Pronouns as positioning practices in home-school communications
Abstract This study explicates the discursive constitution of particular parent-teacher relationships in home-school communications. It focuses on examples of this type of communication originating from three Australian secondary schools. Analysis shows that these texts constitute particular domains of social action for teachers, parents and students. Certain textual devices are used which constitute the private everyday worlds of homes as school ordered versions of the world. A study of pronoun use in particular shows how parents, teachers and students are positioned and position each other in relation to such discursively constituted facts and knowledges which are produced according to official, public, school agenda. By using certain pronouns, and, at times, invoking other institutions as authorities, the Principals of the three schools are seen to textually colonize home space. The article concludes that home-school interactions thus enter into and enact the relations of ruling of the larger extra-local social world of which they are a part.