Metalanguage instruction within an adult literacy program: Lexicogrammar as source for socially meaningful choices

Abstract

Lexicogrammar as a system for socially situated meaning-making (Systemic Functional Linguistics) and literacy pedagogy were the framework for metalanguage instruction, in close relation with the organization and the social objectives of different everyday texts, within the adult literacy program "Learning for Action" (Adult Education Centers, IDEKE). Our proposal consisted of literacy activities, within which socially situated texts and their social objective -realized through their lexicogrammar as well as through complementary semiotic systems - allow for critical language awareness and the consequent students' (linguistic) action. More particularly, we provide examples from our material, where lexicogrammatical realizations of field and tenor parameters (according to SFL) are used to "unlock the text" (metalanguage instruction), in order the students to comprehend how different lexicogrammatical choices are related to the purpose, the topic, the participants as well as the way in which language resources meet social objectives and therefore are ideologically loaded. In this paper, our main claim is that the approach about language and literacy proposed in this particular program contributes to the development of the "design of meanings" as examples of metalanguage instruction in our data illustrate. © Common Ground, Marianna Kondyli, Christina Lykou