
Edward
Andrew:
answer to Father together
Father: confirm to Edward and Andrew, new question to
Edward and Andrew
Andrew: answer to Father
Father: confirm to Andrew, new question to Edward and
Andrew
Edward
Andrew:
answer to Father together
Father: confirm to Edward and Andrew, new question to
Andrew
Andrew: answer to Father
Father: confirm to Andrew, new question to Edward and
Andrew
Genre influenced the nature of this father-son dyad in these examples (CS
11- CS 13) that contrasted a concept book with a narrative book. In their study of
reader style between four-year-old children and adults, Reese and Cox (1999),
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identified three styles: describer, comprehender, and performance-oriented. They
concluded that the style of reading was dependent on a number of factors. In their
work, Reese and Cox (1999), reported that the performance-oriented style
seemed to benefit preschoolers who were more advanced whereas the describer
style seemed to be responsible for more improvement in vocabulary and
children’s print skills. Andrew’s father favored the describer style and he stressed
labeling things much more than understanding things as was evident in the
preponderance of “where is ____” and “what is _____” questions in the
conversations analyzed with concept and narrative storybooks. When the father
read the narrative storybook, he used the comprehender reader style far more
than he did the in the concept storybook but he still favored “where is___” and
“what is ____” questions to prompt conversational interaction. When the dyad
read from Hey, Get off Our Train, the father talked about the commonality of his
son and the boy in the storybook who each had trains. When the dyad read from
Chicken’s Aren’t the Only Ones, the father talked about Andrew’s flight on the
pterodactyl to see Grandma Peters. Genre and each of the other dimensions
discussed in this dissertation were controlled by family dynamics that were
important to consider in the overall nature of the practice in this situated literacy.
Control Patterns during Father-son Storybook Reading
There were two types of control apparent between this father-son dyad.
One type that has been discussed previously in this paper was relationship
control patterns (Millar & Rogers, 1976). Miller and Rogers defined the
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dimension of control as a “basic and dynamic” relationship pattern that is
“continually negotiated” based on “who had the right to direct, delimit, and
define the actions of the interpersonal system in the spatial-temporal situation”
(p. 91). Another control aspect of storybook reading was topic control (Justice &
Kaderavek, 2003). These finding about each of those types of control as they
were observed in this study of storybook reading between Andrew and his father
follows.
Tannen (2001), a sociolinguist who has written extensively about gender
and family communication, stated that we create and shape our relationships
through talk. This father normally controlled the storybook reading interaction
throughout the literacy events recorded, which included controlling the
conversation during those experiences that were consistent with findings of
Justice and Kaderavek (2003). The father worked toward a democratic process
for selecting text and allowing his sons the freedom to participate as they
expressed interest in the activity. The prelude to each of the recording sessions
included a brief statement by the father giving the date, time, and participants.
All of the storybook reading sessions recorded for this study were initiated by the
father. The father established the parameters for the storybook reading sessions
but he allowed his sons to make decisions about the specific feature of the
interaction. For example, he appeared to initiate all of the sessions, which might
have been specific to experience that, included taping the storybook reading for
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this study. As another example, this one related to the child and the ending of the
sessions, in which the child could declare he no longer wanted to read storybook.
The father included running commentaries related to the session, such as
in CS 14 below, when he introduced the set of storybooks provided to the family
for this study. Without the father’s focused descriptions about activities not
captured on the audiotape as a natural part of the storybook reading
conversations, no sorting mechanism would have existed to categorize the taped
session. He included start times, end times, conditions, variables, and explained
extenuating circumstances as oral notes. Furthermore, his conscientiousness for
detail in his commentary (logically included perhaps based on his own
experience as a science researcher), made available a practical way to understand
the broader nature of the social context. For example (CS 14), when the father
said, “Okay, today is Friday, March 17
th
,
”
he provided to the physical conditions
for that storybook reading session. There would be no logical reason to say,
“Okay, today is Friday, March 17
th
,
”
to his children in the storybook reading
setting, in fact it would be absurd to do so. In fact, it appeared that the father’s
comments, which were out of context for storybook reading, caused Andrew’s
confusion during the first recorded episode of storybook reading. The following
example of conversation emanated from the father’s initial statement, “Okay,
today is Friday, March 17
th
. We’ve got a couple of new books to read, Andrew.
We have Edward, who’s two, and Andrew, who’s four. And, we’ve got three
new [books].” An innocent semantic misunderstand by Andrew of his father’s
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tangential remark, “who’s four,” set in motions a string of involved speaking
turns.
Conversation Segment 14a
Father: Okay, today is Friday, March 17
th
. We’ve got a
couple of new books to read, Andrew...
Edward: I nee to. (I need to.)
Father: …We have Edward, who’s two…
Edward: I want to do this
Conversation Segment 14b
Father: …and Andrew, who’s four.
Andrew: Where’s? Which one is four, Daddy?
The father’s statement, “…Andrew, who’s four,” appeared to have been heard by
Andrew as, “Andrew, who [which one] is four?” Andrew answered his father
with a question about “which one is four.” Andrew continued to try to make
sense of what his father meant by “who’s four,” in CS 14c. The father apparently
did not hear his son’s question because he continued with his goal to get the oral
data about the first storybook reading session recorded. These exchanges were
rapid with much overlapping and many interjections. Note the CS 14 sequence
was verbatim from the transcript and unabridged; each segment immediately
follows the preceding segment.
Conversation Segment 14c
Father: And, we’ve got three new…
Andrew: Is that [four], Daddy?
The father was (CS 14c) saying that they had three new books to read. Andrew
interrupted his father when he asked if something was four. It was not clear what
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Andrew was asking about but in the next segment (CS 14d) the father tried to
clarify what he meant when he said, “Andrew, who’s four” (CS 14a).
Conversation Segment 14d
Father: What? No, you’re four years old. One book is
Edward: This is four: Is this is four?
Father: Yea, that’s for…
Edward: I want to read it.
Father: …four year olds
The father evidently heard Andrew say something because he said, “What?” and
continued to say, “No, you’re four years old.” No one was controlling the topic at
this point. Andrew was talking about, “who’s four” Edward was talking about
what he wanted to read, and their father was talking about the list of books to
read. In CS 14d, Edward addressed the “four” topic once and the father used two
turns to talk about the “four” topic. The “four” topic was Andrew’s and he fought
for topic control, using two of his turns to direct attention to the “four” topic. In
CS 14d, Edward interjected, “I want to read it,” in his father’s statement, “Yea,
that’s for…four year olds.” The father’s evidently did not hear Edward say “this”
in either of his utterances, “This is four. Is this is four?” The pronoun “this” does
not refer to a person and the father responded with the word “that” which also is
not used when referring to a person. Since the father innocently began this
confusing dialogue with a statement that meant Andrew was four years old; he
was probably attempting to say, “Yea, Andrew is four years old” but he said,
“four year olds.” He simply misspoke.
