Power and Meaning Making in an EAP Classroom: Engaging with the Everyday 9781783092956

Citation preview

Power and Meaning Making in an EAP Classroom

CRITICAL LANGUAGE AND LITERACY STUDIES Series Editors: Professor Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, Professor Brian Morgan, Glendon College/York University, Toronto, Canada and Professor Ryuko Kubota, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Critical Language and Literacy Studies is an international series that encourages monographs directly addressing issues of power (its flows, inequities, distributions, trajectories) in a variety of language- and literacy-related realms. The aim with this series is twofold: (1) to cultivate scholarship that openly engages with social, political and historical dimensions in language and literacy studies, and (2) to widen disciplinary horizons by encouraging new work on topics that have received little focus (see below for partial list of subject areas) and that use innovative theoretical frameworks. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http:// www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. Other books in the series Collaborative Research in Multilingual Classrooms Corey Denos, Kelleen Toohey, Kathy Neilson and Bonnie Waterstone English as a Local Language: Post-colonial Identities and Multilingual Practices Christina Higgins The Idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language Philip Seargeant Gendered Identities and Immigrant Language Learning Julia Menard-Warwick China and English: Globalisation and the Dilemmas of Identity Joseph Lo Bianco, Jane Orton and Gao Yihong (eds) Language and HIV/AIDS Christina Higgins and Bonny Norton (eds) Hybrid Identities and Adolescent Girls: Being ‘Half’ in Japan Laurel D. Kamada Decolonizing Literacy: Mexican Lives in the Era of Global Capitalism Gregorio Hernandez-Zamora Contending with Globalization in World Englishes Mukul Saxena and Tope Omoniyi (eds) ELT, Gender and International Development: Myths of Progress in a Neocolonial World Roslyn Appleby Examining Education, Media, and Dialogue under Occupation: The Case of Palestine and Israel Ilham Nasser, Lawrence N. Berlin and Shelley Wong (eds) The Struggle for Legitimacy: Indigenized Englishes in Settler Schools Andrea Sterzuk Style, Identity and Literacy: English in Singapore Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places Alastair Pennycook Talk, Text and Technology: Literacy and Social Practice in a Remote Indigenous Community Inge Kral Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move Kimie Takahashi English and Development: Policy, Pedagogy and Globalization Elizabeth J. Erling and Philip Seargeant (eds) Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity Jan Blommaert

CRITICAL LANGUAGE AND LITERACY STUDIES: 19

Power and Meaning Making in an EAP Classroom Engaging with the Everyday

Christian W. Chun

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

This book is dedicated to my father, Chin Wai Chun (1926–2013) Thank you for everything, Dad

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Chun, Christian W., 1960Power and Meaning Making in an EAP Classroom: Engaging with the Everyday/ Christian W. Chun. Critical Language and Literacy Studies: 19 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers. 2. Academic writing —Study and teaching. 3. Literary form—Study and teaching. I. Title. PE1128.A2C493 2015 428.0071–dc23 2014033093 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-294-9 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-293-2 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2015 Christian W. Chun. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Techset Composition India (P) Ltd., Bangalore and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

Contents

Figures Acknowledgments Series Editors’ Preface

vii ix xiii

1

Introduction The Issue at Hand: What’s at Stake? Critically Engaging with the Everyday My Own Trajectories Toward EAP Teaching and Research A Debate in EAP New Directions for EAP An EAP Classroom Collaboration Contextualizing an EAP Program

1 2 3 7 10 13 14 20

2

An EAP Classroom Discourses in Place Classroom Practices: Winter (January–March) Term Collaborative Beginnings with the Teacher

25 25 28 38

3

Exploring the Making of Meanings Addressing Reading Subject Positions in the Spring Term A Beginning Conversation Putting it into Classroom Practice Static Personalities or Performativities with the Text? Discussion

41 43 51 57 62 64

4

The Multimodalities of Neoliberal Globalization Discourses in YouTube Videos Introduction The Local Nexus

68 68 71

v

vi

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

The Neoliberal Entrepreneur of the Self Discussion

88 92

5

Engaging with Neoliberalization Discourses, Part 2: Summer Term Class Introduction What is ‘Neoliberalization’? A Conversation with the Teacher Summer Term Class Engagements Discussion

96 96 98 99 110 119

6

Who is ‘Jennifer Wong’? Multiculturalism and the Model Minority Consumer Introduction ‘Integrated Immigrants’ as the Model Minority Examining Lexicogrammatical Choices and Truth Claims Who is ‘Jennifer Wong’? A Racializing Experience Who is Jennifer Wong Now? Discussion

123 123 126 130 134 139 145 149

7

Bringing the Political into an EAP Classroom? Introduction Disrupting Stereotypes of Non-Western Pedagogy Practices: A Prologue Constructing the Role of an Instructor in the Classroom Discussing ‘Teaching Politics in an ESL Classroom’ with Emilia

153 153

The Everyday Life of an EAP Classroom A Look Back at Evolving Classroom Practices Reflections on our Collaboration Interrogating the Critical: A Reflexive Account Commonalities of Critical Literacy Practices

181 181 187 192 194

References Index

199 210

8

160 163 172

Figures

Figure 2.1 The instructor’s classroom, Winter 2009 term

26

Figure 2.2 List of classroom rules, Winter 2009 term

26

Figure 2.3 Another list of rules in the classroom, Winter 2009 term

28

Figure 3.1 Emilia’s classroom, Spring and Summer terms

42

Figure 3.2 Student writing examples, Spring term

61

Figure 7.1 A student-generated comment from another class, posted in Emilia’s Summer term classroom

vii

154

Acknowledgments

The research and writing of any book invariably involves a community of people to help make it happen and this book is no exception. It simply would not have been possible without the participation, support, permission, advice and encouragement of the many involved, and I am grateful to all of them. I would first like to thank my participants, which include the EAP program where I collected the research data, the students who tolerated my ongoing presence in their classroom and, most importantly, the teacher who generously gave me so much of her time along with her effort, energy, patience and goodwill in participating in this research. She showed admirable courage in having an initially unknown researcher observe her classes for close to one year, displayed resilient confidence in opening up her teaching practices to questioning and change, and demonstrated incredible forbearance in accepting my requests for one meeting after another. I cannot thank her enough for this remarkable experience and for the privilege of being able to share in her teaching journey. I thank my PhD supervisor, Normand Labrie, who skillfully and carefully guided me throughout both my doctoral studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, and the writing of my dissertation, which is the basis of this book. I deeply appreciate his spending many hours of his time schooling me in the countless ways of becoming an academic scholar and professional. I thank him here for all his help, both personally and professionally. He set an exemplary model of intellectual and personal integrity for me to follow in my career. I thank my editors, Alastair Pennycook, Ryuko Kubota and especially Brian Morgan, whose work has had an incredible influence on me because of his longstanding EAP research and classroom praxis, a model to which this book aspires, and one that I hope has done it justice. His extensive and insightful feedback on my manuscripts in the past six years has greatly shaped my thinking on many of the issues presented here, and continues to influence and resonate in my research and teaching. ix

x

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

I also thank the Multilingual Matters staff, including Kim Eggleton, Tommi Grover and Anna Roderick for their forbearance and understanding in seeing this book to print. Sarah Benesch’s work on critical EAP has been an important guide in my own EAP classroom, and a continuing source of important inspiration and ideas for my research. My collaborative work with the participating teacher could not have taken the shape it did without her ideas, advice and support. I can only hope that this book is but a small contribution to her groundbreaking research and work in critical EAP. I deeply appreciate her early mentorship, ongoing support and friendship always. Another very close colleague and friend I would like to thank is Stephanie Vandrick, whose important work has also been a significant influence on me. Her words of wisdom, guidance, incredible warmth, encouragement and good cheer have been invaluable over the past seven years I have known her, and particularly throughout the process of writing this book. I also thank Suhanthie Motha, Angel Lin and Ena Lee for their friendship, collegiality, ideas and support. I have been fortunate to have a number of fantastic work colleagues, some of whom have provided excellent mentorship and others who have become good friends along the way. They include: Bessie Karras-Lazaris at California State University at Northridge; Donna Brinton, Rob Filback, Eleanor Eskey, and Heather Robertson at the University of Southern California; and Rodney Jones, John Flowerdew, Martha Pennington, Jane Lockwood, Stephen Bremner, Matthew Peacock, Jackie Jia Lou, David Gruber and Tracey Costley at City University of Hong Kong. I gratefully acknowledge the following publishers for permission to reprint previously published material in amended form: Chun, C.W. The multimodalities of globalization: Teaching a YouTube video in an EAP classroom. Research in the Teaching of English 47 (2), 145–170. Copyright 2012 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted with permission. Chun, C.W. The ‘neoliberal citizen’: Resemiotizing globalized identities in EAP materials. In J. Gray (ed.) Critical Perspectives on Language Teaching Materials (pp. 64–87). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Copyright 2013 by Palgrave Macmillan. Reprinted with permission. I would also like to thank several close friends and colleagues whom I first met at OISE: Julie Byrd Clark, Mario Lopez-Gopar, Jennifer Shade Wilson, Robert Kohls and Stephanie Arnott.

Acknowledgment s

xi

A shout-out also goes to Martha Atwell, Thomas Curtin, Paul Knobloch and Edward Hull, who have always been there for me over the years. My mother Betty L. Chun, and my sister Lorraine Ng have both given me much love in my life. I thank Jessie Noguchi (whose painting graces the cover of this book) for her unstinting love and support, including encouraging me to go back to graduate school, and then putting in countless hours of work which gave me the time to do the work that was the basis of this book. Her sacrifices can never be repaid; the very least I can do is to gratefully acknowledge her contributions here. Lastly, I dedicate this book to my father, Chin Wai Chun. Thank you, Dad, for all you have done for me.

Series Editors’ Preface

Christian Chun’s new book, Power and Meaning Making in an EAP Classroom: Engaging with the Everyday represents a unique contribution to the Critical Language and Literacy Studies series. It is the first close examination of pedagogical relationships and practices within an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) setting. Other series contributors, notably Lillis and Curry (2013), have discussed EAP texts and genres within the broader context of a ‘global knowledge economy’ and the pressures and inequalities experienced by periphery scholars increasingly compelled to publish their research in English (cf. Erling & Seargeant, 2013). A complementary strength of Chun’s book is its detailed and localized perspective on how such EAP work gets done, illuminating the multiple ways in which EAP curricula and materials are mediated or ‘resemiotized’ (Iedema, 2003; Scollon, 2008) and the forms of teacher–student identity negotiation that are integral to this process. Everyday classroom practices, Chun persuasively argues, are infused with power relations as well as opportunities for change through forms of critical engagement that challenge hegemonic meanings and the social paralyses they project onto classrooms and communities. Through the re-semiotization of a business school video on globality, as in one example (Chapter 4), Chun invites teachers and students to imagine and act upon dominant norms such as a global knowledge economy in ways that go beyond face-value facts and the demands they place on schooling (i.e. the prioritization of human capital as a policy and curricular outcome). Such evidence of change does not come about from immediate or causally direct sources. Chun’s interview data with Emilia, the EAP teacher central to this study, reveal a long-term building up of trust and mutual respect through the fostering of a collaborative research relationship similar to those characterized in the Denos, Toohey, Neilson and Waterstone (2009) contribution to this series. Thus, the critical EAP literacies and practices documented in this text reflect cumulative, dialogic and deeply reflexive processes: Chun’s careful attention to the power imbalance between xiii

xiv

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

academic researcher and practitioner, and his subsequent willingness to critique and re-present challenging theories in ways relevant to practice; and Emilia’s willingness to explore these new ideas and her own evolving sense of agency in her teaching. The transformative significance of the ‘everyday’ emerges in these interview transcripts. It is realized in the seemingly insignificant ways in which both researcher and practitioner take up earlier lessons, and through their conversations reflect on alternatives, for example, on how a pedagogical grammar informed by systemic functionalism and critical linguistics (cf. Janks, 2010) might offer EAP students an enhanced awareness of language and power and the positioning of readers/viewers not previously considered. The seeds of such conversations – what Pennycook (2012) has described as ‘critical moments’ – often arise in unplanned ways in future classes, through new explanations and connections that highlight the role of language as a social practice. Chun’s book clearly shows such pedagogical developments and in ways that resonate with both teacher experience and scholarly insight. This draws attention to a key issue raised by Chun and indeed all of the contributors to the Critical Language and Literacy Studies series: What does it mean to be critical? Is it determined by intentions, outcomes or contexts? Is it possible or desirable to establish a position from which criticality can be judged or is it inevitably always perspectival? To what extent is criticality programmatic, defined by generalizable principles, practices or content – the stereotypical ‘hot button issues’ often associated with critical work, as Chun notes? What kinds of texts, literacies and practices are most supportive: analytic, multimodal, emotional, embodied or ethical? Why and how are issues of language, power and identity addressed? Chun explores such questions throughout the various chapters and themes that comprise this book. The issue of context and specificity for Chun is inspired by Benesch’s (2001, 2012) notion of critical EAP, in which awareness of language and power are seen as complements, rather than substitutes, for academic language proficiencies. From this perspective, critical EAP does not ignore the need for students to develop their capacity to operate in academic contexts; rather it argues that they are better equipped to do so if they are more aware of relations of language and power, and better able to challenge epistemological and linguistic norms. Toward such integrated proficiency/awareness, Chun finds Hallidayan social semiotics of particular relevance for understanding the lexico-grammatical bases of disciplinary genres and texts (cf. Schleppegrell, 2004). Chun also addresses the geopolitics of the kinds of university-based intensive English programs where his study takes place. Increasingly, such programs are crucial to the internationalisation strategies of center-based academies, whose aggressive marketing campaigns and

Ser ies Editors’ Pref ace

xv

globally sanitized curricula align with student identity and desire in complex ways (e.g. Chowdhury & Phan, 2014; Kubota, 2009; Motha & Lin, 2014; Takahashi, 2013) and whose increasingly elite demographic poses specific challenges for critical work (e.g. Vandrick, 2011). Of note, researcher narrative and identity – Chun’s own racialized experiences of being and becoming Chinese-American – are utilized as key critical resources in the resemiotization of an EAP course reading (i.e. ‘Who is “Jennifer Wong”? Multiculturalism and the Model Minority Consumer’, Chapter 6). Chun’s self-reflexive intervention in Chapter 6 and elsewhere underpins a foundational principle for critical work, one of many important generalizations (see, for example, Commonalities of Critical Literacy Practices, Chapter 8) that he sees as both informing and emerging from the specificities of his study. As Chun both argues and demonstrates, the positionality and partiality of a critical researcher are to be embraced rather than eschewed. On one level, forms of writing that foreground researcher familiarity and intimacy (i.e. narrative, auto-ethnography, story-telling) help readers to better assess the transferability of critical pedagogies and literacies to other pedagogical sites. On another level, personalized forms of writing add greater transparency to the partiality of all knowledge claims, challenging research epistemologies whose purported scientificity and objectivity are projected through particular textual and lexico-grammatical practices, a pedagogical issue that Chun repeatedly raises in support of a critical EAP informed by social semiotics and critical linguistics. In common with other recent contributions to this series – Blommaert’s (2013) exploration of superdiversity through the signage in his Berchem neighborhood or Pennycook’s (2012) investigation of language and mobility via familial roots in faraway places – Chun’s critical writing often has the feel of a journey, a search for oneself as much as a description of events and practices in the classroom. Although the rhetorical effectiveness of this type of textual juxtaposition is still being explored, its appeal to and alignment with practitioners’ experiences is more certain. In a recent chapter titled, ‘Regrounding Critical Literacy’, Allan Luke (2013) reminds us that all critical literacies and pedagogies entail normative claims and demands upon students. Whether we prefer literacies that are ‘emancipatory modernist’ in orientation or, instead, those that ‘problematize givens’ (Pennycook, 2001) based on strategies more characteristic of poststructuralism (Norton & Morgan, 2013), Luke urges us to always look beyond the discursive mediations we perceive and deploy; critical literacies in and of themselves are inadequate for an effective politics of change unless they include a commitment to investigating material facts that precede and/or exceed their codification: ‘Unpacking the relationship between discourse

xvi

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

representation and reality remains the core question of critical literacy as theory and practice’ (Luke, 2013: 146). Numerous lessons in this important book achieve the kinds of critical syntheses for which Luke advocates. Consider the issue of neoliberalism – a key concern for Chun – and the debilitating uniformity it has inflicted through bland curricula and system-wide forms of measurement and accountability. For many readers, Chun’s localized strategy of critical EAP literacies and teacher agency comes as a welcome and ‘grounded’ response to the deterministic doom and gloom that often frames current critiques of neoliberalism. Others may find the scope and pace of his interventions too limited and overly optimistic in their transformative potential. Regardless, readers should consider the worldly praxis that underpins Chun’s efforts, specifically his commitment to social justice education as a voluntary faculty member of the People’s Collective University during the Occupy Los Angeles movement in 2011. Chun’s (2012) public lecture/video on ‘Critical Language in Action’ is exemplary and inspiring for the audience at hand and for those who continue to view it. Clearly on display is a public intellectual whose critical engagement in ‘everyday’ realities beyond the classroom enriches and invigorates his work within. We anticipate that this book will be equally inspiring. Brian Morgan Alastair Pennycook Ryuko Kubota

1

Introduction

This book is about a teacher and her English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes, and what happened when she began collaborating with a researcher over the course of several terms. Although she hadn’t known him beforehand, she graciously allowed him to observe her teaching, audio- and videorecord her classes, take copious notes while doing so, and interview her numerous times. I am the researcher she worked with for most of that year. I had taught English language learners (ELLs) for 18 years prior to working with her, and my critical pedagogy practices (Chun, 2009a) informed how I initially conceptualized and planned my EAP classroom research with another teacher. However, I hadn’t fully considered how my own embodied histories of critical EAP teaching practices, approaches and theories would be questioned and problematized when I stepped into this teacher’s classroom. As the dialogic collaborative process gradually developed between us, a praxis arose. The theories and literature addressing EAP pedagogy and curriculum, language learning, critical literacies and meaning making we read together, discussed and sometimes argued over found their way into the teacher’s attempts to implement some of these approaches in her classroom. What emerged from these developing practices further provided a basis for our ongoing shared reflections and discussions. We of course had no way of knowing at first how these dynamics would play out in her classroom in the way it did, but in the end this praxis proved far richer and more meaningful than either of us could ever have predicted. What follows then is the unfolding of this praxis of meaning making between us and the texts and practices we explored, the meanings made by her and the students in the classroom, and the ensuing pathways that continually redirected ways of thinking, seeing and engaging with the language, texts, discourses and representations of the everyday. 1

2

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

The Issue at Hand: What’s at Stake? In chronicling the teacher’s practices and ensuing approaches with her students over the course of several terms in her advanced level EAP reading and writing classes, I aim to illustrate the challenges of applying critical theories and approaches to daily classroom encounters and engagements with language, texts and discourses. This will be addressed in part through exploring how particular discourses in circulation were taken up, mediated, co-constructed and recontextualized by the teacher’s and students’ making of complex meanings from texts, videos, discussions, actions and the world at large. The EAP classroom is a site of power, agency and multiple meaning makings. These are practiced, displayed and realized in various ways and to varying degrees, depending on who is doing what, and the multimodal modes of social-semiotic resources including language, discourse and texts that are privileged, utilized and materially available. These include the institutional and academic texts used in the classroom, the power-laden forms of discourses constructing and circulating these texts, and the ways in which teachers and students choose to address and interact with these discourses by adding, layering, interweaving and/or resisting with their own lived and common-sense discourses. Their ensuing discourses in a classroom may reflect alignments to varying degrees with privileged and dominant meanings or equally may contest these, and they can also be complex combinations of both at times, even within the span of an utterance. As a site of power relations involved in the often privileged institutional and societal making of meanings, and the continuing struggle over whose meanings count and are heard beyond the immediate four walls, the EAP classroom is thus inescapably political. By the term ‘political’, I mean it in the dynamic mobile sense of what Janks (2010) defined as politics with an uppercase ‘P’ and a lowercase ‘p’. In her formulation, ‘Politics’ is what most people might immediately think of: governmental policies and debates revolving around socioeconomic systemic relations impacting us in material ways through conflicts over scarce resources, ongoing climate change, accompanying economic crises and collapses, and so on. In the case of ‘politics’, this attends to the ways in which we directly and indirectly imbricate those discourses and practices of Politics within our everyday lives and beliefs. This can be manifested, for example, in the way we might treat others whom we view as Othered, whether based on mediated notions of gender, racial, class and/or sexual differences. As Janks (2010: 188) points out, ‘while the social constructs who we are, so do we construct the social’. Politics and politics are

Introduc t ion

3

inextricably intertwined, sometimes obviously and at other times less so, but they are both present in various forms via discourses and practices in the EAP classroom. The increase of multimodalities in the officially sanctioned curriculum texts (e.g. Kress, 2010; Stein, 2008) as well as the outside texts often found in the same classroom – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and so on that are accessed by students on their laptops, smartphones and other digital devices – have helped to disseminate discourses already circulating in and through the classroom via the traditional textbooks, teacher talk and institutional texts. These need to be addressed as well inasmuch as ELLs face a daunting array of power-laden discourses they need to learn and engage with in their various academic, institutional and societal forms. Those who have had immediate and available access to the various resources of cultural, social and material capital have been able to decode, understand, embody, rework and rewrite these discourses to their advantage. But for those who don’t have access to these resources, then what? Will these students be able to speak back to the spheres of power and attendant meaning makings that help shape and attempt to fix the representations (Hall, 1997; Hall et al., 2013) of the world featured both in their classroom and outside texts? How can teachers address these representations with their students so that they can make sense of these discourses while learning how to make sense of the language and other equally important meaning-making modes that constitute and are constitutive of these discourses and representations? And what are the ways in which EAP classroom practices can facilitate deeper and more productive engagements with these texts so that both teachers and students become more active readers of the everyday featured in these materials? This book addresses these questions by looking at the teacher’s EAP classes over three terms.

Critically Engaging with the Everyday Because the EAP classroom is a site of power, then critical approaches and practices can be seen as being appropriate to language learning to engage with the dimensions of power ELLs face in their classroom, school and society. But what do I mean by the term ‘the critical’, and how will it be used in this book? The Italian political theorist and philosopher Antonio Gramsci argued that everyone is a philosopher in the sense that they articulate what he called a ‘spontaneous philosophy’ (Gramsci, 1971: 323). As he viewed it, this spontaneous philosophy is embodied in three domains: (1) language, ‘which is a totality of determined notions and concepts’ (Gramsci, 1971: 323); (2) popular

4

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

religion including folklore beliefs, superstitions and opinions; and (3) common sense and good sense. For Gramsci, the distinction between common and good sense is important because the latter term refers to the practical common sense meaning in English language usage. In contrast, ‘common sense’ refers to how people often hold sometimes incoherent and contradictory views and conceptions of how things ‘really’ are in the world or, as Hall and O’Shea (2013: 8) define it, ‘a form of “everyday thinking” which offers us frameworks of meaning with which to make sense of the world’. It is important that this common sense is not regarded as or confused with ideological ‘false consciousness’ in the traditional Marxist sense (as Engels would have it) in that there is a sort of distorting lens that people must take off to actually see the world as it is, using true cognition (science). Common sense is instead ‘contradictory – it contains elements of truth as well as elements of misrepresentation’ (Forgacs, 2000: 421). As such, Gramsci pointed out that common sense is not rigid or immobile but in constant dynamic transformation, as this composite logic of truth and misrepresentations contains a ‘healthy nucleus . . . the part of it which can be called “good sense” and which deserves to be made more unitary and coherent’ (Gramsci, 1971: 328). And it is these elements of good sense as part of the nucleus within common sense that give this construct a much more nuanced dimension than the use of ‘ideology’. This healthy nucleus of good sense contains the ‘apparently obvious taken-for-granted understandings that express a sense of unfairness and injustice about “how the world works”’ (Hall & O’Shea, 2013: 10). This is apparent in both the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party Movement in the United States, for both have expressed outrage about the growing inequalities in society but each attribute these injustices to different agents at times (corporations and ‘the 1%’ versus the government) due to their differing everyday thinking. Thus, being critical means taking on this important idea that ‘common sense is a site of political struggle’ (Hall & O’Shea, 2013: 10) and, as explained above, political in both senses of the larger macro ‘Politics’ and the micro but equally important ‘politics’, both of which comprise our everyday lives. And inasmuch as the sedimentations of common sense allow ‘us to hold contradictory opinions simultaneously, and to take up contradictory subject-positions’ (Hall & O’Shea, 2013: 11), the classroom is an arena in which this is played out as both teachers and students take on different subject-positions as they engage with the discourses circulating in and through the classroom site. It is how ‘the field of discourse is constituted at any particular moment in time’ (Hall & O’Shea, 2013: 17) and how this relates to the participants’ meaning making that will be central focus of this book. And it is precisely the struggles over common-sense meaning makings by motivated power attempting to fix these

Introduc t ion

5

meanings so that specific representations and discourses are naturalized (Hall, 1997; Hall et al., 2013) that calls into being resistance and, hence, critical practices and approaches. It is our desires for the ability, agency and, importantly, the spaces (Lefebvre, 1991b) in which to exercise and create our representations, identities, performativities, narratives and sense of not only this world, but of the possibilities that can change the everyday. The critical involves more than speaking back to power or speaking truth to power; it holds out and nurtures these budding good sense practices, beliefs and views that can sustain and, indeed, mobilize us in working to redistribute power relations, be they the social relations of production, gender inequalities, racial discrimination and oppression, or the policing of sexual preferences and identifications. Accordingly, then, it is also productive to employ Raymond Williams’ concept of hegemony, drawn upon Gramsci’s work, that reverberates throughout this book. For Williams (1977: 108), hegemony relates ‘the whole social process to specific distributions of power and influence’. Hegemony is ‘not only the conscious system of ideas and beliefs, but the whole lived social process as practically organized by specific and dominant meanings and values’ (Williams, 1977: 109), in effect saturating our ‘whole process of living . . . of the whole substance of lived identities and relationships’ (Williams, 1977: 110). In his view, hegemony should not be seen as ‘ideology’ in the false consciousness sense, and is ‘not to be understood at the level of mere opinion or mere manipulation’ (Williams, 1980: 38). Instead, he conceptualized it as ‘a whole body of practices and expectations, over the whole of living; our senses and assignments of energy, our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world’ (Williams, 1977: 110). Constituting ‘a sense of reality for most people in society’, hegemony is ‘a lived system of meanings and values – constitutive and constituting – which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming’ (Williams, 1977: 110). Inasmuch as hegemony ‘does not just passively exist as a form of dominance’ but instead must be continually ‘renewed, recreated, defended, and modified’ (Williams, 1977: 112), the task of being critical is to create counter-hegemonic discourses and representations in resisting, opposing and displacing hegemonic, dominant ones. Therefore, the purpose of any critical analysis is to question how to ‘grasp the hegemonic in its active and formative but also its transformational processes’ (Williams, 1977: 113). These processes occur in what I will be referring to as ‘the everyday’ in this book. This notion is taken from the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s (1984, 1987, 1988, 1991a) conceptual framework of the everyday: The everyday is ambiguous and contradictory. . . . It is lived experience (le vécu) elevated to the status of a concept and to language. And this is

6

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

done not to accept it but, on the contrary, to change it, for this everyday is modifiable and transformable, and its transformation must be an important part of a ‘project for society’. A revolution cannot just change the political personnel or institutions; it must change la vie quotidienne, which has already been literally colonized by capitalism. (Lefebvre, 1988: 80) Lefebvre’s concept of everyday life incorporates contradictory formations of daily life (la vie quotidienne), the everyday (le quotidien) and everydayness (la quotidienneté): Let us simply say about daily life that it has always existed, but permeated with values, with myths. The word everyday designates the entry of this daily life into modernity: the everyday as an object of a programming (d’une programmation), whose unfolding is imposed by the market, by the system of equivalences, by marketing and advertisements. As to the concept of ‘everydayness’, it stresses the homogenous, the repetitive, the fragmentary in everyday life. I have also stated that the everyday, in the modern world, has ceased to be a ‘subject’ (abundant in possible subjectivity) to become an ‘object’ (object of social organization). (Lefebvre, 1988: 87) Thus, ‘if everydayness designates the homogeneity and repetitiveness of daily life, the “everyday” represents the space and agency of its transformation and critique’ (Roberts, 2006: 67). The everyday is ‘not just a space of critical decoding . . . but also a place of active dissent from everydayness’ (Roberts, 2006: 67). My adopting of Lefebvre’s view of the everyday situates the EAP classroom as a nodal point of a network that stretches from the specific locale of the university program to the urban nexus of a North American city, through which globalized flows of immigrants, expatriates, refugees and international elite students are channeled, all embodying disparate and common cultural and historical lived experiences. These experiences are present in any classroom at particular junctures in history. How are the teacher’s and students’ daily lives that are permeated with their own lived values and myths re-situated and recontextualized through mediated social actions and interactions in an EAP classroom? Inasmuch as many ‘doing school’ practices can be seen as ‘everydayness’ in their repetitive and mundane drills and lessons, one function of the critical is the ongoing attempts to reclaim the everyday to be a subject rather than an object of social organization. How and why are the experiences of the everyday represented, reproduced, contested and reified in EAP classrooms?

Introduc t ion

7

The critical intervention in the everyday is to acknowledge these daily lives and re-examine the everydayness that constitute any classroom. Much of class time may consist of ‘drill and kill’ lessons, and ‘chalk and talk’ pedagogy; yet there is much that is going on in the classroom that may not be acknowledged or may be simply ignored: thoughts, daydreams, fantasies, imagination, feelings, desires and ideas. Lefebvre viewed everyday life in its alternative radical potentialities as ‘a place where creative energy is stored in readiness for new creations . . . a moment made of moments . . . the dialectical interaction that is the inevitable starting point for the realization of the possible’ (Lefebvre, 1984: 14). The aim of a critical EAP pedagogy is to transform the everydayness of the classroom into a space of creative, dialogic and dialectical interactions in order to acknowledge and articulate the imaginings of the possible.

My Own Trajectories Toward EAP Teaching and Research What led me to become a researcher committed to addressing the cultural, social and political processes of English language education in society from critical perspectives? I arrived at this juncture via various roads. I grew up hearing stories of my great-grandfather’s and grandparents’ efforts and difficulties in learning English and adjusting to the US after leaving China in the 1920s. I witnessed the struggles of my parents, who were raised in Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side in Manhattan, to raise my sisters and me in Queens, New York City, and then later in the suburbs of Long Island. Growing up as a hyphenated American with the attendant, almost inevitable question, ‘Where are you from?’, shaped and directed my sense of cultural identity. At times, I was reminded by none-too-subtle remarks that we weren’t full members of the community with the rights and access that some, with their valued forms of symbolic and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984), have seen as their sole province. It has been in this context of being born an American but not always recognized as such that I sometimes felt at times an outsider. This feeling informed and shaped my interactions with ELLs and international graduate students, who voice their own sentiments of cultural strangeness and dislocations. One incident illustrates this dislocation. When I began my undergraduate studies, I met with a counselor to plan my course of study. I confided that I had trouble adjusting to college life and its culture, living away from my family for the first time, and the school’s somewhat remote cultural location in rural eastern Pennsylvania. The counselor nodded, and proceeded to tell

8

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

me I should overcome these ‘inconveniences’ and ‘adjust better’ because, in his exact words, ‘you don’t want to end up being a coolie someday, do you?’ Too shocked and dumbfounded to protest this racialized labeling, I mumbled my acknowledgement and quickly left his office, never to return. I first became aware of social class during this time. The majority of students at my undergraduate school were from upper middle-class and upper-class backgrounds, while I was from a working-class background, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Seemingly ‘middle class’, I grew up in a comfortable suburban home on a cul-de-sac with neighbors who were doctors, lawyers and teachers. There were the proverbial two cars in the driveway. However, my parents had not gone to college and in fact my father quit high school to join the US Army and never completed his degree. After finishing his military service, he worked at a variety of jobs including bartending before eventually becoming a manager and co-owner of a Chinese restaurant. So although he and my mother were able eventually to achieve a decent living that technically put us in the middle class based on their income level, their lived cultural, historical and occupational identities complicated this picture. Part of my parents’ lived identities involved transmitting to us their economic anxieties stemming from the precariousness of running a small business upon which our middle-class life was tenuously based. This anxiety was expressed in their admonishing me to join the ranks of the professionals, where presumably one could not lose one’s livelihood. My parents’ identities and their interactions with my own sense of self illuminate how social class is not easily reducible to static categories such as income brackets, but rather is partly constructed from these very cultural dynamics of lived identities and experiences. This became increasingly apparent to me in college, and was highlighted in one of my economics seminars when a professor asked the class how many of the students’ fathers had a university degree. Every hand in the room went up immediately, with mine slowly going up to cover my embarrassment at the time, already acutely conscious about being the only ‘visible’ minority in this classroom. It was obvious to me that many of my classmates felt assured they would easily follow the path of their professional parent(s), whereas at the time I was far from feeling certain that I would manage to become someone my parents had never been. Although I was an outsider in college based on both my race and class background, I was fortunate to have several professors who helped me make sense of these experiences through their introductions to critiques of political economy and cultural studies. It was my first exposure to critical theories and politics, which proved useful for my subsequent work in Los Angeles in the late 1980s as an organizer, canvasser and activist for a national action

Introduc t ion

9

group involved in anti-war politics and anti-interventions in Central America. This formative experience of canvassing disparate neighborhoods and meeting and engaging with people from varied social, class and cultural backgrounds in highly stratified Los Angeles strengthened my desire to help effect change for a more socially just society. I started teaching ELLs in 1991 at a privately owned English language school in Koreatown, Los Angeles, and a little more than a year later, the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney King case sparked the uprising within and across local impoverished communities. A jury of 12 people acquitted three White Los Angeles police officers accused of excessive force, while arresting Rodney King, an African American, on the night of 2 March 1991. The incident was captured on video by a bystander and was shown repeatedly by the media. The news of the acquittal triggered the revolt by some in the Los Angeles African American community due in part to the extensive history of what local activists have described as police brutality in their communities. This had an immediate and personal impact on many of my immigrant students’ lives and occupations since they lived and worked in adjacent neighborhoods. My classroom became something more than a place to instruct students about syntactically correct sentences in another language; it was transformed by them into a dynamic, dialogical space where their demands for an understanding of the complex issues and social realities confronting them daily could be articulated and heard. In this transformed classroom, my teaching practices were called to draw upon both their perspectives and others that could critically address with them the literally combustible sociopolitical context in which their English language learning was taking place. My evolving teaching practices were further shaped at several Intensive English Programs (IEPs). Inasmuch as these programs’ high tuition rates (typically over $2000 for an 8- or 10-week term) were prohibitive for many immigrant students, I was now teaching a more ‘privileged international student’ (Vandrick, 1995: 375). Not all of my international IEP students were affluent as measured by living standards in North America; a good percentage came from families who saved and sacrificed to send them to study in the US. However, compared with many of my adult immigrant students who struggled to make ends meet, my IEP students were relatively wealthier and younger. Thus, my role in this EAP classroom context shifted from expressing solidarity with the everyday struggles of immigrant students and working with them to find solutions, to being positioned at times by some of my affluent international students as a type of hired help – an educational caregiver, essentially. However, although my pedagogical practices took on a different hue with these students, their own roles were in

10

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

flux, whether it was being a privileged member in their country’s elite at one moment or an anxious academic outsider the next. I began to highlight with my students the ways in which the oppressions many faced based on their gender, nationality, non-native English speaker status and so on were interrelated with the oppression some engaged in through their privileged roles in their home countries. I was beginning to realize how my critical pedagogy approaches were being dynamically recontextualized with different students in changing classroom contexts, but these different classrooms were all interwoven into the larger inescapable social and cultural fabric of our times.

A Debate in EAP EAP courses function as a bridge and a lifeline for many ELLs planning to pursue higher education in North America. For international and immigrant students, the primary aim of EAP is to introduce the language and linguistic resources they will need to pursue post-secondary education and to succeed once they enter a tertiary institution. Providing linguistic and language support is therefore crucial in helping to realize these students’ aspirations in higher education. Inasmuch as academic language is the ‘hidden curriculum’ of schooling (Christie, 1985), it is imperative to render more explicitly in the classroom how meaning and knowledge are typically produced through this language, which differs so significantly from everyday language (Cummins, 2000; Schleppegrell, 2004). Without this support, the students’ difficulties in completing a post-secondary degree mount and failure to do so may adversely impact their subsequent life trajectories. And particularly for immigrant students, how EAP is implemented has important ramifications for societies that claim to be multicultural and tolerant. The goal of EAP has traditionally been to teach students how certain academic discourses and genres are constructed in universities; however, as Benesch noted, there have been efforts by scholars such as Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998), Master (1998) and Swales (1994) ‘to move EAP beyond its traditional pragmatic orientation’ (Benesch, 2001: xv). Indeed, Swales, one of the pioneers in genre analysis – which has dominated EAP research for so long that it has been described as ‘a veritable industry’ (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001: 16) – has reassessed EAP with regard to its role in the cultural politics of international education (Pennycook, 1994) and linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992). Swales’ reconsideration either ‘coincided’ (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001: 21) with the critical turn in EAP (e.g. Benesch, 1993, 1996; Pennycook, 1997), or was formed in response to the emerging critical

Introduc t ion

11

researchers and theorists in TESOL/Applied Linguistics in the 1990s. This concern of EAP as being either a pragmatic or a critical discipline (e.g. Benesch, 1993, 2001; Hyland, 2006; Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002; Pennycook, 1997) prompted Hyland and Hamp-Lyons (2002: 9) to ask, ‘is the EAP teacher’s job to replicate and reproduce existing forms of discourse (and thus power relations) or to develop an understanding of them so they can be challenged?’ They themselves maintained that a ‘social-theoretical stance is needed to fully understand what happens in institutions to make discourses the way they are’ (Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002: 9). Yet pedagogy in EAP that interrogates institutional and social power relations and their discourses (e.g. Benesch, 2001; Morgan, 2009) has provoked skepticism from some scholars, this despite critical pedagogy work which has been done with ELLs (e.g. Gebhard et al., 2008). For example, Haque (2007) referred to the debates about whether critical pedagogy is ‘appropriate’ in EAP since the overwhelming majority of EAP students are international students planning to enter university (Crookes, 1999, as cited by Haque, 2007). Haque argued that ‘simple critique and action within the EAP classroom may in fact serve to further marginalize, instead of empower, the students and ultimately jeopardize the fulfillment of their agendas’ (Haque, 2007: 94). This debate is framed as being between the need for the pragmatic approach, i.e. teaching students the tools to get into the university and succeed once there, and the critical approach that would enable students to critically deconstruct the very discourses with which they need to be conversant in the academy (e.g. Benesch, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2006; Pennycook, 1997). As both Benesch (1993) and Pennycook (1997) pointed out, however, the pragmatic argument is itself political since teaching is never neutral, and these discourses of neutrality in which arguments for pragmatism are embedded allow ‘for a view that EAP operates as a service industry to provide students with access to a neutral body of knowledge’ (Pennycook, 1997: 263). Critical pedagogies approaches (e.g. Norton & Toohey, 2004) should not be seen as distracting or even detracting from English language learning because it can help facilitate meaning making in the classroom for both students and teachers. By engaging ELLs more deeply with EAP curriculum materials through closer interrogation of hegemonic discourses and the language constructing these, it can develop their academic literacy skills. Through these engagements, students would have more opportunities to learn how language and discourse work, and thus develop a meta-awareness of how certain discourses may attempt to position them, or offer reading positions they may not always be willing to accept. Particularly in any societal context in which there are immigrant ELLs whose subsequent life

12

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

trajectories can be impacted by their lack of access to economic, cultural and social resources valued by the dominant elite, such an approach can help to develop their critical literacy skills needed for participatory voices in society so that they too may have a chance to be heard along with more privileged others. In contrast, to what extent is it realistic to expect that many of the international EAP students will engage in productive dialogues on the interconnections between everyday life and the systemic processes that facilitate or constrain their choices and lives? For teachers and students, should there be the sole expectation to teach and learn EAP in order for students to overcome a gatekeeping hurdle in entering into disciplinary discourse communities, or can it also be taught and learned in ways so as to critically engage with how academic language constructs content and discourse? Does one necessarily exclude the other? I believe that in order for EAP students to become fully integrated into academic discourse communities, they first need to understand how discourses work at all levels. This can be accomplished through a toolkit that includes a functional grammar perspective (Schleppegrell, 2004) leading to a critical language awareness (Janks & Ivanic, 1992) to help deconstruct and decipher the difficult academic discourses that could ‘increase their level of engagement not only in academic life but also in public issues’ (Benesch, 2006: 50). It is also a language awareness of how they construct their own discourses in articulation with institutional and authorial discourses, and accompanying motivated interests involving power and societal control. And since public and administrative policies such as the high-stakes testing of TOEFL and IELTS, public university budget cuts affecting program and course availability, and high tuition fees levied on international students all directly affect EAP students, potential mobilization on these concerns is not impossible to imagine. It is important in the classroom to address how these disciplinary discourses and their institutionally facilitated power/knowledge formations are linked to the world at large, so they make sense contextually to the students. Lacking this crucial contextual knowledge is one very important reason why many EAP students have trouble understanding academic discourse, especially when they are solely taught from the cognitive second language acquisition (SLA) framework such as attention to language repair and focus on form or a non-critical genre analysis leading to formulaic approaches. However, in the end, it will be up to these students who are equipped with an expanding toolkit reflecting a sophisticated knowledge of the workings of discourse to choose between challenging these discourses of power and authority or reproducing them at will. But the choice will be theirs.

Introduc t ion

13

New Directions for EAP Within the past 10 years or so, a rapidly expanding research area has important implications for EAP classroom practices. In this era of digital textual practices, Hyland and Hamp-Lyons (2002: 8) astutely observed over 12 years ago that ‘the ability to produce and understand text-visual interrelations is now an essential component of an academic literacy, and EAP research is struggling to understand and detail these meanings’. The research that addresses multimodal learning in the classroom (e.g. Cole & Pullen, 2010; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, 2009; Janks, 2010; Jewitt, 2006; Kress, 2003, 2010; Kress et al., 2001, 2005; Lankshear & Knobel, 2011; Lemke, 2002, 2006; Rowsell, 2013; Stein, 2004, 2008) has provided rich insights into the pedagogies and practices evolving around the increasing multimodality in and across academic texts including the visual and aural modes of a web-based stream of videos, images and music on various social media platforms. Because of their complex mediating processes, we need to continue developing deeper understandings of these dynamic relationships and how they impact meaning making in the EAP classroom. If we regard the acts of making meaning as a ‘form of design or active and dynamic transformation of the social world’ (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009: 166), then we need to explore with practitioners ways to redesign EAP pedagogies to help students become more ‘fully makers and remakers of signs and transformers of meaning’ (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009: 175) of the evolving complex multimodal discourses in textbooks, websites and classrooms. Although Kress has argued that the rapidly evolving social media sites and technologies such as YouTube, Facebook and handheld digital devices have led to ‘the redistribution of power in communication’ which ‘has the most profound effect on conceptions of learning, of knowledge and hence on the formation of subjectivity and identity’ (Kress, 2010: 21), important ongoing considerations are still needed. One is that power is not so easily redistributed without intense struggles over who can claim privilege over the specific representations and discourses in circulation. Another important factor has been the attempts to curtail these very modes of expanding communication in terms of what can be said, who says it, and from where. As always, power is imbricated within space and spatial relations (Lefebvre, 1991b), and the time-space terrains of communication across digital platforms are thus not exempt from power relations and instantiations. Indeed they may even serve as an increasing multiplier effect of power in terms of the increasing monopoly of software companies and internet providers.

14

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

However, power invites resistance (Foucault, 1979, 1980), and our agencies in speaking back have an important role in the way digital practices can evolve and have evolved. Thus, Kress observes that the paradigm of design, which he views as incorporating the earlier work of critique in addressing the relations of power enacted in consumption (Janks & Ivanic, 1992), is needed to deal with these new distributions of power. Because these new technologies expand and enable a certain agency in the design process, there is ‘an urgent need to understand the practices, epistemologies, ethics and aesthetics of the new forms of text production’ (Kress, 2010: 24). In light of this, EAP teaching practices should take into account and address these digital practices and accompanying text productions, circulations and mediations involved in students’ processes of meaning making as they resemiotize and transform the multimodal discourses and meanings of the everyday. In order to understand the multimodalities increasingly evident in EAP materials, and how these complex discourses are mediated in the EAP classroom shaping students’ meaning making, many EAP instructors would need to expand their teaching toolkit to help them in the classroom. One toolkit can include the view of language as a social semiotic (Halliday, 1978), which informs the systemic functional linguistic (SFL) perspectives; from these resources, teachers can employ functional grammar approaches to help students first to learn academic language more effectively (Schleppegrell, 2004). Functional grammar is also an important tool in helping to scaffold a critical literacies pedagogy in the classroom (Schleppegrell et al., 2004). Also included in this expanded toolkit would be multimodal teaching and learning methods (Kress, 2000, 2003, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, 2006; Kress et al., 2001, 2005), which are based on the work of SFL as well. This toolkit would also aid in the development and use of multimodal texts in developing an EAP curriculum that is more congruent with many university courses today.

An EAP Classroom Collaboration In documenting the trajectory of the teacher’s classroom practices as they unfolded over the three academic terms featured in the following chapters, I examine in part how they evolved around an expanding repertoire of curriculum materials that began to incorporate videos as class texts. In addition, these classroom practices are set in the context of the discussions with the teacher that began during the second term. This was made possible due to her generously offering her time and energy to be actively involved in the research, beyond having me observe her classes. The dialogic intertextualities of the

Introduc t ion

15

classroom practices thus includes our research meetings in which I began to introduce materials on systemic functional grammar (e.g. Byrnes, 2009a, 2009b; Coffin et al., 2009; Hood, 2008; Martin & Rothery, 1993; Ravelli, 2000; Schleppegrell et al., 2004; Thompson, 2004) as the bridge toward introducing her to critical literacy (e.g. Lewison et al., 2002; Luke, 2000; Luke & Freebody, 1997; McLaughlin & DeVood, 2004; Morgan, 1998, 2009). This was a strategic move on my part, designed to incorporate the teacher’s considerable strengths in a formal, rules-based approach to grammar. In this, I hoped to transform the traditional ethnographic subject-object relationship ‘into a subject-subject relationship through dialogue’ (Anderson & Irvine, 1993: 90). This is an important issue to address while analyzing classroom data. As Scollon and Scollon (2004: 13) pointed out, this ‘requires active participation in the lives and actions with the people in which one is interested and seeks to enlist their interest and involvement in the collaborative analysis of the issues being studied’. Accordingly, my methodological approach entailed the teacher’s involvement in the discussion and analysis of the issues in her classroom we found to be of interest during our numerous research meetings. I shared my preliminary analysis of the classroom interactions with the teacher, who then read it and offered her own interpretations and comments, which further shaped the ensuing analysis. The collaboration, predictably, was initially not without its tensions, as my role of an outside academic researcher and her role as an EAP instructor could be seen as the normative rehearsal of a practitioner beset by universitysanctioned researchers with their latest theories, eager to implement them in a classroom. The power dynamics here must be acknowledged between a teacher who was, at the time, a non-tenured employee working on a contractual basis based on student enrollment, already overburdened with preparing for class, grading papers, attending meetings, meeting with students and so on, and thus did not have the time to keep up with the latest research in the field, and a university-sanctioned and funded researcher. However, this power differential was somewhat mitigated my own self-reflexive awareness of these roles, my addressing it in our meetings, and my own 18-year ESL and EAP teaching experience that gave me some ‘street credibility’ with her. We shared our experiences, frustrations and success stories in the classroom. We spoke of similar experiences with relatively privileged EAP students at expensive IEPs affiliated with major universities. We also commiserated about being non-tenured, low-salaried instructors who were not always accorded the respect and recognition from both the administration and the university that we felt was our due. All of this helped pave what might have been an even rockier road on which we traveled together toward rethinking and possibly reshaping classroom practices to critically engage EAP students in ways

16

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

that could create more opportunities and dialogic spaces for alternative and in-depth meaning makings in the classroom. The research was conducted at the site of an IEP, housed in a for-profit division of an internationally renowned North American university located in a major urban area with a sizable immigrant population. There were several course programs offered, but I focused on the Academic English track offering due to my research interests in EAP. The courses in the Academic English track ran for 12 weeks, and were offered four times a year: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall terms. The classes I observed throughout the terms were the reading and writing class, which met three times a week. I chose the reading and writing class due to my interests and my extensive experiences in teaching EAP reading and writing classes. In the Winter and Fall terms, the teacher was assigned the advanced level reading and writing class. From this advanced level class, the students would be able to matriculate at the university (if granted admission) from the program if they passed the exit exams. However, not all the students who passed this exam left the program immediately thereafter. For various reasons such as scheduling conflicts or waiting to hear from other schools, several of the advanced level graduates elected to enroll in the program’s post-advanced level class. In the Spring and Summer terms, she was assigned to teach this postadvanced level class for the first time. I started observing the teacher’s class in late February, mid-way through the Winter term, after I received consent from the program director. The director then had her deputy ask the instructors if any of them would be interested in participating in my research. Although I had initially hoped for two instructors in order to have a comparative teaching database, only one volunteered. The teacher contacted me via email, we met and I explained my research project, and she agreed to participate. At the beginning of each term, in the first week of class, I introduced myself to her students and explained my research project to them, their possible involvement and the risks of their participation. After the Spring term started at the beginning of April, I approached the teacher with the idea of a collaborative inquiry research in which we would explore ways to more fully engage the students with the materials in class. This was because I had observed many of the students not fully engaged in class and their signs of detachment were evident. I say ‘evident’ because, having been a teacher for 18 years, I know and feel when students are engaged or not. Their lack of engagement was indicated in the Winter term class by (but not limited to): continually whispering to one another, giggling at each other’s private comments, furtively texting and checking messages on their mobile devices, not writing down what the teacher was saying or writing on

Introduc t ion

17

the board (although she explicitly told them to copy down what she was writing), and frequent sighs or groans. I had observed seven of her classes in the Winter term, and was dissatisfied with merely observing. Since it is my epistemological stance that the researcher can never be an objective, neutral observer but is always part of and implicated in the phenomena she or he is observing, I decided to formally recognize this position by suggesting a collaborative inquiry with her. I was also aware of the potential pitfalls in observing a teacher’s practices, leaving the scene, and then writing up a possible analysis that positioned an instructor as somehow being ‘deficient’ according to whatever criteria I constructed, or as a researcher with whom I discussed my project at a conference told me, ‘you don’t want to beat up on another poor teacher!’ This struck a responsive chord with me and I realized I needed to put into practice the critical belief that if one wanted to understand something, one has to actively be a part of it, or in other words, to engage in a praxis. Therefore, I had to become ‘to some significant extent a participating member of the classroom community’ (Wells, 2009: 52). It was also important to concretely realize that a researcher ‘who lacks sensitivity to demands in the lives of informants, or who holds fast to the comfortable distance of authority rather than becoming a learner in the culture, severely limits the nature of the data and undermines the research’ (Athanases & Heath, 1995: 268). And lastly, I want to find ways to bridge the theory–practice divide that has existed between critically oriented researchers and teachers in the English language classroom; my collaborative inquiry proposal should be viewed in this vein. I had practiced critical EAP pedagogy in my own classes (Chun, 2009a), collaborated on a critical literacies project with another teacher (Chun, 2009b), and I wanted to continue to explore ways to bridge this divide. One of the primary aims of this research is to contribute to a much-needed dialogue between critically oriented researchers and practitioners in the field of EAP and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) by addressing how critical theories and practices can and should evolve together. Perhaps the timing of the collaborative inquiry proposal was beneficial to both, as the teacher had never taught the post-advanced level class and seemed a bit anxious about teaching a new class curriculum that was to incorporate extensive use of technology such as a class wiki, and YouTube and Google videos for classroom learning. In our conversations, she had told me that she was uncomfortable with technology and had previously thought of it as interfering with learning in many ways. However, due to this class requiring the integration of teaching and technology, she was perhaps more receptive to our collaborative inquiry.

