In this challenging and at times controversial book, Ronald Carter addresses the discourse of 'English' as a subject of teaching and learning. Among the key topics investigated are: * 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. Investigating English Discourse is 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. Investigating English Discourse is of relevance to teachers and students and researchers in the fields of discourse analysis, English as a first, second and foreign language, language and education, applied and literary linguistics.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this book Michael McCarthy and Ronald Carter describe the discoursal properties of language and demonstrate what insights this approach can offer to the student and teacher of language. The authors examine the relationship between complete texts, both spoken and written, and the social and cultural contexts in which they function. They argue that the functions of language are often best understood in a discoursal environment and that exploring language in context compels us to revise commonly-held understandings about the forms and meanings of language. In so doing, the authors argue the need for language teachers, syllabus planners and curriculum organisers to give greater attention to language as discourse.

Investigating Media Discourse explores spoken interactions in the media, drawing on contemporary sources from the English speaking world including chat shows, radio phone-ins and political interviews with leaders such as Tony Blair and George W.Bush. The main theoretical framework used in this work is influenced by Goffman, where each media encounter is viewed as a three-way participation framework involving the broadcaster, interviewee and audience, all of whom shape the interaction. The spoken media interactions are analysed from this viewpoint to illustrate how they are managed, how pseudo-relationships are established and maintained and how ‘others’ are created. O’Keefe brings together methodologies of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and corpus linguistics allowing the media extracts to be explored from different perspectives whilst providing multiple insights. Investigating Media Discourse will appeal to students and researchers of applied linguistics, english language and media. Anne O’Keeffe is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Department of English Language and Literature, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Language and Literacy introduces the study of language as discourselanguage as it is used by speakers and writers for authentic purposes.

The central concern of this book is the analysis of verbal interaction or discourse. This first six chapters report and evaluate major theoretical advances in the description of discourse. The final chapters demonstrate how the findings of discourse analysis can be used to investigate second-language teaching and first-language acquisition and to analyse literary texts.

Rather than giving the student a list of facts to assimilate this book offers a selection of standard and non-standard pieces of spoken and written English that the reader uses to formulate opinions on structure and lexis for further self-study.

Maurizio Gotti analyses the various features of specialized discourse in order to assess its degree of specificity and diversification, as compared to general language. Prior to any analysis of such traits, the notion of specialized discourse and its distinctive properties are clarified.

New technologies are constantly transforming traditional notions of language use and literacy in online communication environments. While previous research has provided a foundation for understanding the use of new technologies in instructed second language environments, few studies have investigated new literacies and electronic discourse beyond the classroom setting. This volume seeks to address this gap by providing corpus-based and empirical studies of electronic discourse analyzing social and linguistic variation as well as communicative practices in chat, discussion forums, blogs, and podcasts. Several chapters also examine the assessment and integration of new literacies. This volume will serve as a valuable resource for researchers, teachers, and students interested in exploring electronic discourse and new literacies in language learning and teaching.

Interdisciplinary Research Discourse: Corpus Investigations into Environment Journals provides cutting-edge insights into the nature of communication in interdisciplinary research domains. Using a corpus of nearly 12,000 articles taken from 11 journals, this book addresses the key questions that surround writing for an interdisciplinary audience. This books also explores: the ways in which writers write if they are writing for an interdisciplinary audience as well as for a specialist disciplinary audience; the different natures and instances of the term 'interdisciplinarity'; and whether an analysis of the rhetorical contexts in which research is relayed to interdisciplinary audiences is critical to understanding interdisciplinary research activities and communications. Written by two leading figures in the field of Corpus Linguistics, this is an essential text for researchers and upper-level undergraduates working in the areas of Corpus Linguistics, Discourse Analysis and Linguistics in areas of interdisciplinary communication.