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Unfortunately, that was not the end of the confusion about numbers. In
CS 14c, the father said, “And, we’ve got three new [books].” It was not clear that
Andrew was satisfied with the discussion of “four” but he moved on to the
discussion of “three” in CS 14e. It is difficult to analyze what is transpiring
beyond providing a description of the conversation. Andrew and Edward
continued to vie for topic control and to control the interpersonal interaction.
Andrew talked about the “three years old” topic (a variation on the “four year
old” above) and Edward persisted with his desire to get his father to read the
book he had.
Conversation Segment 14e
Andrew: But where is the three-year-old one?
Edward: Eed (Read) me this, Daddy.
Andrew: Daddy are, is that the three year old? Is that three?
Father: Okay, Edward wants to read Alexander and the
Magic Toad [Actual title is Alexander and the
Magic Boat]
Both of Andrew’s turns in CS 14e were about the three year old or about
something that was there. Andrew was ignored by both his father and brother.
His father did acknowledge Edwards plea for his book to be read, “Eed (Read)
me this, Daddy.” Their father said, “Okay, Edward wants to read Alexander and
the Magic Toad.” He did not say, “Okay, Edward let’s read it.”
The usage of the tape recorder was an issue that was discussed earlier. In
CS 14f, Andrew made the first reference to the tape recorder or the tape. Again,
Andrew introduced a new topic and his topic is ignored. His father either did not
hear him or he did not choose to respond to him; that would be something worthy
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of further analysis. It did not appear that anyone was managing topic control and
each of the participants continued to push his own agenda. That might be the way
fathers and sons communicate or it might only reflect the interpersonal dynamic
that was recorded for storybook reading events during the taping of these
conversations for this specific purposes. The family’s unobserved behaviors may
have been very different from what was recorded. Millar and Rogers (1976)
explained that the situation and individuals in a relationship were “relevant only
within the context of a specific relationship and the behaviors of its members” (p.
91).
Conversation Segment 14f
Andrew: No-o-o the tape is going to come on.
Father: Oh, look Edward, this is for Andrew…
Andrew: Are that?...
Father: …this is A.
Andrew: …Are that number three?
Instead of addressing Andrew’s loud advisement that the tape was “going to
come on,” his father addressed Edward and attempted to introduce a new topic,
albeit related to the book Edward wanted to read, Alexander and the Magic Boat.
The father’s turn was remarkable. First, it would have been appropriate to stop
and talk about the tape recorder and the use of the tape to satisfy Andrew’s
concern about a problem that he believed existed. It is common courtesy to
acknowledge someone’s contribution to a conversation, even if only to say that
the contribution was off topic. Second, the father’s turn was about Andrew, yet
he addressed Edward. Andrew was not exhibiting interest in the book Edward
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wanted to read. The father was not responding to Andrew, Edward was not
responding to his father, and Andrew was not getting any answers. The final
talking turn by Andrew and his father in of CS 14f were Andrew’s attempt to
understand what was number three and his father saying to Edward that the letter
“A” was in Andrew’s name. The degree of disconnect was astonishing as was the
swiftness of the father to change to another topic again (CS 14g). .
Conversation Segment 14g
Father: Get Off Our Train.
Edward: (unintelligible) to go.
Andrew: Daddy, that number three?
Father: Sh-sh Edward.
Andrew: Are Daddy, are this one is number three?
There was no transition from CS 14f to CS 14g, the father unexpectedly read the
title, Get Off Our Train, one of the books provide for the study. Edward was
vocalizing mostly in this segment, for which he was shushed by his father.
Andrew twice more asked about the number three and twice more he was given
no answer. Evidently, the rules of conversation were suspended by this father
with Andrew under these conditions.
The next example demonstrated an interesting element of control that was
not immediately discernable. Andrew and his father were engaged in a
conversation about chickens and the nesting area for the chicken. The father
asked, “What are they sitting on?” The relevant talking turns from the transcript
follow in CS 15.
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Conversation Segment 15a
Father: Well, see, a rooster is the male chicken. And the hen
is the mommy chicken. So, the rooster is the daddy,
and the hens are the mommy.
Edward: Hen
Andrew: But where is the baby one?
Edward Right there
Father: Well, let's find out. What are they sitting on?
Andrew: ►Egg.
Father: No, what's on this?
Andrew: ►I don't know.
Father: Straw.
Andrew:
Edward:
Straw.
Father: Yea. Boy, look it how pretty the feathers are on the
rooster.
Andrew answered, “Egg.” That was of course a perfectly good answer in the
context of the book. His father, however, gave a negative evaluation of Andrew’s
response to the question. Andrew was asked again to tell what the chicken was
sitting on. The father appeared to be focused on factual knowledge, in the
absence of procedural or semantic knowledge. Note, however, that the father
used the verb “sit” not “set.” This would have been of semantic importance in
this utterance if Andrew knew that “sit on” means something different from “set
on.” The two verbs are sometimes confused. Hens set on their eggs until the eggs
hatch. However, the hen might not have been setting on a nest and instead she
was sitting on the straw. In this context, it appeared that the father was not
referring to nesting, but to resting—to sit on the straw versus to set on the eggs. It
is entirely possible that none of this was part of the father’s or the son’s reference
for the conversation that transpired on the subject. When the father said, “No,
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what’s on this?” he was probably pointing to the hen’s nest. Andrew appeared to
be at a loss for the answer his father was seeking and he replied, “I don’t know.”
When Andrew’s answer was rejected, he did not understand why his answer was
incorrect. The father did not say something like, “Yes, on the eggs and what
other thing is there?” Since the whole book was about chickens not being the
only ones that hatch from eggs or lay eggs, a good guess, even if he did not know
the answer, would have been, “Egg.”
This short segment of conversation (CS 15b) highlighted another
important aspect of the relationship control by this father. Each of the talking
turns in CS 15b has a line beneath it that shows the types of control direction
messages based on the work of Millar and Rogers (1976). The matrix used to
categorize the control patterns was introduced earlier in this dissertation (See
Chapter 2, Table 1, p. 42 ).
Conversation Segment 15b
Andrew: ↑ But where is the baby one?
Question, Topic change
Edward ↑ Right there
Assertion, Answer
Father: ↓ Well, let's find out. ↑ What are they sitting on?
Assertion, Support Question, topic change
Andrew: ↑ Egg.
Assertion, Answer
Father: ↑ No, → what's on this?
Assertion, Disconfirmation Question, Extension
Andrew: ↓ I don't know.
Assertion, Answer
Father: ↑ Straw.
Assertion, Instruction
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→ Straw. Andrew/
Edward:
Assertion, Repeat
Father: ↑ Yea. ↑ Boy, look it how pretty the feathers are on
the rooster.
