Literacy and Literature: priorities in English studies towards 2000.

Through discussion of a changing and unstable relationship between concepts of 'literacy' and 'literature', this chapter outlines problems of aims and content in university-level English studies, and speculates about future challenges. A historically changing balance is traced between social skills of language use and interpretation (often dismissed as merely 'instrumental') and concern with a body of literature whose fostering of moral and aesthetic values is sometimes deemed essential to national belonging or a sense of being cultured. The view is presented that English studies needs, far more than at present [1995], to integrate linguistic, literary, and media work rather than prioritising any one of these strands or teaching all three, but independently of one another

Raymond Williams's Keywords: investigating meanings ‘offered, felt for, tested, confirmed, asserted, qualified, changed’

Reconsiders the approach developed by Raymond Williams for analysing complex words used in cultural and political debate. Contrasts the semantic and lexicographical emphasis of Williams's work with the history of ideas' focus of Tony Bennett et al's New Keywords (Blackwell, 2005). Also argues that new electronic corpus approaches can enrich Williams's close reading method

Politics and language: Meaning and public deception: a tale of more than ‘very, very few people’

Broad questions of political deception and trust in public figures are examined in this article, with reference to a momentary but explosive interlude in British political life: a series of calls for the resignation of Home Secretary Charles Clarke in April 2006 following allegations that he had misled the public during a BBC2 'Newsnight' interview about the release of foreign nationals from UK prisons. Wider issues concerning accuracy in public communication are drawn out from the example discussed, and a notion of public ‘meaning troublespots’ is outlined (as developed further in the author's 'Meaning in the media: discourse, controversy and debate', CUP, 2010)

On the interpretation of allusions and other innuendo meanings in libel actions: the value of semantic and pragmatic evidence.

Allusions and other cultural references are problematic in defamation actions. This paper presents an account of linguistic evidence concerning a contested expression, ‘economical with the truth’, whose origins as a quotation, coupled with more recent general currency, present an important interpretive challenge. Distinction between idiomatic use and more specialised allusion can be crucial in libel litigation, in that qualification is allowed to the ‘ordinary reader’ test only in respect of so-called ‘innuendo’ meanings (or meanings available only to a sub-set readership with relevant, specialised knowledge). Discussion of semantic and pragmatic evidence suggests that linguists can valuably narrow the scope of plausible interpretation. Linguistic analysis can also contribute to understanding of both the ‘ordinary reader’ and ‘innuendo’ tests of meaning. Generalising from the case under discussion, the author comments on established methods for attributing meanings (and responsibility from meaning) in English libel law, and describes emergent tendencies in the related fields of forensic linguistics and critical legal studies

A story of rights: from word and conceptualisation to law and cultural narrative

Humanities scholars have recently begun to use the phrase ‘narrating rights’ as a way of describing an increasingly discussed area of intersection between legal, ethical, and literary topics. This article examines the conceptual basis and directions of that emergent area of work. It outlines features of ‘rights’ as generally understood in law, along with relevant associated issues; it explains how, in the complex history of the English word rights, that word has conveyed different, often contested notions which persist into contemporary thinking; and it concludes with comments and queries regarding the challenges which face studies in humanities in using ‘narrative’ as a way into understanding rights. In developing its arguments, the article highlights the interconnectedness of linguistic, literary and legal aspects of political and cultural topics, and encourages further interdisciplinary work

Exploring inferences prompted by reading a very short story.

Using the illustrative case of a very short story, which generates a large number of inferences that vary interestingly between readers of different social experiences, this article investigates the role in communication performed by inference. For L2 readers, questions of language proficiency are involved, to the extent that even slightly different linguistic formulation would prompt different lines of thinking. Questions of culture are also involved, to the extent that background assumptions combine with linguistic decoding to produce any given interpretation. Together, such linguistic and cultural elements constitute what we informally call comprehension or interpretation. Paying closer attention to the inferential dimension of discourse comprehension, I argue, can make a valuable contribution to language courses which try to bridge the gap between language teaching and literature teaching. My discussion takes the form of an informal report on experimentation with the three-sentence short story, used on a number of occasions and with different kinds of student-reader group

Meaning trouble-spots: critical discourse analysis and social engagement.

This chapter, originally published in Spanish, addresses the ‘outcome question’ which troubles any practice of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): what specific consequences, in terms of social action, are calculated or likely to follow from this form of critique? A range of strategies for social engagement commonly held to give direction to CDA are outlined, and problems inherent in such strategies are examined by means of a freeze-frame on a project in which the author was engaged

Reading cases in interdisciplinary studies of law and literature

This chapter examines how far the general concept of a 'case' is coherent if extended, in the field of law and literature, beyond legal cases to literary topics and to literary works with legal themes. It is suggested that invoking an undifferentiated sense of 'case' in interdisciplinary enquiry opens up interpretive possibilities but risks major vagueness and ambiguity. The second half of the chapter focuses on 'case reports' in law: the genre of publication usually known as 'law reports'. I explore how far genre considerations associated with law reports constrain the interpretive approaches that can be usefully brought to bear on them (as Posner and others have argued is the case for statutes and constitutions). The chapter concludes that close links between the formal characteristics and purposes of law reports do place obstacles in the way of alternative readings, but that those obstacles need not undermine an extended sense of interpretation which can result in illuminating critical readings. Against Posner’s wider claim that reflexiveness in interpretation is generally unhelpful, I argue that even highly insightful literary readings of particular legal cases are less important than increased self-consciousness as regards how meanings are created by interpretive practices that differ in important ways between law and literature

Noises offscreen: could a crisis of confidence be good for media studies?

In this article, I explore a number of current difficulties of definition and practice within media studies I suggest that, collectively, these may give rise to a 'crisis of confidence' in the field After assessing the relationship between media studies and other fields, especially English studies, I comment on three particular problems in media studies' issues of analytic method, issues of history and issues of language. Work in each of these areas has been made more, rather than less, problematic, as the result of media studies' evident aim of disentangling itself from the baggage of those disciplines from which it emerged historically I do not suggest that media studies is therefore without value. Far from it: the need is overwhelming But agreeing on the existence of a need does not guarantee the suitability of existing responses to that need - hence the questions I want to ask