(Mis)Interpretations and "Misunderstandings": A Tale of Power, Positioning, and Conversational Subterfuge in a Multicultural Pre-K

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Tales, Talk, and Intertextuality With Young Children

Abstract

This paper examines one context of intercultural communication—a preschool classroom with a multilingual and multicultural student population—and argues that rather than viewing cultural/linguistic differences as a source of miscommunication, one might instead see them as a potential cover for it. Drawing on Deborah Cameron’s (1998) discussion of “strategic misunderstanding” as a tool in gender conflict, I analyze the ways in which English-speaking preschoolers used “misunderstanding,” or pretending to misunderstand, and (mis)interpretation, or providing false recasts, as purposeful tools to accomplish their own social aims in peer interaction. I show how these strategic misunderstandings and (mis)interpretations depend on, as well as serve to reinforce, existing power relations between interlocutors—in this case, English speakers and their English-language-learner peers.

Author

• Katie Bernstein, Arizona State University