Assertion, Support Assertion Topic change
All three of the participants in this segment were using messages to control the
conversation and messages to support the communication among themselves.
Since Andrew and his father were of importance for this dissertation, their
conversation was the focus for this analysis; therefore, in CS 15c - d below,
Edward’s contributions were deleted from the transcript.
Conversation Segment 15c
Andrew: ↑ But where is the baby one?
Question, Topic change
Father: ↓ Well, let’s find out. ↑ What are they sitting on?
Assertion, Support Question, topic change
Millar and Rogers (1976) named nine types of control configuration based on the
transactional units of paired utterances. The paired transactions were determined
by sorting the utterances using a matrix for control directions of different types of
messages (pp. 96-97). The paired transaction in CS 15c was complimentary (one-
up/one-down), which was indicated by the directional arrows preceding each
utterance. Millar and Rogers labeled the control pattern complimentary because
when the two utterances in the paired talking turns were either one-up and one-
down ( ↑↓) or one-down and one-up ( ↓↑) they compliment one another. Andrew
asked a question that changed the topic ( ↑), and his father’s assertion showed
support ( ↓). The father, however, continued his turn by changing the topic with
another question (one-up) thus regaining control in the relationship and selecting
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the topic for conversation. Andrew’s assertion was also a one-up message. This
example of their relationship transaction was competitive symmetry ( ↑↑)
According to Millar and Rogers, symmetrical messages have the same
directionality; they can be competitive ( ↑↑), submissive ( ↓↓), or neutralized
( →→). Conversational and relational control was regularly in flux but the father,
maintained most of the control for their topics for discussion, and through the
conversation controlled the relationship.
In the talking turns in CS 15d, the father had four turns with two of those
turns having two separate messages; of the six messages, five were one-up and
one was a transition message. Transition message, as the term was used by Millar
and Rogers, meant the messages were paired but differently from symmetrical or
competitive. Transition messages include at least one one-across message ( →).
In CS 15d, one example of a transition-paired message ( ↑→) was Andrew’s
assertion when he repeated the information his father asserted as instruction (the
last few lines of the segment below). Each of Andrew other two turns were one-
up messages.
Conversation Segment 15d
Father: ↑ What are they sitting on?
Question, topic change
Andrew: ↑ Egg.
Assertion, Answer
Father: ↑ No → what's on this?
Assertion, Disconfirmation Question, Extension
Andrew: ↓ I don't know.
Assertion, Answer
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Father: ↑ Straw.
Assertion, Instruction
Andrew: → Straw.
► Assertion, Repeat
Father: ↑ Yea. ↑ Boy, look it how pretty the feathers are on the
rooster.
Assertion, Support Assertion Topic change
The father and son might not have realize that they were regularly
competing for control in their storybook reading conversations, however when
the conversation segments taken from the transcripts were analyzed using the
control patterns (Millar & Rogers, 1976) there was evidence that Andrew and his
father were often engaged in a battle for topic control. The father did maintain
control of the storybook events and he managed the sessions logistically as well
as taking care to respect his children’s ability to participate and their interest in
the activities.
Frequencies of occurrences descriptive statistics. Characteristics of the
forty-two conversation segments discussed in this dissertation were calculated
using the different conversation analysis categories employed in this study. The
tables that follow show the frequency of occurrences and the percentages
calculated on the frequencies related to control patterns in conversation (Millar &
Rogers, 1976), functions of language (Halliday, 1975; 1978), and speaking turns
(Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974). In addition, question styles (Keleman,
Callanan, Casler & Perez-Granados, 2005) and answer such as “I don’t know,”
Cordon, Saetermoe, and Goodman (2005); labeling items (Cochran-Smith,
1986), and answer styles (Keleman et al, 2005) are presented.
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Conversation/Relationship control patterns are presented in Table 5 that
follows. The two hundred thirty-eight (238) individual utterances in the forty-
three (43) conversational segments analyzed in this dissertation were sorted by
five categories identified by Millar and Roger (1976). The five categories
represented in Table 5 were competitive symmetry ( ↑↑), complementary ( ↑↓ or
↓↑), transitional ( →↑, →↓, ↑→, or ↓→) submissive symmetry ( ↓↓), and
neutralized ( →→). These calculations were based of adjacent pairs of utterances.
Not all two hundred thirty-eight (238) utterance is the conversation were adjacent
to a paired statement by a second speaker, which account for the difference in the
total number of utterance as compared to the number of control patterns
identified.
Table 5: Summary of Conversation/Relationship Control Pattern
Frequencies
Frequency Percent
Control patterns total 81
Competitive symmetry
Complementary
Transitional
Submissive symmetry
Neutralized symmetry
61
16
2
1
1
75
20
2
1
1
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Competitive symmetry had the highest frequency of occurrences representing 75
percent of the conversation control utterances, followed by complementary
patterns with 20 percent, transitional with 2 percent, and submissive and
neutralized symmetry with 1 percent each.
Utterances were also categorized by the frequency of Halliday’s (1975;
1978) functions of language. Table 6, which follows, lists the pragmatic and
mathetic utterances identified using his seven subcategories. The three hundred
twenty-four units of analysis were greater than the total utterances in the
conversations analyzed because some utterances represent more than one
functional category.
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Table 6: Summary of Functions of Language Utterances
Frequencies
Frequency Percent
Pragmatic total 126
Instrumental
Regulatory
Interactional
Personal
18
53
40
15
14
42
32
12
Mathetic 196
Heuristic
Imaginative
Informative
65
12
119
33
6
61
There were one hundred nineteen (119) informative utterances (teaching or
telling information) that represented 61 percent, followed by heuristic utterances
(refection on ideas or experiences) with sixty-five (65) or 33 percent, and
imaginative utterances (pretending or make believe worlds) having the least
frequency of occurrences of twelve (12) instances representing 6 percent of
mathetic utterance. Regulatory utterances (managing other’s actions) had the
highest frequency of occurrences of the pragmatic function (maintaining
relationships and managing actions) type, with fifty-three (53) or 42 percent. Of
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the remaining pragmatic utterances, forty (40) or 32 percent were interactional
utterances (relational joint activity, seeking agreement), eighteen (18) or 14
percent were instrumental utterances (satisfying a personal need), and personal
utterances were fifteen (15) or 12 percent.
The conversation segments analyzed in this dissertation were
representative of approximately three thousand speaking turns taken from the
transcripts of the first three hours of the thirteen hours of audiotaped recordings.
Table 7, bellow, presents the frequency of the speaker turns by the father and son
that were used in this study. The number of utterances is not equal to the number
of speaker turns because a speaking turn can have more than one utterance per
turn. In addition, a frequency of occurrences of pauses was included in Table 7.
The concept of adjacency-paired turns (Sacks, et al., 1974), such as question-
answer or statement-response, served as a basis for conversation analysis in this
dissertation.
