Critical linguistics in the early years : exploring functions of language through sophisticated picture books and process drama strategies

In this chapter we describe a critical fairytales unit taught to 4.5 to 5.5 year olds in a context of intensifying pressure to raise literacy achievement. The unit was infused with lessons on reinterpreted fairytales followed by process drama activities built around a sophisticated picture book, Beware of the Bears (MacDonald, 2004). The latter entailed a text analytic approach to critical literacy derived from systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1978; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). This approach provides a way of analysing how words and discourse are used to represent the world in a particular way and shape reader relations with the author in a particular field (Janks, 2010).

Critical applied linguistics

This chapter provides a historical materialist review of the development of applied and critical linguistics and their extensions and applications to the fields of English Language studies. Following Bourdieu, we view intellectual fields and their affiliated discourses as constructed in relation to specific economic and political formations and sociocultural contexts. We therefore take ‘applied linguistics’, ‘critical language studies’ and ‘English language studies’ as fields in dynamic and contested formation and relationship. Our review focuses on three historical moments. In the postwar period, we describe the technologisation of linguistics – with the enlistment of linguistics in the applied fields of language planning, literacy education and second/foreign language teaching. We then turn to document the multinationalisation of English, which, we argue entails a rationalisation of English as a universal form of economic capital in globalised economic and cultural flows. We conclude by exploring scenarios for the displacement of English language studies as a major field by other emergent economic lingua franca (e.g., Mandarin, Spanish) and shifts in the economic and cultural nexus of control over English from an Anglo/American centre to East and West Asia.

Critical Literacies in Schools : A Primer

Readers and writers use a variety of modes of inscription – print, oral and multimedia – to understand, analyze, critique and transform their social, cultural and political worlds. Beginning from Freire (1970), ‘critical literacy’ has become a theoretically diverse educational project, drawing from reader response theory, linguistic and grammatical analysis from critical linguistics, feminist, poststructuralist, postcolonial and critical race theory, and cultural and media studies. In the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and the US different approaches to critical literacy have been developed in curriculum and schools. These focus on social and cultural analysis and on how print and digital texts and discourses work, with a necessary and delicate tension between classroom emphasis on student and community cultural ‘voice’ and social analysis – and on explicit engagement with the technical features and social uses of written and multimodal texts.

REPRESENTACIÓN DISCURSIVA DE UNIVERSIDADES ARGENTINAS EN LA PRENSA: RELEVAMIENTO Y VALORACIÓN DEL COMPONENTE LÉXICO-GRAMATICAL DE ARTÍCULOS PUBLICADOS EN MEDIOS DE COMUNICACIÓN DE DIFUSIÓN NACIONAL.