18

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

One tactical approach, in retrospect, was misguided in that I originally overburdened her with dense, heavily theoretical articles on SFL that reported on longitudinal studies (e.g. Byrnes, 2009a; Hood, 2008). I employed a recursive, dialogical method in observing how some of the issues we talked about in our meetings played out in the classroom, brought back these observations to the next meetings to discuss and examine, and co-constructed new directions to be implemented in a spiraled trajectory. I therefore adjusted my approach in selecting articles, and started sharing ones that were written more for practitioners rather than fellow researchers (although some addressed both audiences, e.g. Luke & Freebody, 1997), and that showed concrete examples of functional grammar and critical literacy approaches in classrooms, from which she could glean ideas to implement in her own classroom. These meetings continued in the ensuing months, and featured interactions between a newcomer to critical literacy (Lewison et al., 2002) and a relatively more experienced practitioner/researcher in critical literacy pedagogy that were filled with tensions, negotiations over contested meanings, ruminations on pedagogy and students, complaints about administration policies, and anecdotes of lived experiences. The overall aim of our collaborative inquiries was to study our roles as researcher and practitioner, and the teacher’s own motivations to ‘make reading and writing more connected and meaningful to the real lives of (her) students’ (Pappas, 1997: 216). To the extent that this collaboration itself ‘has to be made constantly problematic – that is, it has to be an ongoing, integral facet of methodological concern’ (Pappas, 1997: 215), I address how it evolved, the mediated classroom practices that resulted, the ensuing discussions in our meetings about these resulting practices and the subsequent practices in the following chapters. My methodology followed the working definition of ‘empowering research’ (Cameron et al., 1992: 23). This entails three principles which are: (1) people should be not treated as objects; (2) subjects have their own agendas, and researchers should try to address them; and (3) researchers have an obligation to give feedback to and share knowledge with their subject participants. I attempted to follow these three principles carefully, and I hope I have succeeded. And, inasmuch as there are ‘assumptions that practitioners do not produce knowledge, that their personal knowledge is not useful’ (Gitlin, 1990: 444), these assumptions had to be challenged in light of these principles of empowering research. Thus, I did not regard myself as the one who was ‘empowering’ the teacher; instead I viewed our working relationship as being one between two English language teaching professionals who produced knowledge together in their explorations. I also was not interested in ‘merely producing a “new canon of best practice” compatible with institutional agendas’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, as cited by

Introduc t ion

19

Toohey & Waterstone, 2004: 292), but rather in the ‘transformation of knowledge-making practices’ (Toohey & Waterstone, 2004: 292) in this particular EAP classroom. In examining the teacher’s evolving classroom practices, my unit of analysis is the mediated actions in this particular EAP classroom, which include the teacher’s and students’ classroom practices and actions, the material objects of the videos and texts used in the classes, and my own role as a researcher engaged in collaborative actions that mediated the ensuing classroom practices. To account for how socially situated meaning makings are co-constructed through mediated dimensions (Iedema, 2003), it is important to examine the processes by which these meanings were negotiated and recontextualized in the classroom lessons. This process is termed by Iedema as ‘resemiotization’, which is ‘about how meaning making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next’ (Iedema, 2003: 41). In addressing how social actors in their own specific contexts make meanings from the social circulation of texts and discourses, my classroom discourse analysis was guided by a mediated discourse analysis (MDA) approach. One of the central tasks of MDA is ‘to explicate and understand how the broad discourses of our social life are engaged (or not) in the moment-by-moment social actions of social actors in real time activity’ (Scollon, 2001: 140). In examining how socially circulated discourses are mediated by the teacher and the students, it is necessary to see how these discourses are transformed, or resemiotized, ‘across a wide variety of times, places, people, media, and objects’ (Scollon, 2008: 233). Scollon characterized these particular meaning-making pathways of people taking up the social circulation of discourses generated from other sites, actors and actions, and which are disseminated through multiple modalities of text, visual, aural and other modes as ‘discourse itineraries’ (Scollon, 2008: 234). Analyzing the resemiotization process is crucial, due to how specific semiotic modes are materialized through curriculum materials, the teacher’s embodied experiences articulated via her pedagogical practices, the students’ meaning-making processes, and the classroom discourses that create the context in which these actions take place. Furthermore, the process of resemiotizing also includes my analysis of the ensuing findings, which is part of these discourse itineraries. This is aligned with the view that ‘the relationship of text to text, language to language, is not a direct relationship but is always mediated by the actions of social actors as well through material objects of the world’ (Scollon, 2008: 233). In addition, the central task of an MDA approach is to ‘map such itineraries of relationships among text, action and the material world through what we call a “nexus analysis”’ (Scollon, 2008: 233). This nexus analysis regards a social action – in this case,

20

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

the social actions undertaken in the teacher’s EAP classes – as a nexus of aggregates of discourses. These comprise ‘the discourses in place, some social arrangement by which people come together in social groups (a meeting, a conversation, a chance contact, a queue) – the interaction order, and the life experiences of the individual social actors – the historical body’ (Scollon & Scollon, 2004: 19). Discourses in place (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) in this EAP classroom would be the aggregate or nexus of the many discourses circulating throughout this site: for example, the institutional ones of both the university and the program, the brochures and photos displayed in the lobby that promote the city, the school trips to scenic surrounding areas and the social activities after school, the maps in the classroom itself and the signs that admonish students to speak English only, the text materials used in these classes that include books and internet websites, and even the graffiti etched on some of the desks. The interaction order in this case entails the social relationships between teacher and students, and among the students themselves. Finally, the historical bodies of both the students and the teacher, or their lifetimes of lived experiences, memories and habits of thinking and behaving are to be taken into account, particularly in their interactions and any possible tensions and conflicts that might result. This element of the historical body in the classroom social action to be analyzed is the bridge between the global and the local, for the trajectories of these historical bodies of the students from afar are now intersecting with the trajectory of the historical body of the teacher, who has her own international history, at this particular locale. These trajectories do not end or stop here at this classroom; they continue on to return to the global, or beyond this site in many instances.

Contextualizing an EAP Program The university with which the program is affiliated is publicly supported and located in a major urban area in North America. The urban area in which the university is located has seen a considerable influx of immigrants in the past 20 years or so and, as such, the metropolitan region is rapidly diversifying, which is attracting more people from around the world. The program is housed in a for-profit division. Its enrollment was approximately 300 students with the normal fluctuations depending on the school year. The program faculty staff numbered approximately 35 instructors, most of whom were non-tenured and on a contractual basis depending on enrollment. During the course of my research, the participating teacher was granted a permanent position on the faculty, securing her tenure at the program. She

Introduc t ion

21

had started teaching at the program in 2005; prior to this she had taught at several ESL schools and community colleges, starting in 1999. The student participants came from a variety of countries: China, Latvia, Iraq, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates. They ranged in age from 18 to the mid-30s. They had a variety of educational and work experiences, with some hoping to enter undergraduate level and others planning to pursue a doctorate. All had English language education experience in their home countries, as was to be expected since they were in the advanced level classes. In contextualizing this specific classroom locale of EAP, I address the role EAP plays in North American universities’ (re)production of cultural and linguistic forms of capital in the effort to compete with other educational regions in attracting students around the world who possess the requisite economic resources to pursue this particular language resource. The timeline of this research coincided with the recent global economic crisis (begun in late 2007 and still ongoing as of early 2014), which is addressed several times in this class throughout two terms, and provides the backdrop against which several texts are set.

An institutional context of EAP The rise of English language teaching as a major international service industry – the US dollar revenues are estimated to be in the billions (Pennycook, 1994) – has been an integral part of the effort to direct flows of mobile capital toward the countries which are seen as having desirable tertiary institutions, such as the US, Canada, England and Australia. If the global ‘economy is the engine that drives the ELT industry’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003b: 543), then it also drives the selling of English-medium university education worldwide, particularly those in North America (Raduntz, 2005). The location of some English language programs within the privileged spaces of well-known universities in North America and their ensuing use of the language resource of EAP has led to a spatialized logic of capital accumulation over the last 30 years or so. This is realized in the enormous transfer of wealth from relatively affluent international students to these institutions in exchange for a product – the educational commodity of EAP – that has relatively low costs of production (many instructors are non-tenured with below median salaries) with a high exchange value in its tuition rates. With many being housed in colleges of extended learning at public and private universities, these programs have marketed themselves to international students as being an integral part of the students’ university education in North America. In this way, they have become ‘mediating institutions’ which help to direct

22

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

the ‘globalized flows’ (Blommaert, 2003) of economic, linguistic and human capital to their affiliated ‘corporatizing’ universities (Starfield, 2004). Corporatizing universities are now ‘designed according to principles of corporate accountability, industrial efficiency, and “quality assurance” – as smoothly running machinery in the cost-effective production of human capital and knowledge for use by the state and the corporation’ (Luke, 2008: 307). These corporatized universities thus benefit from the revenues they collect twice from these international students: the high tuition for the EAP classes and the subsequent higher international tuition fees for university classes. English language programs are by now a prominent institutional feature at many North American universities desperate to maintain and increase their revenues by attracting international students whose families are willing and able to pay full tuition. Their websites feature a financial model that reflects the competitive environment in which they operate: the aggressive overseas recruitment of students by the staff (in many cases former instructors), the marketing and selling of the university name with which the program is affiliated (although at times conveniently omitting any mention that the students will not be accorded the same privileges as the enrolled university students), and the announcements of favorable fees, housing features and student services. All of this has led to the framing of students as ‘clients’ or ‘customers’ by faculty and staff (Chun, 2009a). Many public (as well as private) universities have come to regard these programs as rainmakers that bring in outside revenues in times of government-mandated budget cuts. Since this type of program depends so heavily on its revenues to sustain itself as a viable model operating on a university site, it must aggressively court students worldwide to justify its existence. Thus even before this type of student steps into the classroom, she or he is already positioned by the institutional discourses that view these students as a type of consumer who will receive value for this expensive educational resource.

A neoliberal nexus site These university-affiliated English language programs can thus be seen as a neoliberal site stemming from the increasing marketization and ensuing corporatization of education and publicly funded universities (e.g. Chun, 2009a; Hill, 2009; Torres, 2009; Ward, 2012). What is neoliberalism, and why should we be concerned with it? Teaching the English language itself has been named as a vital component of globalization (e.g. Block & Cameron, 2002; Crystal, 1997; McArthur, 2002; Pennycook, 1994, 1995, 1998) and a contributor to linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992, 2000, 2001). In the field of TESOL/Applied Linguistics, ‘globalization’ is often mentioned in connection

Introduc t ion

23

with a whole host of phenomena, yet only recently has the mention of how a specific inseparable component of globalization – neoliberalism – has become ‘its own globalization’ (Duménil & Lévy, 2005: 10), that has helped to configure the landscape of language teaching and, in particular, ELT (e.g. Chun, 2009a, 2013; Clarke & Morgan, 2011; Holborow, 2006, 2007). This dominant discourse in our time ‘involves both a set of theoretical principles and a collection of socio-political practices, all of which are directed toward extending and deepening capitalist market relations in most spheres of our social lives’ (Colás, 2005: 70). Indeed, ‘the market is the main theoretical and historical social, economic and political institution of neoliberal thought’ (Dussel Peters, 2006: 123). The original proponent of the neoliberal movement was Friedrich A. Hayek, whose 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, warned of the dangers to individual freedom by governmental economic and social planning. In championing the market as the only suitable instrument for social management, Hayek claimed that it ‘has demonstrated itself to be a more efficient mechanism for the use of dispersing information than any other that human beings have consciously created’ (Hayek, 1975, as cited by Dussel Peters, 2006: 123). Hayek argued against devising ‘further machinery for “guiding” and “directing”’ individuals’, and called for the creation of ‘conditions favorable to progress rather than to “plan progress”’ (Hayek, 1944: 240). Hayek’s claim that ‘a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy’ (Hayek, 1944: 241) is currently framed in the neoliberal discourse of the market as the only viable social mechanism that is capable of providing freedom and ‘choices’ to people. Hayek’s discourse has been adopted in the supplanting of ‘regulation by law with market forces, and government functions (especially in the service sector) by private enterprise’ (Greenhouse, 2010: 1). Under this guise of promoting individual freedom and choice due to the virtues of the ‘free’ market, Harvey (2005) argued that in fact neoliberal policies and practices in the past 35 years have worked to restore the power of economic elites by re-establishing optimal conditions for financial capital accumulation through the dispossession and appropriation of public wealth via increasing privatization. In addition, the so-called austerity measures take the form of slashing the social safety net and cutting budgets to publicly funded domains that are coupled with regressive tax cuts, all of which have led to incredible wealth disparities and deep social inequalities both in North America and around the world. Neoliberal subjectivities are constructed around the notion of human capital as being composed of ‘the entirety of skills that have been acquired as the result of “investments” in the corresponding stimuli’ (Lemke, 2001: 199) of education, training, language studies, and so on. In this discourse formation, education ‘can be considered economically akin to a consumer

24

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

durable which has the peculiarity of being inseparable from its owner’ (Gordon, 1991: 44). According to this view, ‘the individual producer-consumer is in a novel sense not just an enterprise, but the entrepreneur of himself or herself’ (Gordon, 1991: 44). The ways in which neoliberal discourses get reproduced in everyday dimensions can be seen in the active pursuit of skills designed to make a person a more ‘marketable’ commodity. In shifting responsibility for public well-being away from the state, neoliberal modes of governance put the onus onto individuals themselves; it is up to them to continually improve and adapt themselves in becoming ‘flexible’ as part of its ‘indirect techniques for leading and controlling individuals without at the same time being responsible for them’ (Lemke, 2001: 201). Thus, under the guise of re-creating the Self, the modes of neoliberal governmentality in effect expand and deepen social control in its role in self subject-making (Foucault, 1988, 1993). Although neoliberal discourses, subjectivities, policies and practices have been addressed in depth in various disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, education, geography, urban studies and economics, the construction of neoliberal identities has only recently been a focal point of analysis in TESOL and applied linguistics (Block et al., 2012; Chun, 2009a; Gray, 2010; Holborow, 2006). My perspective here incorporates critiques of the neoliberal project to reconstruct democracy in its positioning of people not as active participants in spaces of governing but as passive consumers exercising their ‘choices’ in the ‘free market’. Building upon the critical applied linguistics research that has attended to the important issues of power, race, gender, sexuality and identities in language education (e.g. Benesch, 2001, 2012; Block, 2007a; Block & Cameron, 2002; Canagarajah, 1993, 1999; Kubota, 2004; Morgan, 1998, 2009; Norton, 2000; Norton & Toohey, 2004; Pennycook, 1994, 1998; Ramanathan, 2002; Vandrick, 1995, 2009), this book addresses the complex interanimations of neoliberal, globalization, and consumerist and racialized discourses in EAP materials, and how these are taken up by the teacher, the students and the author. And in this particular EAP classroom locale in which we will see how these discourses are recontextualized and resemiotized, the discourse itineraries of EAP are themselves part of the globalized nexus of international and immigrant students, cultural productions, and old and new pedagogical practices.

2

An EAP Classroom

Although the photograph in Figure 2.1 is captioned as a classroom, the visible presence of writing boards, tables and chairs does not necessarily mean the space is used in this way. One can easily imagine people using this room and furniture for a variety of other sociocultural interactions, for example, poetry readings, business meetings or social club gatherings. This space does not become an actual classroom until social actors engage in mediating the particular objects of the boards, tables, chairs and textual materials in ways that co-construct practices mutually recognizable to them as ‘English language learning’. Most casual visitors observing this classroom in action would read this mediated space as such; however, at this point this tells us very little because one could ask, what was this particular EAP classroom like?

Discourses in Place One approach that can help us in answering this question is to examine what has been called ‘discourses in place’ (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Discourses in place refer to how ‘material placement of signs and discourses and of our actions’ (Scollon & Scollon, 2003: 2) mainly achieve their social meanings from how and where they are contextually situated or placed. For example, a ‘no-parking’ sign hanging over a couch in a university dormitory room has a different social meaning from the one posted on a public street or commercial space nearby. Scollon and Scollon also pointed out that our own bodies make different social meanings in particular contexts and places. They provide an example in which a person at a public beach who decides not to wear any clothing will be regarded as a nude bather, yet the same person preparing to shower in an enclosed structure would not be considered a nude bather in the same sense. If one looks more closely at the photo above, it becomes apparent that there is a sheet of paper hanging next to the green chalkboard. Figure 2.2 gives us is a closer look at this sheet. In the context of this classroom space, this 25

26

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Figure 2.1 The instructor’s classroom, Winter 2009 term

sign can be understood in several ways, following the four questions Scollon and Scollon (2003) posed: Who has authored or ‘uttered’ this? Who is the viewer? What is the social situation? Is it part of the material space relevant to this object? On this sheet the list of rules are in the imperative form: ‘pay attention in class’, ‘ask question at proper time’ and ‘be co-operative with

Figure 2.2 List of classroom rules, Winter 2009 term

An E AP Cl assroom

27

your team’. Its immediate placement by the green chalkboard does not appear to be accidental, as it serves as an added extension to this board, a permanent writing showcased as a type of edict. To that effect, its message is clear: ‘pay attention in class’. However, this leads to a question: pay attention to what? Is it the traditional meaning that students need to pay attention to whatever the teacher is saying and doing and what is happening in class, or does it encompass something broader, such as paying attention to what the students might need? These rules were written by the students in this class and its intended audience was the students themselves, and in particular one student who, according to the teacher, ‘interrupted the class for his own instruction and entertainment’. This behavior irritated the other students, which prompted the teacher to have the students establish their own classroom rules to alleviate these disruptions. This is evident in the third listed rule: ‘ask question at proper time’. The fourth and fifth rules deal with requests to have ‘more interaction activities in class’ and ‘be co-operative with your team’. These requests might speak to the students’ need to be more engaged with each other, rather than having the teacher be the sole focal point of all classroom activity, the one controlling and directing the flow of classroom talk. Finally, the last rule states, ‘take job seriously, equal participation’. Does ‘job’ in this context mean for the students to participate more in class, demonstrating that they are conscientious and motivated ELLs? Or is it meant for the teacher to involve the whole class? Figure 2.3 shows another list of rules in the same classroom. This one was posted on the right side of the whiteboard (from the perspective of the students facing this board and the teacher’s desk). These ‘golden rules’ were named after the teacher’s rules (cell phones turned off in class, being on time for class) and were intended for one or two students who were habitually late for class. ‘Bake a cake’ was included as a joke; however, students did bring chocolates of their own volition when they were late for class the third time. Putting money into the ‘kitty’ was supposedly for not speaking English in the class; however, I did not observe this rule being enforced, nor was there a jar in the classroom. These prominently displayed rules constituted a certain discourse in place advocating a regulative behavior to be followed by students in this particular classroom. What is at stake for these students to follow these rules? Why does there exist a perceived need for these rules to be in place for students here? During the course of my observations during this Winter term, several students habitually came to class more than 10 minutes after the start of the class. One student in particular came to class late several times and each time would announce his presence by requesting his favorite chair, which was an extra red swivel

28

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Figure 2.3 Another list of rules in the classroom, Winter 2009 term

chair (this was the same student for whom the first list of rules was intended). This of course disrupted the class lesson that was underway and several students seemed to resent it, judging by their facial reactions. Do EAP students’ behaviors need to be regulated? If students follow these sets of rules, will this facilitate their learning of academic registers, discourses and texts in any meaningful way? And if so, how, and in what ways? This regulatory discourse was just one of an aggregate of discourses in place in this classroom, which was part of the nexus of social action taking place (Scollon & Scollon, 2004). This nexus also comprised the classroom interactions and what Scollon and Scollon termed ‘the historical body’ of the social actors involved – the life experiences of the teacher and the students. The ways in which the nexus of this particular classroom was inextricably interwoven within the world at large will be illustrated in the next section.

Classroom Practices: Winter (January–March) Term The following class lesson was conducted during the program’s Winter term (January–March), in late February. It was the first class I observed with the teacher, hereafter referred to as ‘Emilia’, the pseudonym she selected herself. The lesson featured a handout on finding word roots in a dictionary with a follow-up quiz of 23 word items with their roots listed. The students

An E AP Cl assroom

29

had to fill in the blanks of these root meanings, and then the meaning of the word itself. For example, the first word item was ‘amphibian’ with ‘amphi’ and ‘bio’ as the two roots for which the students had to find the meanings, and the word meaning itself. This was designed to help the students decipher unfamiliar vocabulary by learning the meanings of particular roots. During the following exchange, the word was ‘chronometer’, with ‘chron’ and ‘meter’ as the two word roots. Emilia: Students: Emilia: Students: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Students: Student 2: Student 3: Emilia: Students: Emilia:

Student 4: Emilia: Student 4: Emilia: Student 4: Emilia: Student 4: Emilia:

OK, ‘chron’ means what? Time. Time, and meter is [the same as [measure= =measure. OK, so we’re measuring time. Timer. Exact measure= =It’s a [kind of [timer. Clock. Watch= =Yeah, it’s like a watch. It’s like a stopwatch, a chronometer, right? So they use chronometers in races and for diving, I think underwater, no? Yeah. But definitely for races, a chronometer. You and I need a watch. Race-car drivers, you know, and gymnasts and, you know, people who work in nanoseconds, you know, hundredths of thousandths, little tiny bits of a second, um, I guess thousandths of a second, they need chronometers, OK, you and I don’t usually. Terrorists. Terrorists, yes – did you say terrorists? Yeah, terrorists. For planting bombs and that kind of thing? Yes. A-ha, OK. Spies as well. Yeah. They’re not the only ones, I suppose. Number 10, ‘circum’ – what does ‘circum’ mean?

In this exchange, the initial turns between Emilia and the students follow the usual initiation-reply-evaluation sequence (IRE), with the students responding correctly and Emilia acknowledging this by repeating one

30

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

answer – ‘measure’ as an affirmation, and then with ‘OK, so we’re measuring time’. Both Emilia and several students affirm this contribution in their coconstructed meaning of chronometer as being ‘a kind of timer’. In the following turns Students 2 and 3 give specific examples of timers: ‘clock’ and ‘watch’, to which Emilia says, ‘yeah, it’s like a watch, it’s like a stopwatch, a chronometer’. She goes on to contextualize the uses of a chronometer in specific fields of activity such as races, underwater diving, race-car drivers, gymnasts and ‘people who work in nanoseconds’. This specialized meaning of chronometer, as opposed to the more general meanings of ‘clock’ and ‘watch’ is indexed by her reference to ‘they need chronometers, you and I don’t usually’. This IRE sequence might have ended at this point as it is evident that the students had no questions about the meanings of ‘chronometer’. There were no indications of any confusion about its uses in specialized fields of activity, although perhaps a student could have challenged Emilia’s working definition of a ‘nanosecond’ (‘thousandths of a second’) by looking the word up in their electronic dictionaries, which were plainly in sight and used regularly by the students despite the occasional admonitions by her not to use them. Yet it did not end because Student 4 continues it with his remark, ‘terrorists’. This was clearly in response to Emilia’s preceding turn in which she cites examples of people needing chronometers. Emilia seems to repeat the word unthinkingly in acknowledging the student’s contribution, but catches herself immediately when she says, ‘did you say terrorists?’ The student replies, ‘yeah, terrorists’, and this answer is contextualized by Emilia in her response, ‘for planting bombs and that kind of thing?’ with apparent reference to the uses of a timer. After the student affirms his answer, Emilia adds, ‘spies as well’, and then goes on to say, ‘they’re not the only ones, I suppose’, before moving on to the next word item on the quiz. Student 4’s utterance did not go unnoticed by his classmates. At Student 4’s first mention of the word ‘terrorist’, a female student from Saudi Arabia exchanged glances with another Saudi student, simultaneously shaking her head and flashing a disapproving glare. Several other Saudi students who had previously been whispering to one another fell silent. At this nexus of historical bodies of these particular students in the class that day, the media and politicized discourses promoting anxiety and fear that tar people with the brush of suspicion based on their religion, nationality, clothing and/or physiognomy were resemiotized in the visible discomfort shown by some of the Saudi students during this brief and seemingly benign exchange between Emilia and her student. In this classroom context in which an ordinary exercise on word roots and their meanings, well devoid of any overt political content, may be a frequent or occasional occurrence, a particular current

An E AP Cl assroom

31

discourse in social and politicized circulation emerges. It was taken up and brought into this space perhaps because of the student’s feeling of what he thought was a clever or provocative connection with chronometers and a certain activity in an attempt to garner attention (it was the same student who would draw attention to himself upon arriving late to class). It succeeded in drawing the attention of Emilia and several of his classmates, but in different ways. Although it was not seemingly acknowledged as such in any verbally articulated form, the physical expressions and reactions of several of his Saudi classmates were significant in their uptake of particular discourses that continue to circulate and take hold due to their mediated and power-laden disseminations. Despite Emilia using content that can be considered by many as neutral insofar as this word root exercise lacks any direct references to social or political issues, teachers ‘cannot predict which text will erupt in class’ (Janks, 2010: 221). A week later, Emilia’s lesson featured a reading handout entitled ‘Wikipedia’, which dealt with the historical context and rise of the internetbased encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The handout, which was a page and a half long and was accompanied by eight multiple-choice comprehension questions, was selected from the textbook, Advanced Reading Power (Mikulecky & Jeffries, 2007). Her objective in selecting this reading was to help students understand simple online search methods, and what constitutes academic research in US and Canadian universities. This lesson was part of the aim to introduce students to skimming and scanning a text and reading for critical analysis, which in many EAP classrooms primarily means analyzing the logic of an argument and finding flaws if any, and identifying an author’s bias. After giving the students time to read the handout, Emilia begins: Emilia: Students: Emilia:

OK, so if you read the first sentence in each paragraph, does that give you a general idea of what’s happening here? Yes. OK, so that’s one way you’re going to do research. That’s one way that you’re going to actually attack your reading for first-year university is by skimming and scanning, getting an idea of what is generally it’s about, OK? So for instance, if this is a chapter in a textbook that you have to read and you have 50 pages to read, you’re not going to just start at the beginning and read 50 pages, OK? You need to get a general idea of what the 50 pages says. And one of the ways to do that is to do a quick skim-scan of the headings, the titles and then read, like, let’s say the first sentence in a few paragraphs to get an idea, OK, because you don’t have time.

32

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Student 1: Emilia: Students: Emilia: Students: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia:

You won’t have time to read everything in depth so sometimes you’re going to find yourself skimming and scanning, and looking through it quickly, getting an idea of what is said in the first sentence of each paragraph will quickly give you a general idea of what’s going on, OK? OK. Now, I want you to go to the first paragraph. And I want you to find the words ‘unlike’ and ‘however,’ because there are some words you need to start noticing: connecting words, transition words that you need to start noticing in a text. And ‘unlike’ and ‘however’ are two that you need to notice because they’re going to give you an opposite point of view, OK, and they’re going to give you a contrast, and we need to see those. So paragraph one, look for the words ‘unlike’ and ‘however.’ The same, the same line? Same line, line what? Fourth. Four, OK? So, ‘unlike other encyclopedias, however, Wikipedia is not written by experts but by ordinary people.’ See how important that sentence is? Yes. That’s why they put those beautiful transition words in there to tell you, ‘Hey, hey, notice me, notice me.’ OK? So start noticing those words. They’re important. Paragraph number two. The word ‘in fact,’ OK? Again, it’s an introduction of something that is= =third line. Yeah, third line, something that is true and that could be interesting to read. So ‘The early encyclopedias were not used as reference books as they are today, but served as textbooks for learning.’ So that’s different from today, OK?

Emilia begins with cueing the students by asking if reading the first sentence in each paragraph gives them ‘a general idea of what’s happening here’. The students respond with a ‘yes’ and then she tells them ‘so that’s one way you’re going to do research’. The reading passage length is 11 paragraphs, the longest of which totals seven sentences. The other paragraphs average between four and five sentences long. A typical topic sentence of one of the paragraphs reads, ‘Wikipedia serves as a good example of the best and the worst of the Internet’ (Mikulecky & Jeffries, 2007: 295). Each of the paragraph’s topic sentences is indeed the first sentence.

An E AP Cl assroom

33

Yet to what extent does this reading passage mirror or replicate the academic texts the students will encounter in their undergraduate and graduate schooling? Hyland (2004, 2009) has argued that academic conventions and discourses are specific to their respective disciplines. Thus, several ongoing EAP curriculum issues are once again highlighted by this classroom encounter with this particular text. First, how do instructors find suitable EAP texts that approach the lexico-grammatical density level of specific academic discourses and genres (e.g. Byrnes, 2006; Halliday, 1993; Schleppegrell, 2004; Schleppegrell & Colombi, 2002)? This of course is a recurring problem for many EAP instructors in finding suitable materials. Some use authentic texts in their classrooms in addition to their program-mandated curriculum materials, but of course this is an added burden on already overworked and underpaid non-tenured EAP faculty. Secondly, in their attempt to present a generalized text in the belief that this will appeal to the greatest number of students and which rests on the idea that teaching academic English ‘involves teaching general skills and forms that are transferable across contexts and purposes’ (Hyland, 2002: 389), do authors and publishers of these types of texts do a disservice both to teachers and to the students? In publishing these texts as a way to acquire academic competence, publishers are in a sense promoting the idea that ‘there is one general “academic English” (or “business English”, etc.) and one set of strategies for approaching reading and writing tasks that can be applied, in a painting-by-numbers fashion, across disciplines’ (Hyland, 2002: 392). This is the discourse Emilia seems to be drawing on in her extended comment in the third turn; a discourse that in ‘divorcing language from context’, presents ‘an autonomous view of academic literacy [that] misleads learners into believing that they simply have to master a set of rules which can be transferred across fields’ (Hyland, 2002: 392). This is not to fault Emilia and many other teachers who have to rely on and are in some ways guided by their textbooks’ presentation of readings and accompanying assessment questions, but to call into question the nature of such practices. This is indicated by Emilia’s suggestion to the students with her remark that since they ‘won’t have time to read everything in depth’, they should skim and scan the material by reading each paragraph’s first sentence quickly for the general idea(s). She could hardly be faulted here for advising students to skim the first sentence of each paragraph to give them a general idea of the paragraph because this reading passage, like those featured in many ESL and EAP textbooks, is structured precisely in this way. For example, in an advanced level EAP textbook used in this EAP program’s upper level reading and writing classes, it advises its readers that ‘for most of your academic reading, you will want to read fast and remember what you read’ and ‘in

34

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

order to accomplish this, you should “read smart”’ (Williams, 2005: 47). The textbook’s strategy of ‘reading smart’ solely consists of telling students to skim the headings and topic sentences of each paragraph. When paragraphs have their topic sentences as their first sentence, then this reading strategy might work well for the students in this particular EAP class (and, in fact, judging by their responses to her questions, it did), but it would seem unlikely to benefit students who are ‘reading for first-year university’, and much less for the students aiming to enter graduate studies, in which readings feature complex and dense language contained in paragraphs that may not necessarily feature their topic sentences as the first one. Emilia continues on to the third paragraph in the reading: Emilia:

OK, so we’re talking about 1600s in Europe, Middle East and China; encyclopedias were expensive and rare. OK, next paragraph. I want you to find the words ‘by’, the word ‘by’. Students: Second line. Emilia: Second line. OK, that’s a time word and that’s also, signals some kind of change, OK? So it’s important. So ‘by the 20th century, it was common for middle-class families.’ What do they mean by ‘middle-class families’? Student 2: xxxx. Emilia: Families have income in the middle. That’s right, not too rich, not too poor, just in the middle, OK? ‘To buy a multivolume encyclopedia to keep in their home.’ So now, all of the sudden it’s not expensive and rare. It’s normal to have it at home. OK, so that’s a change. So we know that in paragraph number four, now we have the change to middle class. It’s not expensive and rare anymore, now it’s a middleclass thing to have an encyclopedia at home. How many of you have encyclopedias at home that your parents bought once upon a time? Student 3: Yeah. Emilia: A few? Yeah, me too. And now, not so common, but they’re still very useful. I don’t know if you use yours but I use mine all the time. Student 1: Not all the time= Emilia: =Yeah, but it’s very useful= Student 1: =Sometime, especially if you like, you have an English, a topic in English and you would like to take a background in= Emilia: =Not only that, it gets you a vocabulary. Student 1: Yeah=

An E AP Cl assroom

Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

35

=You get the background vocabulary. It’s very useful. Plus, it’s much easier than looking it up online. You’d think it’s easier to go online, but it’s not. It takes a long time to look up something online, whereas in a book, it’s like looking it up in a dictionary. You just find the page, you know, ‘Africa’, ‘Af’ is going to come after ‘Ae’, A, B, C, D, E and then F, ‘Africa’. And it’s there, everything is there: the population, the, you know, it may not be up-to-date like the latest, latest, but it gives you a pretty good general idea, you know? So don’t just think about the internet alone. It’s not a bad idea to have access to, and encyclopedias can be very specific. They can be about people only. They can be about particular, they can uh, be more geographic, they can be political, they can be literary= =Yeah, how many, how many series you use?= =Well, there are general dictionaries, there are like the Encyclopedia Britannica, Columbia, um= =Certain books?= =The Canadian, uh, I don’t know. Go to a library, for instance, the Reference Library has, like, lots of different sets of encyclopedias. And they’re beautiful books= =Yeah= =you know? So if you like books, they’re beautiful.

Emilia asks the students for the meaning of ‘middle-class families’. Student 2’s response in the following turn is inaudible but it appears he knew the answer because the instructor says, ‘that’s right, not too rich, not too poor, just in the middle, OK?’ In this turn, the pedagogical emphasis shifts from highlighting elementary grammatical features as a reading method to a discussion on literacy practices associated with a social class that is foregrounded in the text. After Emilia and the students discuss the usefulness of encyclopedias, she then claims encyclopedias as being easier to use than ‘looking it up online . . . it takes a long time to look up something online, whereas in a book, it’s like looking it up in a dictionary’. Emilia seems to be privileging a literacy practice that appears to have vanished with students who came of age using online search engines to find information quickly. Her feelings regarding technology were generally made clear to her students throughout the classes I observed in the Winter term. As she put it one week later in class, ‘I hate technology, honestly’. This was in the context of a student’s cell phone vibrating, so perhaps an alternate interpretation could suggest that this disruption enabled by electronic noise (rather than

36

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

students’ physiological noises such as whispering) was the cause of her irritation. However, her comment that looking something up in an encyclopedia is ‘much easier’ and ‘you’d think it’s easier to go online, but it’s not’ speaks to an adherence to a literacy practice – looking things up in an encyclopedia, using physical books as the still dominant form of knowledge – that may not resonate with students who now almost solely, if not completely, retrieve information from online sources. And in a sense, it is also an issue of aesthetics inasmuch as Emilia makes the claim for encyclopedias as ‘beautiful books’ and ‘if you like books, they’re beautiful’. This perhaps is an indexing of the realization (or anxiety?) that printed books might become an antiquated technology in the face of the increasing use of electronic devices that display the same content via different modes and forms. What then are the implications of not only these rapid changes in the ways people want to read texts in preferred modes of dissemination, but also the ways in which people gain access to (or are barred from) these privileged modes now seen as valued and desirable forms of delivery? After going over the rest of the reading using the same method of highlighting specific words such as ‘however’, ‘until’ and ‘thus’, Emilia reviewed the reading comprehension questions at the end, which were multiple-choice items. She and the students have just finished this exercise when she says: Emilia:

OK, now. That is efficient reading, OK? I know some of you are a little bored. You’re yawning, you’re tired. Uh, reading is really going to be your best friend in university and you’ve got to start doing it efficiently, OK, like a surgeon. Don’t read as though you’re reading a novel, this is not for pleasure. Don’t start at sentence number one and just go until you finish. You will never be able to complete your reading for one course if you do that. You need to read in a very systematic, surgical way, OK? Make it general, look it over, make you know, make notes, think about how long it’s going to take you to read this thing, you know? Then decide how much time you’ve got, read it quickly over paragraph by paragraph, or section by section, and then when you have time, read it in depth. If you don’t, maybe that’s all you can do is just skim, scan, skim, scan over it before you go to class, OK? Remember, you’re going to have to be realistic about your time. So if you do not have time, skim, scan, skim, scan, get the general idea, OK? It’s enough to answer these questions, so it’s going to be enough for you to go to class and understand the lecture, OK?

An E AP Cl assroom

37

The lack of engagement with this reading passage might be indicated by Emilia’s observation that ‘some of you are a little bored, you’re yawning, you’re tired’. Whether this sign of several students’ fatigue was due to their being in class for two hours (this was right before their mid-class break for 15 minutes), or their being disinterested with the reading is open to conjecture. However, in my subsequent interviews with several of the students in this class, many expressed a general lack of interest in reading, particularly academic reading. As for the ones who did like to read, they preferred popular fiction. The students’ views and attitudes toward reading academic texts contrast with Emilia’s claim that ‘reading is really going to be your best friend in university’. Her discourse on reading practices here replicates to a certain extent the reading practices privileged by many of the structured ESL and EAP readings: ‘you’ve got to start doing it efficiently, like a surgeon . . . you need to read in a very systematic, surgical way’. Her medical metaphor about reading practices needed to succeed at university (‘read it quickly . . . skim, scan, skim, scan . . . get the general idea’) is promulgated by ESL and EAP textbooks that exhort readers to get the main idea quickly by skimming for these ideas embedded in topic sentences and titled subsections. This catch-all reading method practice focusing on rather elementary signposts such as transition words and clausal connectors promotes a technicist reading of the material that further disengages many students from connecting with the content and positions them as mere decoders of text (at a somewhat superficial level) instead of encouraging the practice of knowledge co-constructors engaged in dialogue with the text. In addition, many of these ESL and EAP reading textbook exercises in their focus on these elementary signposts substantially ignore how academic registers and language in specific disciplines are structured in ways that will not be easily recognized or comprehended with the simple use of finding clausal connectors. In drawing upon the work of Martin (1991) and Unsworth (1999) on Australian middle school history textbooks, Schleppegrell et al. (2004: 74) noted that several key linguistic features of this academic discipline include ‘nominalization, reasoning within the clause through choice of verbs, and ambiguous use of conjunctions’, all of which are almost never mentioned in the advanced ESL and EAP textbooks I have taught or encountered over my English language teaching career spanning nearly 20 years. Furthermore, ‘each of these features presents major challenges to students unfamiliar with academic registers and makes it difficult to understand the meanings being constructed’ (Schleppegrell et al., 2004: 74). And since these specific linguistic features such as nominalizations are central to particular academic registers and the attendant meanings being constructed, getting the general idea of linguistically complex and lexically dense academic texts from skimming and

38

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

scanning topic sentences and looking for transition words will be difficult for students who are unfamiliar with the language and registers in their planned academic disciplines.

Collaborative Beginnings with the Teacher After the Winter term concluded, there was a break before the start of the Spring term. I would be observing the classes in the Spring term from the beginning and so would get a better sense of the overall course and classroom trajectory in terms of classroom dynamics and practices. I decided to approach Emilia with the idea of a collaborative inquiry in her upcoming Spring term class for several reasons. First, it was due to my burgeoning interest in how functional grammar approaches could be utilized in teaching ‘the language of schooling’ (Schleppegrell, 2004). A functional grammar approach can help students learn how academic language and discourses are structured through its focus on the linguistic features while also serving as a practical tool for understanding and critically appraising these texts. Secondly, I wanted to explore how students could become more deeply engaged with the sometimes culturally alien texts they face, with the aim of making reading more meaningful and connected in their potential agentive roles as knowledge producers in their own right. Finally, I was seeking to discover how both EAP teachers and students could add to their meaning-making resources, by equipping them with an expanded social semiotic toolkit that would help develop their skills to function in a university setting on their way to achieving their academic goals. In our beginning discussions, Emilia discussed what she perceived her strengths and weaknesses in her pedagogy to be – she felt very confident in her ability to teach grammar but was less sure about her approaches to teaching reading. I thought that introducing her to the concepts and teaching tools of functional grammar would draw on her strengths in formal grammar and address ways in which these tools could help her students not only to better decode academic language but also to reconstruct it in their writing. She was receptive to learning more about a functional grammar approach and in collaborating with me. This collaboration entailed several components. The first was meeting several times a month (whenever our schedules allowed it) to discuss the readings I had selected. These readings encompassed: (a) a general overall introduction to the concepts of functional grammar; (b) the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics; (c) empirical articles that demonstrated the efficacies of this approach; and (d) material pitched more toward practitioners, with practical examples which Emilia

An E AP Cl assroom

39

could immediately grasp (without the at times intimidating mediating factor of complex theoretical frameworks with which she was unfamiliar) and could directly employ in her classroom practices following this type of reading material. At first, the dense and complex theoretical articles proved to be a bit of challenge for both of us. Because I had never previously used a systemic functional approach with my own EAP students, and she was coming from a formal grammar and second language acquisition (SLA) background, we were both novices finding our way together to put this functional grammar approach into practical effect into her classroom. I was initially concerned that I was overburdening her with theoretical articles that made it difficult for her to see how they could be implemented in her classes. This was made clear in her comment at one point, ‘how the heck can I put all this stuff in the classroom?’ However, in our subsequent conversations, Emilia expressed the view that these articles eventually gave her the theoretical background necessary to understand the approach toward language functional grammar takes and its connections to practical classroom applications. With this in mind, I started to adjust the flow and direction of the articles we were reading together. The sequence outlined above was not planned in advance, but rather done on an ad hoc basis, determined by the reactions and feedback from Emilia, who would comment on and evaluate the articles she found useful and the ones she found to be more theoretical than practical. I found more practically oriented ones (e.g. Coffin et al., 2009; Ravelli, 2000; Schleppegrell & Go, 2007) that we could discuss how to use in addressing the specific issues and needs of her current students that Spring term. These gave clear illustrative examples and models that she could utilize in expanding her teaching repertoire and toolkit. A second component of our collaborative inquiry was the implementation of this functional grammar approach in her classroom after discussing the readings. In what will follow are several examples of how we worked together to construct lessons using aspects of functional grammar to highlight the linguistic features that construct both academic discourse and discourses in social circulation that are at times impenetrable to many EAP students. The third aspect of the collaboration was my observations of these classroom practices which I audio-taped and took notes on for further discussions. The fourth dimension of our collaboration was the ensuing meetings in which we discussed how the lessons went, what could be learned from them for future practices, and suggestions based on both my observations and Emilia’s own self-reflections on her teaching and classroom practices. As with any collaborative endeavor, this was not without its occasional tensions and disagreements. I was acutely aware of the power dynamics

40

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

involved in this collaborative relationship between me as a researcher and Emilia as a practitioner who was starting her graduate studies in second language education. I did not want to position or present myself to her as one who ‘knows’, or who would ‘empower’ her with the theories or research that carry with them academic and cultural capital to be deployed from one who has the capital to do so. Instead, as we negotiated our roles in navigating a comfortable working relationship, we strove to co-construct knowledge together as we discussed our EAP teaching experiences and our frustrations and successes in the classroom. This will be illustrated in the next chapter.

3

Exploring the Making of Meanings

In the Spring (April–June) term, Emilia was assigned to what was a new class for her: a ‘post-advanced’ level class of students who had successfully passed the program’s advanced level class and its accompanying exit exam, allowing them to matriculate at the university if they were admitted. Thus the class was optional and in a sense served as a way-station for these students who were waiting to hear back from the university. The post-advanced class was mandated by the program to include an integrated use of technology with the curriculum in the classroom. This entailed having a class wiki on which the class could post photos, comments and their papers. In addition, this also meant Emilia had to use online videos as supplementary materials in support of the print-based texts covering the same topics, such as marketing and workplace motivation. In her Spring term EAP reading and writing class, Emilia had 11 students: six females and five males. They came from China, Iraq, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Taiwan. All were planning to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in North America in various disciplines, including marketing, business, accounting and political science. The students in her Spring term class all ranged in age from 18 to the mid-30s. All had received extensive English language education in their home countries. For this Spring term class, the tables were arranged in pods (Figure 3.1), because another teacher who had the room before the class preferred this arrangement. Several times, Emilia had the students rearrange the desks into a U-shape, but she mainly left the tables as they were. This pod arrangement was also intended to facilitate group work in this class, but at times it engendered private, whispered conversations among some of the students, particularly at the pods furthest away from Emilia. A few students would have their laptops open, and would either search the internet for relevant information that was being discussed at the time, or check their email and Facebook 41

42

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Figure 3.1 Emilia’s classroom, Spring and Summer terms

pages during the lesson. The room itself was equipped with a ceilingmounted AV projector for Emilia’s laptop computer, and had internet access, both cable and wireless. However, the internet wireless access in this room was unreliable due to the room’s location in relation to the transmitter’s signals. This sometimes proved to be an impediment to her lesson plans as the cable option also did not always ensure access due to occasional problems connecting to the university server and the overloaded capacity of the bandwidth availability in the building. This was a stark reminder that, although telecommunications infrastructure might be in place in some schools (and non-existent in others), easy and rapid access on demand is not always possible for a multimodal teaching and learning environment to be created. Until this primary issue can be resolved in classrooms so that teachers have up-to-date equipment that can be supported by unlimited bandwidth and fast, reliable access to online materials at will, a more comprehensive multimodal teaching and learning environment remains out of reach for many schools around the world. Emilia had effectively used a so-called ‘smart’ classroom and an online system at the other schools where she had taught; however, because the technology did not always work in this room, she did not exclusively rely on it. In her view, it was the institution’s responsibility to make technology easily accessible for teachers to use; otherwise, as she pointed out, ‘it’s like giving an instructor chalk, but no blackboard to write on’. However, due to

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

43

the aforementioned program mandate for this class, her teaching had to incorporate video texts for this class.

