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Over the past few decades there have been intense debates in education surrounding children’s literacy achievement and ways to promote reading, particularly that of boys. The Harry Potter book series has been received enthusiastically by very many children, boys and girls alike, but has also been constructed in popular and media discourses as a children’s, particularly a boys’, literacy saviour. Children’s Literacy Practices and Preferences: Harry Potter and Beyond provides empirical evidence of young people’s reported literacy practices and views on reading, and of how they see how the Harry Potter series as having impacted their own literacy. The volume explores and debunks some of the myths surrounding Harry Potter and literacy, and contextualizes these within children’s wider reading.
Over the past three decades, our conceptualizations of literacy and what it means to be literate have expanded to include recognition that there is a qualitative difference in how we communicate through modalities such as the visual, audio, spatial, and linguistic and that different modes are combined in complex ways to make meaning. The field of multimodality is concerned with how human beings use different modes of communication to represent or make meaning in the world. Despite the rapid growth of international research in this area, accounts of a broader range of global sites, particularly economically under-resourced and culturally diverse contexts such as Sub-Saharan Africa, remain und...
This collection of studies explores recent research in the area of gender and language use experienced around the world. Featuring an interdisciplinary and global approach, the contributors demonstrate how focus on gender and language creates the lived experience. The studies in this book use gender and language to analyze a broad range of topics including religion, politics, education and sexuality. Contributions include the use of language of a new female bishop in Canada, hetronormativity in language use in Croatia, women's magazines in Japan, and the electoral code in Cameroon. Using critical/feminist discourse analysis, the chapters represent scholarship from Britain, Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. Readers in applied linguistics, sociology, women’s studies and education who are interested in language and its power in creating the lived experience will find this book full of intriguing and illuminating connections.
This innovative text draws on theories and methodologies from the fields of multimodality, ethnography, and literacy studies to explore the sociocultural significance of book ownership and book inscriptions in Edwardian Britain. The Sociocultural Functions of Edwardian Book Inscriptions examines evidence gathered from historical records, archival documents, and the inscriptive practices of individuals from the Edwardian era to foreground the social, communicative, and performative functions of inscriptive practices and illustrate how material, lexical, and semiotic means were used to perform identity, contest social status, and forge relationships with others. The text adopts a unique ethnoh...
Approaching academic assignments as practical controversies, this book offers a novel approach to the study of digital literacy. Through in-depth accounts of assignment writing in college classrooms, Bhatt examines ways of understanding how students engage with digital media in curricular activities and how these give rise to new practices of information management and knowledge creation. He further considers what these new practices portend for a stronger theory of digital literacy in an age of informational abundance and ubiquitous connectivity. Looking also at how institutional digital learning policies and strategies are applied in classrooms, and how students may embrace or avoid imposed technologies, this book offers an in-depth study of learner practices. It is through the comprehensive study of such practices that we can better understand the efficacy of technological investments in education, and the dynamic nature of digital literacy on the part of students charged with using those technologies.
This book explores the dynamics of the linguistic landscape as a site of conflict, exclusion, and dissent. It focuses on socio-historical, economic, political and ideological issues, such as reflected in mass protest demonstrations, to forge links between landscape, identity, social justice and power.
Offering an original historical perspective on literacy work in Africa, this book examines the role of the Norwegian Lutheran mission in Madagascar and sheds light on the motivations that drove colonizing powers’ literacy work. Focusing on both colonial and independent Madagascar, Rosnes examines how literacy practices were facilitated through mission schools and the impact on the reading and writing skills to Malagasy children and youth. Analysing how literacy work influenced identity formation and power relations in the Malagasy society, the author offers new insights into the field of language and education in Africa.
This volume demonstrates how the ethnographic approach to research demanded by a ‘Literacy as Social Practice’ perspective can generate fresh insights into what happens when young children engage with schooled literacy tasks. Researching Early Childhood Literacy in the Classroom argues that the lived experience of young children encountering formal schooled literacy curricula should be the foremost consideration in educational reforms intended to improve rates of literacy acquisition in schools. To make this argument, the author suspends traditional concerns with ‘learning’ and ‘progress’ to concentrate on ‘practice’ and ‘meaning’ in a careful analysis of key classroom incidents. The author concludes that such insights suggest a need for re-considering the assumptions upon which educational policy rests. This book will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, and libraries in the fields of Literacy Studies, Teacher Education, Education Policy and Applied Linguistics.
Research Methods in Linguistics guides the reader through the key issues, principles, and contributions of core methods in linguistic research. It is an essential resource for researchers and graduate students looking for clear introductions to key concepts, accessible discussions of theory and practice through illustrative examples, and critical engagement with current debates. Topics covered include developing research questions; combining methods; quantitative research designs (including questionnaires, chi-square tests and t-tests); corpus analysis; qualitative research methods (interview methods, discourse analytic approaches, multimodal analysis). Expanded throughout, this second edition also features: - New chapters on ethics in linguistic research; transcription; and case study research - Further reading, online resources, discussion questions and a glossary of key terms for each chapter Providing in-depth introductions to key concepts, a wealth of examples from recent linguistic research and suggestions for further exploration and discussion in each area, this book will be an invaluable resource for anyone working with linguistic data.
Harry Potter and Beyond explores J. K. Rowling's beloved best-selling series and its virtuoso reimagining of British literary traditions. Weaving together elements of fantasy, the school-story novel, detective fiction, allegory, and bildungsroman, the Harry Potter novels evade simplistic categorization as children's or fantasy literature. Because the Potter series both breaks new ground and adheres to longstanding narrative formulas, readers can enhance their enjoyment of these epic adventures by better understanding their place in literary history. Along with the seven foundational novels of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and Beyond assesses the extraordinary range of supplementary m...