Citation

Solomon B. Youth Soc. 2006; 37(3): 251-286.

Affiliation

University of Vermont

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0044118X05277922

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

By examining discursive practices of educators in two New England high schools, the author shows how educators' claims of student violence were formed in relation to two discursive fields found in professional academic texts on the subject: a traditional and a rights-informed discourse. These discourses were distinct from one another in terms of how they constituted violent acts and accounted for violent subjects or perpetrators and victims. The analysis shows that educators described student acts to obey one or the other discourse's extra locally derived meaning but also, at times, incorporated one discourse's beliefs and ideas into the other or slipped from one to the other's language and related meanings as they spoke. These findings call attention to the complex ways power relations mediate claims and are embedded and critical to the simultaneous production of students and their actions at school.