The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

particular approaches to written texts and to reading can carry important social
implications, demonstrating Collins and Blot’s dictum that literacies are “insepa-
rable from values, senses of self, and forms of regulation and power.”
58
 This ap-
proach directs our attention to the issue of cultural epistemologies: What socially
constructed understandings of language and text do participants bring to or en-
counter in the classroom?
Ethnographic studies of classroom learning by scholars such as Jenny Cook-
Gumperz, Sarah Michaels, Hugh Mehan, Susan Philips, Courtney Cazden, James
Gee, and others have demonstrated that careful attention to the details of linguis-
tic interactions provides important insight into these issues.
59
 For example, stud-
ies of urban schooling have shown that some children bring with them into the
classroom norms for organizing speech that differ considerably from those em-
ployed by their teachers.
60
 Analysis of minute linguistic detail in one such case re-
vealed (a) that the child’s discourse structure differed radically from standard
classroom discourse (but that it contained many rich and subtle techniques for
conveying meaning);
61
 (b) that specific differences between the child’s discourse
and that of her teacher made mutual understanding difficult; and (c) that imposi-
tion of the teacher’s discourse norms resulted in a classroom structure that deval-
ued differing, though complex and interesting, patterns of speech, thereby silencing
the child. This and other similar studies indicate the advantage of detailed analysis
of classroom language: it permits us to capture the actual process by which class-
room interaction effects a transformation or reinforcement of linguistic patterns
and epistemologies.
62
 Observation of the results achieved through classroom lan-
guage can also uncover the differential effects of social structure on different par-
ticipants in classroom interaction, a point of interest to anthropologists studying
the impact of Western schooling in colonial and postcolonial settings.
63
 These is-
sues are important in the study of law school classroom language as well. What
cultural norms are conveyed or violated by the discourse pattern of the classroom,
and would these norms affect different students differentially? How does the exer-
cise of pedagogical power in constraining or shaping (or evaluating) classroom
discourse accomplish a socializing process?
Sociologists studying education have focused on the way education can operate
to reproduce and reinforce existing power relations and structures.
64
 This “repro-
duction” approach represented a change from earlier, more neutral “functionalist”
approaches.
65
 A familiar debate emerged as scholars began to explore the relation-
ship between social power and education. Some studies posited a relatively deter-
minist relation between social structure and education, in which education is
conceptualized as a reflex of existing class relations.
66
 In reaction to this apparently

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Law, Language, and the Law School Classroom
25
determinist approach, scholars such as Apple and Giroux pointed out that schools
serve as fora for struggle over social power, and thus are not mere reflexes of eco-
nomic structure.
67
 They took issue with determinist theories on two points: first, they
argued that people who are disadvantaged in a particular society do not become
passive receptacles of dominant culture, but instead retain their capacity to struggle;
second, they insisted that social institutions such as schools are characterized by some
measure of autonomy from economic structure, however small.
68
 Carnoy and Levin
further argued that if Western educational institutions provide a somewhat autono-
mous forum with a dynamic of its own, then an essential aspect of that dynamic is
tension between preparing citizens for participation in democratic society (i.e., train-
ing them to know and fight for their rights under the law) and training workers who
can function in relatively authoritarian work regimes.
69
Functional conflicts of the sort described by Carnoy and Levin would obvi-
ously differ across subcultures and societies along with cultural conceptions of
citizenship, with differing economic situations and needs for worker training, and
with different roles for educational institutions themselves.
70
 The work of Pierre
Bourdieu on education incorporates this notion of culturally circumscribed edu-
cational practices and also recognizes a somewhat autonomous dynamic to edu-
cational organizations.
71
 At the same time, Bourdieu thinks that schooling plays a
key role in reproducing class structures, and that language is an essential part of
that process.
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There is a continuing tension in this scholarly tradition between these more