Addressing Reading Subject Positions in the Spring Term The following class lesson in Emilia’s Spring term was based on a reading section entitled ‘Micro-marketing defined’, featured in a chapter, ‘Marketing’s role within organizations’, from a marketing textbook, Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach (Shapiro et al., 2002). This reading was chosen because several students’ intended major was either business or businessrelated (marketing), and the class syllabus called for an article and a video related to each of the students’ planned studies, with a presentation by each student for that particular week. Emilia’s objective here was to introduce academic tone and a closer look at how academic language is constructed. In the extract below, a subsection of the chapter, ‘More than just persuading customers’, is the main focus of the class discussion. The subsection reads: You already know that micro-marketing isn’t just selling and advertising. Unfortunately, many executives still think it is. They feel that the job of marketing is to get rid of whatever the company happens to produce. In fact, the aim of marketing is to identify customers’ needs – and then meet those needs so well that the product almost sells itself . . . If the whole marketing job has been done well, customers don’t need much persuading. They should be ready to buy. (Shapiro et al., 2002: 8) A beginning shift in Emilia’s classroom practices will be reflected through our collaborative inquiries on the uses of functional grammar in her Spring term class. The initial step was taken when she shared the chapter with me that she was going to teach. I asked Emilia if she would mind if I demonstrated to her an alternative reading of the text by using a more functional grammar and critical approach. She enthusiastically agreed and was immediately curious to see my own analytic take on it. Since we did not have time to meet to discuss the text before her class, I went ahead and highlighted a passage in the chapter on micro-marketing in which I identified key linguistic features and posed several questions. I underlined the sentences containing the key linguistic features, such as nominalizations which are indicative of academic writing (Schleppegrell, 2004) and are often difficult for EAP students to unpack, passive constructions

44

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

that obscure agency, and word choices that require analytical engagement for the construction of framing arguments. After underlining these in orangecolored highlights, I annotated each with numbered comments and questions in the margins. I then proceeded to scan the annotated pages and emailed them to Emilia. In the following two extracts, she took up several of my comments and questions in her approach to the text with her students: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Students: Emilia:

Student 2: Student 3: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Student 4: Emilia: Student 4:

Emilia: Student 5:

OK, if we look at the paragraph, the sentence begins with the word, what’s the first word? Uh, ‘you.’ You. Who is ‘you’? The reader. The reader. OK, so it doesn’t look like he’s used ‘you’ a lot anywhere else or, well, maybe later on a little bit. Why would the, the writer, uh, begin that paragraph with the word ‘you’? Why use ‘you’? To uh, appeal to [yourself that you make a conscience of what is he telling in the, in the paragraph? [It’s impersonal? OK, so that you’re more conscious? Yes. You’re more aware of what the writer is saying? Yes. OK, so by using the word ‘you,’ he’s making you conscious of what? That you, that it’s more than just persuading customers, that you have to be conscious of, it’s not just convincing the customers to buy your stuff. OK, so it’s, it’s focusing on an idea that the author wants you to pay attention to? [Yes. [xxxx OK. Sorry? I think maybe the author, uh, the author, the sentence in this, uh, the meaning of this sentence is the author want to, want the reader to know something and if they don’t know, they want you, they want the reader read the, the passage before. OK, yeah, those three words at the beginning, ‘You already know,’ how does the author know that? Because he mentioned it before.

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

Emilia: Student 5: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Students:

45

Oh, he mentioned it before? (laughs) And so, by saying you already know that= =He assumed that you read it. He’s assuming that you read it. He reminds you that if you don’t know this information you need to go and read about that. Exactly. It’s reminding you that it was said before. This is a review. So this is, the author is now stepping out of the text and saying, ‘Hey reader! I already told you this. Do you remember?’ So that ‘you’ has a very specific purpose. Yeah.

Student 2’s and Emilia’s intertextual co-construction of meaning regarding the author’s intention in using ‘you’ to focus the reader on a particular idea is challenged by Student 4 in presenting a different reading of ‘you’: ‘the author want to, want the reader to know something and if they don’t know . . . want the reader read the, the passage before.’ Student 4’s reading of the addressivity of ‘you’ seems to suggest this isn’t so much an authorial demand to focus on the thematic ideas but rather more an assumption that the reader has been dutifully following the readings up until this particular point. Here, the author is resituated as a prototypical teacher lecturing to the students; the reader is assumed to be a student, and therein lies the audience for this text. Emilia acknowledges this different reading with an ‘OK, yeah . . .’, and this is reinforced with Student 5’s assertion, ‘he assumed you read it’ and Emilia immediately repeating this. This is picked up by Student 1: ‘he reminds you . . .’ and Emilia in the following turn affirms this interpretation again with ‘exactly’ and repeating part of Student 1’s answer, ‘it’s reminding you that it was said before’. She then ventriloquizes the author: ‘hey reader! I already told you this.’ The co-constructed meanings of ‘you’ now take a definitive cast with Emilia’s final comment, ‘so that “you” has a very specific purpose.’ The students all seem to agree. This exchange demonstrates how the meanings of ‘you’ are made through the intertextualized co-constructions and negotiation of meaning associated with the authorial intentions of the text. Instead of Emilia approaching the text in a monologic manner as she did in the Winter term class extracts in the previous chapter, the meaning of ‘you’ here is interpreted, challenged and co-constructed by both the students and Emilia, with the text and with each other. In doing so, the students have a dialogic space in which they can articulate how the language is specifically working in creating a reading subject position for them. This attention to language goes

46

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

beyond the mere highlighting of specific words such as ‘unlike’ or ‘however’, as in the Winter term class; the pedagogical focus here is a move toward heightening (or developing) an awareness of language and the role it constructs for the students as readers. That the students are more engaged throughout this exchange is evidenced by more turn-taking and more participation (five students offering comments). Not only is ‘you’ understood differently at the end, but in its continual recontextualization by more participants in the dialogic process, it also becomes an entry point for the students to engage with and understand language, its motivated interests and the effects it can have on their understanding of what the text is doing as they read it. A few minutes after the above exchange, the class began discussing whether or not a 12-year-old child needs a cell phone, and the role of the marketing department in a telecommunications company in meeting the needs of customers. This perceived need is tied to safety and parental concerns, and the marketing and selling of cell phones to children is to alleviate these fears or ‘instill confidence for the family,’ as one student put it. Another student remarked that marketing phones to children is for ‘expanding the customer groups’. At this point, Emilia says: Emilia:

Students: Emilia: Students: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia:

OK so, well let’s go back to the text for a moment, OK? In that second paragraph, under ‘More than just persuading customers,’ where it starts with ‘Nortel,’ and it says it ‘has moved its people from thinking of sales as marketing to thinking of marketing as meeting customer needs,’ is that true? Is marketing always meeting a customer need or are they sometimes creating it as well? Sometimes creating= =Sometimes creating it as well. Now, you as a reader, are you thinking about that when you read these words or did it take my asking you questions to make you think about that= =(laughter) Too uneducated about this topics so= =OK, so you may or may not be educated about the topic but do you analyze the words that are being used and think critically about it and say to yourself, ‘Oh, wait a minute, is this true? Do I really believe what this guy is [saying about marketing?’ [I don’t believe. Or do you just kind of read and say, ‘OK, what does he think? What’s he trying to tell me?’

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

Student 3: Emilia: Student 3:

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2:

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1:

47

Well, he’s writing about marketing as a, in an academic approach. So he’s writing about marketing in an academic approach [and therefore? [So he even so, and therefore he has to say, ‘OK, marketing is here to meet the needs of customers’, instead of saying, ‘OK, you can, you can have an excellent career in marketing if you just begin to create necessities to your customers’. OK. Teacher? Yes, that’s quite possible. Uh-huh? I suppose because it’s a textbook so, and for the beginner, most of they are student in undergraduate school, they cannot have too much about the negative, the negative, uh, aspect of marketing so they can= =Maybe= =So they cannot talk the grey area, so they use ‘meeting the need’ to avoid it. OK, so your textbook is actually, as we say, dodging the issue. Dodging the issue means like, uh, [don’t hit me! [Would someone consider making a need as a [bad thing? [so, it’s a xxxx, I’m sorry what? Would someone else consider making a need as a bad thing? Maybe not, but the textbook doesn’t tell you. So you, as the reader, I want you to think about how often you, as a reader, are critical of the sentences you read. How many times do you say, ‘OK, do I really believe this? Is this true?’ Or do you keep going along and just believe what the author said because the words are pretty? I very often critical= =OK, so= =In the topics I’m really interested in. As an academic student, what is your job when you’re reading? To be critical. To be critical. To analyze. To analyze. Huh! But it’s very difficult to analyze if you read about the topic the first time in your life.

48

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Students: Emilia: Student 1:

Hmm, maybe. Maybe this is the second time you read it, it’s easier to be critical. So maybe the first time you read it through for information and the second time you’re more critical. Probably to be critical enough we need to read different opinions. Ah, different opinions. OK, now, you don’t have different opinions here. You only have your own and the author. The author, do you think the author has an opinion? No. Yes. Yeah, usually every author has some kind of [opinion. [Every person has an opinion.

Emilia redirects the students’ attention to the second paragraph in the same subsection, ‘More than just persuading customers’. In the preceding paragraph, the last two sentences read: ‘If the whole marketing job has been done well, customers don’t need much persuading’ and ‘they should be ready to buy’ (Shapiro et al., 2002: 8). The sentence to which Emilia is referring is ‘Nortel understands this and has moved its people thinking of sales as marketing to thinking of marketing as meeting customer needs’ (Shapiro et al., 2002: 8). She begins by asking the students if marketing is always meeting a customer’s need or creating one. Her re-voicing of ‘creating a need’ is from my comment number 9 in the margin, where I wrote ‘is it “meeting” customers’ needs or “creating” them?’ Here we can trace the itinerary of a particular discourse and its mediated steps. First, the text itself draws on a marketing discourse in its statement, ‘thinking of marketing as meeting customer needs’. Secondly, I then choose to interpret and read this particular discourse through my own lens and uptake, which perhaps in this instance projects a meaning not wholly intended by its authors – that of creating a need. My interpretation is then written down in blue ink in the margin next to the printed text, in effect ‘talking back’ to the text, and thus creates a critical intertextual commentary that may have been unanticipated by the textbook authors. The third step is when the instructor – Emilia – read this commentary (she did not have a chance to discuss it with me prior to teaching the lesson), and then chooses to reproduce it in her question to the class: ‘are they sometimes creating it as well?’ The fourth and final step in this discourse itinerary is in the beginning turns in the above extract where the students repeat part of Emilia’s question (‘sometimes creating’) and her bringing it to a close by repeating their repeat – ‘sometimes

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

49

creating it as well’. These interactions illustrate the Bakhtinian notion of utterances being taken up, repeated and re-voiced so that these ‘cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socioideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue’ (Bakhtin, 1981: 276). The discourse of marketing is recontextualized and resemiotized across different spaces of actions and modes – written, read and spoken – through these series of mediated acts both inside and outside the classroom. These included my interacting with the textual content and in the ensuing critique of it in the form of literally writing back to the authors on their published text, Emilia reading my comments and then articulating them in the class, both directing the students’ attention to the motivated aspects of a particular word choice and foreclosing other paths, other possible readings due to my constructed binary choice between ‘meeting’ and ‘creating’ needs and, finally, the students taking up this offered choice of ‘creating’, which had been prepared by the preceding discussion on the marketing of cell phones to children. My written remark questioning if marketing merely meets people’s needs or actually creates them shapes the trajectory of the ensuing mediating actions and thus raises a question: How different would the class discussion have been if I had written only, ‘meeting customers’ needs or . . .’, leaving it blank so that it would be open to Emilia’s and the students’ own contributions to alternative readings of, with and against the text? This issue is highlighted when Emilia asks the students, ‘now, you as a reader, are thinking about that when you read these words or did it take my asking you questions to make you think about that?’ Several of the students laugh and Student 1 replies that he’s ‘too uneducated about this topics’. Several turns later, the same student asks an interesting question that challenges the assumption that for everyone, ‘making a need’ is ‘a bad thing?’ Perhaps this could have opened up a new dialogic pathway through which the textbook discourse on marketing would have again been resemiotized in potentially productive discussions on who would consider creating (or ‘making’) a need a good thing, others who might regard this as ‘a bad thing’, and still other people who may think of this as a neutral process – just ‘the way it is’. Emilia replies that, ‘maybe not, but the textbook doesn’t tell you’. She then goes on to tell the students to think about ‘how often you, as a reader, are critical of the sentences you read’ and not to be swayed because ‘the words are pretty’. Student 1 then replies, ‘I very often critical . . . in the topics I’m really interested in’. This turn might have also served as an entry point for another alternative dialogic pathway which could have initiated a discussion on what makes particular material interesting

50

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

to some students, why the effects of this engagement would lead to being critical (or not) and/or why other material is not engaging, and so on. However, Emilia does not follow up on Student 1’s comment but instead reiterates her earlier remark in her question, ‘what is your job when you’re reading?’ Student 1 has a different take on his job as an academic student while reading: ‘to analyze’. He also makes the point that ‘it’s very difficult to analyze if you read about the topic the first time in your life’. His perceptive comment raises an important issue for critical literacy practices in the EAP classroom. Often students will point out that it is difficult for them to contribute in class because they have no idea about a brand new issue with which they are unfamiliar, or at times even being intimidated by the material. This difficulty is also exacerbated by their being hampered in engaging in discussions due to a lack of specialized vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific academic discourse. Emilia acknowledges this difficulty by giving Student 1 encouragement: ‘maybe . . . the second time you read it, it’s easier to be critical.’ She then gives the class a two-step reading method: the first to read for information, and then to be critical the second time. Student 1 makes the crucial point that ‘probably to be critical enough we need to read different opinions’, which in fact is the second dimension of critical literacy as defined by Lewison et al. (2002: 383): ‘reflecting on multiple and contradictory perspectives’. Emilia recognizes this, and points out that there is a lack of alternative viewpoints in the textbook reading passage. She then asks if the author has an opinion. While Student 2 says no, the other students say yes. Emilia concludes with ‘usually every author has some kind of opinion’ while Student 1 claims that ‘every person has an opinion’. Perhaps this classroom articulation of differing opinions (or the lack thereof) could have been extended by Emilia to address the complex ways in which the textbook authors’ opinions may be presented as ‘neutral’ information devoid of any particular framings, or how it may shape the presentation of information known as ‘facts’. There are several conflicting meanings of the critical in select instances throughout this classroom interaction. In several turns, Emilia links it to one of belief in, or skepticism toward, the author’s words. For Student 1, being critical means being engaged in the material and topics that he himself finds appealing; however, the same student also cites the need to read different viewpoints in order to be critical. These interactions highlight the ongoing concern about who gets to decide what the critical is, what they mean by the ‘critical’, and in what context. Emilia, in relating the critical to being skeptical of an author’s words (‘do I really believe this?’), seems to echo Willinsky’s (2008) observation that several popular approaches to critical literacy include

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

51

focusing on determining an author’s point of view detecting bias, particularly in the mainstream media. He argued that ‘identifying bias as the issue can make these acts of misrepresentation and distortion appear as no more than a passing prejudice, a slight unconscious tendency, among certain media people who should know better’ (Willinsky, 2008: 6). Emilia’s use of the term ‘critical’ appears to be more aligned with critical thinking or critical reading, which comes from ‘the liberal-humanist philosophical tradition’ and ‘emphasizes such skill-based tasks as distinguishing fact from opinion and, at a more advanced level, recognizing propaganda in texts’ (Patel Stevens & Bean, 2002: 310). In contrast, the ‘critical’ in critical literacy ‘views textual meaning making as a process of construction’ and focuses on ‘elements of context, historical, social and political dimensions of power relations’ (Patel Stevens & Bean, 2002: 310). This in part involves having readers name ‘power groups with an interest in its message’ and recognize ‘that all texts are ideological’ (Patel Stevens & Bean, 2002: 311). We will see in Emilia’s evolving classroom practices in the following chapters the continuing tensions between these two meanings of the critical, and how they affect and shape how specific meanings are made in her classroom.

A Beginning Conversation Prior to our second discussion meeting, I had emailed Emilia several articles on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) which included articles by Heidi Byrnes (2009a) and Sue Hood (2008). I selected these particular articles because I hoped they would serve as a good introduction to a SFL theoretical frame of reference in foregrounding ‘a theory of language that understands language as being fundamentally about meaning making, that is, about language and content’ (Byrnes, 2009b: 1). Set in the context of Emilia’s attention to a focus on form approach I repeatedly observed in her teaching, these articles presented an alternative view of ‘the meaning-making or functional quality of language as a semiotic system and of contextualized language use’ (Byrnes, 2009b: 2), which is particularly important for advanced language learners, as Byrnes argued. In underscoring the ‘dynamic meaning-oriented approach of SFL’ (Byrnes, 2009b: 2), in an email to Emilia the night before our second meeting, I demonstrated how two students’ sentences could be transformed into academic prose through the nominalization process. In her class on the day before this meeting, Emilia had the students paraphrase sentences from a reading on biotechnology (Sherlock & Morrey, 2002) as an in-class exercise. When they were finished, she then had them write down their

52

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

paraphrased sentences on transparencies that she subsequently showed to the class. Here are the original sentences followed by the two students’ paraphrased sentences: The original sentence: There are a couple of features of the sugar molecules that explain how all parts of the single-stranded DNA molecule are held together in a line. (Sherlock & Morrey, 2002: 3) Student 1: Two traits of sugar molecules describe the process of combining the parts of the single-stranded DNA molecule in a line. The original sentence: Many pharmaceutical drugs, including insulin, are already genetically engineered in the laboratory. (Epstein, 2002: 49) Student 2: Numerous pharmaceutical drugs, one of which is insulin, have [been] engineered in the laboratory. (Emilia added ‘been’ to the student’s sentence on the transparency) One of the main issues facing EAP students is learning how to properly paraphrase without plagiarizing. As an EAP instructor myself for many years, it was at times difficult to teach this skill to my students. Even a preliminary glance at both the original sentences and the two students’ paraphrased ones will reveal the sentence structures to be intact. The students employ the method of substituting words for one another: (a) ‘a couple of features’ becomes ‘two traits’; (b) ‘explain’ becomes ‘describes’; and (c) ‘many’ becomes ‘numerous’. How then can teachers move students beyond this type of paraphrasing? Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian:

Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

So I copied down the sentences from both students on their transparencies? OK. Right? OK, Mm-hmm. And I didn’t correct, that was the uncorrected one, I think. You had corrected a little bit. Um, but I thought, now that they, you know, they have this kind of basic concept of nominalizations, so I thought this, as an example= =Mm-hmm= =as an example, to scaffold it to the next step, that, if you would, if you showcase it somehow, showing that, how this whole sentence= =Mm-hmm=

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

53

=can be turned into= =OK. That’s what you and I need to talk about because this is what I don’t understand. I don’t know enough about the, what nominalization actually means, you know? To be able to, you know, so, for me, in order to teach that, OK? I need to give them a little bit of theory here, you know? So that’s why I began with [smaller elements like sentence. [Right, right, right. But we didn’t really talk about that as, you know, how this was going to work in its minutiae, you know, so have I taken you off track? No. What happened is there’s just time constraints. Yeah. Totally not off track [because I, you know [It’s a nightmare! The theory that you can find is in those articles I emailed you. One was the Heidi Byrnes article which is ‘Grammatical metaphor.’ She lays [it out very nicely. [And that’s the one I’ve started. Yeah. So that’s the one I’m reading. Right. Yeah. And then the other one that we talked about together last week was Sue Hood, she does a little bit. Right. But, basically, they’re not the same. Right. So nominalization is the resource that grammatical metaphor uses. OK.

We started off talking about how I wrote down the two students’ sentences and then rewrote them using the nominalization process. I started to show her how I did it, but Emilia interjected to ask me to explain in more detail the SFL notion of nominalization and its role in complex constructions. In her role as practitioner, she reminded me to show the practical classroom mechanics of it – ‘how this was going to work in its minutiae’. This prompted me to refer her to the theoretical basis in the various articles I had selected for her to read, but rather than spending too much time talking theory, I decided to discuss with her how to teach it in practical ways that students would be able to grasp quickly. I then emphasized that students need to know how to write extended

54

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

noun phrases from various verbs since academic English features heavy use of nominalizations: Christian:

Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian:

Emilia: Christian:

Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

Yeah, so it’s the nouns. Here, I kind, I wrote something like um, ‘cause Student 1 writes, well, her main verb here is ‘describe,’ right? So here, I switched it to this ‘sugar molecules two-trait descriptions,’ so two traits, description, ‘of the,’ and then switched it; ‘combination,’ turned that into a noun, right? ‘Combination process of the single-stranded DNA molecule particle.’ Now, granted, that’s a mouthful= =What a nightmare! It’s a mouthful, but [that’s exactly what [But that’s what they do. Yes. And that’s why academic language is difficult to [understand. That’s so interesting. [Exactly, exactly. OK, so, yeah. I can use that as a good example. See? And then when, ‘cause that is what makes it academic, which it is, that’s within the discourse and then when profs read that, they go, ‘OK, this person knows how to write.’ Right? Yeah. Um, now, Student 2, she wrote, which is a perfectly fine sentence, and you had added the ‘been’, which was the small, um, OK, so that’s the subject and then she has the little clause here, and then, ‘have been engineered in the laboratory,’ so, what that does is, according to functional grammar, is, OK, that ends the sentence, right? But what you can do is= =[Change all that into a [Change the whole thing into subject and then, so that you can add more information within one sentence, right? So that you don’t have to keep writing another sentence. (laughs) I love that! See? Yeah, yeah, right. See, that’s the whole thing. Never thought about that at all. Right. Never thought about it. Isn’t that interesting? (laughs)

In showing her how I did it with the students’ sentences, Emilia exclaims that the new sentence featuring the densely nominalized subject (somewhat

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

55

exaggerated in length for effect) is a ‘nightmare’; it seems to resonate with her because, upon seeing how the sentences became more complex through the nominalization process, she notes ‘that’s what they do’ – ‘they’ meaning academic writers, and ‘that’s why academic language is difficult to understand’. It was very gratifying to hear her say that she could use that ‘as a good example’. At that moment, I felt the immense practical usefulness of functional grammar in helping EAP instructors to teach students how both to understand and to write academic texts. This meeting proved beneficial in that it provided Emilia with a new tool to teach students in their need for acquiring linguistic resources beyond simple error correction and vocabulary: Emilia:

You see, that’s why, when I’m talking to you and I think about where they need to be, and then, when I read their, their homework, their assignments, and I think, ‘This is where they are’, you know, then I, because I’m teaching it for the first time, I realize, ‘Oh my god, like, how do I get them from that low level to a higher level and build that awareness?’ But I can’t get them to the higher level, what I need to do is just build awareness of, so that they understand, they like, they really do need to be working very hard at this English thing, you know? And I feel like I’m giving them scare tactics but I’m not really giving them mechanisms to do something with it right?

Many students in general, and particularly EAP students, find academic texts difficult to read and process because of their dense structure, which is partly a result of the frequent use of nominalizations. Because nominalization ‘allows a lot of information to be packed into the Theme/Subject position which otherwise needs a whole clause to express’ (Harvey, 1993, as cited by Schleppegrell, 2004: 72), these noun phrases carry an intense informational load which then has to be deconstructed and processed by students, which is no easy task for EAP students. Schleppegrell (2004) explained that nominalization is also a resource for grammatical metaphor, a construct of functional grammar that is key to understanding the nature of academic registers. Grammatical metaphor is the expression of concepts in an incongruent form (Halliday, 1994, 1998). Congruent expression refers to the ‘everyday’ use of language, where, in a clause, ‘things’ are realized in nouns, ‘happenings’ are realized in verbs, ‘circumstances’ are realized in adverbs or prepositional phrases, and relations between elements are realized in conjunctions. With grammatical metaphor, the choice of elements

56

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

for these grammatical categories is incongruent, as other categories are used. . . . Grammatical metaphor . . . uses different wording to refer to the same meaning. . . . Since grammatical metaphor is a linguistic process through which meaning is construed in the grammar in a form other than that which is prototypical, it is key to understanding the linguistic challenges of schooling. Through grammatical metaphor, ‘everyday’ meanings are construed in new ways that enable the abstraction, technicality, and development of arguments that characterize advanced literacy tasks. (Schleppegrell, 2004: 72) Schleppegrell illustrated this with an example of congruent expression, or the ‘everyday’ use of language: ‘The telephone was invented’, which is a clause. She then presented the incongruent expression or ‘specialized’ use of language of this in a noun phrase: ‘The invention of the telephone’. The simple illustration demonstrates how academic registers are achieved. Verbs, which many students can easily categorize as being ‘action’ or ‘process’ words, are now changed into nouns. Schleppegrell pointed out that what might be a lengthy description of process now becomes a single nominal element. Using these nominal elements, writers can employ chains of reasoning within one sentence, bypassing conjunctions that are usually emphasized in many EAP classes. These sentences thus become much more complex due to their increased load of more ideas packed into these noun phrases. Teaching nominalization is one such concrete mechanism that EAP instructors can use in helping students learn ‘the language of schooling’ (Schleppegrell, 2004). The exchange between Emilia and me demonstrates that the divide between theory and practice needs to be bridged more with researchers and practitioners working closely together to find the tools that can help students recognize the constructions of academic discourse. In addition to understanding nominalizations as the necessary component of the language of schooling, learning how to unpack dense nominalizations not only for sentence and text-level comprehension (which of course is important for students), but also for addressing how and why some nominalizations function as part of discourse dynamics and power arrangements provides an essential component to a critical literacy toolkit. Students becoming savvy about the use of nominalizations such as ‘globalization’ can learn to see how these nominalizations can conceal or erase human agency in presenting a complex historical, cultural and sociopolitical process as a pre-existing ‘fact’ or ‘natural’ order of things. In this way, a functional grammar approach is compatible with a critical literacy practice and approach in which the students could use this tool as part of their learning how to read with the text and against the text (Janks, 2010).

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

57

Putting it into Classroom Practice The day after the research meeting with Emilia, she planned to introduce the nominalization process to her students. Before she began this lesson, she solicited from them what they thought written academic language to be. They gave many examples: avoiding humor, use of graphics such as charts and graphs, more detail, more complex language, redundant, passive voice, changes in sentence structure, more reduced clauses, more precise language, more grammar structures, more formal vocabulary, and ‘boring, repetitious’, in the words of one student. It is clear that EAP students know academic language when they see it; however, it is less clear whether they understand the mechanisms by which this type of language is created. I had suggested to Emilia that she might use Schleppegrell’s (2004) examples of congruent and incongruent expressions to help illustrate and explain the nominalization process to the students that day. She did so, and proceeded to write on the board: The telephone was invented by Alex G. Bell versus . . . the invention of the telephone by A. G. Bell She also wrote: action invented V a thing the invention After giving an explanation of how verbs are easily nominalized, and asking the students questions regarding the focus of each sentence, she then asks: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

OK, so, in a sentence, what is this whole thing here, ‘The invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell?’ How can I use it in a sentence? It’s a noun. It’s a noun? OK, it is a noun. But I want to think about the whole thing, here, how can I use that in a sentence? What part of the sentence could that be?

58

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Student 2: Emilia: Student 3: Emilia:

Student 1:

Subject? It could be the subject, yes. So if this entire phrase, ‘cause there’s no verb in there, it’s not a clause, so, if this is, it starts with a noun, then, basically, it’s what we call a noun-phrase. Maybe everything except the first part. So, if you look at what we did here, the entire sentence, up here, starting with the capital, ending with the period, nice, simple sentence even though it is passive voice, right? You have an entire sentence that becomes a noun-phrase subject. Do you think that that’s kind of an idea you can use in your own writing? To take an entire idea and make it into the subject of a sentence and, that way, expand on your idea? Yeah.

Student 1 immediately recognized that ‘the invention of the telephone by . . . Bell’ is a noun (phrase). Emilia then asks how this could be used in a sentence, and Student 2 replies as a subject, and Emilia affirms this answer and reminds the class that this is a noun phrase. Student 3 then says something interesting: ‘maybe everything except the first part.’ It is not clear what this student meant by ‘the first part’. Emilia perhaps did not hear this comment because it was never addressed or raised again in the ensuing thread of dialogue. She does go on to point out to the students that a sentence in its own right – ‘The telephone was invented by . . . Bell’ can now become a noun phrase subject – ‘The invention of the telephone by . . . Bell’. She asks the students if they could use this method in their own writing to develop and expand their ideas, to which Student 1 says ‘yeah’. After asking a student to copy down everything she had written on the board so she could use it for later reference, and after a short lecture to the class about the dangers of complacency stemming from their being satisfied that they are in the highest level class in the program, Emilia turned her focus back to nominalization, and uses the two examples we went over in the research meeting the day before: Emilia:

So, what I want to talk to you, I’m going to give you another example from sentences that students wrote (begins to write on the board): ‘Two traits of sugar molecules describe the process of combining the parts of the single-stranded DNA molecule in a line.’ ‘The sugar molecules’ two trait description of the combination process of the single-stranded DNA molecule parts in a line + verb. . .’

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 1: Student 3: Emilia:

Student 4: Emilia: Student 4: Emilia: Student 4:

59

‘Numerous pharmaceutical drugs, one of which is insulin, have [been] engineered in the laboratory.’ ‘The laboratory engineering of numerous pharmaceutical drugs including insulin + verb’ OK, so we had, from microbiology, there, OK, we had the sentence, ‘Two traits of sugar molecules describe the process.’ OK. I’m going to give you an example of another way to say this and you tell me which one is clearer, which one’s more easy to understand. It’s a difficult idea, anyway. OK, so even here, it’s not that simple an idea. I’m going to write it a different way, and you tell me which one you think is easier to understand. OK? (finishes writing the sentences on the board) It’s not a sentence? No, it’s part of a sentence. That’s why it has an ellipsis here, the dot-dot-dot. Telling you something’s missing. But it’s OK. Is that the same idea, do you think? Maybe yes. Is that the same meaning? Yes. OK, so the meaning is the same? Yes. Which one’s easier to understand? The second [one? [The first one? How many of you think the first one’s easier to understand? There’s a lot of information there. First one is, is easier? How many of you think the first one’s easier? One, two, three, four, five, six. Seven of you. And then rest of you think that the second one is easier? Which one more academic? The [second one. [The second one. The second one? Want to vote for the second one? How many of you think the second one is more academic? OK (asks Student 4), why do you think it’s more academic, the second one? Maybe like, not too much nouns? Where? Like, in the first sentences? So they’re= =More than the first sentences, I think it’s more academic than the first one=

60

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Emilia: Student 4: Emilia: Student 4: Emilia:

=OK, so it’s more academic than the first one= =Yeah= =Because? It has a lot of nouns? A lot of nouns. OK, so there are more nouns in the second one.

After writing both sentences on the board, Emilia asks the class which sentence is easier to understand. Student 1 is at first puzzled by Emilia’s use of the ellipsis in the first bolded example above where she wrote ‘+ verb. . .’ After quickly explaining this convention, she asks the class if the pair of sentences express the same idea and the same meaning. Student 1 says ‘maybe yes’ and then says ‘yes’ as he is processing the information on the board. Emilia then asks which sentence is easier to understand and Student 2 tentatively says the second one while Student 1 suggests it is the first. She then asks for a show of hands to see how many think the first sentence (each done by the two students) is easier, and seven students (out of 10 present) indicate that they find the first one to be easier. When Emilia asks, ‘and then the rest of you think that the second one is easier?’, the remaining three students were silent and did not raise their hands nor did they nod their heads. This lack of response may have indicated their not being sure or being somewhat confused. Emilia quickly asks, ‘which one is more academic?’ Both Students 1 and 3 say the second one is, and then Emilia again asks for a vote. Several more raise their hands, and she then asks Student 4 why she thinks it is more academic. Student 4 astutely points out that there are fewer nouns in the first sentence and because the second contains more nouns, this feature marks the sentences out as ‘more academic’. This lesson demonstrated how a more conscious, heightened awareness on the part of the students can be brought about through the foregrounding of specific linguistic features using a functional grammar perspective. In this case, the linguistic feature commonly used in academic registers – nominalization – was brought to the attention of the students, who were shown how this was achieved through Emilia’s clear explanation of this process and the comparison between the two students’ sentences and my heavily nominalized renderings of them. During the stretch of time while Emilia was giving this lesson, the students were paying close attention; all eyes were on her and the board. In contrast to other moments in the class and throughout the term, none of the students was looking at one another, or whispering and giggling, or stealing glances at their open laptops (one or two had the habit of checking their Facebook page during the lessons). These signs seem to indicate that the students were fully engaged with this lesson as it made clear to many of them, perhaps for the first time judging by their reactions, how academic

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

61

English could be unpacked and made more accessible by demonstrating its lexicogrammatical process, and that it was thus within their grasp to both understand and to produce this in the future. The students were subsequently able to produce nominalizations that increased the density of their sentences. They also expressed satisfaction and pleasure in the following class about this particular lesson as it unlocked a key part of what makes academic language ‘academic’ in a way they had not been taught previously. This validated the research on the utility of a functional grammar approach in classrooms (e.g. Schleppegrell, 2004), and was handled masterfully by Emilia – she showed it could work in her classroom, and this after a very brief time in which she became acquainted with functional grammar and its concepts. The lesson ended shortly after the above extract due to the end of class. The next morning, Emilia continued her lesson on nominalization, but unfortunately I was unable to observe that morning lesson. However, after arriving at the classroom later that day, one of her students expressed to me how ‘helpful and useful’ these lessons were, and seemed quite happy. Another student took a photo of the board on which they had written their new sentences that morning (Figure 3.2). Judging by the sentences on the righthand side of the board, we can see evidence of how these students were able to produce the incongruent, specialized expressions characteristic of (scientific) academic registers. In the first sentence, a student was able to nominalize the verb ‘made’ (are made from) into ‘the process of making proteins from RNA’. In the second sentence, another student nominalized the verb ‘produce’ into ‘the production of proteins from DNA’. By constructing the sentences in this way, the students were able to pack more information into

Figure 3.2 Student writing examples, Spring term

62

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

the subject of the sentence, which allowed them to increase the lexical density of the sentence as well as to construe a more technical meaning appropriate to scientific registers.

Static Personalities or Performativities with the Text? A few weeks later, Emilia had her students read a chapter entitled ‘Personality factors’ from Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (Brown, 2000). This material was chosen to support two students’ planned presentations on foreign language learning. A discussion worksheet was prepared by Emilia. It included comprehension questions, as well as having the students apply the knowledge to their own EAP learning environment – their classroom. In the chapter, ‘Personality factors’, Brown (2000) frames personality and language learning according to schemata that include affect, inhibition, risk-taking, anxiety, empathy and extroversion, all of which are presented to explain why these factors can facilitate or interfere with second language learning. Myers-Briggs’ character types are also introduced to help explain why some are successful in a second language and others less so. This ‘scientific’ discourse is taken up by Emilia: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

The kind of student you were in high school, or in other university classes – if you are at the post-graduate level – is probably the kind of student you’re going to be here. So if you were a loud student, enthusiastic, always talking in your classrooms back home, you will probably be that kind of student here. If you were very quiet in your classrooms back home, you will probably be very quiet here. We do not change our personalities too much, you know, a little bit, when we learn a new language. So would you say, if you look back on your own behavior, do you think you are the same sort of student here that you were there? I think I am completely different. Really, completely different? So in Russia you were= =I was quiet, and not too active in the class. Oh, interesting. So, why the change? What do you think caused it? Now I am interested in the stuff that I study. So it is your level of interest? It’s not your personality so much, but your level of interest and the material. OK, that’s

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

Student 2:

Emilia: Students: Emilia: Student 3: Emilia: Student 4: Emilia: Student 4: Emilia:

63

interesting. (Student 2’s name), you would say the same thing, that it’s slightly different? Uh, about my country? Here? No, I think it’s the same. I think that the factors are the, the aptitude of the person and it is true that if you are interested that the students show about on some topic. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Do you find that for all of you if you are more interested in the topic you are more likely to speak? Yes. Yep, yep, for everybody? Are any of you just really quiet? It doesn’t matter how interested you are, nobody knows because (laughs) (Student 3’s name), really quiet? Really? Quiet. (laughs) OK. (Student 4’s name), you’re very quiet in class, do you think? Yeah, depends on topic. Actually when I was in Taiwan, actually I’m fine; active in the class. OK. Yeah, so it depends on= =The topic. The topic, OK.

Emilia starts off the lesson by seeming to adopt the view of static identities, irrespective of contexts in her opening remark that ‘the kind of student you were in high school or in other university classes . . . is probably the kind of student you’re going to be here’. She mediates the discourse of MyerBriggs’ classification in a manner as to include the present embodied histories and lived identities of her students rendered as one-dimensional in their static ‘personalities’ characterizing and explaining their performances in class. If one is quiet in classrooms back home, then one will probably be quiet in this EAP classroom, or so the discourse that Emilia is taking up seems to suggest. There does seem to be a tacit admission, however, when she says people do change ‘a little bit’ when they learn a new language. Student 1 immediately says in response to this discourse positioning, ‘I think I am completely different’. Emilia seems caught off guard by this revelation that the student was quiet and ‘not too active’ in Russia. This is particularly noteworthy because this student was one of the most vocal participants in the class. He had to be restrained at times by Emilia because he had the tendency to dominate conversations, which impacted his classmates being able to participate and contribute to the discussions. When Emilia asks him why the change, the student simply replies, ‘now I am interested in the

64

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

stuff that I study’. His explanation appears to contradict notions of ‘character types’ that ignore social contexts, structures and of course actors’ own agencies in reshaping and redefining their performative selves in public spaces such as the classroom. Emilia finds it ‘interesting’ that it is level of interest and the material that can influence how one behaves, or rather performs in a class, rather than some essentialized, static personality. Whereas Student 2 says ‘it’s the same’ for her, she also agrees with Student 1 that it is the topic that engages students, rather than any determinant personality. When Emilia asks the class if they agree, all of them say yes (‘Yep, for everybody?’), which seems to surprise her a bit. This surprise prompts her to ask Student 3 if he is quiet all the time. He nodded no, which led to her saying ‘Really?’ In my own conversations with Student 3, he also reiterated that he was quite talkative in classes in his home country, but was quiet in this EAP class. Emilia then asks another seemingly ‘quiet’ student to affirm that in fact he is quiet (all the time), but he also says, ‘depends on topic . . . when I was in Taiwan, actually I’m fine; active in class’. She starts to repeat his first remark (‘so it depends on’) to acknowledge this shift in thinking about personality, and the student completes it, which Emilia repeats in the last turn (‘the topic’). By contesting this positioning of identities irrespective of context, the students challenged assumptions legitimated by social science discourses such as the ones found in the textbook on language learning by Brown (2000) that emphasize psychological aspects of motivation to the exclusion of other factors such as external ones (Benesch, 2012). The students’ responses are resonant with the research done within the past 10 years or so on second language learning and identity (e.g. Block, 2007a, 2007b; Norton, 1997, 2000) that address the complex interplay among language, learning and social identities. Emilia comes to realize this through this dialogic encounter in which the students made clear that their engagement with the materials and topics they find to be of interest determines to some extent their performative identities in the classroom, and not their inherent ‘personality type’. This will be highlighted again in the next chapter, in which there are extended silences from all but one student in a class two weeks later.

Discussion In documenting some of the classroom practices and discourses in Emilia’s Winter term and the ensuing researcher-mediated practices in the Spring term, I have attempted to highlight several issues that are interrelated in their mediated effects on making meaning in her classes.

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

65

In the Winter class, the classroom geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) materialized in the visual displays of the various rules regulating student behavior, call into question why these EAP students need to be disciplined and punished (Foucault, 1979). Emilia informed me that for many of her students, this was their first time away from home, and so they might not have always been focused on their studies due to the distractions of living in a large urban area without many of the restrictions to which they had been accustomed. Although she admitted that her rules may not have necessarily facilitated language learning, if her students left their cell phones on, neglected their homework assignments and continued to speak their first language in the class, these behaviors would leave her ‘worn out, demoralized and annoyed’. As a long-time EAP instructor myself, I can sympathize with her concerns regarding cell phone use in class, and students not taking their EAP studies all that seriously. However, in my role as a researcher I have the luxury of being able to step back, as it were, and think about how these student practices impact their potential to make meaning in class. One very obvious indication of the divide between research and practice is the prevalent attitude among many EAP instructors regarding their students speaking their first languages in class. Although much work has addressed the benefits of students using their first language as an important resource in learning additional languages (e.g. Cummins, 2000, 2001), many instructors continue to see this as detrimental to their students being able to learn academic English. This is one example of how research has not yet fully influenced everyday classroom practices. What may be forgotten at times by many teachers is that students who share the same first language will often use this resource to help each other if they do not understand the class lesson or activity in progress. Of course, students will also speak to one another about non-related issues in their first language in the classroom, but whether this has any negative bearing on their ability to make meaning in academic English has not been shown. Perhaps a question many teachers could ask themselves would be whether any of these student practices actually hinder their meaning making in concrete measurable ways, and derail pedagogical objectives for the class. If not, then what is at stake for teachers to discipline, regulate and punish these behaviors? A second issue concerns several classroom discourses in the Winter term. In particular, Emilia’s resemiotizing the EAP textbook discourses on what constitutes effective reading for university studies is somewhat problematic. It is debatable that practices such as skimming and scanning for main ideas and topic sentences, and reading quickly and ‘smart’ (Williams, 2005) will help students to decode and comprehend dense academic language, registers and discourses, facilitating their reading with the text. This

66 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

also speaks to the problem of suitable materials for an advanced level EAP class. Are the students being exposed to the texts that they will encounter in their undergraduate and graduate studies? Do these type of materials such as the textbook, Learning English for Academic Purposes (Williams, 2005), parts of which were used in Emilia’s Winter, Spring and Summer classes, serve students in developing and expanding their meaning-making potential in an academic context? Or do these textbooks merely serve the publishers hoping to expand global market share? This is also a program issue in the administration’s decisions on designing and mandating a curriculum for the instructors to follow. Are the students’ needs and the teaching objectives being met here? An interrelated matter is the literacy practices of teachers and students, which may differ at times. Emilia’s caution to the students not to exclusively rely on online searches to find suitable information or for their research, and her suggestion to use encyclopedias as well may not really resonate with a generation who has grown up with the internet. Although the early years of online searching did not yield easily organized information, the advances in search engine algorithms and the rise of open-source venues and social media sites such as Academia disseminating published articles are rendering longestablished and recognized sources of information such as encyclopedias increasingly obsolete. However, this is not to fault her, but instead to call for ways in which teachers who have not grown up with the internet can engage with the myriad online resources that can help EAP students in meeting their academic goals. As was evident in the selected extracts presented in this chapter, a functional grammar approach helped both Emilia and her students to expand their meaning making in reading the texts and producing academic language. Although these lessons were preliminary and non-systematic due to time constraints, lesson planning, Emilia’s own agenda and pedagogic habitus (Grenfell, 1996), and my inexperience in implementing systemic functional approaches in my own classroom, the instructional focus on the linguistic feature of nominalization proved to be beneficial to the students, as evidenced by their anecdotal reports and some of their sentences written on the blackboard in the featured photo (Figure 3.2). Here, my objective aligned with Emilia’s teaching objective in that this approach went beyond the teaching focus on surface errors, and laid the groundwork in exploring ways to highlight specifically how academic discourses achieve their effects. Since the goal of EAP is to have students become conversant in academic English, a functional grammar approach can help them to deconstruct and then reconstruct academic language in a manner that goes beyond a focus on form and/or technicist approaches to reading.

E xplor ing the Mak ing of Meanings

67

However, with regard to the students learning how to use academic discourses through exposure to functional grammar, the final question in this chapter is one that asks: is this sufficient on its own? My answer is – it is not. It is not sufficient because learning academic discourses without a knowledge of how hegemonic Discourses (Gee, 2004, 2005, 2008; Williams, 1977) operate in and through these academic discourses (and everyday discourses) does not fully meet all of the EAP students’ pragmatic needs. Functional grammar, while an extremely useful tool in helping students to read with the text, does not address how to read against the text (Janks, 2010). For example, in the functional grammar lesson on nominalization, students were exposed to how verbs can be nominalized so that the resulting noun phrases could increase their informational load and enable more complex sentences to be produced. But what can be left out is how nominalization can obscure agency and leave out contributions by social actors deemed to be insignificant by those who are in the position to decide. This is one example that demonstrates a need for critical literacy practices in the EAP classroom that would highlight for the students how to recognize the issues of language and attendant power instantiations of specific meaning makings enabled by the nominalizing processes in their readings they come across. This important dimension that integrates functional grammar as a concrete tool in a teacher’s critical literacy toolkit can enable students to see how academic discourses are intertwined with hegemonic Discourses in social circulation. This can equip them so that they would be able to read against the text in a manner that would not only help their academic performance in class by producing thoughtful and insightful critiques and thus expand their meaning-making abilities in academic English, but also aid them as they attempt to understand and navigate the powerful institutional discourses of their chosen schools, and of the new societies in which they now reside.

4 The Multimodalities of Neoliberal Globalization Discourses in YouTube Videos

Introduction The term globalization is now such a key feature of our planetary lexicon (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 2001) that the word itself has become nearly as inescapable as the very processes it is meant to describe. Although globalization is often depicted by the mainstream corporate media as if it were ‘an entirely new phenomenon arising from the conditions of the immediate present’ (Edwards & Usher, 2000: 14), others situate this complex and uneven development within a much larger time horizon, extending back to at least 500 years ago with the Columbian invasion of the indigenous peoples in the Americas that initiated the era of European colonization, world capitalism and imperialism (e.g. Amin, 2004; Arrighi, 2000). Frank (1998) argued that globalization originated even earlier; moreover, in contrast to the many scholars who adhere to the Eurocentric globalization narrative, he viewed its origins not in the ‘West’ but in the ‘East’, specifically the global economy of ancient China. What are relatively new, however, are the ubiquitous ‘patterns of representation’ of globalization (Blommaert, 2008: 260) that have emerged in the past 25 years or so, obscuring as much they reveal by their many uses. For some, the term is a cover concept for accelerating capital expansion, integrating (and in the process, destroying) local economies in the name of flexibility and the adaptability of the ‘free market’. Saad-Fiho and Johnston’s (2005: 2) naming of globalization as ‘the international face of neoliberalism’ is one such example signifying its hegemonic status as a catchword to camouflage capitalism’s ongoing crisis in the past 40 years in which neoliberal policies 68

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

69

and practices have been adopted by governments in Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia. Others employ it instead to characterize the time and space compressions of cultural practices via technological and social networks, following Pennycook’s observation that viewing ‘culture and language in terms only of reflections of the economic is to miss the point that new technologies and communications are enabling immense and complex flows of people, signs, sounds and images across multiple borders in multiple directions’ (Pennycook, 2010: 114). Globalizing processes necessarily comprise the various interanimating dynamics of culture, economy, technology and society, and how focusing solely on one at the expense of the others ignores how they have inextricably co-evolved (Kellner, 2002). It is thus important to address how these processes and practices shape and mediate one another in ways that are not always acknowledged by those who are solely focusing on either the economic or cultural dimensions. That said, however, the larger question of how these immense and complex flows of people, products and images are themselves enabled and facilitated by dominant large-scale economic powers may be left unaddressed. Indeed, as Fredric Jameson argued that in contrast to the celebratory theorizations of ‘difference’ in various cultural analyses of globalization, in addressing how the economic enables, mediates, produces and is produced by the cultural, one then finds the concept of this globalization ‘darkening and growing more opaque’ (Jameson, 1998: 57). In this conceptualization, what is marked is the ‘increasing identity (rather than difference): the rapid assimilation of hitherto autonomous national markets and productive zones into a single sphere, the disappearance of national subsistence (in food, for example), the forced integration of countries all over the globe’ (Jameson, 1998: 57). It is worth noting how the discourses of neoliberal globalization align with and easily adopt the postmodern discourses celebrating cultural plurality and difference: The baleful vision of Identity can be transferred onto the cultural realm: and what will be affirmed, in some gloomy Frankfurt School fashion, is the worldwide Americanization or standardization of culture, the destruction of local differences, the massification of all the peoples on the planet. But you are equally free to do the inverse, and to transfer the joyous and celebratory Difference and multiple heterogeneities of the first, cultural dimension onto the economic sphere: where, as you may well imagine, the rhetoricians of the market pop up and feverishly reassure us as to the richness and excitement of the new free market all over the world: the increase in sheer productivity that open markets will lead to, the transcendental satisfaction that human beings have finally begun

70

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

to grasp exchange, the market, and capitalism as their most fundamental human possibilities and the surest sources of freedom. (Jameson, 1998: 57–58) Jameson’s view is particularly apt insofar as the ‘economic discourses of globalization are closely tied to assumptions of technological determinism, and to a powerful ideology of techno-utopianism, in which technological metaphors of networking are used to demonstrate the inherent democratizing possibilities of the new economy’ (Grossberg, 2005: 148). This narrative of techno-utopianism is evident in the multiple and seemingly disparate discourses that champion the affordances of an internet-connected world. These discourses range from the more business oriented ones extolling the virtues of new technologies facilitating commerce and trade to the ones that view social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, enabling the promise of democracy flowering in autocratic regimes, as witnessed in the June 2009 demonstrations in Iran, or serving as the online hub of the Occupy movements in the US and UK. Some claim that these technologies ‘have not only created the conditions for the possibility of exchange on a world-wide scale, but will also eventually democratize the distribution of knowledge, communication, and even wealth and power’ (Grossberg, 2005: 148). It is worth noting that this discourse heralding new technologies as signifying the positive aspects of globalization and being inherently emancipatory is espoused by certain right-wing demagogues in the US, notably Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, who has advocated the neoliberal dismantling of government regulation and its social safety nets in order to ‘liberate’ these supposedly emancipatory technologies from their political constraints (Harvey, 1995). In addition, the increasing worldwide surveillance and monitoring of digital devices and accompanying platforms of information dissemination and exchange by both governments and corporations has imbued globalization with new meanings as well. Those who might choose to contest the premise and promise of democratizing knowledge and power via these new technologies by pointing out that the infrastructure needed for expensive telecommunications access is still lacking in many parts of the world face a hegemonic discourse that paints a portrait of an inevitable and unstoppable globalization. This discourse of globalization is embodied in the material practices attempting to realize this invented inevitability, which are carried out by powerful constellations of governments, corporations, transnational institutions and other institutional agents (Grossberg, 2005). Indeed, in addressing and theorizing the complex dimensions of globalization and culture, the aforementioned culture theorists attempt to articulate ‘the very nature of contemporary lived experience’ (Grossberg, 2005: 149).

