Language, Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics
Edited by
Richard Kiely [+–]
University of Southampton
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Richard Kiely is interested in language teacher learning from a sociocultural theory (SCT) perspective: understanding how the TESOL imagination is furnished and refurbished in teacher education courses and through work. The essential features of the language curriculum are forged in large part in classroom interaction, with the contribution of the teacher as the major determinant.
Gerald Clibbon [+–]
University of Bristol
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English language teaching, language learning, English language teacher learning, academic learning skills.
Pauline Rea-Dickins [+–]
University of Bristol
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Professor Rea-Dickins has been involved in language testing and assessment research, teacher development and programme evaluations in a variety of English language education contexts world-wide.
Before moving to Bristol in 1999, she worked at the Universities of Lancaster, Dar es Salaam and Warwick.
Pauline’s research and publication interests in classroom-based assessment are situated at the interfaces between formative language assessment, instructed second language acquisition and language proficiency testing.
She also undertakes research into the consequential validity of high stakes language examinations, in particular their impact on student identity, learning and progression.
Pauline has successfully supervised 19 doctoral students since joining the University of Bristol, in different areas of Applied Linguistics, in particular language testing and assessment.
Helen Woodfield [+–]
University of Bristol
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Helen’s research interests focus on second language acquisition, interlanguage pragmatics (Phd.Bristol 2004), cross-cultural pragmatics and linguistic politeness. Her PhD research investigated ESL learners’ and native speakers’ written and oral responses to discourse completion tasks combining paired verbal report with written production questionnaires. Conference presentations and publications focus on interlanguage pragmatics, variational pragmatics and methodology in interlanguage pragmatics research. Recent funded research projects (Teachers into Researchers) have examined the development of teachers as researchers in contexts of HE.
Helen is currently Co-Director of Masters Programmes (with Elisabeth Lazarus) and contributes to postgraduate and doctoral programmes in TESOL and Applied Linguistics in the Graduate School of Education. Helen teaches on the EdD TESOL programme (Language and Communication; Researching Language Classrooms) and co-ordinates the research network ‘Linguistnet’ with Dr Frances Giampapa.
Language, Culture and Identity is a collection of papers from the BAAL Annual Conference at the University of Bristol 2005. The thirteen papers, by researchers from Britain and across Europe, represent a range of research orientations within Applied Linguistics which connect in different ways with issues in culture and identity. Two plenary addresses from the conference, by Roz Ivanič and Srikant Sarangi, explore the themes of identity and culture in contexts of learning and of work. Papers addressing language planning and policy issues present recent analyses of francophone identity in Canada and Sami identity in Finland. The issues of culture and identity in writing are explored in different papers from the perspective of identity construction in academic writing, discipline cultures in higher education contexts, the consequences of these for interdisciplinary writers, and how writers construct audience identity though the linguistic choices they make. Empirical studies of language learning and teaching are also represented, with papers on Processing Instruction and Intercultural Pragmatics. The themes of identity and culture in these papers connect a range of sub-disciplines within Applied Linguistics, and also connect knowledge building in Applied Linguistics with pervasive themes in research across the social sciences, into the ways people as individuals and in communities understand, shape and represent their experiences of learning and work.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Introduction [+–] 1-6
University of Southampton
Richard Kiely is interested in language teacher learning from a sociocultural theory (SCT) perspective: understanding how the TESOL imagination is furnished and refurbished in teacher education courses and through work. The essential features of the language curriculum are forged in large part in classroom interaction, with the contribution of the teacher as the major determinant.
University of Bristol
Professor Rea-Dickins has been involved in language testing and assessment research, teacher development and programme evaluations in a variety of English language education contexts world-wide.
Before moving to Bristol in 1999, she worked at the Universities of Lancaster, Dar es Salaam and Warwick.
Pauline’s research and publication interests in classroom-based assessment are situated at the interfaces between formative language assessment, instructed second language acquisition and language proficiency testing.
She also undertakes research into the consequential validity of high stakes language examinations, in particular their impact on student identity, learning and progression.
Pauline has successfully supervised 19 doctoral students since joining the University of Bristol, in different areas of Applied Linguistics, in particular language testing and assessment.
