Dr. Wortham’s research applies techniques from linguistic anthropology to uncover social positioning in apparently neutral talk. He studies the linguistic details of how interactional and social processes can go on under the surface of classroom discussions about subject matter. He is particularly interested in interrelations between the official curriculum and covert interactional patterns in classroom discourse and in how the processes of academic learning and social identity development interconnect and facilitate each other. He has also studied interactional positioning that speakers accomplish in media discourse and in autobiographical narrative. Over the last several years he has been studying how Mexican immigrant students are faring, in school and out of school, as they move to towns without a history of Latino presence. Dr. Wortham’s work has involved action research and service learning, ethnography in urban and rural high schools and their surrounding communities, and discourse analysis.