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Table 7: Summary of Speaking Turns Frequencies
Frequency Percent
Total conversation turns 176 100
Turns by the father
Turns by Andrew
Turns by Edward
82
74
20
47
42
11
Total utterances 285 100
Utterances by the father
Utterances by Andrew
Utterances by Edward
154
102
29
54
36
10
Average utterances per
speaking turn
Father 1.8
Andrew 1.3
Edward 1.5
Measurable pauses (.) to (.5) 51 100
≥ one tenth of a second
≤ one tenth of a second
25
26
49
51
The frequency of occurrences by the father was eighty-two (82), his utterances in
those speaking turns were one hundred fifty-four (154), with and average of 1.8
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utterances per speaking turn. Of the fifty-one pauses in these conversation
segments, forty-seven (47) were within the father’s speaking turns. Andrew
paused once for two tenths of a second (.2) and three times for less than a tenth
of a second (.). Andrew had seventy-four (74) speaking turns that included one
hundred one utterances for an average of 1.3 utterances per speaking turn.
Edward had twenty (20) speaking turns and twenty-nine (29) utterances with an
average of 1.5 utterances per speaking turn. The frequencies of speaking turns
reflect the nature of conversation as the dyad took turns talking.
A table of styles of question asked is presented in Table 8 below. The
question styles (Cordon et al., 2005) were biological, nonliving, artifact, behavior
of others, or of self. Frequencies of occurrences were calculated for the father
and his son Andrew. . The categories with representative examples of types of
questions are: (1) Biological—“Why are there black kids?” (2) Non-living
natural—“Why is the sun hot?” (3) Artifact—“What are seatbelts for?” (4) The
behavior of others—“Why is my brother bad?” (5) The child’s own behavior—
“Why can’t I sleep with you guys?” (pp. 254-255).
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Table 8: Summary of Question Style Frequencies
Frequency Percent
Questions total 81
Biological total 14 17
Father
Andrew
12
2
Non-living total 8 10
Father
Andrew
6
2
Artifact total 23 28
Father
Andrew
14
9
Behavior of others total 29 36
Father
Andrew
13
16
Behavior of self total 8 10
Father
Andrew
1
7
10
Table 8 presents the eighty-one questions sorted by categories of questions asked
by the dyad. The highest frequency of occurrences for a category was twenty-
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nine (29) behavior of other’s questions; thirteen (13) by the father and sixteen
(16) by Andrew, which accounted for 36 percent of questions asked. Questions
about artifacts represented 28 percent of the questions, followed by biological
with 17 percent and 10 percent each for nonliving, or behavior of self. Artifact
questions for this dissertation were identified as question that asked, for example,
“Where (on the page) is the chicken?” The picture of the animal was considered
an artifact. On the other hand, biological questions were questions that asked
about the nature of an animal, for example, “Where do chickens come from?”
The development of the egg into a chicken was considered a question about the
biology of the animal. In the biological question category, the father asked
twelve (12) questions and Andrew only asked two (2). In the behavior-of-self
category, Andrew asked seven (7) and his father only asked one (1).
Keleman et al., (2005) identified three styles of answers parents gave to
their preschool children’s questions. The styles were teleological (the purpose for
the phenomena), causal (the cause-effect of phenomena), and ambiguous (either
no answer or neither teleological nor causal) answers. Additionally, frequencies
of occurrences of “I don’t know” (Cordon, et al. 2005) answers and answers that
were labeling (Cochran-Smith, 1986) of illustrations were included in Table 9
below.
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Table 9: Summary of Answer Style Frequencies
Frequency Percent
Answers total 86
Causal (cause-effect) 24 28
Father
Andrew
19
5
79
21
Teleological (purpose) 15 17
Father
Andrew
13
2
87
13
Ambiguous (either/neither of
above)
14 16
Father
Andrew
9
5
64
36
Labels 24 28
Father
Andrew
9
15
38
62
“I don’t know.” 9 10
Father
Andrew
8
1
89
11
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The two types of answers that represent the highest frequencies of occurrences
are causal answers and answering by naming or labeling with each having 28
percent. “I don’t know” as an answer had the frequency of nine (9) or 10 percent
of the answers in the conversation segment analyzed for this dissertation.
Summary
This study of a father, a son, and a storybook revealed the inter-workings
of a family with a positive approach toward literacy and a supportive
environment that encouraged family literacy activities such as sharing
storybooks. The family owned a number of children’s books; some of their books
were incorporated into this study. The first book read on the first tape was
Alexander and the Magic Boat, a book from the family’s collection. It was
evident that the family participated in family storybook reading because Andrew
“read” Alexander and the Magic Boat with authority and he included the
important elements of the story without prompting from anyone. He was at ease
reading the storybooks and it appeared from the family’s interaction that
storybook reading was a normal daily activity in the household. Andrew and his
family were invited to participate in this storybook research because Andrew was
enrolled in the preschool at the university where his father was a faculty member.
He, therefore, had experiences with storybook reading practices in classrooms in
addition to his home experiences.
The research questions that provided the impetus for this study were to
describe a specifically defined situated literacy—a father, his preschool aged son,
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reading selected storybooks in their family home. The unit of analysis was
interaction patterns embedded in the father-son conversations. The father-son
dyad followed rules of turn taking (Sacks et al., 1974), their conversational turns
had pragmatic and mathetic functional purposes (Halliday, 1975), and they met
the expectations of Grice’s (1989) cooperative principle and maxims of
conversation. The interpersonal and social interactions aligned with Watzlawick
et al.’s (1967) relational axioms and with Millar and Rogers’ (1976) paired
control patterns for dyads in interpersonal relationships. The concept explained
by Wittgenstein (Ambrose, 2001) of language as a game was evident in segments
of the father-son conversation when rapidly asking for and calling out labels of
illustrated items in the storybooks.
The nature of the interaction during storybook reading between this
father-son dyad was at times rigid and even uncomfortable to listen to during
auditing of the tapes, as they appeared to experience a discordant conversation
with one talking about one topic and the other something different. Generally,
there was a sense of true emotional attachment to one another and a sincere
concern on the part of Andrew’s father to support his son’s ability to understand
the information and ideas represented in the storybooks they read together.
Conversation patterns during storybook reading easily transitioned from talk
about the text to talk about environmental and procedural elements of the session.
Sometimes the dyad was guided by the content of the text but they were not
unduly bound by the text. The interaction allowed for walking away, doing other
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things along with book reading or talking about books. When Andrew lost
interest or became more interested in some other activity his father confirmed
that Andrew was tired of reading and the session ended.