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

71

Our lived experiences are indeed becoming increasingly shared through globalized mutual interactions on the Web 2.0, such as Tumblr and YouTube (at least for those who have access), and some have viewed these extensive interactions in the context of young people’s identification with these facilitating social media sites (boyd & Ellison, 2008). Their identifications with social media should be explored for pedagogical reasons because multimodal texts incorporating visual, aural, verbal and textual modes have become integral to many students’ lives (Macken-Horarik, 2004). These various media, which ‘themselves are a form of pedagogy’ (Kellner & Share, 2005: 371), need to be interrogated for their contextual mediated interactions by local actors. Multimodal texts have proliferated, be they academic materials that increasingly employ visual modes to carry the informational load (e.g. Kress, 2003, 2010; Lemke, 2002), or market-driven social media websites. These globalized websites have become embedded in many people’s daily rituals, and thus help shape how they see and define the representations of society and everyday life. Their multimodalities necessitate active readings inasmuch as ‘we now collectively occupy globalized, interconnected spaces that insist on such critical engagement’ (Morgan & Ramanathan, 2005: 152) from viewers. Thus, it is important to understand and address students’ practices and epistemologies as they interact with multimodal productions constructing and offering particular interpretations of the complex social realities students are attempting to comprehend. What is ultimately at stake is who gets to define, offer and disseminate representations of the everyday with accompanying acknowledgements of their own invested and motivated interests.

The Local Nexus Although recent work has addressed the interconnections among globalizing cultural processes and various forms of English (e.g. Mahboob & Barrett, 2014; Pennycook, 2007), how English language teachers and learners articulate views of globalization and its representations in their classrooms has largely been absent in TESOL and EAP research. In a classroom context, how are notions of globalization understood, negotiated and co-constructed? This chapter examines the ways in which multimodal texts – two YouTube videos on globalization and business – were mediated and recontextualized in Emilia’s Spring term class, and how these mediations shaped her and the students’ meaning making in certain ways. In addressing their engagements with these videos, I examine the classroom discourses and practices that interact with the social circulation of a globalization discourse constructed and articulated by these multimodal texts. My purpose here is with how

72

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

these patterns of representations embodied in multimodal discourses of and about globalization are mediated, addressed and reconstructed by these local actors, or how these discourses were ‘brought home’ (Blommaert, 2008: 261) to this particular classroom. These students in fact play a double role, both as local actors functioning as students in an English language program, and as culturally and historically embodied agents as part of a global network that stretches from this specific locale in a large North American city to points beyond. It is this network, through which globalized flows of immigrants, expatriates, refugees and international elite students are channeled, which allows these varied cultural and historical experiences to be carried by EAP students into this particular classroom at a certain historical juncture. The dynamic interactions produced from the encounters between global discourses and globalized flows of students now situated in the local in an EAP classroom are mediated in part through the curriculum content as material objects. These curriculum materials sometimes serve as a potential impediment to the learning process inasmuch as they attempt to interpellate particular kinds of identities and values leading to possible student resistance (e.g. Apple, 2004; Benesch, 2001; Canagarajah, 1993, 1999; Chun, 2009a, 2013; Cummins, 2001; Kumaravadivelu, 1999; Morgan, 1998). In addition, to the extent that ‘EAP, and foundation preparatory programs can be theorised as global education contact zones’ (Singh & Doherty, 2004: 11), students are often called upon to represent and perform a type of global subjectivity through English language curriculum materials that showcase a globalized world of business, commerce and culture (Block & Cameron, 2002), which they may also resist at times. Analyzing a discourse itinerary (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) is crucial in an EAP classroom due to how meanings are made and re-made through curriculum materials, instructors’ embodied experiences articulated via their pedagogies, students’ own meaning-making processes, and the institutional discourses that help create the context in which these actions take place. Furthermore, this resemiotizing process does not end there, but continues in my own data analysis that enters into the dialogic intertextual cycle in incorporating my own multi-accentuated words and their meanings in the Bakhtinian sense. Thus, ‘the semiotic transformations produced by the analysis are subsequently resemiotized into “new actions” or new ways of doing things or seeing things, both on the part of the researcher, and on the part of the participants’ (Norris & Jones, 2005: 203). Included in my analysis are the classroom discourses, the multimodal material objects of the two YouTube videos, and my own role as researcher engaged in collaborative actions that mediated ensuing classroom practices. I first draw upon a multimodal discourse analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen,

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

73

2006) to discuss the encoded meanings from images from one of the videos, entitled “Globality: Why Companies are Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything”. I then address how both videos’ contents were resemiotized in this classroom context, and how the ensuing classroom discourses reframed and recontextualized meanings of globalization with the aim of considering how these discourses impacted the meaning making of the students in specific ways. In examining how these discourses were brought home to Emilia’s classroom, I believe it is productive to see how the keyword ‘globalization’ is used in specific contexts and how this contextual usage reflects and refracts the various authoritative discourses and their accenting of this keyword (Voloshinov, 1973; Williams, 1985). Since ‘the word has the capacity to register all the transitory, delicate, momentary phases of social change’ (Voloshinov, 1973: 19), how does ‘globalization’ function as a dominant signifier through which one meaning is authorized, legitimated and enacted, and other meanings ignored or silenced? Voloshinov maintained that the true object of inquiry is the dynamic interrelationship of ‘the speech being reported (the other person’s speech) and the speech doing the reporting (the author’s speech)’, and that these two ‘do exist, function, and take shape only in their interrelation, and not on their own, the one apart from the other. The reported speech and the reporting context are but the terms of a dynamic interrelationship’ (Voloshinov, 1973: 119). It is this dynamic relationship between how globalization is reported in the curriculum materials and the resemiotizing by Emilia and her students that is the object of inquiry here. How does globalization function as a hegemonic discourse through which one meaning is authorized and legitimated as common sense, and other meanings ignored or silenced? Who decides what is meant by ‘globalization’, and in what ways do these meanings constrain our understandings of this term? What are the representations of globalization in the social circulation of discourses, and what are the ways in which these discourses are taken up by Emilia and the students? What follows is an examination of the interactions, mediations and possible new constellations produced from the encounters between the global and the local. This chapter features the relevant classroom interactions from Emilia’s Spring term. She chose the topic of globalization because she saw it as being related to the academic discipline of business, which was one student’s plan of study. The pedagogical objective here was for the students to watch two videos, and in the effort to simulate online lectures, the students would practice taking notes, answer and discuss related issues. A student was assigned to summarize and present the main themes to the class to engage the classmates in a critical discussion of the video in the context of globalization discourses.

74

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

A YouTube video: Globality A social-semiotic view of meaning making (Halliday, 1978; Kress, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) sees language as just one of many semiotic systems that are generated in social contexts and interactions (Kress, 2010). Within each system, there are choices as to how people make specific meanings, and these have consequences for how knowledge and meaning are constructed, conveyed and privileged. In other words, there can be no meaning without specific choices involved in construing that meaning. The educational implications are significant because this view ‘implies that it is very difficult to deconstruct the ideological and cultural assumptions inherent in any text without also directing students’ attention to the ways in which those assumptions are constructed’ (Hammond & Macken-Horarik, 1999: 541). Considering that multimodal texts such as videos employ visual and aural modes in addition to written ones at times, researchers and practitioners need to take into account how their hegemonic and cultural discourse constructions often utilize ‘the power of the verbal text and its discourse to “fix” the meaning of the image’ (Newfield, 2011: 85). Newfield also argued that a textual ‘caption directs or “remote-controls” the reader’s interpretation of the image’ (Newfield, 2011: 85). These are important considerations in any reading of an image accompanied by oral or written language. My analysis in this section focuses on how one video’s verbal text and its textual captioning attempt to cement or fix particular meanings and direct an interpretation of its images. My own resemiotizing of the video’s multimodal discourses stems from a theoretically informed reading, which shaped the ways in which I have taken up the globalization discourse the video is circulating. However, the reading presented in my analysis of the video is not meant to suggest that mine is the preferred one over Emilia’s and her students’ readings, or others for that matter. Instead, it is intended to illustrate and compare how different social actors – relying on the meaning-making resources at their disposal and shaped in many ways by their lived experiences, practices and identities in how their resources are deployed – take up and resemiotize the same discourses in social circulation and understand the particular pathways of meaning making they employ in doing so. In exploring how different readings are produced through mediated interactions with multimodal discourses, it is important to examine the pathways these discourse itineraries take. These pathways of meaning making are contoured by the extent to which students are able to engage with complex academic discourses, including multimodal ones; this is an essential component in learning academic literacies (Hyland, 2009; Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002). Thus,

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

75

in analyzing how the following globalization discourse is resemiotized from different vantage points, including my own, I aim to show the various resources and discourses these social actors draw upon and co-construct in negotiating this video’s discourse. The video, Globality, based on the book of the same title, was posted on YouTube by KnowledgeAtWharton (2008), an online business journal affiliated with the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. In their analysis of images and their attendant semiotic messages, Kress and van Leeuwen dissected both horizontal and vertical axes in (Western-based cultural) image constructions. In contrast to the horizontal axis in an image, the vertical axis is likely to have more of a sense of contrast or opposition between the upper and lower sections. The upper section, or what they call the Ideal, ‘tends to make some kind of emotive appeal and to show us “what might be”; the lower section tends to be more informative and practical, showing us “what is”’ (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006: 186). This lower section, termed the Real, often presents ‘practical consequences’ or ‘directions for action’ (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006: 187). The opposition between the Ideal and the Real in this opening shot mediates the complex relationship between the featured text and image. In the opening shot of the video, the Ideal is a combined text-image of the title Globality and the accompanying image of the planet with binary code forming a Saturn-type ring encircling it. The Real is the text stating ‘competing with everyone from everywhere for everything’, followed by ‘a special report from KnowledgeAtWharton’. If the Ideal image of a planet, which in this context appears to be a metonym for a globalized, uniformly interconnected society, is the emotive appeal, or what might be, then what messages might be inferred from an image of a planet encircled by binary code, which is a product of highly sophisticated technology? Is the video maker’s (and the institutions represented by the Wharton School of Business, which is located at a nexus of academic and corporate research) idealized representation of this world a world that might be or a world that is hoped for, and for whom? This particular visual representation of the planet viewed in the context of the Wharton School of Business YouTube website appears to be ‘bound up with the interests of social institutions within which the images are produced, circulated and read’ (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006: 47). The lower section of the video's opening frame – the Real – calls for directions for action: competing with everyone in the world for everything. What exactly entails ‘everyone, everywhere and everything’ is not clear from this immediate (con)text but is eventually elaborated throughout the rest of the

76

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

video. Following the opening shot, 44 seconds into the video, the lead author of Globality, Harold Sirkin, defines globality: Globality is what comes after globalization. For the last 20 years we’ve heard about the global economy emerging, but for the first time, we’re seeing it happen. We’re seeing companies from India, China, Russia and Brazil emerging to become real competitors. That’s the sign we’ve entered the era of globality. Going global is no longer a choice. If you don’t capture the low cost, you will be at a significant cost disadvantage. If you don’t capture the large markets, you will miss tremendous scale benefits. And if you don’t capture the earnings, you will remain behind your competitors. Going global, participating in the world of globality is no longer a choice. It’s a must for survival. (KnowledgeAtWharton, 2008) The ‘everyone’ in this context is now clear: the emerging nations of China, India, Russia and Brazil. Who are the unspoken agents who are competing with these countries? When one of authors featured in the video states: ‘Going global, participating in the world of globality is no longer a choice. It’s a must for survival’, is he addressing the audience of companies based in North America and other developed regions? Or is he addressing up and coming players located in the emerging and developing nations who want to stake out a position in the global markets? Or is it both inasmuch as ‘everyone’ and ‘everywhere’, which are articulated via textual titles and aurally throughout the video, index these particular agents who have the means to compete (with omitted reference to ones who do not merit being included as ‘everyone’ from ‘everywhere’)? Finally, the ‘everything’ in the context of Globality perhaps does refer to literally everything that is valued by some, i.e. the world’s resources of commodities, money, market share and power. The intersemiotic messages of the visual Ideal of the world encircled by binary code and the textual Real reinforce the notion of a globalized world interconnected in its practices. However, they also, perhaps inadvertently, contradict each other: the planet appears in placid tones with its atmospheric halo while the command to compete (presenting itself as a fact of reality) suggests an inevitable and unavoidable conflict. At 1 minute 33 seconds into the video, the opening shot is repeated, this time with the narrator speaking: ‘In this report, we examine how the world’s largest firms from the most powerful nations are increasingly being threatened by emerging challenges with lower costs, innovative products and global ambitions.’ The audience for this video is now made clear – multinational corporations who ‘are being threatened’. Here, it is not the multinational corporations from ‘powerful nations’ who are doing the threatening, but ‘emerging challenges’ of

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

77

companies based in China and India. This text, or what may be called an aural captioning of the images, serves to frame how we see this particular image of a world encircled by a seemingly all-encompassing technology. The image composition and both the textual and aural captioning all work together in constructing and attempting to fix these rather narrow meanings of globalization. This construction of a ‘preferred meaning’ of globalization reflects Hall’s argument that ‘the domains of “preferred meanings” have the whole social order embedded in them as a set of meanings, practices and beliefs: the everyday knowledge of social structures, of “how things work for all practical purposes in this culture”’ (Hall, 1980: 134). Following the repeat shot of the opening frame of the video showing the world encircled in binary code, there is the image of multiple signs showing the directions and distances to cities around the world. This occurs at 1 minute 48 seconds into the video. While this image is being presented, the viewer hears the narrator saying: ‘During the earlier phases of globalization, many companies saw going global as a choice. They could make a decision to participate in the phenomenon by operating in low-cost countries, seeking out foreign markets and availing themselves of global supply chain resources or not.’ Subsequent to this, Harold Sirkin then appears in the video, and asserts: ‘Going global, participating in the world of globality is no longer a choice. It’s a must for survival.’ Set in the context of these aural captionings, the image of the crossroads of the world acts as a signifier for both ‘choice’ and a directional guide for survival. The various signs pointing to wellknown cities may be read as a menu from which companies could choose to expand their business. Another reading suggests that this image functions as a roadmap for directions to the most favorable route that would increase the odds of surviving in the world of ‘globality’. The video concludes with the opening shot of the planet encircled by a revolving binary code and the viewer hears the narrator intone: ‘And if you learn to compete with everyone from everywhere for everything, you may find globality offers you greater opportunities than you could have ever imagined.’ The following section presents an analysis of how Emilia and her students themselves take on these motivated meanings.

Mediating Globality The teaching objective here was for the students to watch the video, and in the attempt to simulate online lectures, the students would practice taking notes and answer and discuss related issues. Prior to this exchange, Emilia had asked the class if the video’s representation of the increasing global competitiveness from companies in India, China and Brazil was accurate. A

78

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

student from Mexico responded with an example of two Mexican companies that recently made inroads in the US market. He discusses it at some length until she turns her attention to the rest of the class: Emilia: Student: Emilia: Student: Emilia: Student: Emilia: Student:

What about the rest of you? What do you think? Where is your laptop computer? Uh, I don’t know, is it supposed to say somewhere on the laptop? I think it’s somewhere in China or Asia or something like that. One would think. And= =I guess it’s not made in Canada or the United States? No. So that’s a great example.

The student resemiotizes Emilia’s laptop here as part of the global circulation of products and, in doing so, recontextualizes the classroom as a particular space of economic representation – that of the commodity. Since this classroom is located in North America, the presence of an object that was manufactured elsewhere in the world is construed by him as global competition being brought home to this particular locale. In this case, where the laptop was made is clearly not the ‘everywhere’ the video maintains, but rather a specific region – ‘China or Asia or something like that’. The student’s presumption that the laptop was not made in North America indicates that competitive practices materialized in this object (a ubiquitous feature on university campuses in North America) to a certain extent empirically proves that emerging countries’ economies are spreading, or rather garnering market share – as he argues, ‘that’s a great example’. However, in considering how economic representations play a role in constituting subjectivities, and how they are produced and circulated (Ruccio, 2008), the issue is more than simply the student’s viewing of the laptop as a litmus test of the video’s claims. Indeed, given the fact that systemic processes facilitating global flows have been occurring on a significant scale since at least the 15th century (Wallerstein, 2004), the video’s assertion that ‘the last 20 years we’ve heard about the global economy emerging, but for the first time, we’re seeing it happen’ not only seems rather unremarkable given there have always been interconnecting and competitive global economies – colonialism is but one example – but also, given historical patterns, patently false. Rather than reading the video’s claim as true or not, we need to view its particular economic representation of ‘globality’ as several things: first, it promotes an image of the market as existing

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

79

only on a worldwide scale, and ignores how local and small-scale economies function without having to go global (e.g. Gibson-Graham, 2008). Secondly, the video’s economic representation strengthens the notion (and perhaps practice) of a hyper-capitalism in which everyone must compete with the entire planet or else perish. Lastly, in doing so, it certainly attempts to prevent imagining alternative economic and social interactions, both locally and globally. What is also left out of the conversation is how people who are working for global corporations may not necessarily be invested in their companies’ larger ambitions. Emilia thus responds to her student’s remark, ‘so that’s a great example’: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2:

Mm-hmm. OK, but most computers are made where? I have no idea. Are they made in China?= =Taiwan, Mexico, Korea. OK, but the fact that it says ‘Made in China’, does that mean that the company is owned in China, owned by Chinese people? No. Probably it isn’t. Probably it isn’t? What makes you think that? Probably it’s not but I don’t think that’s important, actually. The [people [Where= =in China getting jobs, the people in China getting money anyway. OK, so the Chinese economy is prospering, but . . . is it important to own the industry? Depends. It depends? Depends. If you are the one that is developing the technology? Mm-hmm? And you have a good uh, business system? You can own the business, but, if you don’t, it’s senseless you own the business.

Emilia’s question regarding who owns a company poses an attempt to have the students consider not only the processes involved in producing a commodity such as her laptop, but also the global flows of capital and profits. By reframing the laptop in terms of who owns the means of producing this object, she contests the economic representation of the Globality video. In response, Student 1 seems to imply that if people there are working and

80

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

receiving money, whoever is employing and paying them is of no concern or consequence for the employees. Emilia concedes the point that the Chinese economy may be ‘prospering’ but then reiterates the question whether it is important who owns the industry. Student 2 replies that it depends if the company develops the technology and has a good business model (‘good uh, business system?’). Emilia then responds: Emilia:

Student 3: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Students: Emilia:

Student 1:

OK, but that’s a, that’s a whole other, uh, issue is maybe uh, but in this case, I just want to get back to the labor aspect for a moment, right? If you have an entire country that’s used as labor, right, look at it from the Chinese perspective. Is it a good idea for China to have so much foreign ownership?= =No= =[Uh, within the [Yes. country so that, yes, your workers make money, but if we look at what’s happening to the US economy right now, right? So, if the US economy is in crisis, and I’m not an economist, I’m just sort of looking at this from my layman’s point of view, um, the layman’s point of view is, you know, you and me, Joe Public, as we say. Uh, OK, the layman is not an expert, just an ordinary person, OK? So, from the layman’s point of view, it seems to me, because Canada has gone through this as well, so I look at is as a parallel to the Canadian situation probably now and some time ago. Uh, we have a situation in Canada where we have a problem with a company that is foreign-owned, the workers are here, but the ownership is in the States. Does that ring a bell? GM. GM. Chrysler. Yeah, the car companies, right? Mm-hmm. So if, let’s say, we’re talking about China, and China has a huge workforce because of the population, but they don’t um, they provide the labor, but they don’t own their own industries= =Yeah.

Emilia shifts the focus back to ‘the labor aspect’ in her first response. After asking the question of whether it is a good idea for China to ‘have so

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

81

much foreign ownership’, she continues her line of inquiry (ignoring for the time being Student 1’s affirmative answer to her question) by comparing the situation with Canadian workers who work for foreign-owned companies such as General Motors (GM), which filed for bankruptcy in 2009. In this turn, she positions herself as speaking from a ‘layman’s point of view’, which can be seen as a challenging dialogical response to the business professionals showcased in the video. Her adopting of the persona of ‘Joe Public’ as the everywoman, ‘an ordinary person’ who speaks back to the experts about the costs of mobile global capital leaving, is an interruption of the hegemonic narrative that Globality is attempting to establish. By rescaling this discourse down to the local, she draws attention to how this local works ‘as a parallel to’ (in her words) another local that is perceived as the global, which in this case is China. The possible interconnections between the two, and how this is obscured in the ‘Globality’ discourse on the ‘emerging challenges . . . and global ambitions’ (KnowledgeAtWharton, 2008) of China (and other countries such as India and Brazil) is articulated in Emilia’s move to examine the impact of neoliberal globalization on those who have little stake in its competition ‘with everyone from everywhere for everything’. She poses the question, what do the global ambitions of either China, or its relatively new companies, have to do with the local everyday concerns of people who may not have the mobility to the extent that foreign capital possesses? In the ensuing turns, Emilia continues by asking related questions: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1:

Is this a problem for an economy? I don’t think so. Don’t think so? No. OK, so you can, but what if the other economies start to collapse? That means your labor force is gone, and you= =But if they, it’s like if there are no . . . foreign companies in the first place, so the foreign company will make situation better and now it’s gone. Yes, but now it’s gone. It’s not worth it. There would be no company at the beginning.

Here, it could be argued that a potential teaching and learning moment was lost when, instead of asking the latter question, if Emilia had simply said, ‘why not?’ in response to Student 1’s ‘no’. Would the dialogue have taken a different trajectory? Perhaps. But two turns later, Student 1’s response

82

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

to her question reiterates his earlier position when he says: ‘if there are no . . . foreign companies in the first place, so the foreign company will make situation better and now it’s gone.’ His phrase, ‘make the situation better’, suggests the positive effects of the presence of international capital in its creation of jobs for the local populace. However, Emilia goes on to repeat his last phrase, ‘now it’s gone’, to remind him of the precariousness of capital mobility, but the student responds ‘there would be no company at the beginning’. Approximately 8 minutes after this exchange, during which time the students and Emilia discuss the 2008–2009 world economic crisis’s impact on the students’ lives and families, and their job prospects and futures, she shifts the attention back to the video’s theme of ‘globality’, which supposedly comes after globalization: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia:

OK, so . . . do you believe that globality exists? That we have become a global marketplace, or are we still kind of uh, you know, separated by= =I think we’re going towards globality. Mm-hmm. What makes you say that? What do you think? Oh, we have more and more interactions between different countries and different businesses. Mm-hmm. We do. You’re here. That’s proof. Um, where did the video come from? What did uh, what was the basis of this video, do you remember? Uh, a book ‘Globalities’? That’s right. It was a book. So, based on the video, would you buy the book? Mmm, no. If you were interested in economics – because most people who are not interested in economics are never going to buy an economics book – but, if you are interested in economics, would you buy the book? Do you think it’s an important topic? Could be. Could be? OK. What makes it important and what makes it insignificant? Obviously, to some of you this is not important, right? So you really don’t care. You’re trying to be interested because it’s a class. Come on computer . . . but there (the Globality video plays for a second), there are going to be a lot of issues in university where you’re not that fascinated but you still have to create interest, right? You

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

Student 1: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2:

83

have to be interested because you’re studying it, so uh, if we’re talking about this, where do you think this fits in the whole area of economics? Why would somebody show a video like this and what is the usefulness of it? Is there any usefulness to it? They show this video to sell this book? (some students laugh) They show this video just to sell this book? Well, but it’s, it’s also shown . . . it’s from the, the Wharton School of Business, right? So it’s not just a sales pitch. It’s uh, it’s a talk, and they are looking at a particular issue, right? Yeah, some students studying international communications? Mm-hmm. They will get benefit from this.

Here, Student 1 aligns himself with the video’s message: ‘we’re going towards globality.’ When Emilia asks him to expand upon his statement, he offers the observation that increasing interactions among countries and businesses support the video’s claims. She agrees with his observation – ‘we do’. She then cites the student himself as ‘proof’ of this since he’s ‘here’. Emilia’s citing the student functions to dialogically link him to the material object of the laptop mentioned in the first extract, which was also ‘a great example’ (in the student’s words) of ‘globality’. Both the commodity and the student are perceived, represented and named as material manifestations of ‘globality’. However, this is not to dispute the fact that the student is indeed from another country, Russia, and is now in a North American city attending an English language program located at a prestigious university (which attests to global flows of capital in addition to this student’s particular mobility), or the existence of a laptop made in Asia and now sitting on a desk in this classroom. The larger point, I think, involves how the video’s multimodal representations of an Idealized world with its Real injunction to compete in order to survive are mediated through the student’s and Emilia’s deictic references to conveniently present objects such as the laptop and embodied selves. The dialogic intertextuality here is notable inasmuch as the speech being reported (‘going global, participating in the world of globality’) and the speech doing the reporting (‘going towards globality’ and ‘you’re here, that’s proof’) appear to be aligned perfectly. The dynamic interrelationship between these speeches (Volosinov, 1973) in the above exchange suggests in this instance a monologic discourse on globalization, one that speaks with a uniformly consistent voice. In this socially situated context of the EAP classroom, the meaning-making process of naming ‘globality’ in the

84

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

object and the student adopts the same social-semiotic strategies in the video that offers baby carriages and porters as manifestations of a world named ‘globality’. After asking the class if they would buy the book that the video was promoting, Emilia poses the question to the class regarding what makes this topic ‘important and what makes it insignificant’. She goes on to say that ‘obviously, to some of you this is not important . . . so you really don’t care’. She seems to be aware of the lack of student interest, apart from one or two of the same students who respond to her questions in her statement, ‘You’re trying to be interested because it’s a class’. During this time, one student was typing something on his laptop and another was looking lost in reverie. A few minutes prior to this exchange, the students seemed to be more involved when Emilia was asking how the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 had affected them and their families and their career plans. Only one student admits that the topic ‘could be’ important in response to Emilia’s question. Emilia seems to be assigning responsibility to the students in her admonition that ‘you still have to create interest, right?’ even though they may not be ‘that fascinated’ by a lot of issues in university classes. This raises the familiar issue of finding and using engaging English language learning material in the classroom: is it a teacher’s job to make it so, or do students have to create (or feign) their interest in it? Given the fact that ELT publishing companies have merged into a few dominant players, is it realistic that these companies would publish materials that explore in depth the pressing issues in society such as growing economic inequalities, racism, climate change, ongoing wars, increased government and corporate surveillance, and the like to generate student interest? Or, as Gray (2002) argued, since publishers avoid any topic deemed to be controversial so as to capture the largest possible market, can there be classroom approaches to these texts that can facilitate deeper and more sustained engagements examining the language, text and discourses in these materials? When Emilia asks why somebody would show a video such as Globality, and the usefulness of it, if any, Student 1 seems to cynically suggest that the reason the video is shown is to only sell the book (which, on the face of it, appears to be reasonably true), which prompts several students to laugh. Emilia counters with the source of the video – the Wharton School of Business – which she cites as a legitimating authority. Although the fine line between ‘a talk . . . looking at a particular issue’ and a ‘sales pitch’ is not always clear in the present era of the corporate genre known as the ‘infomercial’, there may have been a teachable moment in exploring with students how and why videos disseminate information constructed around particular

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

85

discourses that can more effectively reach global audiences in ways traditional print-based books may not anymore. After Student 2 suggests that students majoring in international communications will benefit, Emilia goes on to ask if there are any useful lessons to be learned from the information presented by the video: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 2:

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Student 1:

OK, so it’s good for international communication. It’s also uh, economics, finance, OK. But how do they benefit? What do we actually learn? Uh, that it’s good to invest in foreign markets? OK. So it’s good to invest in foreign markets, why? Because they are growing? Because they’re growing= =And they uh going to be uh, competitive enough? OK, so if you’re investing in stocks, you might want to invest in what they call ‘emerging markets?’ Markets that are just starting to um, gain in popularity or to emerge as being interesting, powerful financial forces? Do you think that, um, do the rest of you think that as well? What do you think? What else has been interesting, for what other aspects does this video touch on in society? One of the aspects I, because I have saw that in my country, is that the video says that the, that the companies that begins in the in under-development countries get a stronger because in development countries it is very difficult to start a company. And I know that by my own, for example, in Mexico, it’s a bureaucratic mountain that you have to climb to obtain your own, how it is called, your own unlimited corporation. Mm-hmm= =instead of investing by your own. So it’s easier in developing countries, but it’s more difficult [in the? [No, it’s more difficult in developing countries to set up your own corporation, that is the most difficult part= =It’s easier in developed countries. Yes. It is more difficult to set a, a stable business system the, the, uh, in developing countries, the difficult part is the salary and all the labor regulations. In developing countries there are usually less freedom and the government is going to make more problems for you.

86

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Student 1 adopts the marketing perspective of the video by answering that what he learned was that ‘it’s good to invest in foreign markets’ because ‘they are growing’. Emilia makes a move in asking the students to consider or focus on other aspects of the video. This question initiates in the following turn the difficulties in starting a company in developing nations and the obstacles entrepreneurs face in the supposed intransigence and the interference of the government: ‘it’s a bureaucratic mountain’ and ‘all the labor regulations’, as Student 2 argues. Student 1 seconds this view when he states that ‘the government is going to make more problems for you’. Emilia then asks the rest of the class: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

Student 2: Student 3: Emilia: Student 3: Emilia: Students: Student 1: Student 2: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 3:

Yeah, do you find that as well? Do the rest of you agree, what do you think? Do you find that, in the countries where uh, you come from and the countries you visited, that bureaucracy is different in each country? Do you understand what bureaucracy is? A group of people that don’t let you work? The people that what? Don’t let you work? Uh, it’s a noun. And it can be countable and not countable, so, if it’s a big idea, it’s non-count. It’s an abstract, and if it’s a bureaucracy, it’s one particular example of bureaucracy. So we can say that uh, for instance, I don’t know, the Ministry of uh, any government ministry has a certain amount of bureaucracy to deal with, and bureaucracy means what? The government of [the office. [Policy. Sorry? Policy? Policy? Policies have something to do with it, yes. Have you ever gone to a government office? Do, does, do things happen, like really quickly? (laughter) Noooo. Quickly? No! No? Why not? Because government isn’t effective? Because the government isn’t effective? Why not? No, it’s depends on the Ministry and the people who work there. Some people think, ‘Oh, yeah, I work in the government, in the institution, I don’t care.’

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

Emilia: Student 3:

87

And so they don’t care? ‘You have to come here, come later because this is your, this is what you really want, not me.’

Emilia attempts to involve the rest of her class in the discussion by asking the students about the nature of bureaucracies they have encountered in their countries, and their understanding of the term. Before any of them can respond, however, Student 2 answers, ‘A group of people that don’t let you work?’ He repeats his definition after Emilia seems not to hear it clearly. It appears at first that she does not react or respond to the student’s definition but instead chooses to focus on his truncated repeating ‘don’t let you work?’ by giving a grammar explanation on the forms of count and non-count nouns of bureaucracy, and then finally repeats her question about the meaning of bureaucracy. Both Students 2 and 3 answer, but she focuses on the latter, most likely because she wanted others to have a chance to participate. After Student 3 defines it as ‘policy’, Emilia seems to take up Student 2’s definition of bureaucrats interfering with people’s wish to work by asking if things happen ‘like really quickly’ in a government office, setting off howls of derisive laughter from the class. Student 1 continues his discourse on government causing problems for individuals by citing its ineffectiveness. However, Student 3 interjects by arguing that this is contextual, depending on which ministry, and the personnel. This student makes an observation shared by many that some with government jobs seem less inclined to care, perhaps basing it on a comparison with some who work for enterprise and profitbased companies, or the fact that in several countries government workers may be protected by their unions. In any event, she continues ventriloquizing an imagined worker by addressing an imagined frustrated visitor. In this exchange, the various adoptions of the neoliberal discourse of the government supposedly interfering with the workings of the ‘free’ market is aligned with the ‘Globality’ discourse of a winner-take-all unfettered market. The neoliberal hegemonic rationality involves notions of freedom as consisting of freedom from bureaucracy, rather than freedom from want. It presents bureaucracy as inhibiting not only individual freedoms (‘not letting you work’) but also the efficiency of an ideal market-run society (‘government isn’t effective’) that would allow those individuals to become fully entrepreneurs of themselves in the neoliberal mode of selfgovernance. However, in the students’ resemiotizing of the video’s market discourse, they draw upon several discourses that appear to be contradictory. If on the one hand, government is seen to be ‘ineffective’, it also appears to be able to ‘make problems for you’ with ‘all their labor regulations’. Their common sense of (and stemming from) the everyday

88

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

comprises elements of truth for those who have experienced bureaucratic delays, but also elements of misrepresentation in the notion that government is actively not interested in facilitating economic development. Their discourse draws upon the neoliberal rationality which states that government is not the solution to our problems but the problem itself in not allowing markets to be supposedly free.

The Neoliberal Entrepreneur of the Self A few days later, Emilia had the students view another YouTube video on globalizing companies as part of the unit on business, entitled ‘Future of Paper, Pulp and Packaging Industry’ (Dixon, 2008), featuring a business futurist, Patrick Dixon, speaking on global trends of paper product consumption trends. The video was part of her objective in having the class analyze globalization narratives in the context of the global economy. The extract from the video transcription begins at 3 minutes 15 seconds into the video: Dixon:

Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2:

As these countries in Asia and Africa continue to generate economic growth, as the number of middle class people in these countries aspires and gradually develops Western-style lifestyles, you will see that their use of paper and cardboard will increase dramatically. Now, I’m not saying that in India you’re going to get populations using 300 kilograms of paper a year as in the US, after all, the US is becoming more efficient with recycling. The US is on a downward curve, as is the European Union, as is Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the rest. What I’m saying is that India will, at the top end, eh, in its wealthy population, will certainly achieve a likely target of 100 kilograms per person of paper per year, maybe even 150, maybe even 200 kilograms of paper a year. And that’s going to be a very different scenario than today when it’s played out in the global market. Now, when we look at – (Emilia pauses the video) =Is that information valuable? Yes. Why? We have to invest in Kimberly-Clark! OK. This guy must be really, really rich.

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

89

You must be? This guy must be= =Really, really rich? If he can predict trends like that, he must be rich. So why is it important, for the rest of you now, what do you think? How would you profit from this information? Why is it important information? Why is it useful? If you would consider= =Wait, wait, wait. Don’t. The rest of them. Let’s give everybody else a chance. (8 seconds elapse) Maybe a better question is to whom is it useful? (6 seconds elapse) To anyone who invests money? To anyone who invests money? So just investors. The rest of you, you have anything to say? What do you think? (23 seconds elapse) OK. (she resumes playing the video)

Emilia’s opening move frames Dixon’s paper consumption forecast as being ‘valuable’ or not. The first student’s suggestion that ‘we have to invest in Kimberly-Clark!’ (an American corporation that sells paper-based products including facial tissues and toilet paper) appears to signify his interpreting ‘valuable’ in this context to mean Dixon’s ability for profitably forecasting investment trends. Emilia may not have intended or anticipated this direction as she responds with only an ‘OK’. The second student reinforces this by presuming Dixon ‘must be really, really rich’ based on his ability to ‘predict trends like that’. Emilia continues their framing by asking ‘how would you profit from this information?’ and ‘Why is it useful?’ Her choice of the word ‘profit’ seems to be positioning her students as potential investors or as if they were business majors, although only three students (out of 11) in the class intended to study businessrelated subjects. However, Emilia recontextualizes the issue when she asks, ‘maybe a better question is to whom is it useful?’ There is a six-second silence. Although she attempts to shift the focus to whose interests this information might be of use to, no student offers a response until the second student says, ‘to anyone who invests money?’ Her response, ‘so just investors’ seems to make a move to address alternatives audiences for this video. After she asks, ‘the rest of you, you have anything to say? What do you think?’, a 23-second silence elapses before she resumes playing the video. Several aspects in this classroom exchange are highlighted here. Is Emilia positioning herself as someone who may be knowledgeable about business in her question to the students on how they would profit from the video’s

90

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

information? Is she addressing the students, not all of whom were interested in pursuing business-related degrees, as if they were future entrepreneurs? In working with content material that features a globalizing world of business and commerce (Block & Cameron, 2002), how do teachers address the subject positions these materials offer in their neoliberal discourses of entrepreneurship and economic mobility? This raises the issue of how EAP instructors relate to and position themselves with regard to their content materials (Hyland, 2006). For some teachers, their passive deferral to these texts and their discourses can actually serve to prevent students from fully learning academic discourses. In order for EAP students to join a specific academic discourse community, they first need to understand how its discourses work at every level. Teaching students how forms of power and knowledge are constructed through disciplinary language and discourse can enable them to deconstruct and demystify academic texts they often find difficult and intimidating. To what degree are these students receptive to these discourses of entrepreneurship since some of them intend to become global players in their own right, while others express alternative ambitions? This issue is raised by the silences toward the end of this particular classroom exchange. A 23-second silence might not be all that long in some classroom contexts, while in others it might be an uncomfortably long pause. One explanation might be that some students may have had difficulties in articulating their responses, given that the video content was not related to their academic interests or planned fields of study. As mentioned previously, there were three students who were planning to pursue business-related degrees, only one of whom (Student 1) responded in this exchange. In the context of this Spring term class in which several students were very active in class discussions, it is noteworthy that only Student 2 responded to Emilia’s question, and none responded to her follow-up question at the end. In this class, a 23-second silence appears to be significant in that there were no comparable silences of that length during my observations of her classes that term. Thus, in terms of how this video text was received and understood in this classroom exchange, it can be asked to what extent are these silences indexing a resistance to this video’s addressivity and Emilia’s mediated framing? Were the majority of the students resisting the subject positions of being an investor or a forecaster created in part by the resemiotizing by both Emilia and students? The first student’s comment (‘we have to invest in Kimberly-Clark!’) adopts the position of an entrepreneur in strategizing economic options presented in the video, and in his interpretation of Emilia’s initial question. Neoliberal subjectivities are constructed in part around the notion of

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

91

human beings as their own capital, their own producers of their satisfactions, their own sources of earnings, or entrepreneurs of themselves (Foucault, 2008; Gordon, 1991), rather than being seen as partners in forms of communal exchanges. The ways in which neoliberal discourses are reproduced in everyday domains can be seen in this view of actively pursuing skills designed to make oneself a more marketable commodity through investing in oneself. In absolving the state from any responsibility for the public well-being, neoliberal governance squarely puts the full burden on individuals themselves to improve, adapt, and survive. The student’s resemiotizing of the futurist Dixon’s forecasting trends in global paper consumption helps to construct a hegemonic market rationality through his viewing of this trend in market terms only. It forecloses possibilities and alternatives in considering how these consumption patterns might adversely affect ecological balances, for example in the clearing of forests for paper and for farming. It achieves perhaps a level of common sense for some in that Dixon’s forecasting is read only in terms of potential positive market opportunities and outcomes, rather than for possible negative impacts. However, in viewing the itinerary of the video’s discourse as it was mediated through the participants’ various meaning makings, we can see how this hegemonic rationality can possibly fracture through the trajectory of Emilia’s questions: ‘Is that information valuable? > How would you profit from this information? > Why is it important information? > Why is it useful? > Maybe a better question is to whom is it useful?’ This last question, although it garnered only one student response, signals a possible opening up or rupture in the discourse that was at first taken up somewhat unproblematically by the first and second students in their comments on investing in paper companies and wealth based on predictive abilities. The extended silence that followed Emilia’s last question, in addition to possibly being one of resistance from the rest of the students in their rejecting of the addressivity and/or their unfamiliarity with business discourse, could also have been an opportunity to explore the ramifications and implications of the question – indeed, to whom is this information useful, and why? Gently prodding through follow-up questions might have helped to construct a counter-hegemonic alternative way of looking at the Dixon video so as to denaturalize the common-sense interpretations of investment opportunities as necessarily in the interests of the public good. Drawing on the students’ lived experiences, a discussion can be held on issues of recycling, paper uses and the ways in which recent digital reading devices have partly dispensed with the need for paper-based textual materials.

92

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Discussion The discourses of Globality took on similar and at times different meanings for Emilia and her students, who resemiotized these discourses dialogically with each other, the video text and other socially circulating discourses they drew upon. Any video’s – or any other (multimodal) text’s for that matter – attempt to fix particular meanings and direct a uniform interpretation of its discourses and images may be undercut by its very mobility across and among social networks, platforms, websites and social actors. This mobility is characterized by the ability of social actors to appropriate a video’s images and text and recontextualize it in other multimodal contexts such as blogs, journals, mashups, memes and other media to create additional, unintended and/or oppositional meanings, as well as social actors’ resemiotizing a video’s discourse with meaning-making resources of their own or in conjunction with others. Social actors take up the circulation of globalization discourses in a multitude of ways. This is evident in both my reading and the participants’ reading of the video’s discourses in which we drew upon different discourses and meaning-making resources in our dialogic engagements with the ‘Globality’ discourses. Each reading of the ‘Globality’ discourse stems from a dialogicality with our own discourses, which reflect our constructed common-sense views of society and the various hegemonic or counter-hegemonic meanings we assign to it. For me, these discourse itineraries were routed through my mediated lived experiences identifying various dominant and hegemonic discourses in our society and articulating oppositional ones, and the various texts I have engaged in (and aligned myself with) that specifically address the ways in which certain discourses work to maintain their hegemony over others. The meanings I assigned to the video differ from both the Spring term students’ reception of the video and Emilia’s in that particular class. The highlighting of this difference is not to suggest that one reading is preferred over another. Rather, in addressing why there are marked differences among the presented readings, we need to explore the ways in which particular readings were produced from the mediated, dialogic interaction between the video’s discourses and the various resources the classroom participants drew upon as they viewed the disseminated modalities. These resources seem to be a crucial element in both how the meaning making unfolded and the extent to which it did. It appeared that in the selected exchanges from the Spring term, the meaning makings constructed by both Emilia and the students around the neoliberal globalization discourses were rather limited,

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

93

i.e. for the most part, their meanings quickly aligned with the video’s, and their interrogations of the video in several instances were rather brief. An argument could be made here that in doing so, the Spring term students had fewer chances in practicing the forms of spoken discourse needed for their future academic studies. Emilia and the students did not necessarily have to rely on any direct oppositional discourses with which to interrogate the video (akin to the manner which I employed for my analysis); however, on the other hand, by relying on the same discourse with which to make meaning of the video, the discussion path rather narrowed in terms of exploring other possible meanings and thus ended quickly. In light of her students’ efforts to learn academic English through their engagement with the complex multimodal discourses featured in this video, the question posed by Hyland and Hamp-Lyons (2002: 9), ‘Is the EAP teacher’s job to replicate and reproduce existing forms of discourse (and thus power relations) or to develop an understanding of them so they can be challenged?’, is a salient one. For any EAP instructor, there are the daily classroom challenges in teaching students the difficult academic discourses they will need to succeed in their future studies. However, for students merely to reproduce these forms of discourses in their EAP classes may not be enough for them to fully engage and interact with their future university curriculum material, now increasingly multimodal in form. Without having them develop deeper understandings of how discourses are constructed and disseminated through a variety of modes, many of these students might fail to take adequate control of them. Furthermore, should they also want to challenge these forms of discourses, they will lack the analytical skills to effectively address how these discourses function in their roles as university gatekeepers and as privileged disseminators of curriculum knowledge. A fundamental aim of English language teaching should be to utilize and expand the meaning-making potential of students. This can come about by having students more deeply engaged in their material through approaches that help them understand the modalities involved in textual and discourse constructions. In doing so, students can then become equipped to name and challenge specific discourses by coming to know and recognize socially constructed meanings that are not necessarily aligned with their own understandings of the world. To be sure, there will be difficulties in any discussion about what globalization may mean due to its complex nature. This is particularly so in a classroom of students working on developing and improving their English language and literacy skills while trying to connect with curriculum content that may at times be unfamiliar due to the diverse academic

94

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

backgrounds of the students. Inasmuch as globalization as a construct is often heavily contested, and may be understood differently depending on the discipline, it would be a challenge for any teacher and student to engage with the myriad of globalization discourses. Perhaps the students in this Spring term class who were not planning to pursue business-related degrees may not have been interested in addressing the particular corporate elements that the Globality video focused on, such as global product marketing and investing. This of course points to both the video’s painting of globalization in very restrictive colors and Emilia’s directed readings of the video that term. If one takes the perspective that social actors sometimes actively choose to take up one discourse over available others and, in the process, perhaps disregard or ignore the sedimentation of how competing and contesting discourses have co-evolved with dominant ones, then we should examine the appeal and purchase of a particular discourse that is repeatedly taken up with widespread acceptance and belief. Texts are often read through a prism of one’s own lived experiences and identifications. If competing discourses are allowed and admitted into the conversation with a text, and the class lesson is opened to include the flows of an ‘interdiscursive dialogicality’ (Scollon & Scollon, 2003: 23) with discourses at odds with the text, then spaces can develop in which other discourses can take hold, or at least be excavated to reveal their imbricated relationships with a dominant reading position. Formerly subterranean discourses that are contradictory and contesting can and do emerge suddenly at times and are then taken up by a wider public audience, as we are currently witnessing in many areas of the world. Because of complex mediating processes among different modes, we need to continue developing deeper understandings of these dynamic interrelationships in multimodal texts and their impact on literacy development and meaning making in the classroom. Websites such as YouTube, Tumblr and Facebook have become a global nexus in and through which local actors can participate in viewing, designing, producing and sharing their multimodal video texts with the world at large. The many cultural and social representations produced through multimodal meaning-making capabilities can now be viewed by millions on the planet. These representations and their accompanying discourses, which encompass everything from the mundane minutiae of our lives to the extraordinary shared moments, should be examined for their potential to reshape and reorganize our perceptions, ideas and representations of social life and society. This is apparent in the Globality video, in which its ‘spectacle is the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue’ (Debord, 1983: 24).

Mult imodalit ies of Neoliberal Globalizat ion Discourses in YouTube Videos

95

Of course it is up to students to decide how they choose to interpret, consume and take up the complex multimodal discourses of these videos. However, these multimodalities, in their multiplying meanings (Lemke, 2002), also multiply the hegemonic discoursal effects through these very intersemiotic and intertextual processes in play. Thus, it is incumbent upon EAP instructors, who are and will be increasingly faced with implementing multimodal texts into their curricula, to develop and utilize classroom approaches to address these texts coming at their students from both inside and outside the classroom. In the next chapter, we will see how Emilia began to incorporate a more critical approach toward the discourses in the Globality video with her students during the following term.

5 Engaging with Neoliberalization Discourses, Part 2: Summer Term Class

Introduction Building on the recent work by critical applied linguistics researchers on neoliberal discourses in education and English language learning contexts (e.g. Block et al., 2012; Chun, 2009a, 2009b, 2013; Clarke & Morgan, 2011; Gounari, 2006; Gray, 2010; Holborow, 2006, 2007), this chapter continues the exploration begun in the previous chapter on the ways in which neoliberal globalization discourses were taken up by Emilia and her students, this time in her Summer term class, which was also a ‘post-advanced’ reading and writing class. Neoliberalization has been a political project in North America, the UK, Europe and Asia that has imposed painful economic measures on millions of people across the globe. Vital social care budgets have been eliminated and, particularly in North America, public services such as education and postal delivery have been targeted for defunding and privatization as part of neoliberal restructuring policies at local levels. Social consequences stemming from cuts to public schools include students who suffer from larger class sizes and fewer teachers due to school programs being closed and staff layoffs, all of which result in far less attention to individual learners at risk, particularly many immigrant youth ELLs. In the past 35 years, neoliberalism has become an ‘everyday discourse’ (Leitner et al., 2007: 1). This everyday discourse, in its social and mediatized circulations, has featured a now dominant common-sense vocabulary in recasting and reframing our social interactions: phrases such as ‘flexibility’, 96

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

97

‘accountability’ and ‘best practices’, regularly used in corporate discourses, have now been adopted by many in educational institutions at the tertiary, secondary and primary levels. With its aim to commodify and privatize public school education, the neoliberal project has aimed to foster a complicit depoliticized citizen/educational subject, which Wendy Brown (2005: 43) has termed ‘the neoliberal citizen’. The concept of neoliberal citizenry represents the attempted erosion and/or eradication of sociopolitical concerns and issues in its reduction of active ‘political citizenship to an unprecedented degree of passivity and political complacency’ (Brown, 2005: 43). By defining every aspect of human life ‘in terms of a market rationality’, neoliberal discourse is intent on ‘extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social action’ (Brown, 2005: 40). This extension of market or economic rationality aims to produce the ‘model neoliberal citizen . . . who strategizes for her- or himself among various social, political and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organize these options’ (Brown, 2005: 43). However, neoliberal policies have generated numerous contestations at various local levels such as worker cooperatives, community enterprises and organized challenges in urban areas (Gibson-Graham, 2008; Leitner et al., 2007). In the case of several English language classrooms, neoliberal discourses have also been challenged, including ELLs’ varying roles as either passively complacent, or as democratic activists articulating their own learning needs (e.g. Benesch, 1999, 2001, 2006; Janks, 2010; Morgan, 1998; Stein, 2004). What is at stake then is the need to challenge these culturally politicized re-articulations of individuals as neoliberal citizens. Although neoliberal discourses have framed the notion of ‘individual choice’ as a defining feature, neoliberal policies are fundamentally anti-democratic in the attempts to deny people their own voices in organizing and altering their options in society (Couldry, 2010). Equally important is how particular conceptions, narratives and portrayals of the economy, or what Ruccio terms ‘economic representations’, affect ‘how we understand . . . the consequences of those representations in terms of reproducing or strengthening the existing economic and social institutions and of imagining and generating new ones’ (Ruccio, 2008: 7). The economy is viewed here as being ‘both determined by, and a determinant of, the social (including political and cultural) and natural elements that make up the rest of the world, such that there is no clear line that can be drawn between economy and non-economy’ (Ruccio, 2008: 10). As Ruccio points out, we need to consider both the role ‘diverse economic representations play in how . . . subjectivities and identities are constituted’ (Ruccio, 2008: 15), and how these representations are ‘produced, how they circulate,

98

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

and the manner in which they are contested in sites and practices throughout society’ (Ruccio, 2008: 15).

