This article examines discourses of cultural knowledge and ideology in Chinese language textbooks currently used for primary school students nationwide in China. Within the framework of critical curriculum theory and using critical discourse analysis, this article critically investigates how discourses of cultural knowledge are constructed and…

Patients experience considerable difficulties in making and sustaining health-related lifestyle changes. Many Type 2 diabetes patients struggle to follow disease risk-management advice even when they receive extensive information and support. Drawing on a qualitative study of patients with Type 2 diabetes, the paper uses discourse analysis to…

The field of environmental education research has been moving away from scientistic and positivistic discourses for some time now ("Environmental Education Research," 2000; Hart & Nolan, 1999). However, it has been noted that the meta-discourse about this research continues to draw on their framings, registers, and lexicons (Hart, 2000;…

This qualitative study explored the meanings of chat room conversations through observations of teenagers using the Internet. Adolescent girls were a focus because of their shaky sense of self. Participants in ten chat rooms included 534 individuals. Six themes, emerging from analyzing 2526 utterances [descriptive statements], included (a)…

In the context of a class is of pre-service, undergraduate educational technology, primary and secondary majors, the author explores feminist theories and post-structuralist theories regarding gender dichotomies to better comprehend how young women have internalized cultural biases informing them that computers are masculine artifacts. The issues…

When creative uses of spoken language have been investigated, the main examples have been restricted to particular contexts such as narrative and related story-telling genres. This paper reports on an initial investigation using the 5 million word CANCODE corpus of everyday spoken English and discusses a range of social contexts in which creative…

In this essay, I address the problem of White racism in the classroom, proposing a way of reading racist discourse that takes into account its emotional dimensions and hence its persuasive appeal for White students. This way of reading begins with the insight that racist language functions metaphorically, and that it acts as a rhetorical bridge…

In this article, I explore issues of sexuality and reflexivity in language education research practices by revisiting a section of an interview between myself as researcher and a student research participant. The research interview was from a larger ethnographic study on cultural identities in a second language program, and the student was a…

This methodological study examines an original data collection model designed to incorporate human factors and enhance data richness in qualitative and evaluation research. Evidence supporting this model is drawn from in-depth youth and adult interviews in one of the largest policy/program evaluations undertaken in the United States, the Drug,…

This paper reports on an investigation into the discourse features of seven dialogues published in coursebooks between 1981 and 1997, and contrasts them with comparable authentic interactions. It finds that the textbook dialogues differ considerably from their authentic equivalents across a range of discourse features: length and turn-taking…

This paper describes an action research project undertaken to look into the effectiveness of tasks designed to raise learner awareness of conversational strategies. The goal was to test whether tasks and direct instruction aimed at promoting learner awareness of conversational language at the discourse-level had any impact on the students'…

Research on second/foreign language teacher impressions, reflections, and beliefs continues to illuminate various facets of language teacher knowledge and practice, but it has only recently begun to question the relationship between these teacher characteristics and actual classroom discourse. This collaborative case study undertaken by a…

The study examines the development of the registers of academic writing by African American college-level students through style and grammar: indirection inherent in the oral culture of the African American community and the paratactic functions of "because." Discourse analysis of 74 samples of academic writing by 20 African American undergraduate…

How do instructors motivate students to participate in computer-mediated discussion? If they do participate, how can the quality of their interactions be assessed? This study speaks to these questions by examining online participation and discourse in a science course for preservice teachers. The instructor of an introductory entomology course for…

Recent studies have suggested that cultures vary in subtle ways in the talk about talk that children hear and learn to produce. Twenty-two three-year-old children and their families in respectively Oslo, Norway and Cambridge, Massachusetts were observed during mealtime with the aim of identifying talk-focused talk. The analysis distinguished talk…