Investigating English Discourse: Language, Literacy, Literature

Description

In this text Ronald Carter addresses the discourse of "English" as a subject of teaching and learning. The topics investigated include: grammar; correctness and standard English; critical language awareness and literacy; language and creativity; the methodological integration of language and literature in the curriculum; discourse theory and textual interpretation. The work presents a collection of revised, re-edited and newly written papers which contain extensive contrastive analyses of different styles of international English. These range from casual conversation to advertisement, poetry, jokes, metaphor, stories by canonical writers, public notices and children's writing. Ronald Carter highlights key issues for the study and teaching of "English" for the year 2000 and beyond, focusing in particular on its political and ideological inflections. The book should be useful to teachers, students and researchers in the fields of discourse analysis, English as a first, second and foreign language, language and education, and applied and literary linguistics.

Ronald Carter is Professor of Modern English Language at the University of Nottingham and was National Co-ordinator of the 'Language in the National Curriculum' Project (LINC) from 1989-1992. He has published extensively and is the editor of the Interface and co-editor of the Intertext series, both published by Routledge.