This study did not attempt to compare the way this father and his son
experienced storybook reading with any other dyad of the same or differing
gender. What was observed was a father who valued reading to his son, as was
evident from his commitment to this activity; but also he gave every indication
that he truly found pleasure in spending the time with his son reading stories. The
way they read storybooks was determined somewhat by the genre of the
storybooks. When they read concept books, the father mostly asked closed-ended
questions and Andrew said or pointed to the answers. There were many times
when there was confusion during the conversations, sometimes related to textural
information and at other times associated with the management of such things as
the recording equipment. Andrew often selected books he had previously heard
or read but was attentive when his father introduced a new storybook. They spent
more time reading the narrative storybooks than they did reading the concept
books. The father slowed his rate of speech and allowed longer pause when he
read from the narrative.
Based upon the frequencies of occurrences for the different units of
analysis reported on there were areas for future research that might benefit the
study of storybook reading and its accompanying discourse. The competitive
nature of conversation between the participants in this dissertation was 75
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percent of their communication. Studies to include an intervention that provided
heightening the adult’s awareness of using fewer competitive and more
complementary patterns of conversation might improve the relationship between
the participants and as was noted by Allor and McCathern (2003) and Bus (2003)
a dyads sense of interpersonal attachment has been shown to affect the storybook
reading experience for the families. The nature of question-answer adjacency
pairs in the situated literacy experiences between parents and their children might
provide greater insight into the process of conversation that seeks to engage
participants in exchanges that go beyond dialogic reading methods (Wells, 1985;
Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2002). The question-answer format that encourages one-
up directional messages (Millar & Rogers, 1976), such as messages that are non-
supportive, questioning, ordering, topic changes, but does not encourage one-
down or one across messages, such as messages that are supportive and extension
of current topic, detract from harmonious interaction in conversation and
interpersonal relationships.
The questions posed for this dissertation study led to new and more
intriguing questions that indicate additional study of this father-son dyad related
to their specific socioeconomic status and their idealized stereotypical family.
The study also indicated that there were implications for future studies that are
beyond this one case study. Chapter 5 addresses questions and considerations for
future research, implications for practitioners, and a concluding discussion of this
dissertation.
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Chapter 5
Discussion
Five exploratory questions guided the study conducted for this
dissertation. They were to examine the nature of the interaction between a father
and his son during storybook reading and the decontextual interaction patterns
during situated literacy practices and events. Additionally, analyses of the role
gender, genre, and adult power (relationship control of conversation) played in
storybook reading during early childhood between the father-son dyad. A
discussion of these questions follows in the implications for future research,
implications for practitioners, recommendations for future research, and the
concluding remarks.
Implications for Further Research
Gendered studies in the language arts gained attention in terms of social
justice and equity as it related to biases in favor of men and against women in
English written language and in the common parlance of the American speakers
of English. The English language “has received more discussion than any other
language” according to Crystal (2005), because of the activist feminist movement
in United States. English is deficient compared to some other languages because
it lacks gender-neutral pronouns, “he” is + male - female + human; “she” is –
male + female + human; and, “it” is – male – female - human.
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Table 10: Pronoun Matrix
Pronoun Male Female Human
He + - +
She - + +
It - - +
As Crystal explained, speakers and especially writers have attempted to contort
the lexicon to refer to a person using a singular indefinite pronouns (he, she, hers,
his, etc.) by using sex-neutral terms, such as “tey, co, E, ne, thon, mon, heesh, ho,
hesh, et, hir, jhe, na, per, xe, po, and person” (p. 314). None of those “sex-
neutral terms” is used by the public and it is unlikely that the “man on the street”
or (in less gender-biased terms and more colloquially speaking) “everyday folks”
have even heard those nonstandard pronouns. Changes in the lexicon continue to
be made in an effort to eradicate gender specific words and phrases. The title of
chairman is often reduced to chair or replaced with chairperson to avoid gender
bias, in fact, Word spell check prompts a writer to select either “chair” or
“chairperson” if the word chairman is typed in a Word document (if the user has
that option activated in the program). Nonetheless, it is awkward and even
comical to say, “Let me introduce you to the Chair of the Board” in place of
“Chairman of the Board.” Other substitutions have avoided that transformational
hazard by replacing the descriptor with a completely new word or phrase, e.g.,
“mailman” to mail carrier; “policeman” to police officer. From the prospective of
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eradicating sexist language in society, there came a movement to modify
children’s language arts materials such as producing literature that avoided sexist
stereotypes of males in positions of power (doctors, executives, lawyers) and
women in less powerful roles (nurses, secretaries, caretakers). This change in the
genre of children’s literature and materials used in classrooms is evident in the
number of books that portray men, women, boys, and girls in gender-neutral
roles or gender bending roles. Men are shown as nurses and women as doctors,
stay at home dads and working moms. The societal variations present in
communities are more recognized by showing intergenerational relationships,
current stratifications in family homes that show one-parent families and two
same sex parents. There are storybooks about many cultures and cultural groups
within the larger society. It would be informative to include in the study of
storybook reading the ways these factors actually effect selection and reading of
storybooks by fathers to their sons. It could be instructive to determine if
culturally, ethnically, socially, or other self-identifying attributes in genre
influence storybook reading behaviors. To the degree that there might be
differences, it could be useful to analyze the differences and so assess if the
differences matter. Intuitively it would be expected, but validating the intuition
would be worthwhile. Gender studies in literacy research will benefit from much
more attention to how fathers and sons interact in situated literacy experiences
together. The few existing studies lean toward intervention for children who are
in at-risk categories for any number of reasons. Many sources of information are
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not studies at all, but are instead descriptions of community based family literacy
related programs (e.g., Fathers Reading Every Day (FRED); or Project DAD) for
which descriptions and management plans are provided. The programs are
designed for getting fathers to take part in their children’s lives with reading
being part of that relationship dynamic. The notion that fathers need to be enticed
to read to their children is worthy of further study. Popular search engine
searches produce myriad sites on father-son abusive relationships but few sites
for positive father-son relationships. Likewise, the information on fathers and
sons who are middle-to upper-socioeconomic status, and low-risk (versus at-risk)
of school failure are close to nonexistent. The body of research would benefit
from more study of what works in positive father-son dyad relationships in
general and specifically in early literacy.
Anderson, Anderson, Lynch, and Shapiro (2004) reported that fathers
were more interactive than mothers were during storybook reading; but it would
be useful to examine multiple father-son dyads to determine if it is warranted to
make such a general claim. Possibly a comparison of homogeneous dyads would
show fathers literacy practices reflect a much broader range using a Likert scale
from low to high interactive behaviors. Perhaps some fathers are more interactive
and possibly under different conditions for the study of father-son interaction
during storybook reading different outcomes would be found. Anderson et al.
(2004) found that mothers elaborated during their reading of narrative texts with
boys; in fact, they elaborated twice as much. It would be useful to do a father-
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father comparison of fathers reading to boys, just as there are variances between
the backgrounds and experiences of different gendered parents (mothers
compared to fathers) there are differences between similar gendered parents
(mother compared to mothers). Fathers of children who are at-risk may not
exhibit the same reading behaviors as fathers of children who are at-low-risk or
no-risk of failure in academics.