University of Bristol
Helen’s research interests focus on second language acquisition, interlanguage pragmatics (Phd.Bristol 2004), cross-cultural pragmatics and linguistic politeness. Her PhD research investigated ESL learners’ and native speakers’ written and oral responses to discourse completion tasks combining paired verbal report with written production questionnaires. Conference presentations and publications focus on interlanguage pragmatics, variational pragmatics and methodology in interlanguage pragmatics research. Recent funded research projects (Teachers into Researchers) have examined the development of teachers as researchers in contexts of HE.
Helen is currently Co-Director of Masters Programmes (with Elisabeth Lazarus) and contributes to postgraduate and doctoral programmes in TESOL and Applied Linguistics in the Graduate School of Education. Helen teaches on the EdD TESOL programme (Language and Communication; Researching Language Classrooms) and co-ordinates the research network ‘Linguistnet’ with Dr Frances Giampapa.
University of Bristol
English language teaching, language learning, English language teacher learning, academic learning skills.
Language, Culture and Identity is a collection of papers from the BAAL Annual Conference at the University of Bristol 2005. The thirteen papers, by researchers from Britain and across Europe, represent a range of research orientations within Applied Linguistics which connect in different ways with issues in culture and identity. Two plenary addresses from the conference, by Roz Ivanič and Srikant Sarangi, explore the themes of identity and culture in contexts of learning and of work. Papers addressing language planning and policy issues present recent analyses of francophone identity in Canada and Sami identity in Finland. The issues of culture and identity in writing are explored in different papers from the perspective of identity construction in academic writing, discipline cultures in higher education contexts, the consequences of these for interdisciplinary writers, and how writers construct audience identity though the linguistic choices they make. Empirical studies of language learning and teaching are also represented, with papers on Processing Instruction and Intercultural Pragmatics. The themes of identity and culture in these papers connect a range of sub-disciplines within Applied Linguistics, and also connect knowledge building in Applied Linguistics with pervasive themes in research across the social sciences, into the ways people as individuals and in communities understand, shape and represent their experiences of learning and work. An introduction to the book.
Chapter 1
Language, learning and identification [+–] 7-29
Lancaster University
Roz Ivanič is Professor of Linguistics in Education and Associate Director of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre. Her research interests include writer identity, intertextuality, multimodal communication, writing practices in both academic and non-academic settings and adult literacy. Her publications include Writing and Identity: the discoursal construction of identity in academic writing and, with Romy Clark, The Politics of Writing. She is co-editor with David Barton and Mary Hamilton of Worlds of Literacy and Situated Literacies.
In the first section of the paper Activity Theory is used as a heuristic for identifying the key elements of sociocultural perspectives on language and 8 Language, Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics learning. The research context is then introduced to exemplify the main argument in the paper: a Food and Drink Service course at a College of Further Education, and one of the students enrolled on it. In the main part of the paper is proposed five aspects of identity which concern language and learning: the relational nature of identity, the discoursal construction of identity, identification, the way in which identity is networked, and the way in which identity is continuously reconstructed. The chapter is concluded by outlining the implications of these aspects of identity for learning and for language learning.
Chapter 2
Identity in a francophone cultural context: issues of language rights and language use in Canada [+–] 31-46
University College Cork – NUI Cork
Maeve Conrick is Statutory Lecturer and former Head of the Department of French, UCC, National University of Ireland Cork. She set up the MA in Applied Linguistics programme at UCC, with colleagues in the Department of English. She has published widely in international journals and edited collections in the areas of sociolinguistics (French in Canada, language and gender), applied linguistics (French as a second language) and Canadian Studies. She is author of Womanspeak (Mercier Press, 1999) and co-author with Vera Regan of French in Canada: Language Issues (Peter Lang, 2006, forthcoming).
Since the introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, provincial provisions on such issues as language rights can be challenged as far as the Canadian Supreme Court. The legal framework in terms of language policy and language planning at federal and provincial levels plays a crucial role in public policy and public debate, with much evidence of tensions resulting from conflicting provisions made at provincial and federal level. This article analyses the outcome of two Supreme Court decisions handed down on 31 March 2005, relating to the controversial issue of access to schooling in English in Quebec, following challenges to restrictions contained in Quebec’s Charte de la langue française (Charter of the French Language), the infamous Bill 101.
