Page 113 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

96 Chapter 4

Communication within the family exhibits class- based communication patterns.
Ritchie discovered that families of parents whose jobs entailed a high degree of open-
ness and autonomy in the workplace— in other words, parents of higher socioeco-
nomic class— demonstrated greater conversational orientation within the family and
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less conformity. The families that Jordan observed showed relationships among
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social class, perceptions of time, and media usage. Parents in middle- and upper- class
families socialized their children to observe deadlines and structure their time. They
used a linear, sequential structure for activities in the home by encouraging their chil-
dren to do one thing at a time and to complete one task before going on to another.
They planned their schedules in advance and adhered to them. The working- class
families used looser organizational patterns and tended to do several things at once,
such as watch television, eat dinner, and talk to each other at the same time. Schedules
were not planned in advance or were changed spontaneously. Middle- and upper- class
families perceived time as a scarce commodity that should be managed well and not
wasted, and taught their children to perceive time in the same way. Such preferences
can produce subtle differences in what individuals from different socioeconomic
classes accept as normal or appropriate in a group.
We could find no studies that looked at the effect of class differences within
small groups. However, in our own teaching, we have observed the effects (usually bad
ones) of communication differences that are class based. A recent book by Payne
describes several key communication patterns, related to the co- cultures of class, that
can cause problems. Payne, a teacher and principal, has been successful in working
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with both children and adults from backgrounds of what she calls generational poverty,
in which a family has experienced socioeconomic poverty for at least two generations.
Payne notes that the communicative and daily living rules differ greatly for people
from poor, middle, and wealthy classes. Each class experiences its own ethnocentric-
ity, assuming that its rules are both known and appropriate. Middle- class individuals,
who include many of the teachers, managers, and professionals in the United States,
assume that “everyone knows the rules” for how to do things. But the poor and the
wealthy have different values and communicative rules! What are some of those
differences?
Payne notes that different classes use discourse in different ways. Individuals
from backgrounds of generational poverty use discourse as a form of entertainment.
For all discourse, they use the casual register— an informal meandering conversational
style the middle class uses only between friends. It is characterized by vague word
choice, incomplete sentences, reliance on nonverbal signals to complete thoughts,
and a limited vocabulary of 400 to 800 words. The narrative pattern is circular,
wherein the speaker talks around an issue before getting to the point. This contrasts
significantly with the formal register style middle- class and wealthy speakers use for
most conversations. Formal register uses complete sentences, standard sentence con-
struction and syntax, a more extensive vocabulary, and specific words; and the
speaker gets right to the point. In Table 4.4, the story of Cinderella, told in both
casual and formal discourse, illustrates some of these differences.

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