In this dissertation, the father was of an elite group of people who hold
the highest academic degrees, he was employed, during the time the data for this
study was collected, in a position of teaching exceptional university students
preparing for highly skilled professions, and he is a medical researcher himself.
His child was enrolled in an exclusive, prestigious preschool program. The
family had a print rich environment with a generous children’s library in their
home, they greatly value learning and literacy as is evidenced by the family’s
participation in a study such as this one, and the degree of participation in their
recorded activities during the storybook reading sessions. Compared to a father
and son who were learning to speak and read in another language, living at
poverty level, who owned few book, and other factors entirely opposite of the
family in this study, differences could be anticipated. Intuitively differences in
behaviors would be expected during situated literacy experiences when variables
are changed. If there are differences, the nature of the difference could be
informative. Assumptions about variables that contribute or distract from boys
literacy success deserver continued scrutiny.
214
The father/son dyad in this dissertation study did not appear to have been
given instructions in how to proceed with the recording of the sessions (the
logistics or mechanics) or the manner of storybook reading, such as for example
the model for dialogic reading (Wells, 1999). It would have been instructive to
identify the father’s rationale for the processes and procedures he used during
these storybook events. He most likely had a model or schema that shaped his
behaviors for this situated literacy although he may not have been able to give an
explanation. There are many things people do without a clear understanding of
how they do it or why and even if the how and why are sensed, at times, putting
that information into words proves to be a daunting task. An interesting follow
up activity for this study might have been an interview using the tapes as a
reference (to play back the tapes) for the family and have the father and the son
comment on what they were doing or trying to do at different points.
The father’s attention to details (such as clearly stating the time, date, and
circumstances) could be attributed to his own experience as a researcher. He
noted details that he would have considered important for scholarly research, as
if he were making lab notes or a running log of steps taken during an experiment.
He was careful to state the titles of books and to give the names of who the
participants were at the time of the recordings. He provided other information
relevant to the social situation for the storybook reading as they took place, e.g.,
mood changes, attention levels, distractions, extenuating circumstances. It would
be interesting to find out if other father-son dyads during storybook reading
215
respond to the task of recording the sessions with similar attention to detail. An
analysis of the father’s storybook reading behaviors with his younger son was not
part of this dissertation study. A comparative study could be designed to analyze
differences between this father’s interactions when reading to both sons together,
to the two year old alone, and the four year old alone. The father did modify his
manner of reading when he read to his sons depending on the participants. When
reading to both sons he attempted to maintain a balance that nurtured both boys.
Andrew tended to be more aggressive and Edward more remonstrative during the
storybook reading. Both boys interrupted, raised their voices, talked over each
other and their father, complained, and expressed disinterest and preferences
among other actions during the storybook session.
The father was provided three different sets of storybooks for this study.
The storybooks discussed in this dissertation were a concept book (Chickens
Aren’t the Only Ones), two narrative books—one from the family library
(Alexander and the Magic Boat) and one provided (Hey, Get Off Our Train), and
an ABC book. There were differences in the manner of interaction between this
father-son dyad that demonstrated genre relevant approaches to reading concept
versus narrative storybooks.
Implications for Practitioners
The practice of storybook reading is predominately a mother-child
experience or an occurrence that happens in primary-grade settings with a teacher
and small group of young children (Ortiz, Stile & Brown, 1999; Sulzby & Teale,
216
1991). It is likely that those two paradigms will continue to dominate the
storybook reading practices for young children even though there are some
exceptions. An interesting phenomenon exist in that the television representation
of adult storybook reading with young children has included many male models
in the social practices of literacy, such as the hosts of the long running children’s
programs featuring Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers. Storybooks and storybook
reading are a unique part of literacy in terms of its distinctiveness for a specific
age group and for its perceived appropriateness as a genre for other ages.
Storybook reading is an experience that is primarily for very young children and
unusual for older children and adults. When adults work with storybooks, it is
more likely they are studying the genre in the form of rhetorical analysis, such as
interpreting the political or philosophical meanings of texts like Gulliver’s
Travels or doing comparative analyses of various editions of a fairy tale such as
Cinderella with its more than two hundred versions. Perhaps that is why a joy is
renewed in adults when they have opportunities to read storybooks from their
childhood to children and the adult is free to escape to the world of fantasy where
there are happy ever after endings to even the most dire of circumstances. The
use of storybooks and the storybook reading paradigm contributes in unique
ways to boys’ understandings of literacy in that it is the introduction to making
meaning of people and places that are captured in words stored in stories. In
many stories, the only access to the imaginary places and beings is through the
words because they do not exist beyond the minds of readers and writers of
217
fiction. Perhaps for boys their feet must take flight with their minds in order for
them to be engaged fully with storybook reading.
Teachers and parents of preschool and primary grade boys recognize that
those boys benefit from emergent literacy experiences as a means to learn about
language, print, and knowledge related to literature genres necessary to become
literate so that they will be able to succeed in their schooling. These adults also
recognize that there are differences between learners, differences that may be
gender specific based on the child’s culture and socialization in his community at
home and in school. The research points to the ongoing struggles of boys in
language arts. Boys outnumber girls referred to special education programs and
need assistance in language arts to do schoolwork. To provide more storybook
reading practices that are positive for young boys, first it is important to examine
the nature of the current practices, some of which have questionable
effectiveness for engaging them in early literacy. Researchers found that boys
have fewer adult male role models who read as part of their everyday experiences
and fewer still of adult males who read to the boys (Millard, 1997); furthermore,
fathers were not nearly as often seen as readers compared with mothers who read
for their own purposes and to their children (Maynard, 2002). Men are more
pragmatic in terms of using literacy skill as tools to accomplish specified goals—
to find answers they need for immediate purposes. Educators and researchers
might work toward a model of teaching literacy to boys that will meet the
expectations of the boys’ perceptions of the usefulness of literacy. Literacy is a
218
pragmatic tool for solving problems and for gaining knowledge that can be
appreciated for its innate value when it is used for its intended purposes. For boys
the meaningfulness for reading may at times need to be more concrete and less
focused on the mechanics of the process. The Gingerbread Man is a child’s
storybook that includes a statement about the gingerbread man running as fast as
he can; the gingerbread man says that no one can catch him. For some boys that
line is a prompt to jump up and run as fast as they can, faster than the
gingerbread man, faster than anyone can. Few parents or teachers would view
jumping up and running about the room as fast as the boy can run as a part of
storybook reading and the likelihood that the behavior would be encouraged is
small. Yet, if that is the logic of this storybook reading experience for a boy, is it
useful to depress this exceptionally enthusiastic response to literacy and to
construe it as inappropriate?