Chapter 3
University of Jyvaskyla
Hannele Dufva is a Professor at the Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä. She is currently involved in applying the dialogical theory of language to the research of applied language studies, particularly language learning and language education. Her recent publications include papers on beliefs about language learning, children’s metalinguistic awareness and the dialogical psychology of language. She has also a co-edited (with Pietikäinen and Laihiala-Kankainen) collection of papers on multilingualism and multivoiced identity.
University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Sari Pietikäinen works as a researcher in the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä. Her research interests lie in critical discourse analysis, multilingualism in Sami language contexts and revitalising language practices. She has published articles on critical discourse analysis, media representations of ethnic minorities and discursive construction of Sami identity. She is currently working on a project focusing on the empowerment potential of Sami language media.
The focus of this paper is to examine forces that may co-exist but work in different, sometimes opposite, directions, thus enhancing either revitalisation or extinction of nine Sami languages.
Chapter 4
Identity formation and dialect use among young speakers of the Greek-Cypriot community in Cyprus [+–] 61-77
University of Nicosia
Andry Sophocleous is Lecturer in the Department of Languages at Intercollege, Nicosia. Her teaching covers the areas of Linguistics and English as a Second Language. Her present research is concerned with the language attitudes of young Greek-Cypriots towards the Greek-Cypriot Dialect. Her research interests include diglossia, code-switching, majority-minority language relations and language and national identity.
The two language varieties used in the southern part of Cyprus are Standard Modern Greek (SMG), the official language that is regarded as the prestigious form, and used in educational institutions, in the media, in political gatherings, governmental offices, and in the court of law; and Greek-Cypriot Dialect (GCD) which is used in everyday conversation, amongst family and friends, in folk literature and songs, and in political and cultural satire. This chapter discusses how the use of dialect can affect identity.
Chapter 5
University of Durham
Sue Fraser is a Doctorate in Education student at the University of Durham. She is currently conducting research into the communicative competence of learners of English in high schools in Japan. She has taught at the Institute for Applied Language Studies, University of Edinburgh, where she was involved in teacher-training and materials writing. Her research interests include phonology, discourse analysis, and the use of literature and drama in ELT.
Assuming that English is to be taught worldwide to speakers of other languages, discussion centres upon what the purpose of learning English is, and hence what variety/ies should be taught. As the argument for English as an International Language (EIL) gains ground, the central question is which model of English is most appropriate for international communication with global intelligibility.
Chapter 6
University of Coventry
Hilary Nesi is a Reader in the Centre for English Language Teacher Education at the University of Warwick, and is project director for the BASE and the BAWE corpora. Her research interests include the analysis of academic genres, corpus linguistics, learner dictionary design and EAP materials development.
Coventry University
Sheena joined the Department of English and Languages in July 2011 from the University of Birmingham, where she was Reader in Educational Linguistics and member of the MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism
Sheena has a background in Functional Linguistics, English Language Teaching (Germany, Sudan, Ukraine), EFL, ESL and EAL Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics (Canada and UK), with experience in Malaysia, Botswana, Pakistan, and China. She enjoys teaching grammar and genre analysis, and has been involved in the development of national and international pre-university, undergraduate, postgraduate and workplace programmes
This varied international background informs her current role as Head of the Department of English and Languages, with its combinations of Linguistics, Literatures, Cultures, Languages for Business, Creative Writing, TEFL, Academic English and the many languages taught including English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Arabic
Sheena’s research interests lie in the linguistic analysis of educational discourse from systemic functional and other perspectives to enhance our understanding of how languages work in context, and to inform teaching and learning. Two major research projects are an investigation of genres of university student writing and an exploration of classroom based assessment of English as an additional language among young learners. Sheena was also co-investigator for the follow on project ‘Writing for a Purpose’ (ES/J01095/1)
Sheena has always valued the synergies between teaching and research; her research not only focuses on educational practices but also informs her teaching. Her more than 70 publications include teaching materials, and internationally refereed journal articles in TESOL Quarterly, Language and Education, Language Awareness, Language Teaching Research, English Language Teaching Journal, TESL Canada Journal, Journal of English for Academic Purposes and the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.
As part of an ESRC funded project entitled ‘An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British Higher Education’ we have been conducting semistructured interviews with academic staff responsible for course planning and assessment at undergraduate level, to discover views on the types of assignments students are required to write, perceptions of the differences between assignment types, and the qualities valued in student writing at various levels.
