Overview

The last two decades have seen a good deal of work in educational linguistics, which has created a deeper understanding of how language works in different varieties of discourse and what a teacher needs to know for engaging successfully in language education. In this sense, the focus has been largely on instructional discourse - i.e., what is to be taught. The chapters of this book attempt to widen the field by focussing on who is being taught. After all, the true active element in the processes of education is the learner. Children have already acquired specific ways of learning, long before they enter the classroom, and in pluralistic societies learning styles vary systematically across communities. This book argues on the one hand the need to attend to the different voices in the classroom, and on the other to encourage an attitude of enquiry which creates awareness of the power of discourse in maintaining and/or changing societies.

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9781904768388

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Reviews

'The well-deserved reputation of systemic-functional linguistics as the most education-friendly theoretical paradigm for language analysis is intricately interwoven with and supported by the life-long work of Ruqaiya Hasan. In this third volume of her collected works, readers will have the intellectual pleasure of encountering the astounding breadth of knowledge and spiritedness of commitments she brings to the learning and teaching of languages understood as a social-semiotic process of meaning-making. Whatever their own role in language and education, under her expert guidance they will reaffirm the central position that learning a language - both mother tongue and other tongue - has for socialization into local and global communities and for the many-faceted processes of individual and societal literacies that mark the contemporary world.' Heidi Byrnes, George M. Roth Distinguished Professor of German, President, American Association for Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University

The well-deserved reputation of systemic-functional linguistics as the most education-friendly theoretical paradigm for language analysis is intricately interwoven with and supported by the life-long work of Ruqaiya Hasan. In this third volume of her collected works, readers will have the intellectual pleasure of encountering the astounding breadth of knowledge and spiritedness of commitments she brings to the learning and teaching of languages understood as a social-semiotic process of meaning-making. Whatever their own role in language and education, under her expert guidance they will reaffirm the central position that learning a language – both mother tongue and other tongue – has for socialization into local and global communities and for the many-faceted processes of individual and societal literacies that mark the contemporary world. Heidi Byrnes, George M. Roth Distinguished Professor of German, President, American Association for Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University This volume is an essential addition to any library collection focusing on the field of linguistics and education. LinguistList Hasan’s book will be an inspiration for most educators and language teachers and in particular for those wanting to make a difference, for whom education has a social function. It provides a wealth of insights into past and present educational practices; on how to make sense to students with different cultural, social and educational history by becoming aware of ‘learner identity’ and ‘semantic distance’; and on how to develop learners’ meta-discursive abilities through reflection literacy, a means of empowering students to interrogate and challenge reality. Journal of Sociolinguistics

Author Information

Ruqaiya Hasan has taught and held visiting positions at various universities in England, America and Australia. Her last appointment was at Macquarie University, Australia, from where she retired as Emeritus Professor in 1994. Throughout her career she has researched and published widely in the areas of stylistics, culture, context and text, lexicogrammar and semantic variation. The latter involved the devising of extensive semantic system networks for the analysis of meaning in naturally occurring dialogues. Jonathan Webster is currently Acting Head, Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, and Associate Dean (Research and Administration), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. In addition to being General Editor of the new journal from Equinox called Linguistics and the Human Sciences (coming in April 2005), he is the Series Editor for the ten volume Collected Works of Professor M.A.K. Halliday (Continuum Books); and also the seven volume Collected Works for Professor Ruqaiya Hasan published by Equinox.

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