What is ‘Neoliberalization’? Watkins argued that despite neoliberalism being ‘a dismal epithet . . . imprecise and over-used’, it is necessary to have a term ‘to describe the macro-economic paradigm that has predominated from the end of the 1970s’ (Watkins, 2010: 7). Due to its dynamic, highly uneven and contested developments, the term ‘neoliberalization’ may be more useful in emphasizing these policies and processes as a ‘syndrome’ rather than ‘neoliberalism’, which suggests ‘a singular entity, essence or totality’ (Brenner et al., 2010: 330). Inasmuch as neoliberalization is a complex ‘reorganization of capitalism’ (Campbell, 2005: 187), one could ask, what is gained from labeling these reorganizing dynamics as such rather than simply using the term ‘capitalism’? There are several important developments that have emerged since the 1970s that warrant this use of ‘neoliberalization’ in naming specific phenomena that have restructured capitalist economies. One development is the increasing ‘extension of market-based competition and commodification processes into previously insulated realms of political-economic life’, which have been ‘accelerated, and intensified in recent decades’ (Brenner et al., 2010: 329). The promotion of the market as an objective or neutral social mechanism is apparent in many governments’ ‘market-based, market-oriented, or marketdisciplinary responses’ (Brenner et al., 2010: 329) to the systemic crises in capitalism in the past 30 years. Secondly, the attendant attempts to deregulate and privatize formerly state-owned enterprises and defund social services have resulted in private capital accumulation through dispossession of public wealth (Harvey, 2005). Lastly, both the massive deregulation of finance capital (particularly in North America, the UK and Europe) and the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs by companies searching for cheaper labor elsewhere have been integral to the dismantlements of post-1945 social contracts in Europe and North America. Thus, employing ‘neoliberalization’ can serve as a ‘means of denaturalizing globalization processes’ (Peck et al., 2009: 97), and this act of denaturalizing involves examining how this particular face of capitalism has been constructed through everyday discourses revolving around common-sense notions of choice and freedom resemiotized to be associated with a market that has been called ‘free’. Neoliberal discourses attempt to construct a ‘hegemonic rationality’ through its ‘embedding . . . as rationality in everyday social organization and

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

99

imagination’ engendering ‘a whole way of life for which neoliberal discourse provides the organizing metaphors’ (Couldry, 2010: 5). One central metaphor, as Couldry observed, is the ‘market’ as the organizing frame for society that serves to delimit and marginalize other ways to imagine alternatives. Furthermore, in basing its rationality on defining freedom only in terms of what the market has to offer, individual freedoms are redefined as being solely the ‘capacity for self-realization and freedom from bureaucracy rather than freedom from want, with human behavior reconceptualized along economic lines’ (Leitner et al., 2007: 4). The tensions between the ongoing neoliberal common-sense notions of ‘choice’ and the ‘free market’ in the Globality video and the emerging goodsense views of the injustices of economic domination and oppression will be highlighted in Emilia’s and her students’ mediations of the various discourses as they accept and adopt naturalized ways of thinking congruent with the videos, while also at times resisting and challenging these views. It is precisely in these moments that a critical counter-hegemonic pedagogy can help facilitate the students in situating and connecting their curriculum materials with sociopolitical concerns affecting them all.

A Conversation with the Teacher After Emilia’s Spring term ended, we met several times to discuss classroom approaches to texts. She often told her Spring term students to be ‘critical thinkers’ and ‘critical readers’, which in her classroom context meant critiquing an author’s reasoning or logic and identifying bias. However, there were numerous times in her classes when the students themselves initiated discussions that addressed issues of power and questioned ‘the rules of exchange within a social field’ (Luke, 2004: 26), such as their newcomer status in Canada, the need for them to learn English, and societal relations in their home countries. Due to my own interests in critical literacy, I first asked Emilia, who was a so-called ‘newcomer’ to critical literacy (Lewison et al., 2002: 382), if she would be interested in learning about it and discussing it in our meetings. She was immediately receptive and enthusiastic, so I began sharing some of the literature with her (e.g. Luke, 2000; Luke & Freebody, 1997; McLaughlin & DeVood, 2004). There is some confusion due to the at-times conflation of ‘critical thinking’ with ‘critical literacy’. In short, critical literacy in the classroom involves exploring with students ‘the multiple threads tying language to power’ (Janks, 2010: 12). Thus, the two central aims of this approach are to identify and name instantiations of power in texts, and to call attention to the

100

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

societal attempts of the ‘convergence in the interpretive practices of their members’ (Freebody, 2008: 107) in seeking to produce uniform and conformist understandings of socially constructed representations of reality. This classroom approach engages students in ‘reading with a text and reading against a text’ (Janks, 2010: 96), so that after students comprehend the text and its organizational features, they can then begin to distance themselves from it by examining how power is involved and instantiated through its attempts to limit, bound, enclose and fix particular representations and constructions of meanings. After giving Emilia a copy of Luke and Freebody’s (1997), ‘Shaping the social practices of reading’, we met some time later to discuss it. I began by first drawing her attention to their definition of reading in their introductory paragraph: We argue that reading is a social practice using written text as a means for the construction and reconstruction of statements, messages, and meanings. Reading is actually ‘done’ in the public and private spaces of everyday community, occupational and academic institutions. Reading is tied up in the politics and power relations of everyday life in literate cultures. (Luke & Freebody, 1997: 185) Christian:

Emilia:

Christian:

OK, I was just wondering what you thought, how you interpret, on page 185 of Luke and Freebody. First of all, I guess the general thing would be to kind of frame it as, what was your take on the, overall? Well, to tell you the truth, it’s a new idea for me, slightly, you know? So, I mean, the idea of reading culture and reading as a social construct is, is, well, the idea of reading as a, as a socio-political event is kind of interesting, which I, you know, we do talk about that in reading, anyway, when you read about, you know, culture, politics, or something else. But we don’t normally look at it as, like, the practice of reading, right? So it’s very new to me, this. Part of me was like, um, ‘Oh, yeah, really? I don’t think so. Come on’. You know, like, it seemed very radical, um, and very, sort of, 1960s. You know, coming out of that liberalism thing, because, fine, and part of it is I haven’t worked through the whole thing yet. So part of my initial reaction is, ‘OK, great, but how the hell do you bring this to bear in a classroom?’ Like, because, because of the time, right? Right.

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

101

A reading has content, and you want to make sure that the students understand the content. And, yes, you want them to understand the subtext, but if they don’t have the language skills to understand the subtext, because so much of English, um, vocabulary, and even the way we construct the meaning, is in the grammar, right? Right. So if they don’t understand the grammar and they don’t understand the nuances of the vocabulary, how can we help them to appreciate (laughs) the social construct of it? Um, because you have to have the words to, um, well, I mean, the idea can be in your head and you can’t express it if you don’t have the words, but you really do need the, the vocabulary to actually look at the reading this way. And I think you need a certain level of vocabulary awareness and distinctions and, you know, tone, to actually appreciate the nuances of a text this way. So I think it’s easier to do if the text is simpler, you know, like, more to the point. Um, and it’s also easier to do if the classes are more advanced, because the students will have a higher level of language. But, assuming they reach a higher level of language, you know, then I understand it ‘cause there’s lots to talk about. But, even then, my concern is the time. So, I guess if we could create reading courses, you know, trying to sort of think about the future, if this were to become a model of reading within the school system and boards of education and, and building awareness of the kind of, you know, first of all, you’d have to make everybody aware of the political context. You know, because if you want people to be aware of a political subtext of a reading, then they have to be aware of the political situation, right? And I don’t think this, um, number one, I don’t think it’s easy to do, if you look at it in a global way, right? I mean, if I look at it just from this, you know, very specific view point of ESL at (name of the university where she teaches) academic English, that’s a whole other thing. But when you’re looking at it from a global point of view, and we’re not really discussing academic level, pre-university or graduate level, we’re talking about you know, elementary, high school, post-secondary, everything together. Then I wonder how easy it’s going to be (laughs) to institute it. Because don’t you really have to start, you have to have a starting point, right?

102 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Christian: Emilia:

Christian:

Sure. And it’s kind of, like, OK, what we’re going to do is make the teachers aware, right? Of a new form of, of reading that we can actually make the learners aware of, or a new system that we can use. Right, right.

Several issues were raised throughout our discussion. Emilia’s initial reaction as she frames it is one of skepticism toward what she perceives as Luke and Freebody’s ‘radical’ stance or approach to reading. This may be a somewhat common attitude among many English language teachers who may be pressured into disregarding anything that remotely suggests the political in their classrooms for fear of alienating students, increasingly identified by administrators as ‘customers’ or ‘clients’ in many for-profit tertiary English language programs in North America. Teaching reading practices other than reading for basic comprehension, vocabulary checks and identifying the main theme have been largely ignored or dismissed. Yet, as Emilia rightly points out, ‘how the hell do you bring this to bear in a classroom? Like because of the time, right?’ This speaks to the pressures many teachers face to get through a mandated curriculum and their increased ‘accountability’ for their students’ assessed outcomes, in addition to the hours spent preparing lessons and grading assignments. But it is not only an issue of time, but also the paucity of practical examples of critical pedagogy in classroom practices that can serve as guides to interested practitioners. Although the works on critical pedagogy from education scholars such as Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux and Michael Apple, to name but a few, have been voluminous, very little, if any, feature classroom examples and/or illustrations of how critical pedagogy is actually ‘brought to bear in a classroom’, as Emilia notes. Another connected issue is the difficulty in developing students’ critical awareness as it relates to the texts they’re encountering in the classroom. Few teachers, due to the lack of relevant courses in their teacher training programs, are equipped to address the linguistic and discourse features of texts in which power is instantiated through the attempts not only to fix meanings, but also in the ways in which various representations and discourses acquire a ‘truth’ through their power/knowledge formations (Foucault, 1980). And teacher training is exactly the point that Emilia raises: Emilia:

So where do you begin? You have to begin with the teachers and it means you have to begin with teacher training. So, if you begin with teacher training, you’re teaching them about,

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

103

uh, the sociopolitical, you know, point of view in reading, or the perspective, and the way we construct meaning with that. But if somebody doesn’t have an awareness of politics, are we having to teach politics, then? Are we going to have to teach political theory? Are we going to have to make teachers aware of politics? I really have not much interest in politics, to tell you the truth. I mean, over a dinner conversation, Sunday night, if I get stuck, you know, fine, I’ll talk about politics. But, um, in terms of academic teaching, I don’t know where you’d begin. It’s just a really interesting problem of how you would make that institutional. So I can see it working in pockets, and I can see it working in pockets of, of institutional systems, but I don’t know that I can see it working globally. Because, I mean, you’re basically fomenting unrest (laughs). Do you know what I mean? Like, if you make students completely aware of their political situation all the time, or, you know, that you’re constantly pointing it out, um, it, it creates a politician of the teacher, to some degree, or at least an observer of, of politics and the political system and the constructs of society. So, if we, as teachers, teach students through reading, uh, awareness of political thought and awareness of political structures, what are we hoping to do, by doing that? Are we hoping to change the political system? Because awareness is the first step in change. So, if you are going to, so I’m thinking this long-term, you know, as a theory, how practical is this? And, if you can get enough adherence, I suppose it would be fine. But what are the ultimate effects of this going to be if you make everybody aware of the political they’re in? Which is, of course, the opposite of what most governments try to do. They try to make you totally unaware of the situation you’re in so that you’re just, like (laughs), living your life and happy, and they don’t have to worry about it. But, you know, as soon as there’s a, a total awareness, how do you deal with that when everybody’s aware of the inequalities in the system? Emilia echoes a common concern for many teachers who do not wish to get mired in political discussions, in avoiding what they may see as social, cultural, historical and political controversies and complex histories which may not be readily available or accessible to either the teacher or the students, or both. For teachers who have ventured into discussions on historical

104

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

conflicts and politics in a region that involve several cultural groups present in the classroom, this can potentially alienate some students and risk disrupting a delicate balance in the class dynamic. But there is another reason why many English language teachers tend to shy away from addressing the political in their classrooms. Morgan argued that ‘to a remarkable degree, our profession has historically constructed itself as a closed system: a body of theories, methods, and research techniques largely disconnected from the local contexts where language instruction takes place’ (Morgan, 1998: 25). As he noted, ESL instructors ‘are informed by a research tradition’ (Morgan, 1998: 27) that has tended until very recently to privilege the psychological at the expense of the social so that ‘language learning appears to take place in a social vacuum’ (Morgan, 1998: 26). Often informed by this heretofore dominant research tradition in their training, and mindful of their EAP program pressures to please and mollify their students (who in some cases are relatively affluent internationals supported by either their parents or their governments), some instructors may be reluctant to engage in what seem to them to be career risks, and in some situations, they are wholly justified. Additionally, for teachers who do not have much interest in politics (as they define it), what is at stake for them to engage with the political in their classrooms? There is also the perception that addressing power may be ‘fomenting unrest’ in the classroom, as Emilia puts it. In her words, by ‘constantly pointing out’ the students’ ‘political situation’, does this create ‘a politician of the teacher, to some degree’ in the EAP classroom? Yet Morgan (1998: 24) noted that ‘for many ESL students, politics is a lived experience constructed in many different ways’. For these students, the political is something they do not necessarily have to be made aware of; it may in fact be something of which they are all too well aware, having come from war-torn countries, such as the student in Emilia’s Spring term class who had left Iraq with her family a few years earlier. Texts in the classroom will necessarily be read differently by students who carry their own historically lived experiences. Emilia’s pointed question of what the ultimate effects of this will be illuminates a central issue – what is the function of education, of second language education, and of EAP education in particular? In the ensuing conversation, I was curious about her phrase, ‘creating a politician of the teacher’, so I asked her to define what she meant by ‘politics’: Christian: Emilia:

Well, you raise a whole set of really interesting issues. So I think they’re great. OK, I, yeah, how do you define, I guess my first question . . . how would you define politics? ‘Cause you= =Oh, god, yeah, OK.

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian:

105

Yeah? Here we go. Well, yeah, I mean, for discussion, you really do have to have definitions of terms. Um, I guess politics, to me, is the, the thought, the practice, the ideology, the systems of power structures, economically, socially, culturally, in each country. OK. Societies, right, OK. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, but then the problem is, this is a global thing we’re talking about. This is, how do you, so, for instance, you cannot just break apart, OK, in the West, we’re going to teach reading through political awareness and making students understand the sociopolitical implications of the readings they’re doing, or the sociopolitical possibilities or thought behind it. So if, how do you do that? You know, and where, and how, and how’s it going to differ in each country and who’s going to decide, like, you know, if I have a, a staunch, Republican over here and then a Liberal over there, and then I have a, a, you know, a dictator in Korea, and I have, you know, like, there’re certain places you’re never going to change. Right, right. Right? So what do you do about opposing political views, and whose political view are we going to teach, or are we going to teach political views? Or are we just going to raise awareness? OK, those are really [big questions. [Yeah, big, I know! That’s great, that you’re raising that. But perhaps we can kind of [scale it down for a second. [(laughs) Right, let’s! Um, you said something really interesting that I want to kind of address, you said, ‘Does this create a politician of the teacher?’ Yeah. Now, you’re framing of politics is pretty much what I would agree with, in terms of how you’ve defined politics broadly. OK. So my question to you is, in, in the concern, if I can use that word, that all this might create, quote, ‘a politician of the teacher’=

106 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

=Right. Do you think that teachers are, in a sense, by what you just, having defined politics already, politicians? To some degree, yes. And I think it depends on the teacher. But, by and large, I think we are. Because we represent a country, almost. You know, we are the representative of the political, social, you know, country we live in, right, the system that we’re in. So, part of my job, I think, in teaching these students, is also to help them understand, like, what the ethos of our political system is, to some degree. You know, so we teach liberalism, we teach what’s in the, in our, um, you know, code, and what the, what Bill of Rights we have. So, if students, you know, it’s always been that thing of, you know, when the subject of homosexuality, let’s say, you know, comes up in class, and, you know, and you get titters and guffaws and all this stuff. And, and I always get really, you know, serious at that point, and say, ‘You know what, like, whatever, it’s 10% of every population, whatever, you know, we have this in our code, it’s, it’s, you know, they’re an important part of our, our political, economic life, you know, we’ve had this for a long time in my country, blah-blah-blah. And, you know, you’re coming here’, so I do this sort of speech. You know, ‘You want other people to understand you and be tolerant towards you, you must be tolerant towards others’. And this is somewhere tolerant, you know, we talk about tolerance, teaching tolerance as a, as an attitude that you can adopt. It’s not something that just happens to you. Right, that it’s willful.

Interestingly, although Emilia expresses the concern (and often-repeated criticism) about critical pedagogy that it espouses – or ‘indoctrinates’ – students into adopting a teacher’s political view(s), or its so-called ‘agenda’, she observes that part of her job is to help her students understand what she terms as the ‘ethos of our political system’. This is illustrated by her example of her directly addressing the homophobic attitudes of some of her students by presenting it as an interconnected issue with the students wanting themselves to be understood in their new society as one of tolerance of differences among all. This in itself is a political act, and one that does not necessarily force students into adopting their teacher’s point of view, but rather it has the students examining their own new subject positions in a new society and the prevailing attitudes they may encounter as a result. However, she

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

107

next expresses the concern that too much talk in the classroom about politics can lead to disagreement, and that it is difficult to keep abreast of current political situations: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

Yeah, it’s a, I think part of the issue is that this is, it’s new, right? And so you don’t, at least from the readings I’ve done yet, apart from the, you know, kind of recipes and instructions and that kind of thing, for the systemic functional grammar, the, you know, the sociopolitical analysis of the text, number one, I would really have to think about, how would I teach that? You know, it’s not the easiest thing to teach in a class. It’s not the most, it might not be the most scintillating thing to teach in a class. And then you really have to leave time for discussion. Right. And then you have to allow for that discussion to become, possibly, heated or intensely personal. If you have, I mean, I think teachers have, traditionally, particularly language teachers, shied away from politics. Because, for instance, and the thing is, let’s say I plan a curriculum. And I’m going to have some sociopolitical content in there. And I get a, you know, I teach it this term, and then I get a whole new group from a whole new set of countries the next time. Right. Now it may not fit. So, let’s say that I talk about, you know, the Second World War, right? And I have a Japanese and a Korean in the class. Like, I mean, I’ve had that problem before. Believe me, they’re not shy about, you know, ‘You did this to my country, you did that, I don’t want to be in this class with that person, I don’t want to talk about this, no, no, no!’ . . . If we’re talking just about analysis of a text, then, immediately, you’re going to have disagreement in the class because politics is a personal issue. It, it really is. We all have different ideas about what we think we want to see, politically. I don’t think anybody really understands the political they’re living in. I mean, you know, look at the garbage strike, right? See it on the news every single day. How much do I really know about the garbage strike? Diddly. I know nothing. I know that they want sick days, right? Is this all? I mean is that all we get? So, with a, you know, a, a dearth of analysis from the media, you know,

108

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Christian: Emilia: Christian:

Emilia: Christian:

Emilia:

there’s a personal onus to go out and get the information. How do I get unbiased information, if I’m going to teach it? What kind of texts will I choose to instigate political thought? Then I’m the politician, then I’m choosing the system just by even choosing a text. I’m forcing them to think in a certain way. You know, I could be accused of, you know, politicizing education. Do I want to do that? It has so many crazy things. Right, right, and I agree; however, there is that argument that= =No, no, go ahead. But yeah, however, the argument, yes, I understand, but the argument, a counter-argument would be, but the curriculum that you’re already forced to [teach, that’s mandated for you, is already politicized. [Right, right, yes, true! Right? So that, you know, if, if you’re worried about, ‘Well, if I get these other texts, people will say, well, you’re just fomenting an agenda’, the argument is, this curriculum, this particular curriculum, already has an agenda. It does, but we hide it, right? And we don’t focus on it.

Inasmuch as institutions have their own agendas, and curriculum materials are already politicized in their institutional, publishing and authorial choices of who and what are included and represented, and who and what are omitted and absent, teachers are already politically engaged in the EAP classroom, whether they accept this role or not. A few minutes after this exchange, Emilia conveyed another concern: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

. . . they’re not saying, ‘Oh my god, I came here to learn English and all they’re doing here is, like, teaching me, you know, what to think’. I don’t, that’s the one thing that I think we have to be careful about is, you know, that students come into a classroom, and that we’re trying to get them to agree politically with the teacher. You know what I mean? Right, that’s not our goal. No. But, you know what, a lot of students come from a culture where you have to agree with the teacher. Oh, that’s a good point! You know, so the problem is, like I’ve said to students before, particularly my Korean students, who have always asked me,

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

109

you know, Asian students and the Chinese students, too, when I taught at (name of school), ‘What do you think?’ They’d ask me, ‘What do you think?’ and I said, ‘It doesn’t matter what I think’. And, like, well, you know, and they said, ‘What if I have a completely different point of view?’ And I’m like, ‘OK, so you have a different point of view’. And I’m like, ‘Well’, and they said, ‘Well, but if the teacher doesn’t believe that?’ And I go, ‘OK, so the teacher doesn’t believe that, so what?’ Are they asking you that because they want to get a good grade, [they think that (laughs) [Yup, yup. They want to get a good grade because, what they, you know= =They parrot your opinion, [they think you’ll [Yes, absolutely ‘Cause that’s, it may work like that in their country. That’s right. OK. So then, if we’re talking sociocultural concerns, that’s a sociocultural concern. You now, I don’t want them thinking what I’m thinking. And I don’t want them writing a paper, you know, to please me. Right. Um, so can you undo that kind of cultural thing very quickly or not? I wonder. That’s a good point, that’s another good point. And maybe that is a good thing for an academic prep class to do, right, before they go into university, if they’re going into university. But, yeah.

Emilia expresses the fear that she would end up ‘trying to get’ her students ‘to agree politically’ with her. However, this is not the goal of critical literacy; instead, one of its aims is to interrogate all viewpoints and not necessarily privilege one over the other. In rejecting the uniformity of interpretation that dominant hegemonic practices attempt to impose on society’s members (Freebody, 2008), critical literacy approaches seek to avoid doing exactly this. However, she makes an excellent point that many of her students have come from a classroom cultural practice that has students agreeing with their teachers to ensure (or rather in the hope of) receiving a good grade, something which I had not previously considered. This is an important issue for critical EAP pedagogy to address and explore further; however,

110

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

it has been my experience that if students have been encouraged to express their opinions and views (as long as they are respectful of others) and not fear being penalized in some way due to a different viewpoint from the teacher, they will do so, provided teachers help create the necessary dialogic spaces in the classroom, fostering trust and mutual respect regarding the inevitable disagreements. And it is through these extended, in-depth engagements and discussions on topical issues employing various critical literacies frameworks that students can develop their academic English language proficiencies around reading, writing and speaking.

Summer Term Class Engagements In her following Summer term reading and writing class, Emilia had only two students, both male Arabic speakers from the Middle East. One was bound for a master’s program in political science, and already held a master’s degree from another university. The other planned to pursue a PhD in business or marketing at a university in North America. Although continuing a class with only two students might seem unusual for an EAP program, there seemed to be a decision to not cancel it due to these students requesting the continuation of this class. The exchanges here are from a class session approximately five weeks after the above conversation with Emilia. Because one of her students was planning to pursue an advanced business degree, she chose to show the Globality video to this class, as she had for her Spring term class, with the same pedagogical objective for the students to practice taking notes and to discuss the issues related to the video’s content. I had given Emilia a transcript of Globality so that she and the students could look at the language in more depth. After having the students view the video and then read the transcript, she began the discussion: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia:

OK, so ‘global’ means what? World, worldwide. Worldwide, OK. Does worldwide really mean worldwide? Does global really mean global? So when we use the word ‘globality’ or ‘globalization’, are we talking about the entire world? ‘Cause, you know, the world is a globe, right? It’s a circle. So globality should mean the entire world, the entire circle of the Earth, is that true? No. No?

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

Student 2:

111

The meaning is, it have, have influence globally, or they have spread widely, so that mean not the whole world but they have almost the whole world.

Instead of initiating the discussion from the assumption that there is one fixed meaning of globalization as she did with her previous Spring term class, Emilia chooses to begin by having the students define the words ‘worldwide’ and ‘global’. Her pedagogical move to query ‘globality’ and ‘globalization’ in her question ‘are we talking about the entire world?’ suggests an alternative path of inquiry to make other meanings about what globalization in its various uses might include or exclude. Her last question above – ‘So globality should mean the entire world, the entire circle of the Earth, is that true?’ – challenges the video’s multimodal construction of the opening shot of the planet in cementing it to the notion of ‘globality’. Her question sets the path in opening up a discussion about the nature of globalization: Emilia:

Student 1:

Emilia: Student 1:

Emilia: Student 1:

OK, so if we have almost the whole world, who’s not included? Like we talk about globalization all the time. We talk about, you know, the uh, global economy, we talk about uh, global problems, you know, the environment around the globe, but when we’re talking globally are we really talking globally? I thinks no because some countries, they are so far from global, for example in some African countries, they are so far what’s global, or they don’t know what’s happening in the world sometimes. And why don’t they? Because they lack, uh, communications. They lack environment to, to encourage other countries to come to their country. Sometimes the political system in that countries, uh, try to avoid any, any other countries to come to countries like Cuba or Iran or something like, like this. OK, so they’re not opening up. Yeah.

This student’s earlier response of ‘world, worldwide’ as being the definition of global was markedly different from his ensuing perceptive remark in this exchange in which he cited areas of the world such as some countries in Africa ‘are so far what’s global, or they don’t know what’s happening in the world sometimes’. Emilia’s prompt of ‘why don’t they?’ led the student to expand upon his point when he mentions some countries ‘lack

112

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

communications’ and ‘lack environment to, to encourage other countries to come to their country’. His observation that not all countries have the infrastructure to participate in and have access to globalizing flows of information belied the image of a seamlessly interconnected world in the Globality video. In addition, his reference to Cuba and Iran and their political systems alluded to their resisting the specific globalizing dynamic featured in Globality, which in their cases meant unwelcomed economic, political and cultural influences and practices. Emilia’s response, ‘So they’re not opening up’, acknowledges the student’s claim that there are resistances to certain globalizing processes. Their co-construction of an alternative narrative of globality in the student’s example of Cuba indicated that government’s unwillingness to open up its economy and domestic market to international capital integration, and its refusal to allow any perceived outside threats to its political order. This seems to be a case of the local refusing to accommodate the global in its economic and sociopolitical dimensions. In the Iran example, ‘not opening up’ would indicate the country’s policies and stance toward the West and its economic market that has been subject to sanctions. In any event, this exchange troubles the video’s neoliberal discourse of globality that presents the world solely as one big marketplace unfettered by the inconveniences of political and social conflicts. Interruptions of a singular interpretation of globalization occurred when both students read the video differently at times. This was facilitated by Emilia’s questions that prompted the students in making alternative meanings in their challenging the motivated claims of Globality and its attendant definition of globalization. Their engagement with the material is also evident when Student 2 followed up with his opinion: Student 2:

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

I think the definition for the global, or the differences between the word ‘global’ and ‘international’, that’s ‘international’, it’s something that’s related to two countries or few countries. But ‘global’, that’s related almost, many countries or almost, there is percentage for, uh, uh, who’s involved or who’s related to the population. Should be more than 85%, thus we can call the issue or the phenomenon; it’s global, eh, global. But if it’s not for fifty-eh, 85% or it’s not more than two or three, uh, uh, actors, let’s see the actors, then= =Participants maybe?= =Yeah. Then it’s will be international. OK, so…

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2:

113

For example, if we have this companies, we can call it, uh, also, eh, multi-multi, eh, culturalism? Or multinationalism?, eh= =Multi= =Multinational corporations, which means has uh, branches in each country or almost whole the world, so it’s become global.

The student elaborates what he sees as the differences between ‘international’ and ‘global’, assigning a quantitative factor (‘two . . . or few countries’ and ‘85%’) to determine what was meant by each. His reading of these words seems to define ‘international’ in a more limited political sense in which ‘two or three actors’ and their interactions cross borders. He then situates the operational meaning of ‘global’ in the specific context of multinational corporations as having ‘branches in each country or almost whole the world’. His locating a particular meaning of this term within the realities of corporate expansion would appear to align with the video’s narrative. However, a few moments later, he commented: Student 2:

Emilia: Student 2:

Sometimes they call globality by ‘un-globalization’. There is several names or they try to theorize the next, eh, era, or the next, after globalization. Because some authors, eh, argue that the theory of globalization, eh, it’s false and it’s, it’s collapsed, it’s collapsed, not . . . eh, collapsed= =Declining?= =Yeah, declining, yeah, declining, so there should be another era. So they call it beyond globalization and eh, maybe in the business world they call it globality. So it’s related to different disciplines.

The student’s resemiotizing of ‘globality’ as ‘un-globalization’ shifts its contextual frame, in which there was no longer a coherent script of globalization, seamlessly segueing into globality. A rather more complicated picture emerges in which some might view globalization theories as ‘false’ or no longer relevant – ‘declining’. His citing of some calling an era ‘beyond globalization’ suggests the different attempts to capture more adequately the emerging and evolving complexities of the world. By linking the concept of globality to a managerial discourse, the student seems to imply that it had limited purchase outside its disciplinary realm. The students’ reframing and problematizing of globalization thus contests the video’s narrative claims.

114

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

The following extract takes place approximately five minutes after the previous one. During this time, Emilia and the students discussed the first author of the book and video, Globality, Harold Sirkin – his nationality, his affiliation with the company, the Boston Consulting Group, and their vested interests in disseminating and selling particular forms of information. The video is put into the context of whose interests it might serve and the access to the information they claim to possess. Emilia now has the students examine how language is used in the video with the aim of having the students interrogate the text’s claims of ‘globality’: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Students: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

OK, so let’s have a look at the language that uh, Sirkin uses. So in the second paragraph, first of all he gives a definition of ‘globality,’ right? OK, is that clear to you? No, it’s not. It’s, uh, eh, vague (mispronounces the word) or ...? Vague. (gently corrects his pronunciation) Vague, yeah, vague, it’s vague= =Yeah, it’s vague. Why is it vague? ‘Cause it’s, uh, it tell us nothing. It’s obvious. (laughs) It comes after globalization, but what’s the nature of globalization? What its, eh, causes, what is, eh, we need some more details. OK. We need to define both concepts: globalization and globality. Yes, right. If you say A comes after B, that’s easy= =Yeah= =But what’s A and what’s B?= =Yeah. OK, so, yeah, because watching the video, I realized, OK, well, their book is about globality, so the entire book is about globality, but they don’t provide a very good definition of what globality is. So if you look at the language, it says, it, it’s what comes after. So if we, if we look at those words, it’s what comes after, that kind of talks about time, right? So something happens, then something else comes after that. It’s a time issue. But is it a time issue or is it a cause and effect relationship? Is it uh, just a natural progression? Uh, is it a process? Is it just based on time? Is it always the way this is? So if you have globalization, are you always going to have globality after that?

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1:

115

It’s depend what the aim of the, the way if you define the concept. Because maybe, eh, why they choose globality, we can eh, instead choose post-globalization. Sure= =Yeah, but, maybe, maybe it’s issue of eh, create new concept or, because they say the book, they need something new to market the book. Right. Say they choose globality, it’s not clear but maybe it will help to marketing their book. OK. So it’s, it’s a catchphrase, what we call a catchphrase= =Yeah, catchphrase= =Kind of a, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to call it, a brand new label’. Yeah.

Emilia starts this exchange by having the students examine specifically what ‘globality’ entails. Student 1 immediately says it is not clear and that it is ‘vague’ because ‘it tell us nothing, it’s obvious’. ‘Vague’ and ‘obvious’ would seem to contradict each other, but Emilia does not address this. However, the student goes on to clarify a bit what he means when he says, ‘it comes after globalization, but what’s the nature of globalization?’ Again, the student creates a space in which he questions the video’s stake in controlling the interpretation of the meaning of globalization. As he says, ‘what its causes . . . we need some more details’. Student 2 concurs by stating the need to define both globalization and globality. Emilia poses a series of questions that challenge the video’s claim that ‘globality’ is happening now. She calls attention to the Globality authors’ strategy of painting a picture of a phenomenon being born without historical precedent or context. By asking questions such as ‘is it a time issue or is it a cause and effect relationship?’ and ‘is it always the way it is?’, she intervenes and interrupts the Globality narrative that ‘for the last 20 years we’ve heard about the global economy emerging, but for the first time we’re seeing it happen’. Here, the ‘global economy’ seems to take on a different cast, in that ‘global’ now appears to be a threat to the center, rather than one that is characterized by historically concentrated capital deployed from the center to around the world. Student 1’s response suggests the somewhat arbitrary choice of the word ‘globality’ when he says, ‘we can instead choose postglobalization’. At first, this appears to be an acceptance of globalization as a given state, an unproblematic use of the term; however, he goes on to suggest that ‘globality’ is a type of gimmick, ‘something new to market the book’.

116

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Emilia follows his lead in co-constructing a different text for ‘globality’: ‘it’s called a catchphrase’. Student 1 agrees by repeating the word, and Emilia ventriloquizes the authors by saying ‘OK, this is what we’re going to call it, a brand new label’. The word ‘globality’ is now rendered by both as a marketing tool, rather than as the intended meaning by the video to signify an unprecedented phenomenon. Both Emilia and the students re-accentuated this word with their own intentions or, as Voloshinov (1973: 102) argued, ‘meaning belongs to a word in its position between speakers; that is, meaning is realized only in the process of active, responsive understanding’. The following exchanges took place approximately one hour later. After discussing other aspects of the Globality video such as the authors’ institutional affiliations and the various companies cited as entrepreneurial models, Emilia asked the students to examine the transcript again, this time for the narrator’s words accompanying the opening image of the planet: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2:

If we could go back just one second to the first page of Globality. And when the narrator – so in the middle of the page we have the narrator in this report. Do you see where I am? OK, ‘We examine how the world’s largest firms from the most powerful nations are increasingly being threatened by emerging challenges with lower costs, innovative products, and global ambitions’. Whose point of view is he speaking from? America. Yeah, yeah. Um, and how do we know that? Cause eh, he express the, eh, the most powerful economy in the world, so they would like to still be the most, eh, economy and they don’t want to be, another one to be, eh, competitive with, with them.

Emilia recontextualizes the narrator’s introduction when she asks, ‘whose point of view is he speaking from?’ Her question prompts the students to consider the motivated discourses in this video text and, in particular, discourses that were presented to appear to be objective or neutral. By posing and discussing this question, Emilia and the students draw attention to the motivated interests and assumptions present in any text. They in effect foreground the not-so-hidden agenda of Globality: the anxiety of a superpower saddled with debt and in relative decline in the face of rising economies. The discourse of globality was now read in this classroom context as a condition, a warning and a call to action, in its portrayal of ‘emerging challenges’ with their ‘global ambitions’. This was apparent in the student’s response that it was America

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

117

whose point of view was represented, which he elaborated on by saying, ‘They don’t want to be, another one to be competitive with, with them’. Emilia then builds upon the student’s observation: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia:

Student 2:

Yeah, and I think it’s also interesting that he used the word ‘threatened’. The position of the country. Yeah. The country as the States. Yeah, and he doesn’t use the words, um, ‘developed’ or ‘changed’, or, uh, you know, uh, ‘somehow altered’, uh, he uses ‘threatened’. And there’s a sense of danger in the word ‘threatened’. Seriously. Yeah. It’s like, the threat, ‘give me your money or I’ll shoot you’. You know, that kind of thing. So threats, the word ‘threat’ has an association with violence, with negative behavior, you know, when, when, uh, somebody says, ‘do this or something’s going to happen’. You know, you say, ‘oh my god, are you threatening me?’ That’s a warning, you know? So all of a sudden there’s danger involved. And when there’s danger involved it means somebody’s position is going to change and obviously he is looking at this from the point of view of the leader of the global economy, which until now has been the US. One could argue that it’s not the US because of how much debt they have, but it seems to be the US. Yeah, the power, yeah.

When Emilia highlights the word ‘threatened’, the student picks up on this immediately by saying ‘the position of the country’, to mean that it was under threat from competitive economies. Emilia continues by citing possible words not used, and by claiming ‘There’s a sense of danger in the word “threatened”’. The student’s response in turn, ‘seriously’, as indicated by his intonation on the recording, elaborated on the meaning of ‘threatened’ as serious, real, not to be underestimated. She agrees, and proceeds to contextualize ‘threat’ within the broader frame of US hegemony with her own reading, with which the student appears to agree, indicated by his remark, ‘Yeah, the power, yeah’. Emilia then draws the students’ attention to another word: Emilia:

And at the end of that sentence he also says, uh, you know, ‘By emerging challenges with lower costs, innovative

118

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Students: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

products and global ambitions’. That word ‘ambition’ is also an interesting choice. Is ambition always positive? If I say, ‘Oh, he’s a very ambitious person’, do you see, you know, like a positive idea in your mind, associated with ambition? Yeah, yeah. You do. OK I think, um, why do you see it as positive? What do you associate it with – ambition? They try to develop their skills, or services. So they’re trying to develop, which is a good thing? Or their goals, they hit the target. OK, so you’re reaching the goal, you’re hitting the target. OK, and again another violence – shooting kind of thing. Interesting, eh? Uh, or archery, that kind of thing. Sports analogies are often common in business. Um, OK so we have global ambitions. I think those, ambitious to me is not always, not always positive. It’s positive for the uh, who want to be ambitious. (mispronounces the word) Ambitious. Ambitious, yeah. But it’s not be eh, positive for another, another one. (laughs)

By drawing the students’ attention to the word ‘ambition’, Emilia foregrounds to them its possible connotations. Perhaps here she might have shown her hand in first asking for a positive association (which would then lead to its opposite), rather than simply asking what they associated ‘ambition’ with. The students affirm that they did, saying ‘yeah’ repeatedly, which seems to catch Emilia a bit off guard when she says, ‘You do. OK, I think, um, why do you see it as positive?’ Her response might indicate that she was possibly expecting them to say ‘no’ initially. She begins to say, ‘I think’, before she asks them to explain the positive associations. Her ‘I think’ might have been a move to disagree with the positive. After the students give their explanations of positive examples of ambition (‘they try to develop their skills’ and ‘or their goals’), Emilia does indeed show her hand when she says, ‘I think those, ambitious to me is not always, not always positive’. Student 2 offers a knowing, humorous observation when he responds with, ‘It’s positive for the uh, who want to be ambitious . . . but not be, eh positive for another, another one’, which prompts her to laugh. In her move to highlight the specific linguistic choices involved in the Globality text, which was transcribed and given to Emilia, who then shared

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

119

it with her Summer term students, she perhaps ran the risk of directing her students’ reading to unintentionally produce a uniform reading. For example, in the final two exchanges, she did the majority of the talking with her students. Referring to the narrator of the video’s report wherein he claimed that large firms from the most powerful nations were being increasingly threatened, Emilia focused on the word ‘threatened’ and then defined it as ‘a sense of danger’. She situated its meaning before the students had a chance to produce their own meanings. She proceeded to give several examples that illustrate her own meaning of ‘threat’, in effect limiting a dialogic space in which the students would be able to co-construct their own examples of what constituted a ‘threat’, who was doing the threatening, and how this might be contextualized differently. Something similar happened with her foregrounding to the students a certain connotation of ‘ambition’.

Discussion In contrast with her Spring term class, both Emilia and her students were able to create more meanings around the notions of globalization and globality in their extended exchanges. This seemed to be partly due to how she facilitated the conversation by having the students unpack the terms ‘globality’ and ‘globalization’, and the students themselves, having been prompted this way, acted to query the video’s discourse by drawing upon other meanings that troubled it. The resources upon which Emilia drew for her Summer term class could be seen as connected to the resources of alternative approaches to texts she and I had shared during the period following the Spring term. Indeed, there were moments in the Summer term class that directly problematized the discourses and representations in the Globality video. The students and Emilia attempted to create different understandings of globalizing dynamics and effects, and their reframing moves opened up new pathways of meaning making, whether it was the student citing Cuba and Iran as being off the globalization grid, as it were, or his fellow student making a distinction between ‘global’ and ‘international’. While these, perhaps, were not entirely new ways of seeing things, they were certainly alternative viewings which contrasted with the featured interactions from the Spring term class in which both Emilia and the students aligned themselves more closely with the neoliberal discourses of Globality. These alternative viewings led to extended conversations and facilitated expanded meaning-making pathways, which gave the Summer term students more chances to engage in the spoken discourses valued in the tertiary classroom.

120

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

However, an approach that strives to incorporate elements of a critical literacy classroom practice may not always enable the students’ meaningmaking potential and, in fact, may inadvertently constrain it at times. As indicated in the last extract, although Emilia attempted to highlight specific word choices and their implications, the resulting interactions that evolved out of this pedagogical move in this context did not seem to suggest any expansion of the students’ meaning-making potential but perhaps served as a constraint on it instead. This is an important reminder that it is not always feasible to adopt wholesale the methodological practices from established research. Indeed, interested practitioners must explore ways on their own to find what works in their classrooms when engaging with students’ vantage points and views stemming from their lived histories and experiences. In the intention to have students focus on specific linguistic features, in the case of the lexical choice of ‘threatened’, are there dialogic moments lost when a preferred reading becomes a dominant reading in the classroom? How does one avoid having a critical literacy reading become the sole dominant reading in the classroom, which in effect negates the idea of the critical itself? Furthermore, how does one promote the critical in the classroom without making it the only option for students? How does a teacher facilitate classroom processes so that EAP students can co-construct, make and recontextualize their own meanings that might be contested? And in light of their own struggles to learn vocabulary and academic discourses, what approaches might address the difficulties in doing all these at the same time? How can we ensure the meaning-making potential of students is utilized and expanded, not constrained or restricted? These concerns speak to the difficulties in any classroom dialogues about what globalization may mean to us at this historical juncture. Although there were moments in Emilia’s teaching practices in the Spring term where she queried the meanings of globalization with her students, dialogic spaces were created and expanded to some extent with more frequency during the Summer term. Yet we have seen that these spaces were tenuous at times and not always ongoing. There is also the factor of having only two students in her class; this may have prompted a more participatory engagement inasmuch as these students had more chances to talk (although as evidenced in the last extract, this was not always the case), and they may have been more inclined to talk more due to the pressures of their being the only two students in the class. In The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, the portrayal of globalization as a capitalist monolith (whether worshipped or dreaded) is termed the ‘globalization script’ (Gibson-Graham, 1996: 124). Gibson-Graham contended that spaces can be created in which ‘globalization need not be resisted only through recourse to the local (its

Engaging w ith Neoliberalizat ion Discourses, Par t 2: Summer Ter m Cl ass

121

other within) but may be redefined discursively, in a process that makes room for a host of alternative scriptings’ (Gibson-Graham, 1996: 147). Alternative scriptings were called into being in this Summer term class, in which both Emilia and the students created spaces that allowed them to rearticulate the globalization script adopted by the Globality video by presenting other narratives of globalization. Students bring to the EAP classroom a plethora of knowledge and experiences stemming from various nexus points of local and global interanimations. Indeed, their very presence in a classroom attests to global trajectories and mobilities that can and do generate narratives not always acknowledged or represented in the curriculum. The introduction of a competing or alternative discourse, however, does not always follow a straight line; for example, in Emilia’s attempted direction of the reading in the Summer class, her students followed their own meaning making of the word ‘ambition’. Likewise, in the conversations with her, my sharing of an alternative discourse or approach was challenged by Emilia, and she chose to take it up in a way that reflected her own practical concerns in the classroom. This of course speaks to her own agency and the students’ agencies in their willingness to enter into that dialogicality with other readings of texts, mine or otherwise. There could perhaps have been more opportunities to explore the specifically multimodal aspects of the video and how these shaped the Globality discourse. Although Emilia made moves toward interrogating the term ‘globalization’ and some of the video’s specific lexical choices with her Summer term students, it would have been interesting to see if and how her students would have responded to the dynamics of meaning making involved in multimodal discourse constructions. Emilia did not specifically address with either her Spring or Summer term students how the visual modes interrelated with the textual and aural modes in the video. This may have been due to time constraints in that she had only 12 contact hours a week and there was a lot of material to be covered. It may have also been due to her not being sure where to begin or how to proceed in attending to how these modes work together to convey information and messages. This raises the important issue of how researchers might work with EAP instructors who are unfamiliar with approaches to multimodal texts in the classroom, and who are only beginning to incorporate multimodality in their curriculum. Addressing the ways in which multimodal texts are constructed, and exploring pathways of alternative meaning makings, can provide a basis upon which teachers can aid students in creating and designing their own meanings, texts and multimodal productions in the process of developing their academic literacies, which now include these very multimodalities. By being able to narrate, document and present their own experiences and

122

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

observations (whether in the form of an essay, an uploaded video, a blog, and so on), which may illustrate alternative representations of the globalizing dynamics involved in their life trajectories, students in effect can speak back to the dominant message of Globality. In this way, they will be able to define globalization on both their own terms and terrains.

6

Who is ‘Jennifer Wong’? Multiculturalism and the Model Minority Consumer

Introduction Inasmuch as EAP textbooks have been described as ‘highly wrought cultural constructs and carriers of cultural messages’ (Gray, 2002: 152), many seemingly innocuous EAP topics such as emotional intelligence and business ethics are in fact neoliberal governance discourses in the way they attempt to frame and define our societal interactions and identities (Chun, 2009a). These textbooks should not be regarded simply ‘as a vehicle for information but as a potent instrument of social formation’ (Hasan, 2003: 446) and, as such, should not be regarded as neutral texts but instead as part of the institutional and corporate discourse formations in which they are produced and distributed as global commodities. Because English language textbooks are increasingly published by only a few key players in the ELT publishing industry, and marketed globally, Gray has argued that they are carefully constructed to avoid featuring or mentioning any topic that could cause offense such as ‘politics, religion, racism, sex . . . terrorism, and violence’ (Gray, 2002: 159). The careful aversion to these topics has led to often bland content of little interest to many ELLs (and perhaps many teachers as well), who no doubt continually encounter the same recurring trivializing topics such as foreign travel and food customs. In addition to their apparent blandness, I have argued that these topics can be viewed as imbricated within discourses of global consumerism, which may not always resonate with or appeal to some ELLs (Chun, 2009a, 2013). Noting the consumer materialism celebrated in many textbooks, Gray 123

124

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

(2002: 161) related the remark made by one publisher who viewed content of this kind as ‘aspirational’, which assumes its readers share the same values. Again, it is worth noting that the mediation and reception of these discourses of materialism depend on the context in which the uptake occurs – the specific readership in their specific contexts. Is the reader an adult immigrant student who is taking evening classes at the local community college after working for 10 hours at a minimum-wage job? Or is the reader an adolescent international student who has just bought a new car and commutes to campus from a home the parents bought for investment purposes? Both will interact with these discourses featured in EAP textbooks in different ways to varying degrees. Critical approaches should be attuned and engaged with these different interactions while facilitating dialogue with differing mediations of the discourses and text. This chapter explores Emilia’s expanding toolkit and the accompanying challenges of implementing these approaches in her Summer term class with regard to a reading assignment. The analysis of the classroom practices examines the tensions, contradictions and slippages of positions in the various discourses that were taken up and mediated by Emilia and her students in their textual engagements with the views and representations featured in a chapter entitled ‘Consumer Behaviour and Innovation’, from an EAP textbook, Learning English for Academic Purposes (Williams, 2005). This reading was chosen by her because in her view there has been a notable lack of EAP material featuring specifically Canadian cultural practices, and this textbook was written by a Canadian author and published in Canada. Emilia’s teaching objective was to use the chapter lessons to focus on paraphrasing and short-answer questions. Her intent was also to use the reading as a basis for the students to develop their discussion and analytic skills in class. The chapter’s opening page features an introduction highlighted in the right margin that reads: In the world of business, nothing is more important than knowing what the consumer will buy. Companies may spend a significant amount of time and money trying to figure out how consumers behave, and why they will purchase one product but not another. A business must understand the behaviour of its consumers if it is to be successful. Once a company really knows its consumers, it can create new products, or innovate, in order to motivate its consumers to buy. (Williams, 2005: 42) The chapter’s main reading passage, entitled ‘Characteristics affecting consumer behaviour’, portrays a hypothetical Canadian consumer named ‘Jennifer Wong’, who is considering buying a motorcycle. Jennifer Wong is

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

125

meant to reflect the current generation of young, mobile Canadians whose ancestral heritage and visage supposedly embody an increasingly multicultural Canadian society. This imagined consumer is examined through the lens of four influential factors that the EAP textbook cites from a marketing textbook, which are claimed to predict and explain consumer choices and purchasing behavior. These factors are listed as psychological, personal, social and cultural. The factors are outlined to help answer the chapter’s opening framing questions: ‘Why do people buy DVDs? What desire are they fulfilling? Is there a psychological or sociological explanation for why consumers purchase one product and not another?’ (Williams, 2005: 44). The chapter subsequently introduces Jennifer Wong: Consumer purchases are influenced strongly by cultural, social, personal, and psychological characteristics. For the most part, marketers cannot control such factors, but they must consider them. To help you understand these concepts, we apply them to the case of a hypothetical consumer – Jennifer Wong, a 26-year-old brand manager working for a multinational packaged-goods company in Toronto. Jennifer was born in Vancouver, but her grandparents came from Hong Kong. She’s been in a relationship for two years but isn’t married. She has decided that she wants to buy a vehicle but isn’t sure she wants to buy a car. She rode a motor scooter while attending university and is now considering buying a motorcycle – maybe even a Harley. (Williams, 2005: 49) It then discusses culture as a factor that exerts ‘a broad and deep influence on consumer behaviour’ (Williams, 2005: 50). In the left margin, the chapter offers a definition of culture: ‘The set of basic values, perceptions, wants and behaviours learned by a member of society from family and other important institutions’ (Williams, 2005: 50). Raymond Williams (1985: 87) observed that the concept and keyword ‘culture’ is ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’, and in fact its meanings have evolved and shifted significantly over the course of the past two centuries. Williams himself preferred to regard the concept of culture ‘as a constitutive social process, creating specific and different “ways of life” . . . (with) the emphasis on a material social process’ (Williams, 1977: 19). The textbook chapter’s concept of culture is elaborated to provide an explanatory frame to present a portrait of a society seen as rapidly changing to a globally connected, multicultural landscape in which consumer identities now provide the main threads to stitch together a national identity. The construction of desire for imagined cultural lifestyles marketed to global consumers has become a central feature of neoliberal identities (Rofel,

126

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

2007). Indeed, the intensifying modes of consumer cultures have accelerated in the past 30 years, in which consumption has been promoted to offset the loss of production in the outsourcing of jobs. The notion of democracy has now come to include freedom of consumer choice, functioning as a guarantor of this democracy so that ‘the ideal citizen is the purchaser’ (Apple, 1999: 204). The ideal citizens are now reconstructed as consumers having the freedom to choose from a wide range of goods in the commodified spaces of malls and shopping arcades, allowing them to exercise their ‘rights’, rather than as active and vocal participators in public spaces in governing society.