El trabajo releva la presencia de las universidades argentinas en la prensa de alcance nacional. Sistematizaremos la mención de ellas en la versión digital de los diarios para observar frecuencia de aparición y contenidos que se asocian. Partimos de la hipótesis de que los medios hegemónicos sólo registran los eventos de universidades del “interior del país” cuando se vinculan con hechos curiosos o violentos. Interesa indagar en qué casos particulares la referencia a dichas universidades se vincula con la producción y difusión académica del conocimiento científico, entre otras. Constituimos el corpus con fragmentos de textos periodísticos que permiten examinar estructuras gramaticales para develar las representaciones que la prensa naturaliza a través de esas formas. Seguimos consideraciones teórico-metodológicas de la Lingüística Crítica sobre el nivel sintáctico: cuando aparece una distorsión en la estructura superficial existe una manipulación ideológica del sentido. Incluimos parte de la teoría de las transformaciones: en el relato de un acontecimiento, cualquier alteración del esquema causa-consecuencia construye una ideología por la cual percibimos los hechos de otra manera. Asimismo, para establecer correlaciones semánticas en lo discursivo, analizaremos los términos en función de tipos de significado y valor eufórico/disfórico de la base léxica. Por otra parte, desde la Teoría de la Enunciación, distinguiremos palabras objetivas y subjetivas: los hechos enunciativos están constituidos por las huellas lingüísticas de la presencia del locutor en su enunciado, denominadas subjetivemas. Además de los pronombres, rasgos espaciales y temporales como marcas enunciativas, seleccionaremos unidades léxicas como sustantivos, adjetivos, verbos y adverbios. La existencia de los subjetivemas se fundamenta en que toda unidad léxica implica una interpretación del mundo, esto es, una ideología en el sentido que asumimos en nuestro trabajo desde el Análisis Crítico del Discurso. Como complemento de las perspectivas interpretativas mencionadas, realizaremos la cuantificación previa de referencias mediante el Análisis de Contenido como apoyo metodológico. A tal fin, el estudio prevé la utilización de una herramienta tecnológica diseñada ad hoc, para el conteo de frecuencia, relevamiento de contextos lingüísticos de aparición y asociaciones léxicas en la frase, como sistematización previa al trabajo cualitativo de valoración de estructuras léxico-semánticas y morfo-sintácticas. The research reflects the presence of Argentine universities in nationwide media. We will systematize their mention on online version of La Nación and Clarín newspapers to observe their frequency of appearance and the contents they are related to. With the hypothesis that hegemonic media only register events in universities from inside the country when they are related to curious or violent events, we will investigate in which particular cases the reference to such universities is related to the production and academic diffusion of scientific knowledge. We built up the corpus with fragments from articles which allow us to examine the deep grammatical structures to reveal the representation press naturalizes through these forms. We follow theoretical-methodological considerations of Critical Linguistics (CL) about the syntactical level: when a distortion in the superficial structure appears, there exists an ideological manipulation of meaning. Also, to establish semantic correlations on the discursive field, we will analyze terms as regards types of meaning and euphoric/disphoric value of lexical basis. From the Theory of Enunciation, we will distinguish between objective and subjective words (“subjectivemes”): lexical unit implies an interpretation of the world, that is, an ideology in the way we assume in our work from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). As a complement to CL and CDA, we will carry out a previous quantification using a technological tool designed ad hoc.

Tow Takes on the Critical

This important volume on the critical pedagogical approach addresses such topics as critical multiculturalism, gender and language learning, and popular culture. Critical pedagogies are instructional approaches aimed at transforming existing social relations in the interest of greater equity in schools and communities. This paperback edition on the pedagogical approach addresses such topics as critical multiculturalism, gender and language learning, and popular culture. Committed to language education that contributes to social justice - and the political, economic, and sociocultural changes such justice requires - the contributors explore the meaning of creating equitable and critical instructional practices, by exploring diverse representations of knowledge. In addition, recommendations are made for further research, teacher education, and critical testing. Graduate students and researchers in TESOL, applied linguistics, and education will find this volume a thought-provoking and comprehensive presentation of theory and practice in this important new area of scholarship.

CDA and values : interdisciplinarity as a critical turn

From their very outset, the disciplines of social science have claimed a need for interdisciplinarity. Proponents of new disciplines have also claimed the whole of human activity as their domain, whilst simultaneously emphasising the need for increased specialisation. Critical social analysis attempts to repair the flaws of specialisation. In this chapter, I argue that the trend towards academic specialisation in social science is most usefully viewed from the perspective of evaluative meaning, and that each new discipline, in emphasising one aspect of a broken conception of humanity, necessarily emphasises one aspect of an already broken conception of value. Critical discourse analysis, qua critical social analysis, may therefore benefit by firstly proceeding from the perspective of evaluative meaning to understand the dynamics of social change and overcome the challenges posed by centuries of intensive specialisation in social science.

Critical theory and literacy

This handbook chapter explores the relationship between critical theory and seminal studies of literacy which investigate inequities in education. It identifies new research questions to explore the connections between literacy and power, but go beyond promises of emancipation.

Conceptualisation and enactment of critical literacy for senior high school EAL learners in Queensland, Australia : commitments, constraints and contradictions

This case study examined four teachers' understandings and teaching of Critical Literacy with senior English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners in two Queensland high schools. Despite continuous, rapid curriculum change in Australia and efforts to diminish Critical Literacy, the four teachers continued to feature it successfully in their teaching with often marginalised learners. They used critical literacy to provide access to and critique dominant language codes, and to draw on learners' diverse experiences. To a lesser extent, the teachers created opportunities for redesigning dominant texts. Implications are important for policy production and interpretation, school planning and teacher professional development.

