Construction Grammar and English Language Teaching

This paper begins by noting that disappointments have been expressed with the communicative approach to language teaching, before discussing a number of problems involved in its implementation. This leads to the question of how English language teaching can attend to grammatical form, but without sacrificing the focus on communicative function. The paper then points to a convergence between strands of research in both theoretical and applied linguistics. In theoretical linguistics, the increasing prominence of ‘construction grammars\u27 resonates nicely with recent suggestions that ‘lexical phrases\u27 or ‘formulaic sequences\u27 should be given greater focus in language teaching. The rest of the paper goes on to consider the pedagogical value of the notion of a construction

Burdens' and 'handicaps' in Singapore's language policy: On the limits of language management

10.1007/s10993-009-9159-2Language Policy9297-11

Personal branding and the commodification of reflexivity

Reflexivity as a concept has produced theoretical debates which have explored the relationship of social actors to agency and identity. Less attention has been paid to reflexivity as a commodity, that is, to the forms of reflexivity that different actors display and to the appropriateness of these forms. Actors who display appropriate forms of reflexivity are likely to be treated differently from actors who do not display such forms, thus resulting in a differential distribution of agency. It is increasingly apparent that reflexivity is a desired commodity which is not available to everyone. In other words, reflexivity as commodity implicates reflexivity as cultural capital. This article explores these issues through an analysis of personal branding and considers how reflexivity and personal branding are in fact emergent from cultural production.Lionel Wee and Ann Brook

Constructing the source: Metaphor as a discourse strategy

10.1177/1461445605052191Discourse Studies73363-38

Reflexivity and the transformation of gender identity: Reviewing the potential for change in a cosmopolitan city

It has been claimed that the conditions of modernity create the opportunities as well as the need for social actors to take greater responsibility for their own identities. Feminist theorists have responded to such `celebratory' views of identity transformation with caution, emphasizing instead the situated nature of critical reflexivity and arguing that the opportunities for transformations in gender identity are far more limited than has been suggested by modernization theorists. In this article, the authors address this issue of the transformative potential of critical reflexivity by drawing upon Frankfurt's (1988) notion of second-order desires and Bonham's (1999) re-working of this in relation to Bourdieu's social theory. Illustrating the argument with data drawn from three case studies from Singapore, the authors show that where second-order desires result from deliberations and public debates — whether these are habituated or institutionalized, or not — transformations in conceptions of gender can and do emerge.Ann Brooks, Lionel We

Linguistic human rights and mobility

10.2167/jmmd492.0Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development284325-33