‘Integrated Immigrants’ as the Model Minority The chapter goes on to cite a poll in which ‘the majority of Canadians noted that our flag, the achievements of prominent Canadians such as artists and scientists, our climate and geography, our social safety net, our international role and our multicultural and multiracial makeup are symbols of our uniqueness’ (Williams, 2005: 50). The discourses of nationalism and these constructions of imagined communities (Anderson, 1991) work to present a seamless entity despite the internal contradictions and socially motivated tensions: ‘Canada is a country that, for all its diversity, has shared values’ and this diversity is respected, which ‘has also long been part of our heritage’ (Williams, 2005: 50). This diversity is verified by the textbook’s citing of statistics illustrating the percentages of minority groups in a Canada that ‘is becoming more multicultural and multilingual’ (Williams, 2005: 50). These minority groups are recontextualized a few paragraphs later as ‘Canada’s ethnic consumers’, which ‘represent some of the fastest-growing markets in Canada’ (Williams, 2005: 51). As such, the reading states that marketers ‘must track evolving trends in various ethnic communities’ such as ‘Chinese-Canadians, for example’ (Williams, 2005: 52). It goes on to say that these Marketers must also be aware of the differences between new immigrants and those who are ‘integrated immigrants’ – people who are second-, third-, fourth-, and even sixth-generation Chinese-Canadians. Although marketing information often must be translated into the language of new immigrants, integrated immigrants communicate mainly in English. Although Chinese-Canadians are influenced by many of the values of their adopted country, they may also share some values rooted in their ethnic history: trust family, work hard, be thrifty, save, and have liquid and tangible goods. (Williams, 2005: 52)

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

127

The chapter presents multilingual and multicultural practices as a unique feature of Canadian society, yet the author’s use of ‘integrated immigrant’ indexes societal anxieties about immigrants who have not yet been integrated into Canadian society and need to do so. The labeling of ‘integrated immigrants’ serves to create a racializing hierarchy distinguishing them from the more recent ones, clearly marked by the adjectival term, ‘integrated’. The implication, of course, is that newer, more recent immigrants have not integrated themselves into the society, and thus are dubious outsiders and somehow not committed to becoming Canadians. This common-sense constructed opposition of ‘new’ and ‘integrated’ is meant to signify different marketing strategies addressing national demographics; however, it instead displays anxieties about who counts as a Canadian, which parallels a similar discourse about immigrants in the US and who counts as an American as well. This discourse of racializing anxiety is evident in the chapter’s framing of integrated immigrants ‘who are second-, third-, fourth-, and even sixth-generation Chinese-Canadians’ (Williams, 2005: 52). Indeed, the term ‘immigrant’ cannot even be accurately applied to the second-generation descendants born in Canada. In the chapter’s statistics showing that Canada has a ‘rich mix of people from around the globe’ (Williams, 2005: 50), it notes that in addition to Canadians of Chinese ancestry, there are also millions of Canadians claiming Scottish, German and Italian ancestries. However, these European-Canadians are not mentioned as being ‘integrated immigrants’. The textbook author also makes an unwarranted assumption that immigrants cannot read English – ‘marketing information often must be translated into the language of new immigrants’ (Williams, 2005: 52). The chapter then proceeds to draw upon the ongoing discourse of the model minority by claiming that Chinese-Canadians ‘trust family, work hard, be thrifty, save, and have liquid and tangible goods’ (Williams, 2005: 52). Somehow, though, these values of trusting family and working hard are not mentioned as also being the values of many other Canadians. Chinese-Canadians’ values, which are supposedly ‘rooted in their ethnic history’ (Williams, 2005: 52), are the markers of model-minority members, which serve to create racialized societal divisions among those who are not represented in this manner but are just as ‘hard-working’. However, in addition to these so-called ethnic-historical values being part of ‘an invented tradition’ (Hobsbawm, 1983), the listing of these values is meant to illustrate the tensions between new(er) immigrants, or rather ‘non-integrated’ immigrants such as Jennifer Wong’s parents, who supposedly value thriftiness, and Jennifer Wong herself, who is constructed to

128 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

typify the upwardly mobile ‘integrated immigrant’ who is integrated into a culture of consumerism that would eschew such antithetical values: Let’s consider our hypothetical consumer. How will Jennifer Wong’s cultural background influence her decision about whether to buy a motorcycle? Jennifer’s parents certainly won’t approve of her choice. Tied strongly to the values of thrift and conservatism, they believe that she should continue taking the subway instead of purchasing a vehicle. However, Jennifer identifies with her Canadian friends and colleagues as much as she does with her family. She views herself as a modern woman in a society that accepts women in a wide range of roles, both conventional and unconventional. She has female friends who play hockey and rugby. Women riding motorcycles are becoming a more common sight in Toronto. (Williams, 2005: 52–53) The parents are represented as embodying values of thrift and ‘conservatism’ (which is at first somewhat ambiguous in this context but will soon be made clear) and thus, in this discourse logic, ‘certainly won’t approve’ of Jennifer’s choice to buy a motorcycle. Instead of framing it as other possibilities such as safety concerns about the winter road conditions in Toronto, for example, the passage presents a mythologized portrait of the ‘good (new) immigrant’ parents who want their daughter to save money (take the subway – it’s cheaper!), and entertain old-fashioned views of how women should behave in society – implied by Jennifer viewing ‘herself as a modern [italics added] woman in a society that accepts women in a wide range of roles, both conventional and unconventional’. These unconventional roles of women are defined by their playing hockey and rugby and, indeed, riding a motorcycle through the streets of Toronto. This supposed feminist rendering of Jennifer Wong as being a ‘modern woman’ serves to imbricate notions of freedom of lifestyle choices unrestrained from socially conservative parental concerns within a neoliberal culture of consumerism that disseminates imaginaries of commodities as standing in for a freer, more tolerant society. Jennifer’s participation is indicated in her desire to buy this globally branded commodity – a Harley-Davidson, which apparently needs no introduction as evidenced by the lack of any footnote or parenthetical explanation in the chapter. Jennifer’s desire to buy a motorcycle, which is an obvious metaphor for the freedom of consumer lifestyle choices that now act as markers of a neoliberal-defined democracy, also signifies a facile feminism that is supposedly demonstrated in the mere act of riding a motorcycle, and which is used in opposition to the ‘conservatism’ of an immigrant culture that the chapter implies is inimical to women living without constraints.

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

129

The representation of ‘Jennifer Wong’ is also meant to convey a particular notion of multiculturalism as it relates to globalized consumer cultures. As Slavoj Žižek (1997: 40–41) observed, ‘the “real” universality of today’s globalization through the global market involves its own hegemonic fiction (or even ideal) of multiculturalist tolerance’. In the attempts to define freedom in terms of market and commodity choices, and the embedding of consumer market values in the specific cultural formations in this chapter, multicultural tolerance is materialized as a model-minority consumer. ‘Jennifer Wong’ is the ideal model-minority consumer: strategizing for herself among her many social and economic options, which in the commodity image of the Harley allows her the capacity for a consumer self-realization unrestrained and liberated from her parents’ cultural conservatism. In this way, the model-minority behavior has shifted from the parental values of thriftiness and saving to the terrain of having the freedom to buy high-end goods and, in doing so, signifies a neoliberalized democracy of consumer culture – open to all people regardless of ancestral background who have the means to participate. And in this, the ‘original aims of multiculturalism – to build fairer terms of democratic citizenship within nation-states – have been replaced with the logic of diversity as a competitive asset for cosmopolitan market actors, indifferent to issues of racial hierarchy and structural inequality’ (Kymlicka, 2013: 113). In portraying the racialized achievements of Jennifer Wong as a success story of an ‘integrated immigrant’, and thus perpetuating the model-minority myth – the celebrated societal success of selected immigrant groups – the chapter and its discourses are actually pernicious in their exclusionary embrace of anointed groups at the expense of other societal members consequently framed as less than ‘model’. The subtext is that since these ‘model’ minorities have succeeded despite facing difficulties, notions of racial discrimination and oppression are therefore baseless. This underpins the recent ‘tiger mom’ narrative in which the Yale University law professor Amy Chua has claimed that the academic success of children of Chinese immigrants is due to strict child-rearing practices emphasizing scholastic achievement as the only sure-fire road to worldly and financial success (Chua, 2011). However, what is conveniently ignored by Chua and others aligning with this model-minority discourse are the various forms of social capital that allow greater access to economic resources that some within and across immigrant groups possess, giving them greater chances to succeed than those without (Louie, 2004). This speaks to the issue that, in portraying racialized achievements through a multicultural frame, EAP materials may not always resonate with many international and immigrant ELLs’ own experiences and struggles in adapting to their new societies.

130

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Model-minority discourses also draw upon what Kubota (2004: 30) terms as a ‘liberal multiculturalism’. This type of multiculturalism has also been called ‘the ideal form of ideology of global capitalism’, whose attitude ‘treats each local culture the way the colonizer treats colonized people – as “natives” whose mores are to be carefully studied and “respected”’ (Žižek, 1997: 44). Kubota makes a similar observation about liberal multicultural approaches and practices in the ELL classroom: ‘in focusing on only the customs and traditions of different peoples, the culture of the Other is often exoticized and reduced to neutral objects for one to respect and appreciate’ (Kubota, 2004: 35). My own reading of these model-minority discourses in social circulation that have been taken up in this EAP textbook chapter stems from my own lived experiences. Indeed, as an American whose grandparents emigrated from China in the 1920s, now employed as a university professor, I could be viewed in my home country as an exemplary ‘model-minority’ member. Yet, my lived identifications, performativities and practices have actually been more White working class (itself a hybrid and stratified complex of varying identity formations), having grown up in predominantly White neighborhoods in New York City and on Long Island, as discussed in Chapter 1. My mediation of these discourses should be viewed through my at times painful and burdened lived experiences in encountering and contesting the perceptions, expectations and oppressions contained in the hegemonic construct of the model minority.

Examining Lexicogrammatical Choices and Truth Claims Emilia reviewed the passive construction in the chapter with her two Summer term students. Using the first sentence from the reading passage, ‘Consumer purchases are influenced strongly by cultural, social, personal, and psychological characteristics’ (Williams, 2005: 49), she asks the students about the author’s lexicogrammatical choices that privilege either processes or results: Emilia:

Student 2:

OK, so in this, uh, in this sentence as well we have passive voice, so we’re starting off a little bit more formally with passive voice and, um, OK, and our subject is ‘consumer purchases’. Now, what else is participating in this sentence? So if we have the verb, which is the, you know, the process, so something is being influenced, OK? So who’s influencing? Consumer.

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1:

131

The consumer is influenced, OK? But what is doing the influencing? What is doing the action? Culture. Culture, uh-huh. Only culture? No, culture, [social, personal, and uh, psychological characteristics. [social, personal, and psychological characteristics. Characteristics. OK, so we have quite a bit there. It’s not just culture, but it’s society, personality, uh, or the personal, and psychology. OK, now, um, that sentence, does it show any kind of bias? Why would the person choose cultural, personal, social and psychological characteristics? Isn’t there anything else? Is something missing or, what do you think? Yeah, there is something like bias because just he mention that the, this affect, this characteristics affect the, like, an opinion, there’s no evidence of it or not. OK, so it’s an opinion so he’s not really giving any more, um, proof of that? Yeah. OK, so we don’t know where the proof is from. OK, so even though, don’t you think it’s proof? Look there’s a figure, Figure 6.2 down below. There’s a bar and a graph, and everything looks very official. Shouldn’t I believe that? I mean it says, ‘Cultural, social, personal, psychological issues’, and there’s a buyer over here and all kinds of little words and stuff. It seems to be very technical. It’s a fact. That’s a fact? Factors. OK, so under cultural factors we have culture, subculture and social class. So that’s a fact. Everybody knows that, right? And there’s nothing else to culture. All of it is just subculture, social class. So you mean, because, because it has, like, graphs, and that means more, I mean? Uh-huh, what do you think? So if I, if I put a graph there, does it make it seem more true? No. No. But the, the= =Oh, it doesn’t? Why would they put the graph there? No, no=

132

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Student 2: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

=Just explain. Yeah. Is this a graph? No. What is it? It’s a figure. Diagram. Yeah, it’s some kind of diagram you could say. I suppose it’s a= =It’s kind of table. Like a table, [yeah. OK. So it’s just a bunch of lists really. [a table, yeah. OK. Like to summarize, to give more clear idea of what’s the topic. OK. So it doesn’t really prove anything though. No. So it’s still somebody’s opinion, right? Yeah. OK.

We can see the beginnings of Emilia incorporating more of a functional grammar approach in her question, ‘What else is participating in this sentence?’ A few minutes earlier she had written on the board: Structure S (who, participant) V (action, process) O (who/what participating) Adv (circumstance) By using meaning-oriented constructs of functional grammar (participant, process and circumstance), she introduces a metalanguage to the students to aid them in seeing the choices the textbook author made in constructing a specific representation of experience. Schleppegrell (2004) argued that this method of analyzing the choices a writer makes in representing experience can help develop better reading comprehension, and that the use of Halliday’s (1994) functional terminology focusing on grammatical processes can aid EAP instructors in teaching academic English. Schleppegrell and de Oliveira have found in their research with secondary school history teachers that these teachers: readily take up the notion of identifying the process that is central to the clause, the grammatical participants, constructed in nominal groups, and the grammatical circumstances, constructed in prepositional phrases and

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

133

adverbial adjuncts. Because the focus is on the larger constituents in the clause, and not on individual words, the sentence is broken into meaning-based elements that fit well with the history teacher’s focus on what happened, who did it and to whom, and under what circumstances? . . . teachers can learn to identify these functional constituents and help students also recognize them as they engage in discussion about the text from a meaning-based perspective. (Schleppegrell & de Oliveira, 2006: 259) Using this metalanguage, students can unpack and then analyze the text’s complex and at-times obscured meanings. This allows Emilia to ask ‘who’s influencing?’ through this framing of participants. Student 2 replies, ‘consumer’, and she reminds him that it is the consumer who is influenced, and first repeats the question (with a ‘what’ instead of a ‘who’) and then asks a second question, ‘what is doing the action?’ Emilia proceeds to frame her question by asking if the sentence shows ‘any kind of bias’ and if something is missing from the particular choices listed as influencing consumer behavior. Student 2 takes up this framing by replying that ‘there is something like bias’ because the author provides ‘an opinion’ and ‘there’s no evidence’ to support the claim that these four factors affect consumer behavior. In the ensuing turn, Emilia asks Student 2 to reaffirm his position that this is an opinion because ‘we don’t know where the proof is from’. Perhaps she missed a previous section in which the author cites a marketing textbook as the source of information listing the four factors influencing consumer behavior since the class started on this subsequent section. In any event, after the student stands by his position that this is an opinion, Emilia points to a figure shown below the first paragraph in which the four factors are displayed in descending order from left to right: cultural, social, personal and psychological, all leading to a black rectangle labeled ‘Buyer’. Under each factor are listed several components, such as social class and subculture for cultural, and motivation and perception for psychological. Emilia seems to challenge Student 2’s claim these four factors reflect only opinion when she points to this figure (‘Figure 6.2 down below’) – ‘don’t you think it’s proof?’ She says ‘there’s a bar and a graph, and everything looks official’. However, she then asks, ‘shouldn’t I believe that?’ in a tone that suggests otherwise, which is captured on the recording. She points out that the figure, in its presentation and structure, legitimates its knowledge claim through its seemingly ‘very technical’ use of ‘all kinds of little words and stuff’. She attempts to have the students take a more problematic view of the figure’s knowledge claims when she says ‘and there’s nothing else to culture, all of it is just subculture, social class’. Student 2 challenges her when he says

134 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

‘so you mean because . . . it has . . . graphs . . . that mean more?’ She replies by asking him if a graph makes the knowledge claim ‘more true’, to which he says no, and goes on to state that the graph is there to ‘just explain’, and Student 1 agrees. Emilia changes the direction of conversation when she asks the students if this figure is in fact ‘a graph’. After some discussion on whether it’s a diagram, a ‘kind of table’, or finally ‘just a bunch of lists’, Student 2 agrees with Emilia after her prompting that rather than proving anything, it is still somebody’s opinion. This exchange indicates a more interrogative, critical move on Emilia’s part to foreground the role of charts and figures in legitimating truth claims. The students themselves question the use of this figure to substantiate these four factors as the sole explanatory references for consumer behavior. After further discussing the various factors the textbook chapter names as influencing consumer behavior (cultural, social, personal and psychological), one of the students observes that ‘they missed media factors here’. Emilia concurs, and then notes, ‘this list of four . . . are the only factors that this author puts in’ and that this is ‘sort of an interesting choice, don’t you think?’ After her asking what might be added to the list, the same student suggests, ‘we can add advertisements as a tools for marketing, it’s important tool’. Emilia then observes that this list is ‘incomplete’ and this is ‘overly general, and yet . . . this is in my textbook, so should I believe it?’ The student replies, ‘You can’t, be critical’, to which she asks, ‘so what does that mean, be critical when I read?’ Being critical here is then defined by the student as ‘you can disagree with that, you can add some reason from your point of view’.

Who is ‘Jennifer Wong’? Emilia and the students then turn their attention to the hypothetical consumer, Jennifer Wong: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Yeah, so if, if in fact she is an example of cultural, social, personal and psychological characteristics, can we find something in there to talk about her cultural, um, her cultural influences? So if we look at Jennifer Wong, what’s her culture? Asian. She’s Asian. She’s, she’s Canadian but she’s influenced by Asia. OK, so she’s Asian but she’s born in Canada, OK. Um, OK, where is she from?

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

Student 2: Emilia: Student 1: Student 2: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia:

135

Hong Kong. Yeah, who was from Hong Kong though? ‘Cause she was born in Canada. She born in Canada, [her parents. [her parents. OK. So what nationality is she? Canadian. Canadian-Chinese, OK? Because she does have a culture, right? What’s her culture? Yeah. What is her culture? Asian, Chinese. (laughs) And then again, if you use these words in a research paper, all that is going to get very technical. Is she Asian? Mm-hmm. Is she Asian-Canadian? Mm-hmm. Is she Chinese, right? So to say she’s Asian, I mean, she could be Filipino, she could be, well, that’s southeast Asian – she could be Japanese, right? yeah, Korean, yeah. Um, so the thing is, by saying Asian, we don’t know, right, by saying Chinese, it’s very specific. Yeah. Um, but it’s Hong Kong, right? Is that really China or is that Hong Kong? You know, if you’re really into the politics= =Yeah= =Right, then that’s a whole different ballgame too. So even just the choice of words is very, very difficult in a research paper. You have to be so careful, right? OK, so that’s her culture. Now what about the Canadian angle? Can we say that she’s half-Canadian? Does she speak English? Yeah, she’s born in Canada. She’s born in Canada so she probably speaks English.

The reading passage asks its readers to consider how the hypothetical consumer named ‘Jennifer Wong’ will be influenced by her cultural background in her deciding to buy a motorcycle or not. Emilia begins this exchange by asking the students if they can find something in the text to allow them ‘to talk about her cultural . . . influences’. But before they can discuss these influences, both she and the students begin a co-constructing process in which they discuss what Jennifer Wong’s culture is. Student 1 says ‘Asian’ is

136 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

her culture, and Emilia seems to agree; however, the student then seemingly backs away from this umbrella term when he immediately hedges by saying, ‘she’s, she’s Canadian but she’s influenced by Asia’. Emilia accepts the student’s reply that Jennifer is Canadian – ‘she’s Asian but she’s born in Canada’. After it is confirmed that Jennifer’s family is originally from Hong Kong, Emilia asks what Jennifer’s nationality is, and after Student 1 replies, ‘Canadian’, she then asks, ‘Canadian-Chinese . . . because she does have a culture, right? What’s her culture?’ Here, her questions appear to suggest that Jennifer Wong’s ancestral background is the main determiner of her cultural practices and ensuing identifications in Canadian society. Emilia attempts to clarify with her students the various meanings assigned to ‘Asian’ when she explains that the term does not situate Jennifer’s particular ethnic background – Chinese. However, she then mentions ‘Hong Kong’ in reference to Chinese ethnicity, and then asks ‘is that really China or is that Hong Kong?’ Her question problematizes the construct of ‘Chinese’ as a historically (and perhaps imagined?) encompassing term that has clumped diverse groups, languages, regions and ethnicities together. It also raises the issues of post-colonial hybridized identities and practices stemming in part from engagements and in tandem with China’s economic resurgence and resulting national pride in the reclamation of lost territories. Emilia refers to Student 1’s planned studies in political science when she says, ‘if you’re really into politics . . . then that’s a whole different ballgame too’. After advising her students that ‘you have to be so careful’ in choosing words when writing a research paper, Emilia says, ‘OK, so that’s her culture’. Yet, it is still somewhat unclear whether ‘her culture’ refers to Jennifer Wong’s grandparents’ lived Hong Kong cultural identities, or the generalized broader notions of what constitutes Chinese culture, or if these are collapsed within one subsuming essentializing construct. Emilia goes on to ask, ‘what about the Canadian angle?’ Instead of perhaps addressing with her students how the various and hybridized Canadian cultural practices might be something that Jennifer Wong has embodied (and identifies with), and exactly what this might entail, she instead asks, ‘can we say that she’s half-Canadian?’ Before they can reply, Emilia asks another question – ‘does she speak English?’ Student 1 replies that Jennifer Wong does because she was born in Canada (the chapter mentions her birthplace is Vancouver), and Emilia assumes that since Jennifer was born in Canada, ‘she probably speaks English’. There are several salient issues here. First, there may be some confusion regarding Emilia’s term ‘half-Canadian’. Does this mean one parent is a Canadian citizen, and the other is not? Or does it refer to the chapter’s particular representations of the hyphenated identity of Chinese-Canadians? Emilia seems to be drawing upon the latter, in that

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

137

Jennifer’s cultural practices are not seen as being only ‘Chinese’ ones. It is interesting to note that Emilia, who arrived in Canada as a young child from former Yugoslavia, does not mention to her students at this point the often complicated relationships second- and third-generation descendants may have with their parents and grandparents’ expectations around maintaining cultural allegiances. A second issue is that she draws upon certain discourses in social circulation regarding immigration, culture and language in her question as to whether Jennifer Wong speaks English. Being born in Canada does not necessarily mean one will speak English; for example, French is also an official language. The interanimating relationships between national and cultural identities are extremely complex to address. In what has been called ‘the dislocation or de-centering of the subject’ that points to a ‘set of double displacements – de-centering individuals both from their place in the social and cultural world, and from themselves’ (Hall, 1996: 597), Stuart Hall argued that the structural changes in late 20th century societies have fragmented ‘the cultural landscapes of class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and nationality which gave us firm locations as social individuals’ (Hall, 1996: 596). Hall cited the Lacanian notion that questions and problematizes the construct of identity as a seamless homogeneous whole, and instead sees this notion as an imaginary fantasy in that identity ‘always remains incomplete, is always “in process”, always “being formed”’ (Hall, 1996: 608). Instead, he proposed that ‘rather than speaking of identity as a finished thing, we should speak of identification, and see it as an on-going process’ (Hall, 1996: 608). So, for example, one could ask with students reading this chapter’s representations, which culture(s) does Jennifer Wong identify with – Canadian or Chinese, or both (or even others)? There appear to be various assumptions in this classroom discourse stemming from the uptake of the chapter’s discourses that because Jennifer Wong’s ancestry is Chinese, her cultural identifications and lived practices must only be ‘Chinese’, however defined or not. As Anderson (1991) argued, national identities are closely linked with invested notions of ‘imagined communities’ in which disparate groups of people who do not necessarily have the same interests or identifications are imagined and imagine themselves to be part of the same community named as the nation. This is mainly accomplished through various systems of cultural meanings and representations repeating and reinforcing these notions and feelings regarding the nation, which many people come to embody through ensuing identifications (Hall, 1996). Thus, ‘national identities are not things we are born with, but are formed and transformed within and in relation to representation’, so that people are ‘not only legal citizens of a nation: they participate in the idea of the nation as represented in its national

138

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

culture’ (Hall, 1996: 612). Furthermore, these ‘national cultures construct identities by producing meanings about “the nation” with which we can identify’ (Hall, 1996: 613). These meanings are produced through various discourses including national narratives and foundational myths in which a myriad of political, social and economic differences have been flattened out (and in some cases, literally wiped out) into representations of unity and uniform identity. However, attempts to produce these uniform narrative representations of the nation are often interrupted by ever-present and ongoing tensions and contradictions in any society. Hall (1996) noted that society is ‘constantly being “de-centered” or dislocated by forces outside itself’ and ‘if such societies hold together at all, it is not because they are unified, but because their different elements and identities can, under certain circumstances, be articulated together’ (Hall, 1996: 600). It is in these attempted articulations that tensions and contradictions emerge from the work to constantly renew and recreate hegemonic discourses of the nation-state that call into question precisely how these identities are articulated together, and the degree to which these are coherent or not. Emilia’s and her students’ discussions of Jennifer Wong’s cultural identity draw upon these larger sociopolitical discourses in constant circulation, upon which the chapter’s own discourses also draw in naming and marking Jennifer Wong as an ‘integrated immigrant’ in Canadian society. How then is Jennifer Wong’s Chinese ancestry, which is foregrounded in the text by its marking of her as an ‘integrated immigrant’, addressed in her identifying ‘with her Canadian friends and colleagues’, who are not named as having the same and/or different backgrounds? The chapter draws upon a liberal multicultural discourse in portraying Jennifer Wong as being between two ‘worlds’: her Chinese ancestry and parents, and her Canadian friends (whose cultures are absent here). The metaphor of Canada as a mosaic is intended to convey a space in which all are free to express their preferred cultural identities/identifications within a tolerant society that sews all these groups together into the national fabric: distinct patterns and squares, but all connected to form a coherent nation-state. There is another matter to consider here. Although the chapter presents culture as being defined in terms of national and ancestral identity, to what extent is the consumer identity of Jennifer Wong an influential cultural factor in its own right? Hall saw what he termed the ‘global post-modern’, which describe the current conditions in which the cultural flows and global consumerism between nations create the possibilities of ‘shared identities’ – as ‘customers’ for the same goods, ‘clients’ for the same services, ‘audiences’ for the same messages and

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

139

images – between people who are far removed from one another in time and space. (Hall, 1996: 621) In this scenario, these globalizing consumer identifications in specific contexts exist in tension with national identities that still rely on 19thcentury notions of the nation-state, culture and language. In contrast with this discourse of nationalism, ‘within the discourse of global consumerism, differences and cultural distinctions which hitherto defined identity become reducible to a sort of international lingua franca or global currency into which all specific traditions and distinct identities can be translated’ (Hall, 1996: 622). However, the logic of consumerism in its continual push to create, promote and purchase ever new commodities in all its manifestations (products, lifestyles, and so on) has also exploited ‘a fascination with difference and the marketing of ethnicity and “otherness”’ (Hall, 1996: 623). To what extent then is the chapter marketing Jennifer Wong’s constructed ethnicity and hence ‘Otherness’, however, defined by Emilia and the students, in the context of this discourse of global consumerism? Thus, the construction of Jennifer Wong as ‘hypothetical consumer’, ‘Chinese-Canadian’ and ‘integrated immigrant’ as part of the ‘multicultural and multiracial makeup (that) are symbols of (Canadian) uniqueness’ (Williams, 2005: 50) can be read in the nexus of attempted articulations between global imagined communities and local ones, be they of language, culture, consumer or the nation.

A Racializing Experience In a research meeting with Emilia five days after this class, she and I began by discussing the difficulties that may arise from using a critical literacy approach as the main responsibility to first get through the required curriculum and lessons taking most, if not all, of the class time, and possible concerns that potentially controversial (as viewed by some) topics such as geopolitical/historical rivalries, marriage equality rights and religious differences could irreparably divide the students in the class. She then made the observation that a teacher’s remark can impact a student for ever: Emilia:

In grade 11, I had an experience with a teacher that’s forever colored my view of teachers. I had a history teacher, and two of my friends were in the class with me, and, and we were all A, A+ students, right? And we had a history test and I think I got 80, or something, and my friends got 86 and 87. And I was like, ‘What the hell?’ So I said, ‘OK, what’d you put for

140

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Christian: Emilia:

these questions? How’d you get such a high mark and I got such a low mark? What happened here?’ You know, and so we compared, and I thought, ‘My answer’s not that different from her answer. I don’t understand.’ So I went to see the teacher, and talked to him in the hallway. And I said, ‘You know, I got a lower mark than they did, but I compared my answers, and I think my answers are very similar, and I think I should have a higher mark.’ And he said to me, I can’t remember the entire conversation, but I do remember this mark like it’s emblazoned on my forehead, like a tattoo. He said, ‘You know, it’s obviously your dark, pessimistic Mediterranean background that’s got you angry about this mark.’ I remember thinking, I just got stalled in my tracks, and it like stabbed me. You know, like through the heart. I’m thinking, it just stumped me. I thought, what do I say to this? And you know, being 16 whatever I was at the time, I thought you look up to a teacher with awe and reverence, you know? But I was a bit of a spitfire too, I’ll hold my own, but ultimately, I’m respectful. If you shoot me down, OK, I’ve got to give in, right? Which I didn’t have to do. I should’ve gone to the office and complained about him, but I had no idea, at the time, about all this stuff, and then, that has resonated with me for so long, like, why he would do that. And I thought that was so bizarre. And I remember thinking, ‘He just doesn’t like me. He does not like me.’ And I didn’t think of it as a prejudice, at the time, you know? It just didn’t connect with me. I just thought, ‘Why would he say such a crazy thing?’ And then I felt partially ashamed for being an immigrant. You start thinking about these things, and that’s one little joke of a remark that he probably thought was a joke, and, look at it, I’m 48 years old, talking about it, right? Sure. And I think, oh my god, the power that a teacher has. I’ve had students who’ve come back and said, ‘You said something in class, two years ago,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, what did I say? You know, I can’t remember what I said yesterday!’ How many positive and negative statements have I made, where the students really make something out of it and think, ‘Oh, OK. oh my god’ . . . the implications of teaching this kind of thing in class, I think because you’re

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

141

teaching students to really, you’re educating them about how to look at the world, right? This isn’t just academic English anymore. It’s, it’s really about opening their eyes to new ways of looking, right? And not only new ways of looking, but new things to look at. And when you do that, that’s much more than just teaching language. And I know language can be that already, and it is partially that already, but maybe I just see the sociopolitical aspect of things as being very personal and powerful and= =Yes. A huge responsibility, when you’re thinking about= =Yes. Doing this in class. Yeah, so, I don’t know, I just think it really needs some thought as to how to implement, implement it fairly.

This painful story shared by Emilia reflected her increasing acknowledgment that the classroom is never isolated from power(ful) discourses circulating through texts, language and the historical lived experiences embodied in those present. Although herself very politically aware, she had previously not regarded EAP materials as being political in nature, nor did she initially see explicitly addressing politics as appropriate in her classroom. However, over the course of our research meetings during which we began to discuss and explore critical literacy approaches to English language education, she began to draw upon her lived experiences in adopting different classroom approaches. In our meeting here, Emilia offers an insightful observation that teaching students is showing them ‘how to look at the world . . . not only new ways of looking, but new things to look at’. And in fact this stance is one of the four dimensions that Lewison, Flint and Van Sluys outline in their critical literacy model for the classroom: ‘disrupting the commonplace’, which is ‘conceptualized as seeing the “everyday” through new lenses’ (Lewison et al., 2002: 382–383). The ‘everyday’ of daily life includes our social interactions, the representations surrounding us and attempting to define and limit us, the perceptions, narratives and views of how ‘things really are’ (or ought to be). These constitute and comprise common-sense beliefs that form part of dynamic hegemonic discourses and practices needing constant renewing, defending and recreating (Williams, 1977). In disrupting the commonplace or, in Emilia’s words, ‘new ways of looking, but new things to look at’, hegemonic discourses and practices are in turn ‘continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged’ (Williams, 1977: 112) by people’s participatory agencies in any critical speaking back to power. In addition to ‘much more than just

142 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

teaching language’, she also states another main tenet of critical literacy: ‘maybe I just see the sociopolitical aspect of things as being very personal and powerful.’ The personal and the political were highlighted in this instance by her sharing of being shamed and racially positioned by her teacher, which led to my asking about the chapter’s framing of ‘integrated immigrants’: Christian:

Emilia: Christian:

Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian:

Emilia:

What you just said, was really powerful. OK . . . since you did raise the issue about the experience, in terms of being positioned as this immigrant, in terms of what the teacher said to you= =Right. I was reading this, chapter [from Learning English for Academic Purposes by Julia Williams], yesterday and came across this phrase, and I wanted to see what your take on this was, because I, you know, frankly, I had a very strong reaction to it, what was on page 52, where they’re using the hypothetical model, which, which in itself is, in some ways, problematic, of Jennifer Wong, Jennifer Wong, the consumer, targeted consumer. On page 52, where, line 113, ‘Marketers must also be aware of the differences between new immigrants and those who are,’ and they have quotes around it, ‘integrated immigrants’= =(laughs) Uh-huh!= =‘People who are fourth, fifth, and even sixth generation Canadian, Chinese-Canadians.’ Now this is the first I’ve ever come across this phrase. Integrated. So I don’t know if this is a phrase that’s endemic to Canadian discourse? ‘Cause I have never seen this phrase in the US. But it, it set off a whole chain of reactions, and I was wondering if you had any, now that I have already foregrounded, yeah. (laughs) If you, when you came across this phrase, what was your, kind of, take on that? Well I guess mine was a little bit more positive, right? I didn’t think of it as a, I thought the quotes were interesting, and I don’t really see that as a, a very common Canadian way of looking at things. But I think he’s, you know, I think, actually, that shouldn’t be a double quote, I think that should be a single quote. Because I think he’s using the term in a very, sort of, you know, he’s changing it, or using it in a very specific way. He doesn’t say where it comes from. Or she, I can’t remember

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

143

who wrote this. But the, to me, like, it was interesting that the distinction between, like, first generation or brand new immigrants, you know, would not be integrated, (laughs) which is kind of interesting. So it means that author’s point of view, just by, you know, according to language, you know, or by birth, there’s no way that they can be integrated Canadians if they’re first generation. So it means any of these students here, who are coming to Canada for the first time, they’re just, there’s just no way they can be integrated. Because= =Right, but= =Go ahead. Right, but, but what about third, fourth, fifth? Yeah.

I made my own feelings explicitly known to Emilia about the phrase, ‘integrated immigrants’. In doing so, I drew attention to a phrase that triggered a resentment regarding how, as a descendant of ‘strangers from a different shore’ (Takaki, 1989), I am still not seen in many ways in my home country as simply an ‘American’ but a hyphenated one, one that I may choose to use of my own accord while bristling at others who insist on labeling me as such. Although it was meant in the Canadian context in this textbook, it rankled with me. Emilia seems to immediately pick up on the implications, as evidenced by a laugh and an emphatic ‘uh-huh!’ Since she had already shared with me her immigrant experiences in Canada, and I in turn related several anecdotes about my being racialized in both the US and Canada, I felt comfortable in asking her reaction to the phrase. She proceeded to point out how the term ‘integrated immigrant’ is used in the text to distinguish firstgeneration immigrants who ‘would not be integrated’, and that from the ‘author’s point of view . . . there’s no way that they can be integrated Canadians if they’re first generation’. Anxious to make my point about how subsequent generations are still regarded as ‘immigrants’, at that moment, I quickly acknowledge her important point without taking time to discuss its implications by interrupting to ask, ‘but what about third, fourth, fifth?’ I went on to ask her if she considered her nieces, who were born in Canada, to be ‘integrated immigrants’: Christian: Emilia:

Are they integrated immigrants? Yeah, no, I don’t feel totally, I guess I don’t even feel integrated. Like, what does integration mean? You know, like, are you linking, he’s linking, the author is linking integration to, you know, whether you’re born in a country

144

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

or not, right? And, and then, if you’re second generation, are you an immigrant? You’re not an immigrant anymore. Like, you know, so . . . Yeah, that’s a very strange thing. Did I unnecessarily involve Emilia in my own concerns regarding ‘integrated immigrant’ identities stemming from my own past and present lived experiences of racial positionings? As someone who often self-identifies as a third-generation American of Chinese descent when asked where I am from (and when the interlocutor does not mean which US city or state I was born in), it would appear reasonable that I was irked by the chapter’s framing of second- and third-generation Canadians of Chinese descent (conveniently omitting those of European descent) as ‘integrated immigrants’. However, this was in fact precipitated by Emilia’s unprompted recollection of her high school teacher racially positioning her in ways that unjustly attributed her anger to some imaginary – obviously hurtful in its various material manifestations – construct in his deflection from the real cause, which of course was Emilia’s perception that she had unfairly received a lower grade. At that point, I had been observing her classes for close to six months, and our research meetings had been going on for almost four months. We had grown professionally close through not only discussing the ideas and practices of functional grammar and critical literacy, but also importantly from sharing our teaching experiences and numerous classroom encounters. I felt comfortable in relating my own racialized experiences with her and she hers. Now, did she take on my concerns in her subsequent reading of the chapter with her students? Was it also, however, an illustration of how our embodied lived experiential histories stemming from similar racialized and racializing discourses built and bridged an itinerary route through which our dialogic speaking back – and in this sense, counterhegemonic – discourses found their way into her classroom practice a few days later? And what of her own agency in her own reassessing of the chapter’s discourses seen through the prism of her own lived experience that she shared so willingly? Inasmuch as agency in a classroom context can be defined as involving individual and/or collaborative actions, whether interdependent and initiated, that mediate and are mediated by sociocultural contexts (van Lier, 2008), then her ensuing approach can be viewed in this interdependent agentive action stemming from our collaboration. We continued to discuss numerous racializing discourses we encountered in Canada and the US, and our own resulting experiences. Toward the end of this meeting, Emilia offered the following observation: Emilia:

I’m an immigrant and . . . you think from your own personal experience, and then think, well, OK, we’re talking about . . .

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

Christian:

Emilia: Christian:

Emilia: Christian:

145

a way of looking at content . . . like, I as an immigrant have a different experience, you have a different experience as an American, and then we look at this, where we can share some of these attitudes . . . And when you think about applying, like let’s look at this, and if I ask the students about this, right? Let’s say I ask them about, ‘When will you be, are your children first generation Canadian, how would you consider that,’ right? A lot of that has to do with my own attitude. . . . So, even in the choice of what we choose to highlight in a text, it’s going to be personal . . . by, by the teacher. I agree, I mean, and I think Luke and Freebody [referring to the Luke & Freebody, 1997 reading we had discussed earlier] would also agree, yeah. I mean, they’re not advocating this catch-all approach, right? Yeah. Or that, they’re not advocating that this is a specific method that everyone can adopt. And so you’re absolutely right, within each particular site, each particular person, how they take up the particular text is indicative or indexes several different things. And the thing that I chose to focus on might not be what you might focus on= =What the students focus on, either. Exactly! What the students focus on.

In my agreement with Emilia, I stress that Luke and Freebody (1997) were not advocating a ‘catch-all’ approach to critical literacy practices where a specific method can be used by everyone, but rather providing a set of heuristics as a guide for teachers and students. And as she reminds me, students don’t necessarily focus on the same things that we as teachers might. Thus there are necessarily multiple readings of any text and not one uniform reading or the convergence of interpretations among societal members (Freebody, 2008). Drawing on her own lived experiences, Emilia’s ensuing mediation of the chapter’s framing discourses led to a different approach with her students two days later.

Who is Jennifer Wong Now? Emilia began the class by asking her students to re-examine the passage and to analyze the author’s lexical choices. After reviewing with the students the four factors listed as influencing consumer behavior, she

146 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

asks about Jennifer Wong’s nationality. After Student 1 tells her that Jennifer Wong was born in Vancouver, she replies, ‘does that make her Chinese-Canadian, or Canadian?’ Student 1 says, ‘she’s Canadian’ and Student 2 observes that ‘she’s Canadian because she was born here.’ Emilia then asks: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Let’s say, if an author says that a woman is Chinese-Canadian, or if the author says, ‘Jennifer Wong, a Canadian’. Would that be different for you? If there’s Jennifer Wong, a ChineseCanadian, and Jennifer Wong, a Canadian. [Would you? [It’s different. It’s different? Yeah, sure. So how is it different? Because you know she’s Chinese anyway, her name is Wong, isn’t it? Yeah but maybe the, you have two aspects here. Uh-huh. When we call the Chinese-Canadian= =Mm-hmm= =maybe, eh, we admit that, that, she, she was a Chinese. Mm-hmm. And now she’s Canadian. Or= =OK, so maybe she was born in China. Yeah. [And [OK. She, she has, um, Chinese nationality. Right. And after that she transferred to the Canadian. OK. Another aspects, maybe we will include this person to the specific group of people; Chinese, uh, Canadian community, if I can say that. Or uh= =OK= =Chinese-Canadian people, specific community. So we have two aspects here. OK, also, I think we have a third aspect. Yeah, um, but if we call it Canadian, maybe that’s, I would think it’s ordinary Canadian, or it’s not belong to another, to another ethnic groups or= =Uh-huh, so what are you going to do about the last name, ‘Wong?’ Because Wong is definitely a Chinese name.

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

Student 1: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

147

Yeah, this is, um, what, what, what I meant by another, eh, the second aspects. You, um, contain this person to that specific group of people, or [specific community. [But then again, like, she born in Canada, and she like, uh, completely affected by Canadian culture. OK, so that she’s not really Chinese, much, [anymore at all. [Yeah. So the Chinese um, influence is very small= =Small= =OK, I think that’s possible too. Um, and also, she could actually, Jennifer Wong doesn’t have to be Chinese at all. Yeah, Jen-Jennifer is a North American name. Wong is a Chinese name. So she could be Canadian . . . marrying a Chinese man, right? That’s the not the case here, but if you call her Jennifer Wong, uh, a Canadian, then we don’t know, right? Maybe she’s white, and you know, from Britain, or from Australia, or from, you know, originally her, her grandparents were from Scotland or something. And now she just calls herself Canadian, but she married a Chinese and she still will be called a Canadian, right?

A different meaning-making route unfolds this time by Emilia having the students address the lexical framing of Jennifer Wong as ‘ChineseCanadian’ or ‘Canadian’. Student 1 argues that there is a difference between the two terms. Emilia asks him to elaborate and then uses the family name ‘Wong’ as an indexer that Jennifer is ‘Chinese’. Her family name here is a signifier that one is Chinese regardless of whatever birthplace, upbringing and ensuing cultural practices and identifications. Student 1 offers several conjectural interpretations of Jennifer Wong’s hyphenated identities. The first is that Jennifer ‘was a Chinese, and now she’s Canadian’. Emilia seeks his clarification by replying, ‘OK, so maybe she was born in China’ (she temporarily forgot that the chapter stated that Jennifer Wong was born in Vancouver). He confirms Emilia’s own conjectural comment, and then continues this line of reasoning: ‘she has Chinese nationality . . . and after that she transferred to the Canadian’. He then suggests that the term ‘ChineseCanadian’ could in fact refer to a person’s inclusion in a ‘specific group of people’ – ‘Chinese-Canadian people, specific community’ in Canada. Whether this is meant to indicate spatially bounded neighborhoods in which recently arrived immigrants and their Canadian-born descendants reside, or a census-oriented national demographic, is not clear, but Student 1 then

148

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

claims ‘if we call it Canadian, maybe . . . it’s ordinary Canadian, or it’s not belong to another ethnic groups’. Here, Student 1 suggests the term ‘Canadian’ signifies an ‘ordinary’ Canadian, which in this context seems to imply only those of White European ancestry. In fact, there are slippages of the term ‘Chinese-Canadian’ in the chapter itself. The author writes, ‘Consider Chinese-Canadians, for example. In the past most members of this ethnic group came from Hong Kong. Today they are arriving from Taiwan and mainland China’ (Williams, 2005: 52). Here, the term refers to those who emigrated from separate (and one independent) regions lumped together under the classification ‘Chinese’, a term that some Taiwanese and Hong Kongers may reject. As mentioned before, the author’s definition of ‘integrated immigrants’ extends to generations born in Canada, who she also labels as ‘Chinese-Canadians’. However, two sentences later, the author writes, ‘Chinese-Canadians are influenced by many of the values of their adopted country’ [italics added] (Williams, 2005: 52). Which group of people is the author referring to when she uses the term ‘ChineseCanadians’ in this sentence – those who emigrated from regions named ‘Chinese’ and have settled in Canada, or the second generations (and so on) of Canadians who can trace at least part of their ancestry to those regions? Emilia asks Student 1 about Jennifer Wong’s family name and says that it ‘is definitely a Chinese name’, to which the student replies that this is what he meant by ‘the second aspects’ – ‘you contain this person to that specific group of people’. At this point, Student 2 rejoins the conversation by reminding everyone that Jennifer Wong was born in Canada and thus has been ‘completely affected by Canadian culture’. Emilia backtracks a bit from her previous comments when she accepts Student 2’s observation by saying, ‘OK, so . . . she’s not really Chinese, much, anymore at all’. Student 2 agrees, and when Emilia says the ‘Chinese influence’ on Jennifer Wong is ‘very small’, he repeats ‘small’ in agreement. Here, both the student and Emilia appear to suggest that in fact lived cultural practices and ensuing embodied performativities lead to stronger cultural identifications than mere ancestral lineages. During this particular meaning making with her students, Emilia begins questioning her own assumptions regarding Jennifer Wong’s cultural identity. However, there appear to be two other assumptions made that despite Jennifer Wong having been born in Canada, she ‘could be Canadian . . . marrying a Chinese man, right?’, which perhaps has the unintended dialogic echo of Student 1’s comment about ‘ordinary Canadian’. The first assumption is that Jennifer took this man’s family name in marriage; the second assumption is that Jennifer married a man and not a woman (same-sex/ gender marriage is legal in Canada). Emilia seems to draw upon Student 1’s discourse of ‘ordinary Canadian’ by perhaps challenging the use of the

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

149

unhyphenated appellation ‘Canadian’ with those who are ‘White’ – ‘she married a Chinese and still will be called a Canadian, right?’ The chapter’s discourses of racialized essentialisms that were addressed in our research meetings and were then taken up with her students can be seen in all their resemiotized complexities when problematized and critiqued by Emilia and the students, and then at other interactional moments (even within the span of an utterance) uncritically reproduced as well.