Notes on the future of critical discourse studies

In How to Do Things with Words, Austin (1975) described marriages, sentencings and ship launchings as prototypes of performative utterance. What’s the appropriate speech act for launching an academic journal? First editions of journals tend to take a field as formed a priori, as having “come of age”, and state good intents to capture its best or most innovative work.

Critical Discourse Analysis research methods for the English classroom

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an approach to analysing the discourses that operate in social contexts, such as classrooms in schools, and their material effects on people, such as teachers and learners. CDA offers a range of ways of engaging with the relationship between texts in context and the power they exercise. In this article, I overview key approaches and provide detail of Fairclough’s (1992, 2003) textually-oriented, linguistic method of CDA, with an example from my own research. I offer a challenge for English teachers, as researchers, to ‘make strange’ the familiar world of their classroom work, and in so doing, identify possibilities for productive change.

Etymological notes on Aleut (III). With methodological notes on (Eskimo-Aleut) historical linguistics

[EN] The goal of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, to review two relatively recent contributions in the field of Eskimo-Aleut historical linguistics in which it is proposed that Eskimo-Aleut languages are related genealogically to Wakashan (Holst 2004) and?/or Nostratic (Krougly-Enke 2008). These contributions can be characterized by saying that their authors have taken little care to be diligent and responsible in the application of the comparative method, and that their familiarity with the languages involved is insufficient. Eskimo-Aleut languages belong to a very exclusive group of language families that have been (and still are) used, sometimes compulsively, in the business of so-called “long-range comparisons”. Those carrying out such studies are very often unaware of the most basic facts regarding the philological and linguistic traditions of those languages, as a result of what mountains of very low quality works with almost no-relevancy for the specialist grow every year to the desperation of the scientific community, whose attitude toward them ranges from the most profound indifference to the toughest (and most explicit) critical tone. Since Basque also belongs to this group of “compare-with-everything-you-come- across” languages, it is my intention to provide the Basque readership with a sort of “pedagogical case” to show that little known languages, far from underrepresented in the field, already have a very long tradition in historical and comparative linguistics, i.e. nobody can approach them without previous acquaintance with the materials. Studies dealing with the methodological inappropriateness of the Moscow School’s Nostratic hypothesis or the incorrectness of many of the proposed new taxonomic Amerindian subfamilies (several of them involving the aforementioned Wakashan languages), that is to say, the frameworks on which Krougly-Enke and Holst work, respectively, are plenty (i.a. Campbell 1997: 260-329, Campbell & Poser 2008: 234-96), therefore there is no reason to insist once more on the very same point. This is the reason why I will not discuss per se Eskimo-Aleut–Wakashan or Eskimo-Aleut–Nostratic. On the contrary, I will focus attention upon very concrete aspects of Krougly-Enke and Holst´s proposals, i.e. when they work on “less ambitious” problems, for example, dealing with the minutiae of internal facts or analyzing certain words from the sole perspective of Eskimo-Aleut materials (in other words, those cases in which even they do not invoke the ad hoc help of Nostratic stuff). I will try to explain why some of their proposals are wrong, demonstrate where the problem lies, and fix it if possible. In doing so, I will propose new etymologies in an attempt at showing how we may proceed. The main difference between this and handbook examples lies in the reality of what we are doing: this is a pure etymological exercise from beginning to end. I will try to throw a bit of light on a couple of problematic questions regarding Aleut historical phonology, demonstrating how much work should be done at the lowest level of the Eskimo-Aleut pyramid; it is technically impossible to reach the peak of the pyramid without having completed the base. As far as Aleut is regarded, I will mainly profit not only from the use of the traditional philological analysis of Aleut (and, eventually, of Eskimo) materials, but also of diachronic typology, bringing into discussion what in my opinion seems useful, and in some cases I think decisive, parallels. It is worth noting that this paper makes up yet another part of a series of exploratory works dealing with etymological aspects of the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut, with special emphasis on Aleut (vid. i.a. Alonso de la Fuente 2006/2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a), whose main goal is to become the solid basis for an etymological dictionary of the Aleut language, currently in progress.

Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA)

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has probably made the most comprehensive attempt to develop a theory of the inter-connectedness of discourse, power and ideology and is specifically concerned with the role that discourse plays in main-taining and legitimizing inequality in society. While CDA’s general thrust has been towards the analysis of linguistic structures, some critical discourse analysts have begun to focus on multimodal discourses because of the increasingly impor-tant role these play in many social and political contexts. Still, a great deal of CDA analysis has remained largely monomodal. The principal aim of this chapter is therefore to address this situation and demonstrate in what ways CDA can be deployed to analyse the ways that ideological discourses can be communicated, naturalised and legitimated beyond the linguistic level. The chapter also offers a rationale for a multimodal approach based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), by which it is directly informed

The politics of 'sustainability': a critical discourse analysis of Victorian Government policy discourse, 1999-2006

Since its emergence during the 1980s the idea of sustainability has come to provide the dominant frame within which environmental policy is debated. Thus, for many ‘sustainability’ represents the best way to address the economic, social and environmental effects of the myriad of environmental issues facing human societies, including biodiversity loss, soil erosion, pollution of waterways, ozone depletion and climate change. There are however, widely divergent views advocated as to what sustainability means, which has important implications for how serious environmental issues are understood to be, why they are important, what has caused them, and what needs to be done to address them. Given the diversity of such views, the consequences for policy making, and the likelihood of effective responses being developed, are self evident. Within this context, this thesis investigates the politics of sustainability, focussing particularly on the way in which it is defined, because of the implications this has for the way in which environmental issues are understood and addressed. Following a review of various approaches to analysing environmental policy (traditional, mainstream, ecopolitical and discursive), Norman Fairclough’s approach to discourse analysis (Critical Discourse Analysis) was identified as having particular merit. Fairclough’s approach avoids the assumption that policy issues exist independently of the way they are framed and offers a perspective on discourse that links the social theoretical concerns of Foucault with the micro level concerns of linguistics. It also provides a means for taking environmental policy analysis in directions that that have attracted relatively limited attraction, namely the detailed analysis of the ideological effects of language on environmental policy. In this thesis Fairclough’s approach is used to explore how three storylines of sustainability (sustainable development, environmentally sustainable growth and transforming society) and their associated discourses shaped environmental policy making in Victoria, Australia, between 1999 and 2006. In undertaking this analysis, I examined the political and institutional context informing policy making (social practice); the contested process of text production (discourse practice), and; the detailed wording of a policy text (textual analysis). A major policy statement on environmental sustainability released by the Victorian Government in 2005 is subjected to detailed analysis. Based on the analysis undertaken, the substantive finding from this research is that rather than moving beyond neoliberalism, the Victorian Government embraced an approach to sustainability that was informed by neoliberalism and (weak) ecological modernisation, which constructs sustainability in ways that limit its importance and constrain the types of responses that could be advocated. In doing so, it drew heavily on notions of natural assets and ecosystems services as ways to make sense of the environment and why it is important. The Victorian Government also highlighted that environmental issues are caused by the cumulative effects of individual choices, and emphasized the importance of individual choice and behavioural change as central features of sustainability, while restricting opportunities for more transformative ideas to be heard. The broader conclusion arising from this research is that approaches to environmental policy that rely on neoliberal and (weak) ecological modern discourses are flawed, because, in commodifying nature, limiting the nature and magnitude of change required, and placing responsibility onto individuals they offer a constrained understanding of the challenge of sustainability and what needs to be done about it. The overall contribution made by this research is an improved understanding of the discursive nature of the politics of sustainability and the influence of neoliberalism and ecological modernisation, the use of a methodology that has attracted relatively limited attention within environmental policy (despite its widespread use in other areas of policy) and the documentation of a period of significant environmental policy reform in Victoria.