Chapter 7
University of Essex
Bojana joined the department in 2007 to teach modules in applied linguistics such as foundations of ESP/EAP, professional communication, and intercultural communication. Previously she taught at Novi Sad University (Serbia), Central European University (Hungary) and Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary), and participated in numerous EAP projects as course designer and teacher in Hungary, Russia, Serbia and Turkey. She has published papers on academic writing, specifically on students’ citation practices, plagiarism, writer voice, and interdisciplinarity, in journals such as Journal of Second Language Writing, Written Communication, Language Teaching, English for Specific Purposes, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, The Writing Center Journal, and System, as well as in edited volumes, such as English as an international language: Perspectives and pedagogical issues (2009) edited by Farzad Sharifian, Constructing interpersonality: Multiple perspectives and applications to written academic genres (2010) co-edited by R. Lorés-Sanz, P. Mur-Dueňas, and E. Lafuente-Millán, and Crossed words: Criticism in scholarly writing (2011) co-edited by F. Salager-Meyer and B. Lewin. She has also published a book on educational reform (A glossary of the educational reform, 2006 [in Serbian]). She was the Deputy Chair of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) from 2009 to 2011, and is currently a member of the Board (2013-2015). She is on the editorial board of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes.
This study explores disciplinary affiliation as part of writer identity in an interdisciplinary field by focusing on student writers’ own views and experiences of writing a master’s thesis in an interdisciplinary master’s programme. In contrast to previous work using text analysis and discourse-based interviews with writers, here writer identity is approached from the students’ perspective only. As a consequence, some of the reported aspects of writer identity may not have a visible presence in students’ texts. They are nevertheless important since they help shape the (inter) disciplinary boundaries of student
Chapter 8
Who or what is the students’ audience? The discoursal construction of audience identity in undergraduate assignments [+–] 133-145
Open University
Lynda Griffi n is an Associate Lecturer with the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at the Open University and an English tutor at a Sixth Form College. Her research interests are in the area of academic writing practices and academic literacy in higher education, audience construction and identity
in writing, discourse analysis and the discoursal construction of writer/reader relationships in student academic writing.
in writing, discourse analysis and the discoursal construction of writer/reader relationships in student academic writing.
This research reveals that students’ texts contain interesting and often unexpected linguistic strategies, which reveal varied, complex but nevertheless successful encounters between writer and audiences.
Chapter 9
University of Oxford
Maggie Charles is a Tutor in English for Academic Purposes at Oxford University Language Centre, where she teaches academic writing to postgraduates. Her research interests are in the study of evaluation, phraseology, discipline-specific EAP and the application of insights from corpus linguistics to the teaching of academic writing. She has recently published papers which take a corpus approach to the analysis of stance and the use of citation in theses.
In this study the major focus is on the use of impersonal patterns. It is argued that although non-native speakers may indeed construct less powerful and overt identities, this does not necessarily imply that the use of impersonal forms obscures a writer’s identity completely or leads to a text that is lacking in authority. Indeed it would suggest that all academic writers, whether student or professional, need sometimes to obscure and sometimes to reveal their identity within their texts.
Chapter 10
Face in L2 argumentative discourse: psycholinguistic constraints on the construction of identity [+–] 163-179
University of Surrey
Doris is Lecturer in German and Programme Director for MA progress in Intercultural Communication with International Business and Communication and International Marketing. She is teaching the following modules: Intercultural Communication (UG), Professional Communication (UG/PG), Teaching Professional Communication (PG), German Business Environment (UG).
After gaining an MA in Germanic and Literatures from the University of Kansas, Doris completed a PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of Southampton. Before joining the University of Surrey in 2008, she worked as German language tutor and lecturer at the University of Kansas, the University of Science and Technology Shanghai, the University of Southampton and the University of Plymouth.
After gaining an MA in Germanic and Literatures from the University of Kansas, Doris completed a PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of Southampton. Before joining the University of Surrey in 2008, she worked as German language tutor and lecturer at the University of Kansas, the University of Science and Technology Shanghai, the University of Southampton and the University of Plymouth.
This chapter uses data from a current study of undergraduate students of German to show how second-language (L2) learners of German do facework in argumentative discourse and explores the impact the psycholinguistic processing implicit in this facework has on their performance.