Discussion In this chapter, I wanted to show the classroom challenges in implementing a critical literacy approach toward addressing the common-sense racializing discourses featured in the textbook chapter. The extracts show the students making meaning by reading with the text, which of course is fundamental to any EAP class to ensure the students comprehend the assigned readings. Yet, the discussion and the students’ meaning makings in the first class lesson do not really extend beyond the students’ brief and often one-word affirmative replies. Emilia’s ensuing uptake with her students following our research meeting takes on a somewhat more critical, dialogic approach in which her students were able to make more interrogative and exploratory meanings in their readings with and against the text’s representations of Jennifer Wong. Her subsequent approach helped create the dialogic space in which Student 1 was able to offer his interpretations of differently viewed communities, beginning with his remark, ‘you have two aspects here’. His comments here are evidence of being an active knowledge producer, which contrasts with his brief and uninspiring answers in the first class lesson. In the ensuing lesson, Emilia and her students enacted a ‘reading against the text’ (Janks, 2010: 22) and, in doing so, indicated that they possibly recognized that texts are ‘selective versions of the world; they are not subjected to them and they can imagine how texts can be transformed to represent a different set of interests’ (Janks, 2010: 22). Following our conversation in which Emilia shared her painful experience, she attempted to have her students engage with the chapter’s selected version of the racialized and cultural identities of Jennifer Wong. To the extent that her pedagogical objective was to have the students analyze the text in a more sustained manner, this was achieved. It would have been interesting if Emilia had developed a class activity in which she and her students imagined the chapter being transformed to represent different interests and accompanying voices, namely that of a, or several, Jennifer Wong(s), and this could have served as a good writing prompt as well.

150

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Any analysis of EAP classroom discourse will reveal tensions and contradictions in the ways teachers and students take up, address, reproduce and/ or challenge hegemonic and common-sense representations in their curriculum texts. Emilia and the students’ initial discussions of the chapter’s representation of racial and cultural identity indicate an unproblematic alignment with the construction of Jennifer Wong’s identity in that they at times reproduced the textbook chapter’s essentialized notions of cultural and immigrant identities. Their reading with the text points to the difficulties for anyone discussing and defining what cultural and racialized identities mean in different contexts. Emilia does initiate a reading against the text with her students in her highlighting of the hyphenated and unhyphenated identities of Jennifer Wong. Sometime later in this same second class lesson (not shown due to space constraints), she cautioned her students to be ‘careful how we label people’ in her sharing of a Canadian author’s experiences of growing up in multiple communities. As Emilia revealed in our meeting, she herself does not always ‘feel integrated’ in Canadian society, and thus her lived experiences should also be taken into account in how she subsequently read the text. When dealing with hegemonic common-sense discourses in place that continually work to construct, define and limit complex cultural identities in essentialized ways which are then normalized, teachers who are relative newcomers to critical literacy approaches and are interested in contesting these racialized discourses in their classrooms can draw upon their ELLs’ own lived experiences of being Othered to help co-construct counterhegemonic narratives. An EAP textbook such as this one, which was mandated for the course Emilia was teaching, is fairly typical. It features the content publishers think will appeal to students’ academic interests (for example, marketing, business and psychology), as well as to their primary customer base – the many EAP programs around the world. Thus, publishers are naturally risk averse to any topics they deem to be controversial. However, sometimes in doing so and in the attempt to present material aligned with a liberal multicultural ethos, this particular textbook content not only presents racialized and gendered stereotypes, but it also lacks the academic discourse and linguistic features of specific academic disciplines, as astutely noted by one of Emilia’s students in his comment that the assigned reading was only for ‘ESL students’. This raises another important issue. Is ‘the ideal end state’ of EAP students solely the ‘integration into a specific disciplinary discourse community or at least into the academic community at large’ (Haque, 2007: 93–94)? For both teachers and students, should EAP teaching and learning consist only of the purpose of entering into an academic community, or can classroom approaches to these texts critically engage with the larger societal discourses

Mult iculturalism and the Model Minor it y Consumer

151

in circulation that in part help to shape these very disciplinary discourses? Does one approach necessarily exclude the other? Indeed, in order for EAP students to become fully integrated into academic discourse communities, they first need to understand how discourses work on many levels. This can be accomplished through more in-depth critical engagements by acknowledging and questioning hegemonic common-sense discourses typically found in many textbooks. In their activities with teachers in deconstructing these discourses, students can come to better understandings of how academic discourses are constructed through the technologies of power and control (Foucault, 1980). As Emilia often reminded me in our meetings, it is highly unlikely that English language teachers have the time and resources (such as access to journal databases and/or subscriptions) to read and keep up with the latest research. As she put it, how does current research in the field ‘trickle down’ to practitioners? She noted, ‘how many EAP teachers are willing to investigate their own teaching methodologies and the proceedings in their classrooms unless an observer/researcher obliges them to?’ Her comment echoes Janks’ observation that ‘redesigning ourselves and others’ might be ‘too risky to attempt on our own’ and so ‘this is why some teachers prefer to experiment with a researcher in their classrooms’ (Janks, 2010: 201). Emilia also asked, ‘how can materials be created that will make manifest these topics for both instructors and learners?’ In her ongoing assessment of her students’ interests and needs, she herself sought other texts that would engage her students, other materials that would feature both the academic language that the students need, and content that would speak to both their concerns. This is the subject of the next chapter. My own ensuing transformations were prompted by Emilia repeatedly reminding me of the crucial necessity to make critical theories more accessible and practical for teachers, which researchers may sometimes forget as they can be detached from everyday English language learning classrooms. I have grown to realize and appreciate the many challenges associated with critical literacy approaches and how these actually play out in another teacher’s classroom. Through these conversations with Emilia, and the many observations of her classroom, I questioned my own research practices in their manifest attempts to achieve a meaningful praxis. Critical literacy pedagogies as a body of theories and how they are actually realized in classroom practices can look quite different at times, and especially so with each new classroom of students with their own inscribed lived experiences in various readings of texts. Being critical certainly does not mean teachers have to display an ‘expert’ knowledge of politics and history. Instead, it means helping to create with students the dialogic spaces in

152

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

which the students themselves can become active knowledge producers and, in the process of doing so, help to expand their language and literacy skills. Being critical involves getting outside of one’s usual habitual epistemological, discourse and sociopolitical spaces (Luke, 2004); naming the world provides challenges, not the least of which is the classroom time needed to develop a critical language awareness. However, the primary aim of any teaching should be to expand the students’ meaning-making abilities. Critical literacy practices in the classroom can aid in developing ELLs’ academic literacies by having them go beyond simply reading with the text in allowing their own narratives and experiences to emerge that can run counter to hegemonic discourses. The distinctions between being critical and non-critical are important because of the many ways in which motivated and invested modes of representations attempt to define and limit how we experience and narrate our own complex social identities. What is at stake is our lived experiences in how we see, feel, think and articulate our everyday social realities, which may be heard or ignored by those in power able to shape these very realities and present them back to us in their own forms. In this current neoliberal age that proposes the ‘free’ market as the only viable societal and systemic mechanism capable of organizing and shaping our everyday life, I maintain that what it means to be critical now is to contest the attempts to dominate, represent and shape our own identities contrary to what we have lived and known.

7

Bringing the Political into an EAP Classroom?

Introduction The preceding three chapters examined how discourses of neoliberal globalization, consumerism, immigrant identities and racialized cultural constructs were resemiotized in the context of Emilia’s classes during the Spring and Summer terms, and how her accompanying classroom approaches shaped the students’ meaning making in varying ways. The ‘layered simultaneity’ (Blommaert, 2005) of these discourses was further deepened and complicated by the mediating and mediated role I played in the observations and discussions with Emilia on language, literacy, pedagogy and classroom approaches. This chapter addresses the issue of the political in the EAP classroom, the role(s) of teachers, and the evolving stances of Emilia toward her own teaching and classroom practices. During our numerous conversations on critical literacy, Emilia had expressed reservations about bringing in and discussing with her students any content that explicitly dealt with political issues (see comment from a member of another class in Figure 7.1). In one of the interview extracts featured in Chapter 5, she expressed concern that, if she or other teachers highlighted or pointed out the political in the everyday, they would risk becoming ‘a politician of the teacher’. Yet she also often expressed frustrations about teaching the usual banal topics featured in so many ESL and EAP textbooks targeted for the North American market. In a meeting we had during the Summer term class, we discussed a number of issues, including how teachers attempt to address the cultures present in any given classroom, and the interpersonal conflicts that may arise between and among students that are sometimes attributed to cultural differences and attitudes. Emilia cited one 153

154 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Figure 7.1 A student-generated comment from another class, posted in Emilia’s Summer term classroom

example in her Spring class in which a female student refused to work with a classmate because the student felt the classmate had what she called a ‘rude’ attitude toward the women in the class. I commiserated with Emilia in recalling other similar disagreements among my own students in past classes of mine. This led to a question I posed to her: Christian:

Emilia: Christian:

How do you see the students’ social identities, if you could call it that, not only their cultural and social identities that they bring into the classroom, but how it’s actually realized as readers and writers, in your view? So for example, we know that certain students have a certain set of ideological assumptions already or positions, right? Right. How do you see that interacting with the specific ESL and EAP texts they actually have to read? So not only is it the content that they’re interacting with, so for example, like a typical EAP content might be something like, here’s the typical North American family, both John and Mary work, they’re both professionals, and then they have teenage children who are dating, or going to school; so the way it’s, not only the way is it presented, the way it’s laid out, I’m just wondering how their, these students’ social identities as readers and writers when not only they’re interacting with a specific text, but this type of text that they perhaps

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

155

haven’t seen before, perhaps they haven’t seen before or if they had, in what way does it make it alien to them because of their previous histories of reading certain texts that to us would be= =Alien. Alien, you know. The way they present material. To tell you the truth, I don’t even think that this is a consideration for most teachers. I mean, I think we think, ‘OK, if I’m going to give you a text, even if you’ve never seen a text like this before, you should be able to read it, you should be able to analyze it, comprehend it, and whatever parts you don’t understand then ask questions about that’. I have never had a discussion in a staff room, I have never had a discussion in curriculum planning about, you know, how are we going to talk to the students about the kind of text this is? Or, um, you know, it’s just too much information for the teacher to impart in a given day. So, if we’re going to talk about the content, let’s talk about the content. If we’re going to talk about the structure, we’re going to talk about the structure. If we’re going to talk about everything, I need so much more time. So, first of all, it’s never really been a huge consideration, I think, for a lot of teachers, and it’s not talked about in planning. So, um, the problem is, if I do this in class, I think we do ask some questions at the very beginning of a course, about what kind of reader are you? What kind of texts do you read? We do a little survey, whether they like to read, or are they interested in writing? But then again that’s an individual teacher choice, what I ask them and the kinds of questionnaires they get. And in class, what I find is when I do have questionnaires like that in the classroom, I find that a lot of students say, you know, I ask them, I used to have a student survey that I would ask at the beginning, do you like to read? And most of them said no. And then it would be, ‘OK, if you do like to read, what do you like to read?’ and a lot of them said, you know, ‘comic books’? Um, like, everything that they read for entertainment, that’s what they put down. Magazines, um, but nobody ever said, like ‘academic texts’, right? I don’t remember one student saying that they like to do research. Maybe one of out of, you know, God knows how many. Um, so the way they interpreted that, was, you know, always about

156

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

entertainment reading, which was interesting. It’s never from the academic point of view. So, to start to talk . . . about social identity, right? Those are two, sort of, concepts. You as a reader-writer, and then you and your social identity. Um, I think it’s problematic actually, because I think students don’t necessarily, like I say I come from a really well to-do family, OK? And I’m sitting next to, now this is (name of the university where the program is located), OK? We have expensive courses here. So, the, the social identity of the students may or may not be all that varied. Right. Um, but even within that there are variations. So let’s say that I come from Japan, and I worked my ass off to come here and I’ve saved my money and now I’m here and I’m really focused on learning. And then over there I have a Saudi student whose government has paid for everything, they feel like, you know, they’re in an insulated position because they’re a student, because that’s how their, you know, their social identity at home, right? And then I have this Japanese student who’s very quiet, very meek, not going to say much, but, you know, very intent on listening to the class and making sure they do the work because they paid for it. Like really paid for it. Right. And when these two discuss in class, right, not only do I have a situation where I know that that Japanese student has worked his ass off, or her ass off, and then I have a Saudi student who may not, may or may not be a hard worker, but has had everything paid for. Um, I know they’re going to have an interesting discussion. But, because of a cultural issue, that Japanese student may say nothing. So, on top of all these constructs we have about, um, sort of national identity and national sort of stereotypical behavior, like the Japanese student is very quiet. Right, right. You know, will there be a discussion that will be equitable? Or will I bring up issues that the Japanese student may not want to talk about? Um, you know, if I have a student who’s poor in the class, whose parents have, you know, paid for this, like it took them forever. And if I fail, you know, will that student want to open up about that to someone who’s,

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

157

you know, in a privileged position that, I don’t know. It’s a really interesting problem when you talk about social identity in the classroom and is it social identity within their own culture? Is that where we begin first? Or do we talk about social identity from, like your culture to North American cultural differences? Do we talk about social identity like, you as a foreign student here in North America? Um, like, where do I – what are the parameters here? And I think part of the problem with classes like this, is that if they entered in the beginning levels, so they’ve done all these levels, by the time they get to the advanced level class, do you know how tired they are of talking about their own culture? Sure. And comparing their culture to [North America? Oh for god’s sake, [Yes. Absolutely. Can we talk about something else? Like, they want to talk about more content, as opposed to= =Of course, of course. Constantly comparing cultures, right?

Emilia raises several important and interconnected issues here. The first is regarding the absence of any notion among many teachers about the specific sociocultural practices of reading, and the ways in which the same curriculum materials may be read differently at times by students. The second issue Emilia addresses is the social positionings, histories and various forms of capital students bring with them into the classroom that can shape their performative identities. The issue of social class in TESOL has been addressed by very few in the field, but Vandrick (1995, 2011) has been a notable exception. There needs to be more discussion of the ways in which – as Emilia points out – there are variations within seemingly privileged ESL students who are part of the ‘new global economic and cultural elite’ (Vandrick, 2011: 160). As Emilia astutely illustrates in her example of the hypothetical Japanese middle-class student who saved and paid her or his own way and the Saudi student funded by the government, these differentiated positions and lived experiences may impact discussions in ways unforeseen by teachers, and has been rarely addressed in traditional SLA and EAP research. A third issue she raises is one of cultural positionings by English language curriculum texts. Culture is often narrowly defined in many ESL textbooks by the usual featured practices of marriage customs, holidays and food. Seen in this way, culture becomes less of a contested terrain of complex and hybrid

158 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

constitutive social formations in which embodied histories, lived identities, belief systems and ways of life are interanimated, and more of a prosaic description of superficial differences. No wonder then that students may be tired of talking about their cultures in essentializing ways. This also points to what Morgan saw as ‘a persistent ideological bias in second language education – a tendency to trivialise and simplify thematic content in many ESL and EAP settings’ (Morgan, 2009: 312). Morgan argued that this bias stems from the dominant discourses in the TESOL and SLA fields in which ELLs are infantilized by positioning them in ‘a kind of cognitive limbo, in which they are seen as “partially formed” learners in need of linguistic remediation before they can be taken seriously as either producers of legitimate academic knowledge or worthy participants in public life’ (Morgan, 2009: 312). In addition to this banal textbook practice of comparing ELLs’ cultures with predominantly English-speaking societal cultures as encoded in marriage customs, holidays, and so on, with which many an ESL or EAP instructor is all too wearily familiar, textbooks are indeed politicized precisely because of their choices of what they include and exclude as appropriate topics for ESL and EAP curricula and students. The exclusion of such topics as religion, violence, racism and politics in these textbooks (Gray, 2002) is no mere accidental oversight, but rather a carefully calibrated attempt by publishers to avoid what they deem controversial issues in order to reach the widest possible market worldwide. In their stead, the commonly featured topics such as consumerism and marketing (discussed in the previous chapters), business ethics and emotional intelligence (Chun, 2009a), psychologically framed notions of motivation, and recent advances in science such as cloning and genetically modified foods are themselves invested in their constructs, assumptions, definitions and representations of culturally mediated practices and relationships in society. As many ESL and EAP instructors can attest, these commonly featured topics do not necessarily generate an engaging discussion among the students. For some, these topics can be alienating by their addressivity; for example, as we have seen in Chapter 4, there were possible indications that many of the students were not willing to adopt the role of the videos as positioning them as future entrepreneurs or investors. If the majority of students in a class are not interested in a topic, they will most likely not be intellectually engaged. Another argument is that topics such as comparing one’s culture with another (in the way it is often presented in ESL textbooks) are unlikely to be found in an undergraduate or graduate course, and thus students who spend precious class time discussing these types of topics in either group work or in a full class discussion are not learning the necessary disciplinary discourses and registers required for their planned studies.

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

159

All of these issues raise the question: what is an EAP curriculum? In many of the EAP textbooks I have had to teach, and in the advanced level EAP textbook, Learning English for Academic Purposes (Williams, 2005), parts of which Emilia used in her Winter, Spring and Summer term classes, the material attempts to mimic academic content in its choices of what are deemed to be suitable topics such as the ones outlined above. However, these textbooks often do not feature the academic language, discourses and registers that are characteristic of specific disciplinary content. The end result is that these types of textbooks present ‘academic literacy practices as something abstract and decontextualised’ (Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002: 6). If advanced EAP students are not being exposed to content materials that feature the complexity of academic language and discourse, then these EAP textbooks are doing little to serve their target audience. By not challenging students with engaging content that provokes lively discussion and reflection, an EAP curriculum that relies on banal content positions both EAP students and their instructors as something less than knowledge producers, something less than thinkers and intellectuals who have something to say. Although it is admittedly difficult at times, and given the heavy workload for many already overburdened and underpaid non-tenured EAP instructors, a somewhat time-consuming task, finding content material that is of interest to students and in which they may already have extensive knowledge is a worthwhile endeavor. Expanding an EAP curriculum that goes beyond publishers’ textbooks to engage students requires a willingness also to expand one’s pedagogical practices. Hence, Morgan argued, ‘responding to the needs of a specific group of students, particularly when their values challenge your own, all the while questioning one’s own assumptions, is what I now see as the most important approach to being an ESL teacher’ (Morgan, 1998: 5). The determination in going ‘beyond a fixed body of methods and techniques’ (Morgan, 1998: 5) and responding to the interests and needs of specific students was increasingly evident in Emilia’s classroom practices as the Summer term progressed. She began to question her own assumptions about EAP teaching and learning, and indeed seemed willing to learn from her two students who had much to offer. This was clearly indicated in the latter weeks of the term when she sought out material that not only reflected her students’ interests, but also in which they had considerable expertise since both held advanced degrees relevant to the selected material. Trying to find material that went beyond the usual EAP textbook topics of superficially comparing cultures and business success stories, she increasingly used multimodal texts in the form of online videos from sources such as the MIT World, TVO and Democracy Now websites. In addition to her increasing willingness to be seen by the students as a novice in these subjects, Emilia

160 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

seemed to feel more comfortable addressing formerly excluded topics in her class such as economic underdevelopment: Why is the Whole World Not Developed? (TVO, 2009b), the interconnections between Middle Eastern and global politics: Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (MIT World, 2009), and critiques of US financial and foreign policies in an interview with the linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now: Noam Chomsky on the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, U.S. Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire (Democracy Now, 2009). This chapter examines one class near the end of the Summer term in which both Emilia and the students explore what the role of a teacher should be in the classroom. In this class, Emilia’s evolving teaching practices created a more open dialogic space in which her students shift from being mere receivers of knowledge to more active co-producers of knowledge in her classroom, thereby expanding their meaning-making abilities. The class extensively discussed the issues that were raised in an online video that the instructor selected as part of the term’s multimodal curriculum, entitled Politics in the Classroom (TVO, 2009a), which was produced by TVO, a public educational media organization based in Ontario, Canada. Politics in the Classroom addresses the nature of a professor’s role in the classroom. The question posed on the podcast website asks the viewer to consider if a professor’s role is to transmit knowledge without bias, or to be a driver of social change. Featured on the TVO program The Agenda with Steve Paikin, the video podcast presents a panel of six academics who present and debate varying views of what they see as their duties and responsibilities toward their students in the classroom. In addition, this chapter also features several conversations between Emilia and me on teaching politics in the EAP classroom. As mentioned in the previous chapters, she had previously expressed to me in our meetings leading up to this term that she was not politically inclined and that she had shied away from political discussions in her classes in the past. That she chose to teach these texts based on what she perceived to be of interest to these students speaks to her re- conceptualizing an EAP curriculum content during the course of the Spring and Summer terms.

Disrupting Stereotypes of Non-Western Pedagogy Practices: A Prologue Before examining the class exchanges on the aforementioned lesson based on the online video, the following extract is from a class two weeks earlier in which Emilia and her two students were discussing if there were

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

161

any differences in the teaching methods between the students’ Arab professors and the Western ones they had encountered either in their home countries or in North American university settings. This was in the context of Emilia asking them about their learning experiences in their schools in the Middle East. After pointing out a few differences such as Western instructors making use of discussion groups and PowerPoint in their lectures more often than their Arab counterparts, Student 1 then has this to offer: Student 1:

It’s not, eh, for me, one of my experience, there is eh, stereotype or tradition in Middle East in general, student cannot disagree with teacher eh, opinion. Student 2: Yeah. Student 1: You always believe that the teacher has, uh, uh, huge knowledge. Sure, you will be eh, correct, never will be, that’s the stereotype. I had a professor, eh, my undergraduate, he used to make mistake on purpose to let us to eh, disagree with him, and eh, he tried once to encourage us to be critical and eh, because, uh, because all people in Middle East fear to talk about politics. So he encourage us to be crit-criticize in our midterm exam, and he told us, ‘My guarantee, write whatever you want’. And after that, the next day, he collect the exam and destroy the paper in front of us. Emilia: Oh really?! Student 1: Yeah. Emilia: Just to say it’s [secret, don’t worry. Student 1: [Yeah, yeah, to, I think he tried to send a message, try to say whatever you want and don’t fear the limits, you can. Emilia: Right. Student 1: Try to use all your freedom until that eh, red lines, as we say, or don’t be fear. Don’t be fear. Emilia: And do you think that was shocking for a lot of students? [Was that kind of Student 1: [Yeah, yeah. Emilia: Everybody talked about, ‘Oh my god, [what’s he doing?’ Student 1: [Yeah, yeah, of course= Emilia: =Interesting. So can I ask you a question – sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt – but I’m very curious about that exam. Were you, did you push the limits on that exam? Were you critical?

162 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1:

Emilia: Student 1:

Yeah, a little bit. But still some student eh, don’t take this opportunity. And some of them, yeah, they directly criticized in this exam and, uh, he give them A+. Right, interesting. And do you think the students who were sort of afraid still were thinking, ‘Oh, it’s just a trick. He’s’= =Maybe, but maybe it’s trick, or maybe some, some of them, ‘I don’t care, what, what’s the benefit?’ They, they didn’t get it. But, uh, for me and some other colleagues, until now, when we talk about this professor, we mention about this event. Ah, you see, so it [stayed in people’s minds. [Yeah, yeah.

One aspect of the historical body (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) of Student 1 is revealed in his recounting of a classroom experience with his undergraduate professor. He challenges the ‘stereotype or tradition in Middle East in general’ that a student cannot disagree with a teacher by relating the story of one professor who encouraged his students to be critical and take chances. Mindful of the possible repercussions feared by the students if their views were to be made available, the professor proceeds to destroy the exams in front of them. Student 1 interprets the professor’s actions as sending the message to his students to ‘use all your freedom’. ‘All your freedom’ in this context meant that the students had the opportunity to exercise their agencies in exploring and expanding the limits of what is possible in the classroom. After Emilia asks if this was shocking to the students, she then asks if the student in fact pushed the limits on the exam. Her question, ‘were you critical?’, here takes on a specific meaning in this context; being critical here involves speaking truth to power, with possible consequences. Although the professor protects his students from possible consequences in the event their exams were released, his encouragement and ‘guarantee’ that their honest views would be able to be expressed opens up an important space in which the students could depart from the everydayness of their schooling. For some, as Student 1 describes it, they could not see the benefit of doing so – ‘they didn’t get it’ – but for others like him and a few of his classmates, this event made a lasting impression: ‘until now when we talk about this professor, we mention this event.’ Student 1’s anecdote disabuses the notion that critical pedagogy is a privileged Western construct, something that only takes place in the West, and that non-Western teaching practices are more authoritarian or less forgiving of disagreement in the classroom.

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

163

Constructing the Role of an Instructor in the Classroom Emilia had shown the TVO video, Politics in the Classroom (TVO, 2009a), to the students the week before. She subsequently sent them the link to the video so that they would be able to watch it again over the weekend. The class began with her reminding the students about their research paper assignment since the term was drawing to a close in two weeks. She then passed out a handout with questions for class discussion: (1) What do you think a professor’s job is? Do you agree with Stanley Fish or Rinaldo Walcott? (two of the six featured panelists in the discussion) (2) Should a professor teach values, or have a political agenda? (3) How can you as a student identify the professor’s bias, if there is one? (4) Is there a difference between the role of a professor in an undergraduate or graduate setting? (5) As a grad student, are you aware of your own biases, and those of your professors? (6) Would you choose a professor or course based on a known bias because you share it or disagree with it? After the students had a chance to look over the questions, she started the class lesson: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1:

It was Professor Stanley Fish who had written a book about what the professor’s role should be in the classroom. So I thought that it would be interesting to have a look at that, um, and a professor’s bias, particularly in terms of the other video we watched, which was Islam and Democracy, um, because of course each of the panelists – or the two panelists at least have an agenda. And, so I wanted to kind of link those two together and talk about some of the issues in both videos. So, um, I thought we’d start with number one. Now, do you remember what Stanley Fish said about what the role of the professor is in a classroom? What was his book about? The name of the book, or? Uh, yeah, I can’t even remember the title. Do you remember the title? Yeah, he used, Save the World by your, in your=

164

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

=on Your Own Time. Yes, Save the World on Your Own Time. Do you know what that means, ‘on your own time’? Yeah. What does it mean? It involve uh, uh, your personal interest in, uh, personal time. So use your, uh, your, with your aims or uh, your goals, achieve your aims in your time, not in class time or anything. Yeah, your own time is when you’re not being paid. Yeah. Um, so that’s your free time, so whatever you do on your own time, that’s your business. But, now, his theory was, and he said that it was based on craft, that you’re being paid to do a certain job and that’s what you need to do, is to just do the job, right?

In the opening of the video, the host Steve Paikin begins the panel discussion by first asking Stanley Fish about the role of the professor in the classroom. Fish initially replies that he does not like to use the word ‘role’ in talking about what professors do in the classroom, but goes on to say that if he had to use the word, then ‘the role of the professor is to do his or her job, that’s it’. Following up on Fish’s statement, Paikin asks him if the job of the professor is to merely teach the curriculum and nothing more. Fish replies that he believes professors should be doing only two things in their classroom: ‘One, introduce students to bodies of materials with which they were previously unfamiliar, and two, equip them with the analytical skills of archival research or laboratory skills; any kind of skills that will enable them to move easily within those traditions, and perhaps if they choose to do so, to engage in research after a course is over; that’s it, no more, no less’. Emilia begins the exchange by telling the class she wants to link this video with a video the class had seen earlier, Islam and Democracy. This link is framed by her through the issue of the various speakers’ bias and agenda in both videos and, by contextual extension, ‘a professor’s bias’. Emilia refers to the question handout when she says, ‘I thought we’d start with number one’, and then asks the students to recap Fish’s view of professors in the classroom, and his book. After Student 1 and Emilia prompt each other to remember the title of Fish’s book, she asks him the meaning of the latter part of the book’s title – ‘on your own time’ – to which he replies in that it means ‘your personal interest . . . personal time’ and ‘achieve your aims in your time, not in class time’. In the following turn, Emilia clarifies and expands the student’s definition of ‘your own time’ as ‘when you’re not being paid’ and the student agrees with this definition with a ‘yeah’. Emilia continues to expand upon

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

165

her definition of one’s own time as not being paid with ‘that’s your free time, so whatever you do on your own time, that’s your business’. Emilia’s comprehension check of the students’ understanding of ‘on your own time’ at first glance seems to be a familiar practice common in many English language classrooms: Emilia first asks the students if they know the meaning of the phrase; Student 1 in the next turn says he does (‘yeah’); Emilia then asks him to explain it to verify his understanding; he does so with an adequate definition; she adds to it in the next turn; he agrees with it; and finally she gives additional vocabulary to further delineate ‘on your own time’ by using ‘free time’ and ‘your business’ that finishes this particular comprehension check. However, there is also something else going on here which is more than just a comprehension check. Emilia and Student 1’s actions in co-constructing, interpreting and recontextualizing the situated meaning of ‘on your own time’ are also mediated through the complex relationships among the video modalities, its featured professorial views that attempt to legitimate these views both by their professional and institutional authority, and the simultaneous move to draw upon the larger discourses of common-sense notions of what constitutes one’s ‘own’ time. Thus, a discourse of ‘one’s own time’ is filtered through the mediating dimensions of: larger symbolic processes that create specific culturally normalized senses of time-frames; this particular website addressing what a professor should do or not do in a classroom; the somewhat powerful (by virtue of his academic status and accolades) social actor – Stanley Fish – who is voicing his idea of what ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ time means; and the final stop in this particular discourse itinerary, Emilia and her students who recontextualize this discourse in their class. In their recontextualizing framing of ‘your own time’ in their classroom, both Emilia and the student re-accentuate the term in several ways. Student 1 imbues it with ‘personal interest in personal time’. Emilia recasts it as ‘when you’re not being paid’ so it becomes ‘free time’ and then ‘so whatever you do on your own time, that’s your business’. Thus, their intertextual dialogic interaction creates the context in which the following issue is then addressed. Emilia re-envoices Fish’s stance: ‘he said that it was based on craft, that you’re being paid to do a certain job and that’s what you need to do, is to just do the job, right?’ Here, ‘a certain job’ means teaching students, ‘craft’ means the technical skills being imparted (analytic, laboratory), and ‘just do the job’ means ‘that’s it, no more, no less’. Emilia then goes on to ask the students: Emilia:

Um, OK, and what did Rinaldo Walcott say, the guy with the dreadlocks, uh, who was sitting on the far left, which is symbolic.

166

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Student 1: Emilia:

Student 2:

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

He against the theory book and believe the professor should be eh, more than provide, uh, more than that in class. So he can bring his ideas and try to eh, activate it in class. Yeah, one of the things he mentioned in fact was the, what we call the empty vessel theory. He criticized Stanley Fish for, um, for, for supporting this empty vessel theory. An empty vessel is an empty glass, an empty container and you fill it up. And, um, the whole idea of the empty vessel theory, (writes it on the board) OK? So, uh, it’s like having students who are empty glasses, or empty bowls, or empty whatever, something that holds water, and pouring the knowledge into it. So the student has an empty brain and you just put whatever you want inside. And, uh, Rinaldo Walcott said that that’s not true, that you cannot just fill their brains with whatever you want, that they already come in with notions and preconceived ideas, and they live in a culture and they all come from various cultures and various uh, traditions and beliefs and you cannot ignore that. So if you don’t ignore the, the culture it means you also cannot ignore the culture that the classroom is in, and uh, so he said that the culture outside and the students in the classroom are linked together, you can’t just separate them apart, and so is the professor. So I don’t know, I’m interested, you know, you’ve done some teaching, right? (to Student 1, who nods his head yes) Have you taught? (to Student 2, who shakes his head no) OK, but if you’re going for your PhD, right, then in the future at some point you probably will be teaching. Uh, so I’m interested in what you guys think about uh, those various ideas. What do you think is the role of the professor in the classroom with regard to, uh, making your personal bias known to the students or teaching that bias? You know, what’s your responsibility? Uh, I thinks for me, uh, the professor should teach all the theory, all the ideas, uh, and then maybe decides I, my belief, this theory and in support and if includes bias, why he believes this theory is, uh, good or personal= =OK, so it is, it is correct for the, or it is a good idea for the professor to actually state his or her, uh, bias or his or her beliefs in the classroom? Yeah, why not? Because he= =That is the question, why not?

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 1:

Emilia: Student 1:

Emilia: Student 1:

167

(laughs) Yeah. OK. Because he express all the idea in the theory or all theory= =Mm-hmm= =then so he believes this. So it’s the student can see all the theory and can decide to go with professor or to go with other theory. OK, that’s an interesting idea, that the student can decide whether to go with the professor’s idea or another theory. So hold onto that for a second. Do you agree? (to Student 1) I agree that the professor should, as (Student 2’s name) said, provide his opinion about the, any issue, any theory, but give the student the opportunity to criticize him, not to only see, eh, present one side of his beliefs. That would be bias. But if he provide us this, his opinion as an issue to what do you think, you agree, disagree, and why, I think that will be good opportunity for student to practice their personal, to create their personal idea. I disagree about the professor if he or she bring his or her ideology into class because ideology is different from bias and any opinion, because the ideology is, uh, when we describe ideology it’s told that, eh, disagree about another thoughts. Yeah. So in this case, if the professor bring his ideology to the class, I think it’s kind of dictatorship in the class. So, ‘my idea is eh, right and all these theory is nothing because I believe on that, and that why: one, two, three’. OK= =but that’s, kind you try to enforce, eh, force the student to take or agree. So there is no opportunity to eh, disagreement about your opinion or idea.

In asking about the views of Rinaldo Walcott (a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto), and referring to him as ‘sitting on the far left, which is symbolic’, Emilia’s move further frames the issue through a somewhat traditional political spectrum of what is considered ‘doing the job’ of a professor in the classroom. In his reply, Student 1 presents Walcott’s view as being ‘against the theory book’ of Fish, and that a professor ‘should more than provide than that’ of just doing one’s job of imparting technical skills; in fact, ‘he can bring his ideas and try to

168

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

activate it in class’. Emilia then gives a detailed explanation of the ‘empty vessel theory’ in Walcott’s critique of Fish’s views (which draws upon the Freirean notion of the banking model of education), and asks her students about their teaching experiences (Student 1 had taught before, but Student 2 had not). She solicits their opinions about the two professors’ opposing viewpoints ‘with regard to making your personal bias known to the students or teaching that bias’. Student 1 defines ‘bias’ as the professor presenting only one side of a theory and the absence of the opportunity for a student to ‘criticize him’ for his beliefs. His view of good pedagogy involves professors offering their opinions on a particular issue as a way to invite the students to reflect and debate, and thereby not only develop their analytic skills but also facilitate their meaning-making potential – ‘that will be good opportunity for student to practice their personal, to create their personal idea’. Student 1 then states that he disagrees with a professor bringing ‘his or her ideology into class because ideology is different from bias and any opinion’. He starts to define ‘ideology’ as ‘it’s told that disagree about another thoughts’ and that if the ‘professor bring his ideology to the class, I think it’s kind of dictatorship in the class’. This dictatorship in the class is exercised when a professor tells the class that ‘my idea is right and all these theory is nothing’. For this student, ideology is the ‘kind you try to enforce . . . force the student to take or agree. So there is no opportunity to . . . disagreement about your opinion or idea’. Here, ‘ideology’ is interpreted and resemiotized as the closing down of any space in which students would be able to exercise their own thinking, their own agencies in deciding for themselves what they would prefer to believe. Ideology becomes something portable, extra baggage to be left behind when one enters the classroom, much like the notion that teachers should not bring politics into the classroom. Student 1 presents a professor’s ideology as an agenda, or rather a doctrine or dogma that students would be forced to accept. This exchange is revealing in several ways. Stanley Fish’s discourse of a technicist conceptualization of pedagogy is actively contested by both students. By ‘introducing students to bodies of materials’ without allowing for classroom interrogation of these materials, Fish forecloses avenues through which his students would be able to exercise their agencies in making meaning of their own accord, something that both students clearly reject in their discussions. Student 1’s stance on effective pedagogy is clear in his remark that it is important that students are allowed ‘to create their personal idea’ in the classroom. Both students’ insistence on professors presenting multiple points of view or theories, including their own, and offering them for critique by their students can be seen in action in this exchange. By coconstructing their own discourses of pedagogical approaches, the students in

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

169

effect talk back to the authoritative, hegemonic discourse of Fish. They also interact with Emilia in a similar vein, rebutting the idea that professors should not ‘state his or her bias . . . or beliefs in the classroom’, as stated in the question she had posed. Their stance challenges the notion of neutrality in the classroom, which is often presented as the antithesis of what some see as an agenda by critical pedagogy practitioners. After talking at some length about the training needed for new teachers, Student 1’s own teaching experiences in his home country, Emilia’s view that more university professors should have at least some teacher training before being hired as full-time faculty, and the difficulties of being a good teacher, she then asks the students: Emilia:

Student 1: Emilia: Student 1: Emilia:

Student 1:

Emilia: Student 2:

I, if we look at that panel on TV Ontario, OK? And then you think about taking a class with Rinaldo Walcott and you’re think about taking a class with Stanley Fish, who would you prefer to take a class with? It’s depend but= =Yes?= =Yeah, but, the problem of Stanley, Professor Fish theory, it’s kind, to, uh, make the professor only care about the technical job – only teach the material; don’t involve an opinions. No, he didn’t say that. Uh, you remember he said that, um, it’s the job of the instructor to, yes, to teach the material, but to teach the students to analyze the material. It’s teach them how to think, not what to think. OK, also that’s the, uh, the, uh, the, another professor who bring his opinion, I think that will be good for student because always that students like to hear about the professor’s opinion, not for, maybe for some of them, curiosity or but, uh, it’s good to have this professor who has a knowledge how, how, uh, how he or she think about this opinion, and how you should think about that. And that’s give the student opportunity to compare between two things, not to enforce to take the professor’s opinion or to stand with the professor position, but to, uh, give him right to choose. Maybe the student will be wrong, or maybe the professor will be wrong in the point of view for student, for students. What do you think? (turns to Student 2) Um, yeah, I thinks the professor should give the, the opportunity to compare. Because maybe if you, if you read a

170

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2: Emilia: Student 2:

Emilia: Student 2: Emilia:

Student 2:

lot of opinion or theories, and then how can I compare between them. So if professor compare with them, they teach the students, they give an opportunity to see how he compare between them and how a student can future compare and= =So the teacher should lead by example? Yeah. By giving an example of how to compare between ideas. Yeah. But in that case, the professor is not giving his or her own ideology or opinion, the professor is comparing between two sets of opinions or three opinions, or four, um= =But finally, he, he will give his, he, he finally he choose one idea and he support this idea. He give evidence why he should, why he choose that idea. Right. So it’s like if, um, if a student, how professor choose a theory or how professors choose this idea, how he, uh, how he believe that’s the evidence is really, uh, is really right and really support this idea. So once you know the professor’s criteria for the, for the opinion, then it helps the students to understand= =Sure= =how better to think. I think you might be, yeah, onto something there. At the same time, why can’t we just leave the professor’s opinion out of it? I mean, as Stanley Fish says, ‘Why do you need to know my opinion?’ It’s not necessary. I think, I think it’s like couple of theory, when you write about, you write all opinions, and explain, and then finally you support your, or express your opinion and everything else.

This exchange is noteworthy in two important ways. The first is that both students argue against Fish’s view that essentially presents the banking concept of teaching, as Freire (1970) first named it. As Fish would have it, according to Student 1’s interpretation, professors should just teach the materials, and leave no room for debate or opinions about methods, theories or ideas. Teaching, for Student 1, becomes merely a ‘technical job’ that would seem to negate any spaces in which students would be able to perform as knowledge producers in their own right. Instead, what both students appear to be arguing for is a more dialogical, engaged pedagogy in which both the professor and the students are able to employ and expand their intertextual approaches and academic literacy practices in comparing and discussing

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

171

multiple texts and discourses. In this pedagogical space, learning is not something that is ‘given’ to the student from an all-knowing expert, but rather is a dynamic interaction in which both the student and teacher co-construct forms of knowledge in the Bakhtinian sense of heteroglossia, comprising multiple voices and perspectives. The students also argue that a professor’s role is to facilitate the students’ rethinking of the relations between their opinions and the dominant discourses and texts in society. The second important aspect of this exchange is that both the students and Emilia are enacting the very dynamic process that the students are arguing is essential for real learning to take place: all the participants in this exchange are co-constructing knowledge as equal contributors and partners. For example, when Emilia challenges Student 1’s claim that Fish rejects opinions in the classroom by presenting her own interpretation of Fish’s position that the job is to teach students how to think but not what to think, Student 1 counters her challenge by pointing out that in order to think about an issue, students must be presented with a range of opinions, which include the professor’s, so that they may be able to compare and decide for themselves. Not only do students ‘like to hear about the professor’s opinion’, but also their ‘right to choose’, as Student 1 observed, is also integral to the learning process inasmuch as the professor might ‘be wrong in the point of view for students’. Student 2 seconds his classmate’s view that part of the professor’s role in the classroom is to guide students in being able to critically compare texts, opinions and differing viewpoints by demonstrating her or his own methodology in doing so – ‘they give an opportunity to see how he compare between them and how a student can future compare’. Student 2 goes on to say that the professor should, in a sense, show her or his hand in the end, and ‘give evidence why . . . choose that idea’. This is not only an act of full disclosure in being open and honest with the students as to how one might feel about an issue being discussed in class, but it also serves the purpose of sharing and illustrating one’s epistemologies and methodologies in forming specific opinions, as Student 2 indicates. Emilia appears to accept their argument, as indicated by her comment, ‘you might be onto something there’. However, she then returns to Fish’s argument that it is not necessary for students to know a professor’s opinion as a final prompt. Ignoring the disingenuous aspect of Fish’s argument, Student 2 in the final turn offers up the classic model of a persuasive essay so commonly taught in EAP classes as a rebuttal to Fish: ‘you write all opinions, and explain, and then finally you support your, or express your opinion’. One critique of critical pedagogy (Gore, 1992) has been to disabuse the notion that critical pedagogy empowers students by offering them powerful critiques of society. However, what is sometimes forgotten is that students

172 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

themselves may demand or desire that spaces be created in their classroom in which they will be able to contribute their own knowledge in questioning the world in important critical ways that address the power dynamics of meaning making – who tries to control it, how it’s framed, who can speak back and who can create new meanings. For many students, ‘doing school’ is exactly that – doing it in the sense of repetition and the unimaginative reproduction of everydayness. The classroom as a space of students continually ‘doing’ – whether it is reading dull textbooks or receiving knowledge without critical mediation – can be transformed into a dynamic, dialogic space that helps students to expand and create ever new ways to make meaning in a context that has traditionally been regarded as ‘legitimate’ – the classroom. I say ‘legitimate’ because students are already engaged in creative meaning making in alternative spaces in their daily productions of written and multimodal texts for their blogs, personal websites, online video-gaming, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Tumblr pages, and so on. These spaces are currently not accorded the same legitimacy as a classroom. It is significant that many students engage in co-constructing knowledge in these spaces but are often not given the opportunities to do the same in a classroom, as Fish would have it. The dialogic spaces seen in these extracts demonstrate that EAP students, if given opportunities, can employ their energies in making meaning in the classroom in the same way they do outside of it.

Discussing ‘Teaching Politics in an ESL Classroom’ with Emilia Because Emilia had selected several online videos that featured issues of political economy, religion and democracy, US foreign policy and politics in the classroom on the basis of her students’ interests and planned studies in political science and business, and the ensuing class discussions that were generated from these materials, these developments were addressed and discussed in our meetings. She had often articulated concerns that she felt insufficiently informed to discuss politics in her classroom. Often in everyday discourse, the discursive indexing of ‘politics’ takes on a specific meaning. It is the narrow, everyday representation of the political that tends to circulate most: a process that happens somewhere else, for example, in the corridors of institutional power in which the social actors we call politicians craft their policies and enact their legislation. ‘Politics’ in this representational and discursive realm is seen in a similar way to ‘ideology’ as Student 1 termed it, as something that is alien or taking place beyond everyday life; if it is unintentionally or ‘accidentally’ brought into a space like the classroom, its

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

173

presence is an uncomfortable reminder of the ‘outside world’, squatting there like the proverbial elephant in the room. However, since the elephant was already in the room and, in fact, intentionally acknowledged through the teaching of these videos, I felt this was an opportunity to help contextualize with Emilia the rapidly evolving curriculum she was developing this term for her students. I mentioned to her that there was literature on teaching politics in the English language classroom, and she expressed interest in reading about other teachers’ experiences. This was also a logical progression from our discussions stemming from the Luke and Freebody (1997) chapter on critical literacy practices. Thus, I thought Brian Morgan’s (1998) book, The ESL Classroom: Teaching, Critical Practice, and Community Development, would be a good place to explore one teacher’s experiences in teaching materials that were considered explicitly political in his English language classroom. When I mentioned the book, she responded enthusiastically and so we decided we would discuss in our next meeting Morgan’s second chapter, entitled ‘Teaching Politics in an ESL Classroom’. Morgan (1998: 6) observed that ‘many ESL teachers would reject considerations of social power or social conflict as appropriate for the ESL classroom’. However, as he pointed out, ‘educational institutions value specific forms of knowledge over others – an unquestionably political act when considering the diverse experiences of culture, race, gender, and class in our communities’ (Morgan, 1998: 6–7). In the sociopolitical context of schooling in society, ‘neutrality’ is a hegemonic construct and practice. Academic discourse, which EAP students are hoping to master, is itself a power-laden form of cultural and educational capital with its specialized and privileged registers, conventions and genres. Those who possessed this capital in the past usually presented academic language and discourse as being freely available for those who wanted it enough; yet the use of such language and the accompanying obstacles to gaining access to the institutional sites in which this language is accorded recognition and power call into question the pretense of any such neutrality. As Morgan (1998: 11) argued, ‘the curriculum is naturally perceived as “neutral” when other options and alternative perspectives are made invisible’. With these issues on the table, Emilia and I met on 11 September (we noted the historical significance of the date) to discuss the chapter. I began by asking her what she thought of Morgan’s teaching experiences: Christian: Emilia:

OK, so, uh, what did you think overall of Brian Morgan’s (1998) experiences? Well, it’s inspiring, actually.

