Lecture by Richard Barwell on Thursday, June 10, at 2:00 p.m.

On Wednesday, June 10, at 2:00 p.m. in Lecture Hall H, Richard Barwell of the University of Ottawa will give a lecture titled: “Elements of a Sociolinguistics of Mathematics Learning and Teaching: Polycentricity, Indexical Order, and the Stratification of Mathematical Languages.”

Linguistic diversity is ubiquitous in Canadian school mathematics classrooms. Although the idea that interaction in mathematics classrooms is shaped by social forces that lead to the marginalization of certain learners is not controversial, it is not clear how to analyze that interaction in a way that connects it to these broader forces. To achieve this, I draw on concepts and methods from contemporary sociolinguistics. Polycentricity refers to the presence of multiple centers of linguistic and mathematical authority; indexical order indicates (!) the organization of links between utterance and context; stratification refers to the hierarchical structure of various dimensions of verbal interaction. In this presentation, I present the results of an analysis of interaction recorded in Canadian multilingual classrooms. The analysis traces links between the “micro” and “macro” scales of interaction, links that shape the learning and teaching of mathematics.