In this nexus analysis exercise, locate a YouTube video of a literacy lesson and identify historical bodies, like those suggested in Luke’s article.
How are embodied expectations inscribed on children’s schooled bodies? Literacy inscribes discursive expectations on bodies through the ways it is taught, in other words, literacy instruction inscribes children's bodies with the expectations for learning within a nexus of practice, which circulate through dominant discourses, including classed, raced, or gendered discourses.
In the 1992 article, The Body Literate, Luke describes a classroom interaction that will ring true for many educators. The teacher interrupts herself as she stops reading a picture book of The Three Billy Goats Gruff to repeatedly rearrange the way children are positioning themselves for the story, directing them to “sit down,” “sit up straight,” or “face the front.” Luke analyzed these directives as an attempt to rearrange students’ bodies to align with the expected reading habitus (or what we could rename as the enactment of the classroom nexus of practice).
View a classroom video and identify engrained practices and embodied expectations by closely examining linguistic, embodied, and environmental cues.
Linguistic Cues (talk that structures bodies)
• Lexications: Which practices are named and how? Naming indicates regularly occurring practices literally worth categorizing or mentioning (e.g., “sitting down/sitting up straight”).
• Formulaic Interactions: Expected patterns for interaction (e.g., “Excuse me” when accidentally touching someone) that may trigger expectations for response from others (e.g.,“Thanks.” => “You’re welcome”).
• Normative Statements: Corrections or “you should” statements that make explicit an expected practice (e.g., , if you can’t sit down, you can practice sitting up straight at recess).
Embodied Cues (modal meanings conveyed with bodies that express approval, distaste, inattention, etc.) Refer to Chapter Five for specific ways of tracking particular modes, such as:
• Gesture
• Facial expression
• Posture
• Proximity
Environmental/Material Cues (design or modal meanings in the environment or objects that shape bodies, or make actions un/available, im/proper, etc.)
• Furniture and Layout: Arrangements of furniture that expect certain interaction orders (e.g., stanchions mark and guide bodies into single-file line interaction orders or restrict body movements by roping off prohibited areas)
• Lighting: Amount and quality of light (e.g., warm/cold fluorescent, bright or dim, intense or diffused)
• Sound: Ambient noise, background music, or conversation that makes a place more or less inviting
• Color: Intensity or hues that draw or reduce attention or signal particular actions (e.g., red = alert, stop, danger)
• Texture: Surfaces that encourage or discourage touch (e.g., glossy, soft, abrasive, bumpy)