ABSTRACT
Most research involving the analyses of discourses targets particular points in time or relatively short durations (i.e., one semester, one year). Failure to recognize the ways in which discourses operate over long periods of time limits the ability of educators and researchers to understand the temporal nature of meaning construction. Through this longitudinal research project, Dr. Compton-Lilly tracked discourses about literacy and schooling to document how events at multiple timescales converged in the literacy and schooling experiences of one student. Specifically, she asked how one African American middle school student and members of her family drew upon and negotiated discourses related to past and ongoing experiences as well as larger social histories as they made sense of literacy and schooling. Based on data from an eight-year study, findings from the study suggest that discourses were taken up, challenged, modified, negotiated, and abandoned by participants across time. Participants drew upon multiple, intertextual language resources within families and other social contexts to make sense of themselves and their experiences recursively as they recalled, neglected, revisited, and forgot particular stories and events and identified familiar social types.
