Discusses the close connection between cultural beliefs and practices and the use of language and focuses on the erosive impact of Western language literacy on native cultures. Suggests that when teachers teach connections between first- and second-language discourses, students can retain the intimate truths of their primary discourse while…

This essay shows how classroom conversation is musical and how this musicality is fundamental for one's sense of discourse coherence. To make its argument the paper looks at approaches to music and relationships between music and educational practice. Discussion covers symbols of affiliation and boundary, moral formation and discourse, and an…

Studies differences in the involvement in talk in classroom situations and the nature of that talk for boys and girls in mathematics/technology and language group work. Results with 15 classes of children aged 4 through 11 years give a picture of the effects of the group's gender balance. (SLD)

Examines discourses of childhood from press reports, parliamentary debates, and government-sponsored reports concerning the Travelling People, an indigenous ethnic minority in Ireland. Found that discourses are located within a changing Irish political economic and shifting Traveller-related policy. A case study reveals how discourses of childhood…

Develops a theoretical framework for understanding the principles that regulate the expression and reception of "everyday" knowledge (attitudes about sex, drug usage) in the classroom. Investigates three different school-based contexts: the formal classroom, small group interaction during lesson time, and group interviews (outside the classroom).…

Analysis of French used in teleconferences between American and French university students, relative to technical and discursive dimensions and learners' Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), found much of the language used was beyond these learners' capability, due to heightened classroom anxiety and differences in language varieties used by…

Twenty interviews with school personnel, parents, business owners, and town officials in a rural western Minnesota town revealed an emerging new "rural literacy." This new way of "reading the world" reflected a belief that neoliberal school policies did not serve all residents well, and that rural values and traditions should…

Traditionally women have been signified to be "for others", never for themselves. This conceptualisation is also present in the discourses about literacy. The traditional discourse justifies women's literacy based on the need to improve family health, well-being, educational access, and so on. Thus, it is seen as a tool for other ends…

This article examines writing conference discourse in one English as a Second Language (ESL) basic composition course. The study is based on a 25,000-word corpus of 10 writing conference interactions between the instructor and seven students. Through a microlevel analysis, the authors demonstrate how and to what degree the writing conference can…

This article draws on a case study of a school-university partnership negotiation to focus on the discursive practices at work. Two questions form the central focus of this article. Firstly, how do different discourses function in educational partnership negotiations? This highlights observations about which discourses are evident in individuals'…

This paper proposes a process model of reflective practice for second language teachers, designed to facilitate a closer understanding of language use and interactive decision-making. The L2 classroom is portrayed as a dynamic and complex series of inter-related contexts, in which interaction is central to teaching and learning. An understanding…

Context of learning, such as whether a learner studies a second language (L2) in a formal classroom--"at home" or abroad--may be a key factor in developing grammatical and lexical abilities. Yet, little empirical data is available comparing the effects of study abroad (SA) and formal instruction "at home" (AH) experiences on…

The paper examines the nominal lexicon in later language acquisition as a window on linguistic knowledge and usage across childhood and adolescence. The paper presents a psycholinguistically motivated and cognitively grounded analysis of the distribution of ten semantic noun categories (the Noun Scale) across development, modality, and genre.…

We look across two studies, conducted within the current new managerialist policy context in Australia, which capture the construction of social spaces mediated through the nexus of material, activity, and discursive space. The focus of the first study is the negotiation of identities for a second language (Indonesian) teacher and his Indigenous…

Conveying information to clients has a variety of purposes in professional-client interactions. It has a clear relationship to client access to participation in the decisions made about a presenting problem. Speech-language pathologists tend to assume they do this competently and to the advantage of their clients, but rarely has this assumption…