Chapter 11
University of Portsmouth
Professor Alessandro Benati is Professor of Second Language Acquisition and Head of School of Languages and Area Studies at the University of Portsmouth. He is internationally known for his research in second language learning and teaching, with special emphases on processing instruction. He is a pioneering researcher in the area of second language acquisition (SLA) and has built a reputation on two fronts. On one front, he is a premier Italian language scholar producing the most empirical work on the teaching and acquisition of Italian in the world. On the other front, he is a scholar in the more general field of instructed SLA, with an emphasis on the effects of formal instruction on the acquisition of grammatical properties by second language learners. He has a strong publications record with 12 established monographs, chapters and articles in international journals (Language Awareness, IRAL, and Language Teaching Research).
The aim of the present study is to compare the effects of two instructional treatments Processing Instruction, PI and meaning output-based instruction, MOI delivered via isolated computer terminals in the acquisition of Italian subjunctive of doubt.
Chapter 12
Aalborg University
Srikant Sarangi is Professor in Language and Communication and Director of the Health Communication Research Centre at Cardiff University, Wales, UK (www.cf.ac.uk/encap/research/hcrc). He is also Professor in Language and Communication at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway; Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Aalborg University, Denmark; and Honorary Professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. His research interests are in discourse analysis and applied linguistics; language and identity in public life and institutional/professional communication studies (e.g., healthcare, social welfare, bureaucracy, education etc.). He has held several project grants (Funding bodies include The Wellcome Trust, The Leverhulme Trust, ESRC) to study various aspects of health communication, e.g., genetic counselling, HIV/AIDS and telemedicine. The other areas of healthcare research include communication in primary care, palliative care, with particular reference to assessment of consulting and communication skills. He is author and editor of 12 books, 5 journal special issues and has published nearly 200 journal articles and book chapters. He is the founding editor of Communication & Medicine, editor of TEXT & TALK: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse and Communication Studies (formerly TEXT) as well as co-editor (with C. N. Candlin) of Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice. He is also general editor (with C. N. Candlin) of three book series[es]: Studies in Applied Linguistics; Studies in Language and Communication; and Studies in Communication in Organisations and Professions. He serves as an editorial board member for other journals and book series[es], and as a consulting advisor at many national and international levels. His involvement in professional societies include membership of the Executive Committee of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL, 1997-2002) and Member-at-Large of the Executive Board of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA, 1999-2002). He is also the founder of the annual interdisciplinary conference series, Communication, Medicine and Ethics (COMET) and Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (ALAPP). Over the last ten years, he has held visiting academic attachments in many parts of the world.
This chapter is primarily intended as a necessarily selective appraisal of two complimentary fields of research – applied linguistics and professional discourse studies – with a special reference to the healthcare setting.
End Matter
Contributors [+–] 221-223
University of Southampton
Richard Kiely is interested in language teacher learning from a sociocultural theory (SCT) perspective: understanding how the TESOL imagination is furnished and refurbished in teacher education courses and through work. The essential features of the language curriculum are forged in large part in classroom interaction, with the contribution of the teacher as the major determinant.
Language, Culture and Identity is a collection of papers from the BAAL Annual Conference at the University of Bristol 2005. The thirteen papers, by researchers from Britain and across Europe, represent a range of research orientations within Applied Linguistics which connect in different ways with issues in culture and identity. Two plenary addresses from the conference, by Roz Ivanič and Srikant Sarangi, explore the themes of identity and culture in contexts of learning and of work. Papers addressing language planning and policy issues present recent analyses of francophone identity in Canada and Sami identity in Finland. The issues of culture and identity in writing are explored in different papers from the perspective of identity construction in academic writing, discipline cultures in higher education contexts, the consequences of these for interdisciplinary writers, and how writers construct audience identity though the linguistic choices they make. Empirical studies of language learning and teaching are also represented, with papers on Processing Instruction and Intercultural Pragmatics. The themes of identity and culture in these papers connect a range of sub-disciplines within Applied Linguistics, and also connect knowledge building in Applied Linguistics with pervasive themes in research across the social sciences, into the ways people as individuals and in communities understand, shape and represent their experiences of learning and work. Details about the contributors to this book.
