Language, Place, and the Body in Childhood Literacies Theory, Practice, and Social Justice

Contents

Book Series Editors’ Forward

Foreword: Warda Farah

SECTION I: Introduction

1            Introduction

              KHAWLA BADWAN, RUTH CHURCHILL DOWER, WARDA FARAH, ROSIE FLEWITT, RACHEL HOLMES, ABIGAIL HACKETT, CHRISTINA MACRAE, VISHNU NAIR, DAVID BEN SHANNON

SECTION II: Language as bodily and material

2a          Language as bodily and material

              ROSIE FLEWITT, RACHEL HOLMES, CHRISTINA MACRAE

2b         Making time for unruliness in the special education classroom: Resisting the narrowing of neurotypicality in England

              YVONNE WILLIAMS and DAVID BEN SHANNON

2c          Letting things become what they want to become: Uncertainty, improvisation, and resisting the tyranny of talk

              CHARLOTTE ARCULUS

2d         Facilitating expressive language through body movements: Clinical implications

              MAYA LEELA

2e         Speech Bubbles: How play, joy, and storytelling open up expansive possibilities for language

              ADAM POWER-ANNAND with ABIGAIL HACKETT

2f          Coming together: Roundtable discussion on language as bodily and material

              CHARLOTTE ARCULUS, RACHEL HOLMES, MAYA LEELA, CHRISTINA MACRAE, ADAM POWER-ANNAND, DAVID BEN SHANNON, YVONNE WILLIAMS

SECTION III:  Place and language

3a          Place and Language

              WARDA FARAH, VISHNU NAIR, DAVID BEN SHANNON

3b         Researching language and place: What is the evidence base?

              ABIGAIL HACKETT and DAVID BEN SHANNON

3c          Rituals, vocalisations and creating comfortable spaces: A spatialised view of young children’s language in museums

              ABI HACKETT, CHRISTINA MACRAE, DAVID BEN SHANNON, ROBERT CHESTER, LUCY COOKE, ESTHER HALLBERG, GEORGINA SIMMONS, LAURA SMITH-HIGGINS, SALLY TOON

3d         Spaces of Reprieve: An emancipatory practice centring Black and Brown children labelled with communication difficulties

              WARDA FARAH and VISHNU NAIR

3e          The entanglement between signed language, embodiment, and place

              LEALA HOLCOMB

3f          Coming together: Roundtable discussion on place and language

              WARDA FARAH, ABI HACKETT, LEALA HOLCOMB, VISHNU KK NAIR, DAVID BEN SHANNON

SECTION IV: Language beyond meaning

4a          Language beyond meaning

              KHAWLA BADWAN, RUTH CHURCHILL DOWER, ABIGAIL HACKETT

4b         Beyond ‘deficit’ or ‘lack’: Enjoying the richness of language and meaning-making in a complex early childhood classroom

              WILLOW SPENCER, JESS CLARKE, DAVID BEN SHANNON

4c          How might body-listening open up space for body-languaging?

              RUTH CHURCHILL DOWER

4d         Who chooses my words?

              ANDREA LEE

4e         Listening Body

              LOUISE KLARNETT

4f          Coming together: Roundtable discussion on language beyond meaning

              RUTH CHURCHILL DOWER, ABIGAIL HACKETT, ANDREA LEE, DAVID BEN SHANNON

SECTION V: Rights of the Talker

5.           The Rights of the Talker. A manifesto for chattering, whispering, translanguaging, not-speaking, non-verbalising, screeching, signing, clicking, twirling, stimming, assistive technology-ing, jumping, shouting, grasping, gasping, dancing, drawing, repeating, refusing, gesturing, glancing, smirking, eye-rolling, whistling……

              ABIGAIL HACKETT, KHAWLA BADWAN, RUTH CHURCHILL DOWER, ESTER EHIYAZARYAN-WHITE, WARDA FARAH, ROSIE FLEWITT, KAREN GRAINGER, RACHEL HOLMES, CHRISTINA MACRAE, VISHNU NAIR, DAVID BEN SHANNON

Biography

Khawla Badwan is Reader in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Ruth Churchill Dower is a PhD scholar at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, exploring young children's nonlingual ways of being through experiments in movement.

Warda Farah is a Social Entrepreneur, Speech & Language Therapist, Writer and Consultant.

Rosie Flewitt is Professor of Early Childhood Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Abigail Hackett is a Professor of Childhood and Education at Sheffield Hallam University.

Rachel Holmes is a Professor in the Education and Social Research Institute of Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Christina MacRae is a Visiting Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Vishnu KK Nair is a Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at University of Reading. 

David Ben Shannon is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield.

'This exemplary book goes far beyond simple meanings and interpretations about language, to reconceptualise language as multimodal and embodied in spoken and signed words, created with machines and symbols, danced, painted … and always connected to place. The interdisciplinary authors are academics, pedagogues, located in communities and various practitioners who give us new insights into how children create their own language in their unique learning ecologies and share what this actually looks like in their lifeworlds.'

- Nicola Yelland, Professor of Early Childhood Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia

'If “it takes a village to raise a child,” this book powerfully shows that it is not only the people in the village, but the land, objects, and the whole host of non-human beings there who shape this development. The book demonstrates that language and cognition are embodied, shaped by an ecology of expansive social and material resources. How children draw from all the resources in their environment to think and talk in creative, spontaneous, and unorthodox ways suggests a complex language development. Judging their communication as deficient stems from our limited ideological assumptions. This book educates scholars to expand their perspectives by listening to the more-than-human communication “out of the mouth of babes and infants”!'

- Suresh Canagarajah, Evan Pugh University Professor, Pennsylvania State University, USA

'If you are interested in how, why and when children communicate, you will be informed, provoked, stimulated and engaged by this collection of papers. Rejecting simple and reductive approaches,  the authors collectively show that children’s languaging practices are full-bodied, material, placed, unpredictable and delightfully opaque and slippery.'

- Pat Thomson, Professor of Education, The University of Nottingham, UK