The central example: Crying “racist” in classroom interaction
The example that we will use to illustrate our model in this chapter comes from work by Reyes (2011) that analyzes classroom conversations among Asian American youth who cry “racist,” characterizing someone or something as racist. The data were collected as part of an ethnographic study of a fifth-grade English language arts class that met on Fridays after school in an Asian American supplementary school in New York City during 2006—2007. As was the norm in the school, this class had Korean American students and European American teachers.
In the following classroom interaction, recorded on December 8, the teacher (Mr. Bader) was trying to get the class back on task after a ten-minute break.
Segment 1: The sword of darkness
- 001 Mr. Bader: I- I definitely want to- s- send somebody to the office to quiet
- 002 this crowd down, so, if- I see any twitches, or any, b- b- uh-
- 003 defiant behavior, I will-
- 004 Hyo: send you to the office (just say it)
- 005 Mr. Bader: take you to the office personally
- 006 Hyo: no I will bring the hammer down
- 007 Mr. Bader: bring the hammer,
- 008 Luke: not- not bring-
- 009 Mr. Bader: the hammer ofThor right coming down
- 010 Luke: no not the hammer ofThor, the sword of- the sword of light
OH Mr. Bader: da- da- Damo- Diodes Diocl-
- 012 Luke: no the- no the sword of darkness
- 013 Mr. Bader: the sword of darkness is coming to those who act in a, in
- 014 antisocial behavior
- 015 Joo-eun: does that mean the sword is dark? [or does that mean-
- 016 Pete: [you wish you were a little
- 017 boy again (don’t you)
- 018 Joo-eun: does that mean the blade is black?
- 019 Mr. Bader: yes, this is black, this is- this is- carbon-
- 020 Pete: racist! ((embedded in a cough))
- 021 Mr. Bader: carbon- plated- steel, now, excuse me skateboard people, we are
- 022 recognizing the order of events or steps on page eleven
In this segment, the teacher and students discuss how to eradicate disruptive classroom behavior with hammers and swords, using metaphors to describe the discipline the teacher threatens to impose. Then Pete cries “racist!” in line 020. How do we make sense of this utterance? The tools and techniques that we introduce in the following sections will help us analyze what is going on in this segment. The tools and techniques allow us to address the key discourse analytic questions introduced in Chapter 1: What narrated events are described as the content of this interaction? Which indexical signs should we pay attention to? How are salient indexicals construed, yielding an interpretation of the social action occurring? How does a configuration of signs solidify and establish an account of the social action occurring?