The relationship control patterns advanced by Millar and Rogers (1976)
represent an interesting avenue of study and practice for adults interacting with
preschool children in classroom or living rooms. Understand that relationships
are managed through conversation control patterns between people might
contribute to developing greater interpersonal attachment. DeKlyen, Speltz, &
Greenberg, 1998) characterized a secure emotional attachment as having a sense
of safety or security that was felt by the child because the parent (or other
caregiver) was reliably “available and responsive” to the child’s needs (p. 7).
219
Available and responsive behavior is manifested through physical interaction but
also through the use of language to communication.
Recommendations for Further Research
The research about storybook reading did not present a discrete study
focused on father-son discourse in terms of how the communication in their
storybook reading was experienced; consequently, mother and child or female
teacher and child(ren) research dominates the literature. In this study, the
communication between a father and his son during storybook reading was
analyzed. Pearce (1976) wrote more than forty years ago, “The social sciences
have traditionally been concerned more with the bizarre than with the normal,
more with the improbable than with the commonplace” (p. 17).Much of the
information about fathers and early literacy was focused on family literacy for
children who were classified as being at-risk of failure in academic endeavors.
This study attempted to look at a “commonplace” situated literacy between a
father-son dyad whose family characteristics were classified as the idealized
American family. The father was exceptionally well educated, a professor for a
large private urban university in an elite school of study, the family enjoyed a
comfortable level of economic and social success, they were an intact family of
four, the child was enrolled in a private preschool, and he was the owner of many
personal copies of age appropriate books. The family spoke English as their first
and only language; the child had no physical, psychological, or social disabilities.
Essentially, Andrew and his father were a perfect dyad for this case study about a
220
father, a son, and a storybook that focused on their literacy related conversations.
Based on this study, it is fair to say that there are factors about the ways fathers
and sons relate during storybook reading that warrant further analysis.
Future studies of early literacy experiences that focus on father-son dyads
are needed to understand the dynamics of their interactions with greater clarity.
This study brought together conversation analysis and storybook reading between
a father and his son. It would be useful to expand this work to include several
father-son dyads in an effort to formulate general statements that explain their
actual experiences with literacy. Much of the work on storybook reading
behaviors has been based on the female model of storybook reading; it would be
valuable to discover if such a thing as a male model of storybook reading exists.
It would be inappropriate to claim that this one case study represents anything
more than the description of one father-son dyad. It would be careless to ignore
that this case study showed unexpected differences in the practice this father and
son demonstrated compared to the research that prescribes maximal early literacy
experiences with storybooks.
Specific area for further study. First, the collection of data for
conversation analysis has used audiotapes to capture the speaking turns and
relationship messages as a sufficient means; however, this study would have
benefited from the additional data that videotapes could have provided. Multiple
channels of data (e.g., field notes, videos, interviews) are especially an important
consideration when using secondary data because information related to the
221
primary data set could be lost. For this dissertation, videotapes of the storybook
reading sessions might have shown the book handling, the parallel and periphery
activities, and the nonverbal behaviors to add meaning to the audio data. The
constant and crucial variable in the taping process is the person who operates the
recorder; many parents and researchers have minimal experience with making
tape recordings for research studies in family homes and their skills affect the
quality of the tapes. The tangential remark by the father presented in his running
commentary of the storybook reading session was invaluable for the purposes of
analyzing decontextual data; however, the observer’s paradox was exacerbated
by his attention to the record keeping. The father at times appeared to be
hypercorrect in his speaking, in a sense “playing to the camera.” The father
unusual remarks about the procedures (as if he were performing a laboratory
experiment) influenced Andrew’s sense of the sessions, at times, attending more
to the recording equipment than to the storybook reading. Perhaps specific
instructions to the father about ways to make the recording devise less obtrusive
could help. Certainly, the increased use of audio-visual technologies by families
(message services, camera phone, webcams, home videos, etc.) could influence
the collection of data for future studies as well as serve as a desensitizing factor
related to the observer’s paradox.
Second, both gender and genre as factors that influence father-son literacy
studies are too few to make generalizations about the nature of those interactional
dimensions. Future study of these issues could incorporate multiple fathers and
222
son who represent a broad spectrum of people. This dissertation brought attention
to the unique nature of one father-son dyad. It would be beneficial to consider
multiple dyads with similar demographic profiles to examine variances within
the group. Likewise, it would be of interest to compare dyads representative of
many demographically different groups to determine if there are measurable
distinctive characteristics across groups. Although the research questions for this
dissertation did not extend to the study of the father’s behaviors while reading to
Edward, it was observed that the father did not interact the same way with
Andrew and Edward. Future study of father-son dyads might examine the
observable differences in the nature of a father’s storybook reading to his
different children that might include sons and daughters. It was found in this
dissertation that the father used differing styles of presentation depending on the
genre of the storybooks. Other studies might replicate or amend the genres used
for storybook reading sessions; for example, using comic books, poems, or
picture books with no text in a storybook reading environment. It would be
interesting to include an obviously little girl’s book, such as Barbie or Disney
princess stories, as part of the father-son storybook reading to determine to what
extent the father or boy would reject or accept the genre. The narrative
storybook, Hey, Get Off Our Train, provided for this study was low key in that
there was little action or adventure incorporated into the tale; it would be
interesting to compare that to an action hero narrative story, such as Superman or
223
Spiderman adventures. The level of interaction and interest may vary greatly
within the genre as well as across genres.
Third, the practices of and purposes for storybook reading have been
show to be different among participants. For the most part, the research in
emergent literacy has been, perhaps out of convenience, focused on the patterns
of behavior exhibited by mothers and preschool or primary school teachers, who
mostly are women. The practice of storybook reading by the father in this
dissertation relied predominately on one approach, the style was describer, and it
was manifested in a continuous questioning activity that used “Where is ___?”
types of questions. The nature of the purpose for storybook reading was to get the
task completed. There might be a multitude of factors that directly influence the
father’s purposes and practices that would become apparent though the study of a
multitude of fathers or other adult men who read to young children. It would be
of interest or compare male preschool and primary grade school teachers to
fathers, female teacher, and mothers. The father in this dissertation was not
provided instruction in practices for reading storybooks. An interesting study
design might be to replicate this father-son storybook reading in the manner this
study was done and then to instruct the father in a method (e.g., dialogic reading)
before having him record another group of storybook reading either using the
same text or comparable texts.
Finally, the debate about storybook reading cannot be ended with so
many question still unanswered. Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) found that
224
there was some evidence for storybook reading leading to literacy, but less of an
effect than was taken-for-granted. Bus et al. (1998) found that preschoolers who
were read to exhibited measurable achievements in their skills related to learning
to read and use language. Regardless of the view subscribed to about storybook
reading, there is consensus that reading to young children has value if only as a
means for parents and children to spend time together in an activity that they
both experience favorably. It is likely for that reason parent-child storybook
reading will continue be a part of early childhood experiences. It is important to
complete the picture of storybook reading by adding research that will, to borrow
the title to a very old television program, “Make Room for Daddy.”
