In "The Uses of Diversity," the interpretive anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, says that it is impossible to completely get inside the point of view of another culture. Geertz contends, however, that despite multiple voices in the growing body of reflexive ethnographies there is still an author composing the work. Besides Geertz,…

Recent decades have brought to the fore a coalition of writers on education who identify themselves as postmodernists, a designation that encompasses such vaguely allied groups as critical educators, radical educators, feminists, postcolonialists, anti-imperialists, poststructuralists, postpositivists, and neo-Marxists. A common characteristic…

This book explores the subject of metaphor, using the imagery of cartography to set a course. It explores the creative aspects of thinking and learning through literature, writing, and word play, drawing connections between English and other content areas. Theory and practical applications meet in the book, linking activities and resources to…

A study explored the social acceptability that accompanies the expression of sexual slang. The study of gender differences in language use is nothing new. Previous research has indicated that men and women differ in their use of tentative language, topic selection, control techniques, and conversational style. However, this research has examined…

The European Community (EC) openly supports use and maintenance of the major languages of its countries. One idea behind this support is not to privilege any language of the community, but to encourage the unique features of each member state. This policy carries over into support for diversified language instruction; rather than promote one or…

By focusing on Frederick Douglass' reconsideration of literacy in the 1845 "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," this slave narrative becomes very relevant to students today. This important historical document becomes a powerful tool with which educators can encourage students to confront contemporary, postmodern questions about…

"Lennie," labelled early in life with an IQ number below 70, at age 25 and awaiting trial for murder took on the challenge of learning to read a complex, sophisticated language. He joined a class filled with people who were curious about the way words worked and who used the handbook "Crashing the Language Barrier: The English…

It is argued that because of rapid demographic change at the end of the current century, characterized by growing population diversity, closed systems that cannot accommodate these changes will be hurt. Europe in general, and Switzerland in particular, must adjust perspectives and integrate cultural diversity into the social system as a new value.…

Teachers of English as a Second Language are encouraged to provide support for home language maintenance and use in classroom writing assignment. It is argued that this supports cultural diversity rather than emphasize differences among students, helps in development of literacy and other cognitive skills, and empowers students to achieve and…

Discussion of the establishment of a single language for Europe's many countries and cultures focuses on the debate over English versus Esperanto as the language of choice. It is argued that the notion that language has not been a major barrier to intellectual exchange is a myth. In addition, while the main European political institutions support…

This report reviews findings from ethnographic and microethnographic research to further an understanding about how classroom interaction patterns can affect student achievement. The report discusses the concept of communicative competence in general and in the classroom setting in particular. Next, the report reviews findings from studies of…

This paper demonstrates the adaptability of a poet's words to a variety of themes and techniques, and primarily illustrates how the poetic treasures of the African world can be used to create awareness that words are biracial, cross-cultural, and transsexual. The key thesis of the paper is that once an African poet has published a work, the words…

This paper examines and explains the elements of the paranoid style in rhetoric (first noted by Richard Hofstader in 1966) employed by Leonard Jeffries, Chairman of the Black Studies Department at City College of New York, in his July 1991 speech at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York. The paper also suggests that…

Linguistically inclined scholars such as Ragnar Rommetveit and Michael Halliday offer a sociocognitive understanding of writing that challenges current writing theories, which focus attention on processes to the virtual exclusion of the writing product. These linguistic scholars provide ways of understanding context, not as fixed or concrete, but…

This paper explores whether phenomenology, in general, and the case of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's phenomenological optics in particular, provides a case and a location for "minimal realism," located between the extreme positions of absolute scientific realists and "radical rhetoricians." The paper begins with a description of…