Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-09T11:33:36.728Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The role of language and the language of role in institutional decision making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Hugh Mehan
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego

Abstract

The relationship between linguistic processes, cognitive activities, and social structures is explored by examining the decision making of committees of educators as they decide to place students into special education programs or retain them in regular classrooms. Often, different committee members enter committee meetings with different views of the student's case and its disposition, e.g., classroom teachers and parents provide accounts of the student's performance that compete with the view of the psychologist or district representative. Yet by the meeting's end, the version of the student's case provided by the psychologist or the district representative prevails.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bartlett, F. D. (1958). Thinking. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Cantor, N., & Mischel, W. (1979). Prototypes in person perception. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 12:352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coles, G. (1978). The learning disabilities test battery: Some empirical and social issues. Harvard Educational Review 48(3):313–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Andrade, R. (1974). Memory and the assessment of behavior. In Blalock, H. M. Jr, (ed), Measurement in the social sciences. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Duncan, S. (1972). Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 23:283–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erickson, F., & Shultz, J. (1977). When is a context? ICHD Newsletter, 1(2):510.Google Scholar
Erickson, F., & Shultz, J. & (1982). The counselor as gatekeeper: Social interaction in interviews. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1973). Language acquisition and communicative choice. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. New York: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. (eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol.: Speech acts. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1970). Toward a theory of communicative competence. In Dreitzel, H. P. (ed), Recent sociology #2: Patterns of communicative behavior. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Heap, J. (1980). Description in ethnomethodology. Human Studies 3(1):87106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertweck, A., & Mehan, H. (1981). The three R's: Referral, rehabilitation, and ramification. Paper presented at the AERA Meetings, Los Angeles, California, 04 19.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. (1979). Formality and informality in communicative events. American Anthropologist 81 (4):773–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janis, I., & Mann, L. (1978). Decision making. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Laing, R. D. (1967). The politics of experience. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lopes, L. (1979). “I'm sorry to have to put it that way.” But it is only way he can: Two tiered ethnography of a couple in therapy. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Palo Alto: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Marcuse, H. (1964). One dimensional man. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
McDermott, R. P., Gospodinoff, K., & Aron, J. (1978). Criteria for an ethnographically adequate description of concerted activities and their contexts. Semiotica 24(3/4).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehan, H. (1978). Structuring school structure. Harvard Educational Review 45(1):311–38.Google Scholar
Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehan, H. (1981). Practical decision making in naturally occurring institutional settings., In Rogoff, B. & Lave, J. (eds.), Everyday cognition: Its development and social context. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mehan, H., Hertweck, A., Combs, S. E., & Flynn, P. J. (1982). Teachers' interpretations of students' behavior. In Wilkinson, L. C. (ed.), Communicating in the classroom. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mehan, H., Meihls, J. L., Hertweck, A., & Crowdes, M. S. (1981). Identifying handicapped students., In Bacharach, S. B. (ed), Organizational behavior in schools and school districts. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Mehan, H., & Wood, H. (1975). The reality of ethnomethodology. New York: Wiley Interscience.Google Scholar
Meihls, J. L. (1981). Handicapping students. Paper presented at Second Annual Ethnography in Education Forum, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 03.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Signs. Evanston, lll: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. (1932). The structure of social action. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Philips, S. (1977). The role of spatial positioning and alignment in defining interactional units: The American courtroom as a case in point. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Meetings, Houston, Texas.Google Scholar
Pike, K. L., (1967). Language in relation to a unfied theory of the structure of human behavior. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollner, M. (1975). “The very coinage of your brain ”: The anatomy of reality disjunctures. Philosophy of Social Science 5:1130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplist systematics for the organization of turntaking in Conversation. Language 50:696735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheflen, A. E., (1972). Communicational structure. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Schelling, T. (1960). Strategies of conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shuy, R. (1973). Problems of communication in the cross-cultural medical interview. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Meetings, New York, 08.Google Scholar
Shuy, R., & Larkin, D. L. (1978). Linguistic considerations in the simplification/clarification of insurance policy language. Discourse Processes 1:305–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shweder, P. A. (1977). Likeness and likelihood in everyday thought: Magical thinking in judgments about personality. Current Anthropology 18:637–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverman, D. (1981). The child as a social object: Down's syndrome children in a pediatric cardiology clinic. Sociology of Health and Illness 3:254–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, N. (1949). Administrative behavior. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Tenhouten, W., & Kaplan, C. (1973). Science and its mirror image. New York: Free press.Google Scholar
Watkins, J. (1970). Imperfect rationality. In Borger, R. & Cioffi, F. (eds.), Explanation in the behavioral sciences. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1947). Theory of social and economic organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M.From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Gerth, H. and Mills, C. W. (trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar