scholarly journals Critical literacy and social agency

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-120
Author(s):  
Rogério Tílio ◽  
Thaís Sampaio ◽  
Gabriel Martins
Keyword(s):  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
Digital Text ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Educational Project ◽  
Field Of Inquiry ◽  
Do So

Upon the understanding of Applied Linguistics as an indisciplinary field of inquiry that aims to create intelligibility regarding language-centered social problems (MOITA LOPES, 2006), this article introduces a pedagogical instrument, a Critical Multiliteracies Thematic Project, as a means to develop learners’ critical social agency. The nature of this educational project derives from the pedagogy of critical sociointeractional literacy (TILIO, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2015), whose understanding of language teaching permeates notions of citizenship that defy hegemonic discourses by prompting the analysis of themes and language, and the adoption of a constant critical stance. As the pedagogical project in focus situates its practices through alternative Brazilian female voices, students of an extension English course are led to respond to the multiple discourses on gender-imbricated matters that dwells their social horizons (VOLÓCHINOV, 2017 [1929]). Hence, by investigating the dialogue established between the project and a student, this article intends to contribute to the production of knowledge on social life. In order to do so, we selected a task that integrates the project and a multimodal digital text produced by a student in response to the project. We close off the article by framing the relevance of ethically committed language education in promoting learners’ transforming practices.

Critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 16.1-16.16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Pennycook
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Central Focus

Critical directions in applied linguistics can be understood in various ways. The term critical as it has been used in critical applied linguistics, critical discourse analysis, critical literacy and so forth, is now embedded as part of applied linguistic work, adding an overt focus on questions of power and inequality to discourse analysis, literacy or applied linguistics more generally. In this paper I will argue, however, that although critical discourse analysis and critical literacy still make claims to a territory different from their ‘non-critical’ counterparts, much of this work has become conventional and moribund. The use of the term ‘critical’ (with its problematic claims and divisions) has perhaps reached saturation level. This is not to say, however, that the basic need to bring questions of power, disparity and difference to applied linguistics is any way diminished, but rather that we may need to look in alternative directions for renewal. Here I want to pursue two main possibilities: On the one hand, the effects of critical work have been widely felt, so that the issues and concerns raised by work in this tradition have filtered through to many parts of the field. Work today that might be deemed critical may no longer need to wear this label. On the other hand, a range of different social theories (captured in part by a series of ‘turns’) has started to shift the thinking in many domains of applied linguistics in important ways. Just as work in sociolinguistics, for example, has shifted from a central focus on variationist accounts of language to include style, identity, practices and politics more broadly, and work in bi- and multilingualism has started to question the ways in which these are framed (hence, for example, multilanguaging, polylingualism and metrolingualism), so applied linguistics has shifted from a central focus on language teaching, testing and second language acquisition to a broader and more critical conceptualization of language in social life. It has started to take on board the implications of new ‘turns’ in the social sciences (practices, sensory, somatic, postmodern, ecological, decolonial) and new influences from previously overlooked sources (queer theory, critical geography, postcolonial studies, philosophy). Critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics, therefore, may be found across a variety of domains that are engaging with notions such as language as a local practice.

Critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 16.1-16.16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Pennycook
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Central Focus

Critical directions in applied linguistics can be understood in various ways. The termcriticalas it has been used incritical applied linguistics, critical discourse analysis, critical literacyand so forth, is now embedded as part of applied linguistic work, adding an overt focus on questions of power and inequality to discourse analysis, literacy or applied linguistics more generally. In this paper I will argue, however, that although critical discourse analysis and critical literacy still make claims to a territory different from their ‘non-critical’ counterparts, much of this work has become conventional and moribund. The use of the term ‘critical’ (with its problematic claims and divisions) has perhaps reached saturation level. This is not to say, however, that the basic need to bring questions of power, disparity and difference to applied linguistics is any way diminished, but rather that we may need to look in alternative directions for renewal.Here I want to pursue two main possibilities: On the one hand, the effects of critical work have been widely felt, so that the issues and concerns raised by work in this tradition have filtered through to many parts of the field. Work today that might be deemed critical may no longer need to wear this label. On the other hand, a range of different social theories (captured in part by a series of ‘turns’) has started to shift the thinking in many domains of applied linguistics in important ways. Just as work in sociolinguistics, for example, has shifted from a central focus on variationist accounts of language to include style, identity, practices and politics more broadly, and work in bi- and multilingualism has started to question the ways in which these are framed (hence, for example, multilanguaging, polylingualism and metrolingualism), so applied linguistics has shifted from a central focus on language teaching, testing and second language acquisition to a broader and more critical conceptualization of language in social life. It has started to take on board the implications of new ‘turns’ in the social sciences (practices, sensory, somatic, postmodern, ecological, decolonial) and new influences from previously overlooked sources (queer theory, critical geography, postcolonial studies, philosophy). Critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics, therefore, may be found across a variety of domains that are engaging with notions such as language as a local practice.

scholarly journals Research tendencies in the teaching of English as a foreign language

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Amparo Clavijo-Olarte
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
English Language ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Inservice Teachers ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
English Language Education ◽  
San Andres

An analysis of the thematic tendencies in the 41 research articles published in the issues of the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal during the last three years, 2013-2015, indicates that authors have focused their attention primarily on five topics. These themes can be grouped as a) Trends and Approaches to teaching English as a foreign language, with the highest number of articles, followed by b) language learners´ processes and outcomes, c) teacher education for both preservice and inservice teachers, d) critical literacy and literacy involving social development, and d) uses of Spanish as expression of popular culture and English as a sociolinguistic phenomenon in San Andres. The variety of research reflected in these five thematic groups certainly contributes to addressing the two target disciplines our journal is interested in: Applied Linguistics and English Language Education in the context of Colombia and Latin America.

scholarly journals The idea of community and its practice: Tensions, disruptions and hope in Glasgow’s urban growing projects

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 484-499
Author(s):  
Helen Traill
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Community Gardening ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Community Theory ◽  
Communal Space ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Do So

The question of what community comes to mean has taken on increasing significance in sociological debates and beyond, as an increasingly politicised term and the focus of new theorisations. In this context, it is increasingly necessary to ask what is meant when community is invoked. Building on recent work that positions community as a practice and an ever-present facet of human sociality, this article argues that it is necessary to consider the powerful work that community as an idea does in shaping everyday communal practices, through designating collective space and creating behavioural expectations. To do so, the article draws on participant observation and interviews from a community gardening site in Glasgow that was part of a broader research project investigating the everyday life of communality within growing spaces. This demonstrates the successes but also the difficulties of carving out communal space, and the work done by community organisations to enact it. The article draws on contemporary community theory, but also on ideas from Davina Cooper about the role of ideation in social life. It argues for a conceptual approach to communality that does not situate it as a social form or seek it in everyday practice, but instead considers the vacillation between the ideation and practices of community: illustrated here in a designated community place. In so doing, this approach calls into focus the frictions and boundaries produced in that process, and questions the limits of organisational inclusivity.

Applied Linguistics in the Neoliberal University: Ideological keywords and social agency

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marnie Holborow
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
Social Dynamic ◽  
The University

AbstractNeoliberalism and neoliberal ideology has only recently begun to gain attention within applied linguistics. This paper seeks to contribute to this development with a focus on neoliberal keywords in official texts. The ideological content of these keywords can best be understood within the political project of neoliberalism and within the political economy of contemporary capitalism. Studies which have highlighted the marketization of institutional discourse have analysed this phenomenon from a discourse-based perspective, rather than seeing neoliberal ideology in language as a contradictory manifestation of wider social relations in periods of social crises. The appearance of ideology in language, this paper holds, is unstable, unfinished, unpredictable and dependent for meaning on what Dell Hymes characterised as the “persistent” social context. The ideology of neoliberalism, for all its apparent hegemony, is not guaranteed full consent, and this applies also to its presence in language. The question of social agency is crucial to understanding the social dynamic and unpredictability of ideology in language, both in terms of who produces neoliberal keywords and how they are received and understood. This paper argues that international think tanks, articulating the interests of capital, act as powerful keyword standardisers and their influence will be examined in the production of texts in the Irish university context. However, neoliberal keywords, in certain conjunctures, will also be contested, as will be shown. The paper concludes that applied linguistics is uniquely placed to both critique and challenge neoliberal keywords in the university and that such a challenge has the potential to find wider political resonance as governments, amid continuing economic recession, recharge the ideology of neoliberalism.

Pure and Applied Research in Linguistics: Is the Difference Merely One of Motivation?

1979 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.P. Corder
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Applied Research ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Academic World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Learned Societies ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Own Name ◽  
Do So

It is perhaps natural that in the early years of emergence of a new field of study and research its practitioners should from time to time ask themselves what is the nature of the activity they are engaged in. The need to do so may stem from a number of different causes: philosophical, sociological and psychological. The practitioners may feel the need to establish a personal identity, that is, some accepted place for themselves in the social structure of the academic world, to achieve respect and recognition as workers in the field of scholarship, a role in the institution of higher studies. They may feel that the discipline they profess is not properly recognised within the scholarly domain, its place not clearly determined in the structure of science or scholarship, its value to society not appreciated; and that consequently it does not attract research funds in its own name, permit the establishment of courses and programmes which lead to academic degrees or qualifications bearing its name, or of learned societies devoted to discussing its problems and disseminating its notions. All of these factors I believe play a part in the motivations for the constantly renewed discussion of WHAT IS APPLIED LINGUISTICS? None of them is in any way reprehensible or unworthy. The intensity or frequency with which these discussions occur is a response to the prevailing orthodox views about the discipline itself and its relation to neighbouring disciplines found in the society where the discussions take place, and to the degree to which its practitioners (i.e. people who call themselves applied linguists) feel oppressed, unrecognised or undervalued by the members of the institution in which they work and with whom they interact. This is a whole field of investigation open to the sociologist of science to describe and explain.

scholarly journals THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION TOURISM: A CASE OF BERUGA’ ALAM INSTITUTE

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 210
Author(s):  
Marham Jupri Hadi ◽  
Tris Shakti Permata ◽  
Tarmizi Tarmizi
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Life ◽  
English Language ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Language Education ◽  
English Language Education ◽  
Tour Guides ◽  
Educational Tourism ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Short Courses

Education tourism refers to a travel program to a location with the primary goal is to engage in learning activities directly associated with a tourist destination. The current study explores the practice of edutourism as implemented by Beruga’ Alam Institute which involved college students of English language education. This case study employed participant observations, in-depth interviews, and documentation to gain a deep understanding regarding the case under study. 13 participants consisting of 7 students of English language education, a program coordinator, 2 tour guides and the head of the institute took part in the interviews. Collected data were analyzed interactively to conclude the study. The findings of this study revealed that the concept of educational tourism practiced in Beruga’ Alam Institute reflected its five fundamental vision namely: a) well behaved; b) being insightful; c) being skillful; d) being self-reliant and; e) contribution. The promoted model of edutourism in Beruga’ Alam begins with meditation, followed by exploration, reflection and ended with a publication. These stages feature every edutour program. The edutour programs offered to college students include nature exploration, art and culture exploration, Kings and Saints (graveyards) visits, charity and social life exploration, staying with the locals, local figures visits and other programs. Students were also offered short courses like photography writing, cooking class, and public speaking during the tours. Finally, based on the participants’ reflection on their edutour experiences, all of them express positive views on the programs and were willing to participate in the future education tourism programs.

scholarly journals The impact of bullying on EFL students’ academic achievement at state Islamic universities in Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Safrul Muluk ◽  
Habiburrahim Habiburrahim ◽  
Syarifah Dahliana ◽  
Saiful Akmal
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Social Life ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Education ◽  
English Language Education ◽  
Triggering Factors ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Classroom Bullying ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Issues and incidents of bullying may take place, regardless of time and place, notwithstanding at Islamic education institutions. This study is aimed at finding out types of bullying and their triggering factors taking place in the university classroom; examining steps taken by lecturers to anticipate and prevent classroom bullying; and analyzing the impact of bullying on EFL students’ academic achievement. This mixed-methods study involved 546 students and 30 lecturers of the English Language Education Department at three state Islamic universities in Indonesia; Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta, and Universitas Islam Negeri Ar-Raniry in Banda Aceh. Both surveys and interviews were employed to collect the required data. The findings elucidate that physical, social, verbal, and racial are among the most common emergent bullying incidents the students experienced. Revealing the triggering factors of bullying, the data show that competition in academic and social life, differences in thoughts and appearances, lack of understanding of bullying meaning, and lack of regulation are pointed as the source of bullying. The findings also indicate that bullying influences students’ academic achievement; bullying incidents have driven their victims into four pathetic conditions: less confident, stressed, anxious, and passive. Some steps are applied by the lecturer to prevent and handle bullying; they are: providing classroom regulation, being a counselor for students, enforcing the regulation, and massive socialization.

The Monologic Imagination

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Design ◽  
Do So

The pioneering and hugely influential work of Mikhail Bakhtin has led scholars in recent decades to see all discourse and social life as inherently “dialogical.” No speaker speaks alone because our words are always partly shaped by our interactions with others, past and future. Moreover, we never fashion ourselves entirely by ourselves but always do so in concert with others. Bakhtin thus decisively reshaped modern understandings of language and subjectivity. And yet, the contributors to this volume argue that something is potentially overlooked with too close a focus on dialogism: many speakers, especially in charged political and religious contexts, work energetically at crafting monologues, single-voiced statements to which the only expected response is agreement or faithful replication. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from the United States, Iran, Cuba, Indonesia, Algeria, and Papua New Guinea, the authors argue that a focus on “the monologic imagination” gives us new insights into languages’ political design and religious force, and deepens our understandings of the necessary interplay between monological and dialogical tendencies.

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