This paper examines regulating discourses "spoken" within the complex multi-sector network of educational policy and provision that has grown from a recent introduction of choice advisers in England. Choice advice documentation from across the network is examined and four discursive themes are identified: equity; parental responsibility;…

The aim of this article is, by analysing children's discourses, to investigate their actions or absence of actions during a domestic violence episode. The empirical data are recorded group therapy sessions and individual interviews with children who have grown up experiencing their fathers' violence against their mothers. The analysis shows that…

In view of the growing body of research on humor and language play in computer-mediated communication (CMC) which--more than any other medium--has been associated with goofing off, joking, and other nonserious communication, this paper compares spontaneous foreign language play (L2 play) in text-only synchronous computer-mediated versus…

Learners engaged in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) work collaboratively to construct knowledge by providing each other with implicit and explicit feedback. In addition to its value in encouraging learners to make modifications toward target-like forms, the implicitness or explicitness of the feedback provides a means to…

This research explores the interrelationship between the production of national identity and multiculturalism in Irish schools and society. Working from the perspective that ideas about "race" and nation are inextricably linked, I examine how contemporary nationalistic identity projects and processes map onto the current policy drive…

This article examines the way in which socially constructed notions of "language", "social cohesion" and "diversity" create tensions within different educational arenas, particularly concerning educational policies developed at administrative levels and the subsequent interpretation of these policies in the classroom.…

The attention to the visualization of education policy is an area of study yet to be developed and explored. This paper extends the scholarship of "mediated education policy production" by developing a visual methodology to analyse a visual education policy document that takes the form of a documentary titled "Learning…

This paper examines the tensions created in a Greek Cypriot primary classroom between the legitimate variety of the school, Standard Modern Greek, and the home variety of the students, the Greek Cypriot Dialect. Ethnographic data are presented to indicate that language use in the classroom, contrary to what language policy-makers argue, is…

This article uses the convergence of our positionings as feminists, pragmatists, and rhetoricians to theorize communicative gaps related to different beliefs about writing instruction as sites of generative dialogue. We offer a WPA/TA discourse model centered on productive resistance and on discursive power, to posit feminist pragmatic rhetoric as…

This article arose out of an engagement in medical communication courses at a Gulf university. It deploys a theoretical framework derived from a (critical) sociocognitive approach to discourse analysis in order to investigate three aspects of medical discourse relating to childhood epilepsy: the cognitive processes that are entailed in relating…

Encountering trouble producing a word in the midst of a turn at talk is an everyday experience for foreign language learners. By employing conversation analysis (CA) as a central tool for analysis, the current study explores how students undertake a range of word searches while they organize a pair work session designed for the purpose of language…

The main goal of this paper is to shift the focus on "learning" away from the traditional locus of inquiry in SLA--the L2 classroom--in order to extend the SLA empirical database, and by so doing extend and broaden our understanding of what it means to learn and use (in mutually reinforcing and enlightening ways) an additional, or second,…

This paper investigates the impact of Web. 2.0 technologies on the ways learning can be conceived of as a narrative process within contemporary contexts, using blogs as an illustrative example. It is premised on the concept of narrative as a way in which individuals represent and organize experience in order to learn from it and make it shareable…

Much of physical education curriculum in the developed world and specifically in Australia tends to be guided in principle by syllabus documents that represent, in varying degrees, some form of government education priorities. Through the use of critical discourse analysis we analyze one such syllabus example (an official syllabus document of one…

Whilst researching a teacher's use of miniature "handheld" computers (PDAs) with students, it became apparent that the related research literature implied unwarranted benefits arose from using this technology in the classroom setting. Focusing closely upon one exemplar UK government-commissioned research study, this paper attempts to…