dark and gloomy. That's like saying 'repeat again.' Now a good sentence for
dismal would be, 'The clouds are dismal today.'"

Assuming the teacher is not stupid--which she is not--why would she re-
ject the student's sentence of somewhat literary prose in favor of the rather
bland and nonliterary one she herself offers. Consider first what the teacher is
doing. She is testing her students to see if they know the meaning of the vo-
cabulary words, which she likely assumes are new to their experience. The
sentence will put the word in context so that the students can prove they
understand the meaning. It might even be seen as cheating to use synonyms
with the new word to disguise the fact that the word is not fully understood.
Another sub-skill rule, to avoid redundancy, dominates the literary sense and
poetic cadence. If the teacher believed the student could easily understand the
word dismal, she might have been able to listen differently to the response.
Only the suspicion that it hides ignorance registered. Seen in this light the
teacher's sentence may have been offered more as an example of how to be
honest (not hiding behind dictionary synonyms) than as an example of good
prose and composition. This narrow pedagogy, driven by mistrust, will not
provide the room for which the steppers have pleaded--the room which is re-
quired in order for them to demonstrate their competence.

Expressive forms such as stylized sulking or doing steps can essentially be
viewed as metaphors for the human condition. The expressive forms used by
the students can be seen as a message of individual (in the case of stylized
sulking) or collective (in the case of "Mississippi") autonomy in the face of
authority. The behaviors discussed here are both face-saving devices which
allow for pride and ownership in circumstances where opportunities for such
prizes are scarce.

Both sulking and stepping seem to be associated with a certain set of black
communicative displays that have typically been a class marker for failure in
our society. Like nonstandard vernacular, these "street" behaviors will tend to
close rather than open doors for black children who are trying to be upwardly
mobile in our society. No matter how legitimate a linguistic or behavioral anal-
ysis of such behavior is, the key factor of legitimacy is how these behaviors are
interpreted in the social world in which they are performed. For the children
in the study site, most of their parents and teachers agree that the cost is too
high. Symbols of black "street" behavior such as stylized sulking and stepping
are seen as ethnic and class markers which interfere with success and may, as
the discussion has shown, even limit access to socially valued commodities
such as literacy.

Since fear about and focus on good attitudes made community members es-
pecially sensitive to any markers associated with black vernacular "street" cul-
ture, little latitude was allowed for any displays concerning sex (particularly

-70-