Conclusion
This dissertation study examined a series of situated literacy practices and
events that included a father, a son, and a storybook. Each storybook was read
by the father to his son and the storybook reading conversations associated with
the reading of the storybooks were the units of analysis. The analyses showed
specific patterns of discourse the father used to read to his son (at times to his
sons) that related to the genre he was reading. Implications for further research
included examining the nature of gendered literature for men and boys in
storybook reading and other literacy related experiences for preschool aged boys.
The research into the perceived ideal father-son storybook reading experiences
warrant more attention; and studies that include more father-son dyads that
represent varied social stratifications are called for to access the actual nature of
225
father-son literacy behaviors. Implications for practitioners involved rethinking
the expectations for literacy related to storybook reading when working with
preschool boys and working to included fathers and other adult males in the
process of showing boys that reading is for fathers and other men too, not just the
women they see as teachers or their mothers. Recommendations for future
research included continued study of storybook reading between fathers and sons
with the additional focus of including children who are at low- or little-risk of
failure in school. More study of the nature of the conversations between parent
and child to understand the dynamics of their discussion of storybooks is
warranted. Specifically, future studies should consider the collection of data
methods employed, the dimensions that make father-son storybook reading
warrant further exploration, and generalizations about fathers and sons as they
experience storybook reading and literacy in general deserve examination on a
broad scale.
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249
Appendix A: Examples of Control Patterns
Examples of Control Patterns
1. Competitive symmetry (one-up/one-up)
A: ↑You know I want you to keep the house picked up during the
day.
B: ↑ I want you to help sometimes.
2. Complementary ↓↑ (one-down/one-up)
A: Please help. I need you.
B: Sure, I know how.
3. Transition (one-across/one-up)
A: → Let’s compromise.
B: ↑ No, my way is best.
4. Complementary (one-up/one-down)
A: ↑ Let’s get out of town this weekend.
B: ↓ Okay.
5. Submissive symmetry (one-down/one-down)
A: ↓ I’m so tired. What should we do?
B: ↓ I can’t decide. Your decide.
1. Transition (one-across/one-down)
A: → My dad was pretty talkative tonight.
B: ↓ You’re right; he sure was.
7. Transition ↑→ (one-up/one-across)
A: I definitely think we should have more kids.
B. Lots of people seem to be having kids these days.
8. Transition (one-down/one-across)
A: ↓ Please help me. What can I do?
B: → I don’t know.
9. Neutralized symmetry (one-across/one-across)
A: → The neighbor’s house needs paint.
B: → The windows are dirty too.
(Littlejohn, 2002, p. 239)
250
Appendix B: Key to Coding Symbols and Notations
Key to Coding Symbols and Notations
Headings:
Identification of transcript P 95.1.A.10-12 means:
Peters 1995: Tape 1 Side A Lines 10-12
Pointers:
Points to the text example discussed ►
P We have Edward who’s two [00:14 and
Andrew who’s four.
►C1 [00:14 I want to do this.
C2 00:17 Where? Which one is four, Daddy?
Line Number:
Microsoft Word’s automatic line numbers function
applied to whole document.
Speaker
Identify:
“P” (parent) for father, C1 for two-year-old boy, C2
for four-year-old boy
Timeline:
00:00 minutes and seconds time line based on running
tape clock
Speaker
Overlap:
[00:00 two people speaking at once were marked with
a left bracket and the time when the second speaker
began to speak
P We have Everett who’s two [00:14 and
Alexander who’s four.
C1 [00:14I want to do this.
C2 00:17Where? Which one is four, Daddy?
This shows that at the 00:14 second mark on the tape
C1 said, “I want to do this.” during P’s turn after the
phrase “who’s two.” C2 began a turn at 00:17
seconds.
Spelling:
Spoken words were transcribed in Standard English or
allegro spelling. Allegro spelling: wanna Standard
spelling: want to Contractions were transcribed using
their standard informal forms “we have” is written
“we’ve”
Syllable Stress:
All capital letters for UNUSUAL SYLLABLE
STRESS
Lengthened
Syllables:
Two or more colons following the syllable: No::
Pauses:
Pauses are shown in tenths of a second, e.g., a 4 tenths
of a second pause (.4) short, but noteworthy pause (.)
Unintelligible: ((unintelligible)) vocalization not discernable
251
Appendix B: Continues
Key to Coding Symbols and Notations
Vocalizations:
Vocalizations were transcribed in phonemic
transcription when phonemes were recognizable
12 C1 [00:04I /ni/ to. (I need to.) In this sample, /ni/, is
likely “need” followed with (I need to.) the probable
utterance
Probable
Utterance:
In this sample, /ni/, is likely “need” and the words that
follow in parenthesis (I need to.) is the probable
utterance
►12C1 [00:04I /ni/ to. (I need to.)
Noises:
Background noises not attended to (e.g., an airplane is
heard on a tape but the participants make no comments
about it), noises remarked about or contributing to the
conversation were noted in the transcription.
Editorial
Notations:
Word Review Toolbar Tools were used for notations
Grammar: Grammar was transcribed in the way it was spoken
Punctuation:
Sentence stress and intonation:
question mark (?) rising intonation
period (.) falling intonation
comma (,) flat to slightly rising intonation
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Conversations between a father and his four-year-old son during their storybook reading sessions were audiotape recorded by the father. The sessions were recorded in the family home, at the family's convenience, over a six-week time span in 1995. The purpose for this study was to examine the nature of interactions between a father and his son during initial and subsequent readings of different storybook genres. Of interest was the role gender and genre played in storybook reading, the nature of decontextual interaction patterns, and the role adult power played in this situated literacy. Conversation analysis systems by Grice (1989), Halliday (1975), Millar and Rogers (1976), Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974), and Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson (1967) were used. This case study provided evidence that gender, genre, repeated book reading, and adult power were intricately related to this dyads communication patterns in contextual and decontextual literacy experiences.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Webb, Anita Taylor
(author)
Core Title
A father, a son, and a storybook: a case study of discourse during storybook reading
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Curriculum
Publication Date
04/25/2007
Defense Date
03/26/2007
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Eugenia Mora-Flores,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
Advisor
Regusa, Gigi (
committee chair
), Mora-Flores, Eugenia (
committee member
), Yaden, David Jr. (
committee member
)
Creator Email
anitawebb@hotmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m424
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UC1182884
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etd-Webb-20070425 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-481426 (legacy record id),usctheses-m424 (legacy record id)
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etd-Webb-20070425.pdf
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481426
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Webb, Anita Taylor
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texts
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(contributing entity),
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Eugenia Mora-Flores