Traditional and Rights-Informed Talk About Violence: High School Educators' Discursive Production of Student Violence

• NCJ Number: 215859
• Journal: Youth & Society Volume: 37 Issue: 3 Dated: March 2006 Pages: 251-286
• Author(s): Brenda Solomon
• Date Published: March 2006
• Length: 36 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article analyzed the interpretive processes used by educators in two high schools to cast students and their behaviors as violent.

Abstract

Results of the analysis indicated that educators tended to use two different discourses, or everyday talk, to describe school violence: (1) a traditional discourse on violence and (2) a rights-informed discourse on violence. Educators who used the traditional discourse on violence did so in three ways: (1) to claim that violence was too much force but that most physical force employed by children was not violence; (2) to claim that violence was too much force and that physical force used by girls and by atypical boys and girls was violence; and (3) to diminish traditional claims of force by including a rights-informed discourse into their understanding of violence. On the other hand, the rights-informed discourse on violence was used by educators in three ways: (1) to claim that violence and harm occurred in forms outside of the traditional notions of violence; (2) to highlight the fact that forms of dominance and masculinity harmed girls and marginalized boys but were overlooked in the traditional discourse on violence; and (3) to diminish rights-informed claims of violence by including the traditional discourse on violence. The findings help to shed light on the complex ways that power relations in society shape our understanding of school violence. The analysis focused on the everyday talk of educators in terms of how they used language to describe violent acts and actors in school. The everyday talk of educators was compared to the accepted ways of describing violent acts and persons that were found in professional publications regularly used by professionals and academics to make sense of student violence. Data included in-depth interviews with 35 teachers and administrators at the 2 New England area high schools during 2001. Interviews were grouped by common terms and concepts and were compared to texts related to violence in schools. References