174

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

Great! Um, yeah, I didn’t think it would be, ‘cause I opened the chapter, you know, Politics in the Classroom. I thought, ‘Ugh, teaching politics in an ESL classroom’, I thought, ‘Oh lord, OK’. Because I don’t know much about politics. It’s not a topic that particularly interests me. I’ve never been a political animal. So I thought, ‘OK, well, why would you want to teach politics in the classroom?’ Because ultimately, unless you’re teaching politics, it can often create, uh, you know, problems in terms of discussion. It depends what cultural groups you have in there and he’s teaching adults in a LINC, um, setting [Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada, a government program offering free basic French and English language courses to adult permanent residents] and I’m teaching adults in a, you know, who are much, much younger. Right, right, right. In an academic setting, prepping for university. So, um, I haven’t necessarily always included politics as a particular, um, part of the curriculum, you know, in terms of content. So it was, but it was very, very interesting because I realized one of the things I can apply to my situation that, uh, really worked well with him is that the students came incredibly engaged not only in the topic, so he’s talking about the, the invasion of Kuwait and the Iraqi war. Right, right. Um, you know, and obviously the students, some of them had a vested interest because they come from that area. And, but it’s the rest of the students that also became incredibly engaged in the whole process. And I started thinking about, you know, from his conclusions and, um, all the different sort of aspects that they talked about, um, it wasn’t just the war from the political angle or the decisions that were made by government officials or, you know, so, it’s not just the issue of powerlessness against the state. It was very personal issues about, uh, how, you know, the students were touched in one way or another in their own lives by this topic, whether it was, you know, students from China that had remembered other incidents, or, you know, their grandmothers, grandfathers had talked about something. So it may not necessarily have been themselves who were

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

175

completely affected but somehow, indirectly, through family members or through family history or through, um, some kind of, you know, tangential contact, they were affected. And that emotional response is really, really interesting in a classroom. Um, so first of all there was that, you know, and I thought, ‘OK, so you never really know who your students are until you hit upon certain topics that really, really touch their lives in a profound way’. Continuing a theme she expressed in our earlier meeting that was featured and discussed in the previous chapter, Emilia reiterated that she was not interested in politics and that she ‘doesn’t know much about politics’. Yet, as shown in classroom practices highlighted in several extracts, she engaged quite actively in political discussions with students who often raised these issues on their own. Her students sought her opinions and, at times, some of them energetically expressed their own views on politics, the economy and culture. In so-called democratic societies such as Canada and the US, certain mediated, privileged spaces have been constructed in which ‘experts’ are accorded both the recognition and the right to speak about politics, as a discourse that is beyond the ‘ordinary’ citizen who is deemed to possess neither the credentials nor the expertise to weigh in on such matters. However, with the recent rise of the blogosphere, new mediated spaces have been created in which everyday people have articulated their viewpoints and critiques in the realm of the political. My point here is that people have all kinds of political opinions and views about society, whether or not these are explicitly recognized as such, and in fact are often much more knowledgeable about the connections between their everyday lives and society than the so-called experts who speak in public forums monetized for corporate profit. This socially constructed division between those who are called ‘experts’ and thus become accredited ‘intellectuals’, and many people who are not recognized as experts as such but are ‘organic intellectuals’ in the Gramscian sense, serves to denigrate the forms of knowledge everyday people possess through their lived experiential engagements with the everyday, which are embodied in their historically lived identities and practices. And it is these historically lived identities to which Emilia refers in her observations that Morgan’s students became engaged in a topic that other teachers might have shunned: the Persian Gulf War. As she notes, although many of them in the class were not directly connected to the region, ‘the students were touched in one way or another in their own lives by this topic’. In contrast to the banal topics that so many of the students are exposed to

176

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

in many ESL and EAP textbooks, this topic did not distance them in creating alien subjectivities; as Emilia noted, because of the students’ emotional response to the topic, they ‘became incredibly engaged in the whole process’. Although Emilia points out that Morgan had older adult immigrant students in a LINC setting, and she teaches younger adults who are preparing for either university or graduate school, the topics and issues in which these EAP students will be expected to engage once they enter tertiary schooling will most likely touch upon some aspects of their lives in some way. So why not have these types of topics in the EAP classroom, since this is part of their academic training? She also drew connections between Morgan’s students, who were immigrants and had in many cases suffered a loss of status, and her own EAP students, some of whom had also suffered a loss of status in their new roles which were different in their home countries. This speaks to the need for EAP instructors to create spaces in their classroom in which students can exercise their lived identities; otherwise there is the risk that, as Emilia put it, one may ‘never really know who the students are until you hit upon certain topics that really, really touch their lives in a profound way’. It is these topics, such as war and politics, that are usually carefully avoided in many ESL and EAP textbooks. But, as Emilia noted, Morgan’s students were engaged in precisely this type of topic. However, this is not to suggest that a topic on war will automatically elicit a deep engagement from all EAP students, or that there should only be ‘serious’ topics such as politics, social conflict and environmental destruction taught in every EAP classroom. It worked in Morgan’s classroom because that particular topic resonated with their lived identities in profound ways, and so they had many things to say about it. It is also drawing connections from seemingly unrelated topics to the everyday concerns of students that can facilitate engagement. As presented in Chapter 3, one student in the Spring term observed that he was only active in the class when he was interested in a topic. This speaks to the need for teachers to sometimes go beyond a planned curriculum to find material that would meet the students’ present and future academic needs. In addition, it is not always a ‘what’ method (what topic can I find today that my students will find appealing) but, perhaps more importantly, also a ‘how’ in terms of the ways in which a teacher can activate dialogic spaces so that students can make meanings with and against whatever texts are presented in the classroom. A few minutes later in our meeting, I circled back to Emilia’s comment that she never considered herself a ‘political animal’. We then began discussing what is meant by ‘political’ and addressed broadening the delineation of the word to include other meanings, other practices, and particularly her own classroom practices that had shifted in the ensuing months since our

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

177

collaborative inquiries began. I told her that I had observed her increasingly foreground with her students the social relationships among people, text and language. She replied that this was due to our readings on critical literacy and, in particular, the Luke and Freebody (1997) chapter. She then acknowledged how power dynamics affect the EAP classroom, and raised the question of who creates the constructs that are taught, and why. She then added: Emilia:

Are we aware of what the language is saying and are we aware of what the text says and the critical approach to the text? And, um, becoming aware of the intention behind the words and the way that the phrasing is completed and, you know, the use of certain vocabulary as opposed to other vocabulary. Um, the, the bias of the author, how aware are we of the bias and how does it sneak in between the lines or in the vocabulary? So I think in, there are a couple of, um, components to this. One is some of the research I’ve been reading because of the sociopolitical aspects of language. Second is that both of these guys in some way or form – one is doing an MBA but he wasn’t sure whether it was going to be accounting or business, uh, or what exactly. And, you know, the other is doing political science, and particularly with a focus on democracy. So a lot of our discussions and, have been, you know, about that . . . I have a problem adhering all the, all the videos to, let’s talk about business. And even business is political, you know, because you get down to power structures and who’s in charge and which economy is burgeoning and which one’s not. That’s why when we talked about globalization and the Third World and emerging economies, I mean you immediately get into that. Um, and, but I think it’s also happened, if this were a class of 20 people, I don’t think it would have been as prominent. I think I would have varied the topics more but I think because of their two majors it’s going to be about business, which is about power, and um, and we talked about economics. And it’s been about politics. So some of it has been driven by their own, uh, interests and majors and some of it has been driven by, uh, yeah, my interest in what we’ve been talking about as well. So but no matter what, what a teacher does in terms of research about, you know, pedagogy or anything else, is going to somehow sneak into the classroom.

Here, she attributes her evolving pedagogical approach and stance toward the EAP curriculum and her developing new materials for this Summer term

178

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

class in part to the readings on functional grammar and critical literacy we covered in our meetings, and her growing interest in finding ways to practically implement critical literacy approaches in her EAP classroom. But another important dimension contributing to her evolving curriculum is the class composition. As she pointed out, her two students’ interests also drove the directions in her selection of the materials, and because of their planned graduate studies in political science and business, topics on politics and the economy naturally were chosen, most likely much more than they would have been had the students had other interests and fields of study. There is also the fact that she had only two students in her class for the Summer term, as compared with a much larger class the term before, so she was able to focus solely on these topics and have the time to delve deeper into the material: Emilia:

If I go off on a little tangent I think it’s, um, it’s interesting, particularly in a class of two. Maybe in a class of 20 it’s, you know, you have to really control that more because you don’t have time but, um, you know, that’s been really kind of interesting. And because I’ve become really, truly much more aware of the idea of teaching critical thinking, um, at an earlier point in language education. I used to think, ‘OK, you can’t really handle all the complex issues until they have the language to discuss it’. I think that’s totally wrong, you know? With children maybe, but not with adults. And, yeah, you know, that’s kind of been a huge awakening for me, that I really don’t care, um, anymore, uh. It’s not that I don’t care. I do care (laughs). But I’m not so focused on, you know, if their grammar’s bad we shouldn’t be discussing this because it’s too complex. I mean to hell with that. They’re going to have to figure out a way to communicate.

Her evolving stance signals a shift from previous classroom practices during the Winter and Spring terms in which she seemed intent on focusing solely on the students’ grammatical form at perhaps the expense of their meaning-making potential. Here, Emilia indicates her new acceptance of the importance of integrating critical literacy approaches with English language education with the aim of expanding and utilizing her students’ meaningmaking abilities. It would not be difficult to miss the fact that the very nature of the debate on what the classroom role of a professor or teacher should be is indeed itself political. The attempts to advocate and implement a politics-free zone in the

Br inging the Polit ical into an E AP Cl assroom?

179

classroom to avoid what is framed as a professor’s bias are hegemonic in nature in its claims to a neutral body of materials, bereft of any concerns with conflicting opinions, disagreement and critiques that would interfere with this presentation of factual knowledge. Fish’s discourse dovetails perfectly with the same discourses that underlie the content featured in so many EAP textbooks. This issue highlights the notions of what constitutes suitable content and knowledge in EAP text materials, curriculum and in the classroom. These common-sense notions of knowledge also involve learners’ identities as the two are inextricably linked. For Kress, identity is ‘seen as the outcome of constant transformative engagement by someone with “the world”, with a resultant enhancement of their capacities for acting in the world’ (Kress, 2010: 174). This is interconnected with knowledge, because knowledge ‘is seen not as the outcome of processes regulated by power and authority but of everyday, entirely banal processes of meaning-making by individuals in their engagement with the world’ (Kress, 2010: 174). These two are interrelated due to the fact that ‘the augmentation – in the processes of learning – of the individual’s capacity is at the same time a change in identity of the person’ (Kress, 2010: 174). Whose knowledge counts, and why? An important dimension of critical literacy pedagogy is to value knowledge constructions and contributions from sources usually not accorded the authority that is traditionally bestowed upon sources such as mainstream books. These alternative knowledge-producing sources include online sites such as blogs and wikis, graphic novels (e.g. Chun, 2009b), diaries and journals, photographs and, of course, the students themselves, who bring into the classroom a wealth of knowledge that may go untapped. I would disagree with Kress (2010) in describing knowledge as an entirely banal process of meaning making by individuals because, first, what could be more banal than the content posing as knowledge featured in EAP textbooks such as the one discussed in the preceding chapters? And secondly, processes of meaning making by people in their various engagements with the world are often dynamic by nature, and have the revolutionary potential to transform the everyday. A second important dimension of the critical in an EAP classroom is the facilitation of expanding students’ abilities to make meaning in a variety of social semiotic contexts, which promotes their transformative engagement with the world, as well as the potential to act. What is at stake, as Kress (2010) implied, is the embodied dynamic of an evolving, potentially radical transformation of people’s identities and identifications as they learn more how to expand and develop their capacities to make meanings with and against textual productions of their own and the textual productions of other social actors.

180

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

This knowledge-producing process of meaning making by individuals in their multiple, historically lived engagements with the world is rightfully claimed by the two students in the Summer term class. Their insistence on a pedagogy that co-constructs dialogic spaces with them is a reminder that students themselves sometimes call into being a critical pedagogy to address and articulate the complex issues and realities that constitute their lived identities, much like my own students in the aftermath of the 1992 uprisings in Los Angeles. Their roles in the shaping of a critical pedagogy dynamic should be recognized. In addition, their powerful contestation of a pedagogy that would deny them their agencies in seeking alternative viewpoints and ideas, and in their being able to make meaning partly based on their own bodies of knowledge they bring into the classroom is a compelling argument against those who insist on shutting the classroom door to prevent the entrance of the political. As we have seen, it is already present in the historical bodies of teachers and students, and in the discourse itineraries that wind their way from outside the classroom walls through the curriculum materials as students and teachers mediate, recontextualize and resemiotize the complex representations of our everyday life, from this site of English language learning and teaching to the world at large.

8

The Everyday Life of an EAP Classroom

So, to me, it’s always, how can I put it into practice? So what does all this mean to the language classroom, right? Emilia We do not learn from experience . . . we learn from reflecting on experience. John Dewey (1933, p. 78)

A Look Back at Evolving Classroom Practices In presenting the particular classroom exchanges and Emilia’s comments during our research meetings, I have tried to highlight what I thought was illustrative of her evolving classroom practices over the course of those three terms – Winter, Spring and Summer, and the accompanying reflective and reflexive dialogues on EAP teaching, academic discourse, functional grammar and critical literacy approaches that found their way through both her and the students’ mediated actions and historically embodied engagements with the language, texts and discourses in her classes. During these three terms, Emilia’s classroom practices shifted as she increasingly utilized more of her students’ meaning makings in co-constructing knowledge around the curriculum materials. This was evident in the dialogic approaches she adopted in which she and the students engaged to a greater degree in the social exchange of intertextual meanings. Rather than offering knowledge as something to be imparted by her alone as indicated in the Winter term and parts of the Spring term, Emilia strove to facilitate a more equal footing with the students as knowledge producers in their own right increasingly as that Summer term progressed. In the Winter and Spring terms, the discourses in the text materials and Emilia’s own discourses were 181

182

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

resemiotized in her classroom approaches to create at times a monologic text privileging, or rather attempting, various stable, static and reified forms of knowledge. These monologic classroom texts were manifested in various representations of what constituted literacy practices (e.g. using Wikipedia versus encyclopedia books, and the ‘skim and scan’ technique of reading), notions of language use connected to specific identities, discursive positioning of classroom identities constructed solely by psychological constructs of motivation, and hegemonic representations of globalization. In Emilia’s Winter term class lesson on Wikipedia, her objective was to help students understand simple online search methods and the demands of academic research in North American universities. Their purpose in reading this article was to learn how to skim and scan and analyze the article. The students, from my observations, learned how to skim this particular text; however, the text was constructed to be skimmed easily. Whether this technique will serve them as they encounter much denser texts in their university classes is doubtful. In Emilia’s Spring term class lesson on marketing, her beginning functional grammar approaches helped highlight for the students how particular meanings were construed through language; however, in her class lesson on globalization (Chapter 4), the class-mediated engagements with the discourses on globalization limited in some ways the students’ potential to produce readings of and against the videos, which led to onesided discussions at times. However, as her Summer term progressed, the classroom practices moved in a more dynamic direction in speaking back to the texts, creating more meanings in allowing students to draw from their experiences and forms of knowledge. In this way, her students became more than ‘objects of authorial discourse but also subjects of their own directly signifying discourse’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 6). Rather than the texts being constructed monologically, the classroom practices in this Summer term began to facilitate a more critical, dialogic intertextuality in which representations of the everyday in the classroom discourses of consumerism, globalization and religion and democracy were opened up, interrogated and problematized in the shifting of their (inter)contextual frames. This was evident in the more extended discussions regarding the Globality video that term. New dialogic pathways were created and taken so that the students had more opportunities to realize their meaning-making potential in co-creating counter-hegemonic texts, such as when her students spoke back to the banking model of pedagogy that Stanley Fish advocated in the video, Politics in the Classroom. As critical practices emerged in this particular classroom, there was a shifting of contextual frames. The framings of neoliberal globalization discourses in the Globality video were co-constructed differently in the Summer

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

183

term compared with the previous framings with the Spring term students. ‘Globalization’ was no longer a common-sense and hegemonic-invested nominalization as it was in the Spring term class; instead, its very constructs began to be problematized and unpacked in the following term by Emilia and the students. The assumptions underlying the framing of Globality were questioned, as were its claims that globalization was an accepted reality for all. This shifting is important because it allowed the students to do at least three things: (1) to utilize analytic tools to understand the discourses that situate such concepts as globalization; (2) to begin challenging the dominant discourses by constructing counter-discourses, as evidenced by them in that Summer term; and (3) most importantly, the very acts in their expanded meaning makings facilitated by Emilia’s increasing utilization of critical literacies approaches and practices with them helped develop their academic English language proficiency skills by critically reading and discussing these texts in much more depth, compared to the elementary readings and abbreviated discussions by the same students earlier in the term. This then is the partnership between the pragmatic and the critical in EAP, as I have argued that any in-depth understanding of discourse entails its deconstruction and critical appraisal. This is crucial for students’ future academic performances because this understanding will aid them in becoming more critical readers, which can lead to their designing and producing more complex, nuanced and sophisticated texts. This dimension is apparent in the moves Emilia made in the Spring and Summer terms. Using an introductory form of functional grammar analysis, she began to introduce to the Spring term students how the discourse of marketing is constructed. These moves continued to expand in the Summer term as she addressed the discourses of the immigrant identities of Jennifer Wong, and the notion of politics in the classroom. By having the students engage in the curriculum material in significantly different ways from what was shown in the Winter term, she not only taught them pragmatic skills in seeing how academic discourses work, but she also introduced a critical literacy aspect in questioning to some extent and to varying degrees the motivated nature of those discourses. It is important that students’ embodied lived identities are given voice in the classroom, and how their sets of cultural, social and experiential forms of knowledge can be drawn upon in engagements with their teachers and curriculum texts. Are they able to talk back in productive ways to texts and discourses so as to influence and challenge their English language teachers’ own reading subject positions? Are dialogic processes operating so that mutually constitutive formations can arise in which new texts may produce new readings and alternate meanings? And will their academic English

184

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

literacies be aided and developed by the classroom-mediated augmentations of their learning and meaning-making processes? Emilia’s own evolving teacher identity and reading positions followed a trajectory over the course of our collaboration as her engagements with different and new texts helped transform her role in the classroom. Kumaravadivelu (2003a: 15–16) outlined three perspectives on the function and role of teachers: ‘as passive technicians, as reflective practitioners, and as transformative intellectuals’. These perspectives are not meant as ‘absolute opposites but as relative tendencies, with teachers leaning toward one or the other at different moments’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003a: 17). In addition, Kumaravadivelu argued that ‘what is crucial to remember . . . is that passive technicians can hardly become transformative intellectuals without a continual process of self-reflection and self-renewal’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2003a: 17). Indeed, as Ramanathan urged, encouraging TESOLers to reflect on and question the discipline’s practices and norms in terms of their locally evolving professional identities is crucial if we want them to become critically astute teachers; only through such reflection will they be able to effect necessary changes in the discipline. (Ramanathan, 2002: 10) These ‘relative tendencies’ of the three roles were evident as our collaborative research unfolded over those three terms. Although Emilia’s roles cannot be singularly mapped onto each of the terms in a conveniently tidy fashion, it is worth noting that there was a general arc to her various subject teaching positions throughout our collaboration. These encompassed all three roles: from being somewhat of a passive technician in the Winter term classes I observed to engaging in sustained reflections during our work together in the Spring and Summer terms, which then led to her promising emergence as a transformative intellectual with the help of her students as the Summer term progressed. Of course, as Kumaravadivelu (2003a) shrewdly observed, she would lean toward each of these tendencies in a single class and even within the span of a lesson in the Summer term. However, once she started to become engaged with the texts featured in our research meetings, and which challenged many common assumptions and practices, there was no going back completely. There were two main areas in which Emilia’s classroom practices shifted during the observation, mediation and collaboration period. One was that she started to shift toward engaging with academic discourse directly rather than exclusively concentrating on her students’ surface errors in spoken English. Teachers invariably have their pet peeves with regard to students’

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

185

various grammar issues, and Emilia was no exception. However, as pointed out in our discussions, the question was raised as to what extent individual students actually benefited from her repeated focus on form corrections and recasts. It would seem that a closer attention to how academic language operates through the use of nominalizations or reasoning within a clause, to name only a few, might prove more beneficial to the students’ academic literacies. And yet, she can scarcely be blamed for her prior classroom practices in this area because this is the dominant method in North America, as evidenced by the EAP and grammar textbooks commonly used in many programs, which are published for the market there. For various reasons, functional grammar approaches have been slow to take hold in North American EAP and ESL classrooms, although this is now changing as more researchers and practitioners there begin to turn to them as a major resource in language education classrooms (e.g. Achugar et al., 2007; Byrnes, 2006, 2009b; Gebhard et al., 2007, 2008, 2011; Schleppegrell & de Oliveira, 2006; Schleppegrell & Go, 2007). As that year of our collaboration progressed, Emilia began to remark that critical literacy approaches were having a significant impact on her thinking about teaching. This was immensely gratifying to hear because of my own long-term involvements in critical literacy pedagogy practices and theories. She had expressed repeatedly that she wasn’t satisfied with her previous reading instructional practices and that the critical literacy articles we read together and discussed opened up new ways of looking at texts and their social purposes. Although she repeatedly expressed concern that she thought her perceived lack of political knowledge would prohibit her from engaging critically with texts that had overt political themes, this did not prove to be the case. This supports the argument that one does not have to be well read in all matters political, historical and in current world affairs in order to use critical literacy approaches in the classroom, or that doing critical work is solely the province of scholars and researchers. In her classes, her own students proved to be a rich resource of knowledge about history, religion, political events and culture. Because of the evolving and expanding dialogic spaces in Emilia’s classroom practices, they were able to demonstrate and contribute this knowledge about areas in which she was less knowledgeable. And this is a key point of critical literacy in EAP – it does not mean that the teacher has to have ‘expert’ knowledge of society, politics and history, but rather it allows spaces in the classroom in which students can contribute their own forms of knowledge that can sometimes speak back to the dominant discourses and representations in their curriculum materials by providing counter-narratives and alternate viewpoints. In this way, they can demonstrate that they too are knowledge producers in their own right. And in doing so,

186 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

it also helps create students’ identities as thinkers and intellectuals in an English language classroom in which certain circulating discourses and practices have attempted to infantilize them at times. This has important bearings and implications for EAP students because, instead of being infantilized in some ways by the content material and classroom practices revolving around perceived needs of ‘linguistic remediation’ (Morgan, 2009), they can rehearse the complex academic performativities required to succeed in university classes in the relatively safe zone of an EAP classroom. Although class discussion is non-existent for much larger undergraduate classes, students will be expected to perform at an acceptable level in their subsequent smaller seminar classes, be they in undergraduate or graduate courses. However, unless EAP students fully engage with texts in ways that interrogate content and language in dialogic classroom spaces, augmenting and facilitating their meaning-making abilities, and have teachers to help them read with and against these texts using a variety of approaches, it is questionable if EAP programs are doing enough to prepare them for the academic rigors that lie ahead. As we have seen, Emilia’s expanding toolkit of functional grammar and critical literacy approaches re-shaped her classroom practices. However, this toolkit was not intended to be, nor was it actualized as ‘a fixed body of methods and techniques’ (Morgan, 1998: 5) for her; instead, I believe it facilitated classroom practices that better addressed the needs of her students through more meaningful dialogical and, hence, expanded engagements with texts, discourses and their social purposes. In addition, her evolving practices will face the challenges of addressing the complex demands of the multimodal texts that are increasingly part of many academic disciplines and curricula, and with which the students, although quite familiar in their everyday encounters in market-driven spaces such as YouTube and Facebook, need to be engaged more critically if reading is to be ‘an active process of sign-making, and not just information retrieval’ (Morgan & Ramanathan, 2005: 158). A significant part of Emilia pushing herself in new directions included her using technology in the classroom to address the increasing multimodal aspects of the academic curriculum. However, despite the growing importance of a multimodal classroom, often schools and programs lack the necessary infrastructure and/or training to equip teachers who are unfamiliar with rapidly developing technologies and their uses for increasing the students’ meaning-making potential. On several occasions when I observed her classes in which she was using online videos as the central text for that day’s lesson, the university’s so-called ‘smart classroom’ failed to function adequately due to the poor design of the various interfaces or the overload of the bandwidth capacity allotted to that particular floor in the building. Emilia

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

187

also made the point that there was not enough training for the EAP faculty to become fully conversant with all the technological possibilities in the classroom. Although tempted to continue what she had been doing before, that is, essentially ignoring opportunities to use technology in her classroom due to institutional constraints and the program curriculum, she realized from her engagement with a more multimodal curriculum in both the Spring and Summer term classes that its affordances are noticeable: Emilia:

But visual medium now, it’s just really, I notice how much more impact a lot of this has, and how, um, how wonderful it can be for students to react to a video as opposed to a piece of writing. So I’m going to try to use that much more and get out of my comfort zone, and really use the visual medium to marry with the, you know, and I’ve tried to do it with some but I think I should try to be across the board. It should be a lot more, so, that’s one thing I do plan to do. Um, and I think it will make my teaching more interesting.

Reflections on our Collaboration If there is one crucial lesson I have taken from the collaboration with Emilia, it is the importance of putting critical pedagogies approaches into classroom practices – the necessity of praxis with practitioners. As Emilia repeatedly reminded me throughout our collaborative process, critical literacy approaches as they are theorized and discussed in academic publications and how they are actually materialized in teaching practices can be quite different at times, and especially so with each new set of students with their own lived identities in their readings of the texts and accompanying discourses in social circulation. In this section, I scrutinize my own role as researcher, and problematize the hierarchical relationship between me and Emilia, despite its largely collaborative nature. Inasmuch as classroom ethnographic research is expected to feature ‘an explicit account by researchers . . . about their own role or history in a project and unanticipated influences over the findings’ (Duff, 2007: 978), my intention here is not ‘to apologize for “contaminating”’ (Duff, 2007: 978) this particular classroom research site, but rather to acknowledge my role as a participant and learner, and to disabuse the notion that I was an impartial, impersonal and dispassionate agent (Duff, 2007). In any researcher–practitioner relationship, there is an essential power differential in the very nature of the relationship, even if it is seen and

188 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

practiced as a collaborative partnership. Most research is written up and published by researchers, not practitioners and, thus, half of the partnership’s voice is often missing in the resulting artifact of a scholarly article or book. Because of researchers usually (but not always) possessing a higher degree than participating practitioners, it is these researchers who are accorded more recognition, more authority, more legitimacy by those who ‘count’. These are the various institutional gatekeepers who control: what (and who) gets published in high-ranking journals; the papers selected for prestigious conferences; and, ultimately, who gets cited more, and by whom, all of which are the forms of currency so treasured in academia. The practitioner? Often they are not seen by those who count as having ‘useful’ personal knowledge, much less producing new knowledge of any worth to the academy (Gitlin, 1990). Most EAP instructors are doubly positioned in this regard. First, they are often regarded by administrators in the affiliated university as merely serving the full-time faculty and this is materially reflected in many of them having non-tenured status working on shortterm contracts. The second way they are positioned is by researchers working in the applied linguistics and TESOL fields, who may at times tend to omit the practitioners’ viewpoints, experiences and voices in their reporting, particularly if it is of a quantitative nature. Mindful of this dynamic, due both in part to my having been an EAP instructor for many years, and to my own committed stance in an ongoing naming and critique of the operation of power in the social fields in which the rules of exchange are slanted in favor of one actor over others, and which needed to be addressed in actual everyday practices, I strove to keep in mind the three operating principles of ‘empowering research’ outlined by Cameron et al. (1992). First, Emilia was never treated as an ‘object’ for my research purposes as she had her own agencies of meaning making in the collaboration, and this was often recognized and articulated in our discussions. Secondly, she had her own agenda and her own motivations and purposes in participating in this research and working with me. Thirdly, I shared my observations and thoughts in our research meetings, and rather than seeing myself as ‘giving’ her knowledge, we both viewed the two of us as co- constructing knowledge in our interactions with the texts on functional grammar and critical literacy, in the classroom with the students that I observed, and in our reflections on the practices that generated further knowledge and lived experiences. Therefore, I did not regard myself as the all-knowing researcher who was ‘empowering’ Emilia; instead Emilia and I both viewed our working relationship as one of being between two English language teaching professionals seeking knowledge in our collaborations, and to that end transforming

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

189

‘knowledge-making practices’ (Toohey & Waterstone, 2004: 292) in the EAP classroom. The fact that I provided her with articles to read can be viewed by some as constructing the very hierarchy between researcher and practitioner that is so problematic as I have just mentioned. However, in the act of providing her with articles to read, my intention was not to position her as someone less than knowing or who had little to contribute on her own. Rather, it was to find ways with her as to how to engage students more effectively and meaningfully in the classroom. In our joint exploration of trying to understand language, literacy and language teaching in alternative ways and implementing these practices differently in the classroom, we searched for concrete tools for both the students and her to use in deconstructing and reconstructing academic discourse. This search was partly due to my being excited by the potential of functional grammar and critical literacy in EAP classrooms as it was presented in these articles, and my wanting to share this excitement about its possibilities with Emilia. I think these practices were read accordingly by Emilia herself in our last research meeting that concluded the formal collaboration: Christian: Emilia: Christian: Emilia:

Yeah . . . any kind of final, um, any thoughts in terms of, you know, after 11 months of working together? Yeah, well, I have lots of thoughts. Right. Um . . . so the first is it’s been an incredibly beneficial experience. Um, I have really no negative, um, nothing negative to say. Um, I think, it’s interesting because (a faculty member) asked me if I really understood what I was getting myself into and I don’t know that I totally did, you know, at the beginning. Um, but I really, what I really appreciate from the whole process is, well, learning a lot of stuff from you that I wouldn’t otherwise have learned. I think I really appreciate your input into, um, your input as a sounding board for what happened in the class as a past tense, and then being able to build on that because you have the awareness of texts that are out there and research that exists on the topic. And then being able to, you know, from that, read sort of what’s going on in my class and at the same time be able to incorporate, um, all that new material into my teaching which has really, um, developed my teaching and that’s been incredibly useful. And I love to learn new things that I can use in the class. It just opens up my mind to a new way of thinking and um, that’s been incredibly useful to, not to my philosophy of teaching,

190

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Christian: Emilia:

Christian: Emilia:

but to the way I teach, so to my actually pedagogical method, or methodology. Uh, so the idea of, you know, primarily what we discussed was what? Critical literacy, functional grammar and, um, well, everything within those two sort of umbrella categories, right? Right, right. And uh, so the functional grammar has been, I don’t think I would have found that on my own for a long time. And so to speed up the process of finding a very, uh, specific way, that’s already out there that I didn’t know about, of, uh, being able to teach academic English in a more systematic, easy-to-approach way and get the students to understand academic English a lot faster by understanding it myself a lot faster is great. You cut out probably a year and a half of what would have been sort of blundering through it to find it on my own and I don’t know that I ever would have. So that’s really, thank you for that. Um, ‘cause you get stuck with certain things. Right. You know? And you think, ‘OK, well, it’s not in the textbooks anywhere.’ You wait for new textbooks to come in that sort of have this and you say, ‘Oh! That’s useful!’ You know? But if nobody points it out to you, you know, how many teachers do research on this stuff? You do it, and I don’t think I would have found it in my Masters for a while if at all. So that was great. The critical literacy has totally rocked my world. It really has. It has changed my whole teaching paradigm, um, particularly with regard to reading because, um, I have always been a little bit not totally happy about the way I teach reading and a little bit nervous about, wondering how to improve that. Um, and then academic reading is OK but you’re reading for information but that’s not the only thing. And it seemed like there was this big amorphous mass that was kind of missing, you know, it’s there but it’s not there. And um, and so I knew that I needed to improve the way I taught reading. And it’s interesting how the universe just brings you things when you, you know, sort of state a need and in you come, you know? Um, so the whole idea of critical literacy and academic English and teaching [the advanced level classes] has been so useful, so useful. Like, um, making the students understand text in a

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

191

completely different way, uh, is kind of the missing piece in my reading teaching. Um, so I had always taught it from the comprehension point of view and the vocabulary point of view and the grammatical point of view, um, but I had never really done it from this meta-linguistic, sociocultural, sociopolitical point of view. Um, and that is going to be so useful to the students as they enter undergraduate and graduate studies. So I can explain why academic texts are more difficult but I can also get them to think critically. And getting somebody to think critically is not simple, and this gives you a complete framework – well, not a complete framework, but at least a partial framework on how to get them to think critically about texts and um, on top of the functional grammar. What a beautiful partnership that is of those two, um, areas, you know? And particularly for this level that I’m teaching now. I mean I think it could be used at other levels as well, but it’s incredibly useful for what I’m teaching now so I think the whole process of, and I don’t know that, um, that I would have learned as much if we had not had the exchanges we had. And that’s one of the things (a faculty member) and I discussed was the whole idea. She said, ‘Do you think, you know, if Christian had just come in to observe.’ She said, ‘Do you think you got a lot out of this process ‘cause of the process or because of you?’ And I said, ‘Oh no, definitely it’s because of you.’ Um, and because we actually, because of the interactivity of it, that if you had come in just as a simple observer I might have learned something, but I certainly wouldn’t have learned as much as I did, um, with you giving me material, you know, to read, the theory, and then being able to put the theory into practice is huge, you know? So I could actually practice, see if it worked, and it did. And those lessons are really kind of amazing. So I think I will definitely start to do that in all my reading classes, you know, do the comprehension but still just add the other component to it and always have a talk with them about the critical aspect of the text. My working with Emilia has enriched my own research and teaching practices immeasurably. Time and time again, I was reminded by her of the crucial need to fully engage in praxis, something that some academics tend to forget as they retreat further into the realms of theory increasingly

192 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

divorced from practical contexts. Far from having the ‘answer’ to all the issues raised in this research, I was instead seeking along with Emilia a deeper understanding of the complex needs of the students as they work to become more proficient and skilled in academic English literacies. Relying on both our extensive EAP teaching experiences, I feel we were able to begin this important task. Often her insights about teaching and the nature of learning academic English aided in furthering the research, and were incorporated in the analysis presented here in this book. As discussed previously, practitioners are not impressed with complex theories if these are not easily implemented in practical ways in the classroom. Since teachers are the actual ones doing the hard work of teaching students academic English, their voices need to be heard and heeded more. Critical literacy as it is sometimes presented in the literature can seem to be somewhat of an abstract and perhaps intimidating approach, especially if it is laden with top-heavy theories. As Emilia taught me, critical EAP pedagogy has to be considered in the specific, immediate contexts of any class. This might be an obvious point to some, but at least for me it was worth relearning the lesson. During the course of our collaboration, she repeatedly raised important issues facing teachers, which again served to remind researchers of the messy realities that may not be accounted for in their good intentions. The institutional constraints in implementing a critical literacy pedagogy in an EAP class can be a major obstacle given the pressures to get through the assigned textbook. Another valid issue was the seeming absence of any practical guides for teachers who are receptive to critical literacy pedagogy approaches in their classrooms but are newcomers or novices (Lewison et al., 2002). What are the ways to scaffold practical critical literacy approaches, and how can interested EAP instructors learn these scaffolding sequences? These are crucial issues for both researchers and practitioners to address and think through, and which call for more collaborative inquiries of this nature.

Interrogating the Critical: A Reflexive Account If being critical is to focus on ‘a complex understanding of how naming constitutes the world through text and discourse’ (Luke, 2004: 22), does the ensuing understanding constitute one voice, one agreed-upon critique of text and discourse, or does it contain an unruly assemblage of multiple and conflicting voices articulating embodied histories of invested, stratified and motivated stances? Furthermore, in the spirit of critical reflexivity in examining the rationale of adopting critical literacy practices, Luke (2004: 25)

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

193

asked, ‘what exactly is the compelling reason for second language educators to engage with the critical?’ Is it only because ‘TESOL is a pedagogical site and institution for educating the racial and linguistic Other’ (Luke, 2004: 25)? Is engaging with the critical in the classroom an opposition to teaching practices that remain ‘about, within, and for the nation, tacitly about the protection and production of its Culture (and, by implication, its preferred ethnicities and races, languages, and codes) and committed to the production of its sovereign subjects’ (Luke, 2004: 24), and thus a ‘technology for domesticating the Other into nation’ (Luke, 2004: 28)? I raise several more questions at this point. First, in the context of critical pedagogies in an EAP classroom situated in a university-affiliated IEP comprising mainly international students, many of whom plan to return to their home countries, would the teaching here be one of domesticating these students into the nation? Or is it instead domesticating one into the global economy? Is ‘Culture’ always articulating language, race and nationalism, be it former Empires or present ones, or has culture in the EAP classroom also now become a nexus of globalizing consumerism that has positioned corporate free market and entrepreneurial sensibilities as the only culture worth talking and writing about? How then would the critical in this context engage with technologies for domesticating the Other into sovereign neoliberal subjects of globalized capitalist economies? Secondly, given the various forms of capital many international students possess in social fields that extend far beyond the locale of a university site in North America, how do critical pedagogies address the power differentials that at times may be tipped in favor of some of these students vis-à-vis the many non-tenured, relatively low salaried EAP instructors? Although these instructors may possess a level of power in their classrooms with their traditional disciplinary tools such as determining grades, assessing performance, giving out homework and testing, students paying high tuition fees for market-driven tertiary academic English language programs positioning them as ‘clients’ or ‘customers’ have a certain institutional leverage that can influence their own classes in ways other students may not possess. In this context then, what does critical EAP pedagogy mean? Is it drawing attention to how these students may be positioned in their present social contexts which are quite different from the ones to which they are accustomed, and also how they might be positioned in future institutional contexts such as the university once they leave their confines of these classes? Or is it making the possible connections between these present and future disadvantageous positions and the students’ own implicated practices that they may be involved with in their home countries, which may be based on gender, class and racial discrimination and oppression?

194 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Lastly, how are EAP instructor practices tied to and invested in taking up critical pedagogical approaches in the classroom with these particular student populations? How do these instructors’ embodied cultural, social, gendered and classed identities and histories play a role in their adoption of and engagement with critical EAP? Given that many English language instructors have traditionally been predominantly White and female, how have their own local and global experiences that have shaped their thinking and views connected with the sometimes very different local and global experiences of their students in these contextual engagements? And how do we engage with the critical with each EAP class, and with students with their own lived experiences that are renewed, re-imagined and re-articulated in their mediations of old and new texts and discourses? In having EAP students who are privileged (Vandrick, 1995, 2009) to scrutinize and critique the particular ‘rules of exchange within a social field’ (Luke, 2004: 26) which have clearly brought them opportunities to become part of a global elite, perhaps one possible pathway lies in highlighting the ways in which these students will invariably encounter being positioned as the Other as they are interrelated with their own practices of Othering, whether locally or globally. And while critical literacy pedagogy does involve ‘an epistemological Othering and “doubling” of the world – a sense of being beside oneself or outside of oneself in another epistemological, discourse and political space than one typically would inhabit’ (Luke, 2004: 26), it is important that critical EAP pedagogies do not privilege culturally constructed epistemologies at the expense of the students’ own cultural and epistemological spaces in the name of the critical. If being critical truly entails a doubling of the world – their own worlds, their societies, their spaces of the everyday – then both the teacher and the students will have to embark together in the classroom on their intertwined journeys to inhabit not only each other’s epistemological, discourse and sociopolitical spaces and ones they may already share, but also to question, challenge, recreate and transform all of these spaces in the process.

Commonalities of Critical Literacy Practices Although there may not be a uniform look to all critical literacy approaches and practices in any given classroom, in this last section of the book I outline what I think are seven shared commonalities in the English language classroom. The first one is that it should draw upon both teachers’ and students’ historically lived experiences, identifications and cultural epistemologies in dialogical responses to readings and writings of texts that may

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

195

not be familiar to either the teacher or the students. Together, they can work in tandem in co-constructing and making various meanings – be they aligning, adopting, reproducing, oppositional, alternative or counter – in their classroom. It is important to reiterate here that critical literacy pedagogy should not privilege Western culturally constructed epistemologies at the expense of students’ own cultural and historical epistemologies. Being critical entails engaging with and contesting hegemonic discourses and representations of the everyday that become common-sense ‘realities’, and this is not for the faint-hearted, for naming the world through alternative texts and counter-hegemonic discourses takes work. A second shared commonality is the assumptions and views toward language, texts and discourses. One construct that some critical literacy approaches draw upon is the view of language as social semiotic (Halliday, 1978). This addresses the social contexts or situations in which language is taking place, the lexicogrammatical choices we make in making meanings, how those choices construe particular meanings and not others, and who is saying what to whom, and how. These all shape texts and discourses representing the world, society and our everyday. Janks and others (e.g. Janks, 2010, 2014) have argued that texts are thus indeed partial – never impartial – and the choices we make as text producers draw upon a range of multimodal meaningmaking resources that sometimes privilege one way of speaking or talking about the world. For EAP practitioners interested in using critical literacy approaches in their classrooms for the first time, Janks’ latest work in collaboration with Kerryn Dixon, Ana Ferreira, Stella Granville and Denise Newfield (Janks, 2014) is an excellent resource for practitioners with its many practical activities for the classroom. A third commonality is that a critical literacy approach should always take into account and name the issues of power as manifested not only in the many domains in the classroom but also in society at large. These include but are not limited to: (1) how it is instantiated in texts, as in the privileging of certain academic genres; (2) the complex language needed to be viewed as academic and the accompanying struggles for many EAP students to adopt this into their own literacies practices; (3) the ever-shifting negotiations of distributions of power between teachers and students regarding who has the chance to speak, who can say what, when it can be said and how it can be said (or written); and (4) the power of discourses and representations circulating not only through their curriculum materials and textbooks, but also through institutional policies and mandates, teachers’ views toward English language learning and learners, and the societies in which EAP students now find themselves sometimes struggling to adapt. These issues of power are of course part of the larger societal fabrics that constitute and are constitutive of prevailing

196 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

attitudes and beliefs which are materially manifested in policies and laws. Who controls information and its dissemination and monitoring also involves power relations in this age of social media and should be interrogated as well. The fourth commonality is that critical literacy approaches attempt to actively engage with both students’ and teachers’ notions of the everyday – their common sense, in Gramscian terms. It has been all too common for many who identity with liberal, progressive and radical causes to assume that simply putting out their ideas, which in their view, make eminent ‘sense’, will resonate and take hold with the public at large. However, as Lakoff (2006) and others have pointed out, this has proven to be largely ineffective because of the lack of engagement with the conflicting layering of commonsense discourses. It is not enough to lecture or tell students (or the general public for that matter) about the progressive and/or radical stands on issues of social justice, the environment, gender equality, LGBT rights, economic disparities, and so on. In fact, this approach does not constitute any critical literacy practice. It is rather the approaches to engage students in dialogical interactions around the texts as these may either be featured in the curriculum – or arise unpredictably at times, or ‘erupt’ as Janks (2010) notes. These dialogical engagements mediating texts and discourses have to tap into that healthy nucleus of good sense that many people share in innately feeling the unfairness and injustices as these relate to their own everyday lives, and connect these feelings and views to the broader injustices interwoven into the global common fabric affecting us all. Only by doing this will common sense be transformed from within its own nucleus so that dominant hegemonic practices and discourses can be rendered asunder. A fifth commonality is that an important, integral aspect of any critical literacy approach has to incorporate a form of critical self-reflexive practice, particularly for teachers. This involves developing and sharpening one’s own awareness in viewing, situating and assessing one’s own societal, economic, gendered, racial (and so on) positions vis-à-vis the interrelated and complex power formations, and examining the varying degrees of benefiting, accommodating or suffering from particular positional relationships. This might take the form of investigating one’s own privilege (see Vandrick, 2009), whether it is assumed, invisible or transparent, for example. Critical selfreflexivity encompasses not only one’s positional relationships, but also examining how ongoing classroom practices shape monological (too much teacher talk?) or dialogical pathways for students. Are teachers inadvertently or unintentionally enacting dominant power relations with students that go beyond the already institutional power embedded through assessment, grades and recommendations, such as silencing student voices or admonishing them to speak only English in the classroom?

The Ever yday Life of an E AP Cl assroom

197

The sixth commonality would be that critical literacy approaches and practices seek to create, renew and restore a sense of community. Within the past 30 or so years, the cultural formations of neoliberal policies and discourses have sought to diminish and destroy senses of belonging to a larger whole by championing the notion of the individual in terms of choices, freedom and competition, all with a free market governance. This neoliberal sense of the self disregards and disdains communities, their histories and the accompanying collectivities mobilized around these agencies. By building a community within a classroom, and extending beyond those four walls through resources such as establishing networks via local neighborhood ones to online social media, teachers and students can work to counter and contest the cult of the entrepreneur of the self. Lastly, the seventh shared commonality of any critical literacy in EAP classrooms is that all the above approaches in developing critical practices around reading, speaking and writing about texts, discourses and representations should have a common aim for students and teachers alike. This aim includes of course the primary goal in equipping students with the necessary skill sets to go on and do well in their tertiary courses and studies. As I have argued throughout this book, critical literacy is not a detraction from language learning but can serve to be an essential part of both the teachers’ and students’ toolkit in grappling with unfamiliar academic language, discourses, registers and texts. But the aim should encompass more than this. In the societies in which EAP students now find themselves, at times both close to (in terms of digital globalized connectivities) and far from their home countries (both in material geographical terms and cultural dislocations and affective longings), they may be at times Othered in all sorts of ways. This Othering can take the forms of racializing, essentializing, gendering, fear of the Other, religious faiths, linguistic, social class and cultural positionings. Teachers initiating with their students critical approaches to these discourses, some of which may be featured in their EAP curriculum materials such as ‘Jennifer Wong’ in Chapter 6, can help students make sense of their dislocations, possible alienations, anxieties and confusions regarding their new situations in tertiary classrooms and other contexts. These feelings of confusion and dislocations may be prompted in part by their encounters with at-times unfamiliar reading and subject positions not only offered by curriculum textbooks and the classroom discourses they generate, but also by the larger socially circulating discourses attempting to fix meanings of the everyday represented back to all of us. Issues that affect not only EAP students but also the world at large such as climate change and the ensuing environmental crises, global conflicts, increasing worldwide social and economic inequalities, and the desires for a better tomorrow all tie us together as part of the

198

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

common threads of humanity, and thus should be part of this larger aim. Thus, the aim of critical literacy is to mobilize students’ and teachers’ agencies in learning not only how to speak back to power but, importantly, also to seek to redistribute it in working for social, economic and political justice for people both locally and globally. An EAP classroom may be a local site but inasmuch as it is a nexus of flows of international and immigrant students as well as the hegemonic discourses of power and meaning and the accompanying counter-hegemonic discourses of resistance and speaking back, it is in fact a microcosm of the world at large.

References

Achugar, M., Schleppegrell, M. and Oteíza, T. (2007) Engaging teachers in language analysis: A functional linguistics approach to reflective literacy. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 6 (2), 8–24. Amin, S. (2004) Globalism or apartheid on a global scale? In I. Wallerstein (ed.) The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée (pp. 5–30). Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. Anderson, G.L. and Irvine, P. (1993) Informing critical literacy with ethnography. In C. Lankshear and P.L. McLaren (eds) Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis, and the Postmodern (pp. 81–104). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Apple, M.W. (1999) Power, Meaning, and Identity: Essays in Critical Educational Studies. New York: Peter Lang. Apple, M.W. (2004) Ideology and Curriculum (3rd edn). New York: Routledge. Arrighi, G. (2000) Globalization, state sovereignty, and the ‘endless’ accumulation of capital. In D. Kalb, M. van der Land, R. Staring, B. van Steenbergen and N. Wilterdink (eds) The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back in (pp. 125–148). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Athanases, S.Z. and Heath, S.B. (1995) Ethnography in the study of the teaching and learning of English. Research in the Teaching of English 29, 263–287. Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Benesch, S. (1993) ESL, ideology, and the politics of pragmatism. TESOL Quarterly 27 (4), 705–716. Benesch, S. (1996) Needs analysis and curriculum development in EAP: An example of a critical approach. TESOL Quarterly 30 (4), 723–738. Benesch, S. (1999) Rights analysis: Studying power relations in an academic setting. English for Specific Purposes 18 (4), 313–327. Benesch, S. (2001) Critical English for Academic Purposes: Theory, Politics, and Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Benesch, S. (2006) Critical media awareness: Teaching resistance to interpellation. In J. Edge (ed.) (Re-)Locating TESOL in an Age of Empire (pp. 49–64). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Benesch, S. (2012) Considering Emotions in Critical English Language Teaching: Theories and Praxis. New York: Routledge.

199

200

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Block, D. (2007a) Second Language Identities. London: Continuum. Block, D. (2007b) The rise of identity in SLA research, post Firth and Wagner (1997). Modern Language Journal 91 (5), 863–876. Block, D. and Cameron, D. (eds) (2002) Globalization and Language Teaching. London: Routledge. Block, D., Gray, J. and Holborow, M. (2012) Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics. London: Routledge. Blommaert, J. (2003) Commentary: A sociolinguistics of globalization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (4), 607–623. Blommaert, J. (2005) Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. (2008) Review of the book Language and Globalization. Discourse & Society 19 (2), 257–262. Blommaert, J. (2013) Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (trans. R. Nice) (original work published 1979). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (2001) Neoliberal newspeak: Notes on the new planetary vulgate. Radical Philosophy 108, 1–6. boyd, d. and Ellison, N. (2008) Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, 210–230. Brenner, N., Peck, J. and Theodore, N. (2010) After neoliberalization? Globalizations 7 (3), 327–345. Brown, H.D. (2000) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (4th edn). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education. Brown, W. (2005) Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Byrnes, H. (2006) What kind of resource is language and why does it matter for advanced language learning? An introduction. In H. Byrnes (ed.) Advanced Language Learning: The Contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 1–28). New York: Continuum. Byrnes, H. (2009a) Emergent L2 German writing ability in a curricular context: A longitudinal study of grammatical metaphor. Linguistics and Education 20 (1), 50–66. Byrnes, H. (2009b) Systemic-functional reflections on instructed foreign language acquisition as meaning-making: An introduction. Linguistics and Education 20 (1), 1–9. Cameron, D., Frazer, E., Harvey, P., Rampton, M.B.H. and Richardson, K. (1992) Researching Language: Issues of Power and Method. London: Routledge. Campbell, A. (2005) The birth of neoliberalism in the United States: A reorganisation of capitalism. In A. Saad-Fiho and D. Johnston (eds) Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader (pp. 187–198). London: Pluto Press. Canagarajah, A.S. (1993) Critical ethnography of a Sri Lankan classroom: Ambiguities in student opposition to reproduction through ESOL. TESOL Quarterly 27 (4), 601–626. Canagarajah, A.S. (1999) Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chowdhury, R. and Phan L.H. (2014) Desiring TESOL and International Education: Market Abuse and Exploitation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Christie, F. (1985) Language and schooling. In S. Tchudi (ed.) Language, Schooling and Society (pp. 21–40). Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook. Chua, A. (2011) Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin Group. Chun, C.W. (2009a) Contesting neoliberal discourses in EAP: Critical praxis in an IEP classroom. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2), 111–120.

References

201

Chun, C.W. (2009b) Critical literacies and graphic novels for ELLs: Teaching Maus. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 53 (2), 144–153. Chun, C. (2012) Critical Language in Action. Occupy LA video, 19 November. Los Angeles, CA: The People’s Collective University. See https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bVHbuiaouyk Chun, C.W. (2013) The ‘neoliberal citizen’: Resemiotizing globalized identities in EAP materials. In J. Gray (ed.) Critical Perspectives on Language Teaching Materials (pp. 64–87). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clarke, M. and Morgan, B. (2011) Education and social justice in neoliberal times: Historical and pedagogical perspectives from two postcolonial contexts. In M.R. Hawkins (ed.) Social Justice Language Teacher Education (pp. 63–85). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Coffin, C., Donohue, J. and North, S. (2009) Exploring English Grammar: From Formal to Functional. London: Routledge. Colás, A. (2005) Neoliberalism, globalisation and international relations. In A. Saad-Fiho and D. Johnston (eds) Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader (pp. 70–79). London: Pluto Press. Cole, D.R. and Pullen, D.L. (eds) (2010) Multiliteracies in Motion: Current Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (eds) (2000) Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal 4 (3), 164–195. Couldry, N. (2010) Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. London: Sage. Crystal, D. (1997) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cummins, J. (2001) Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society (2nd edn). Ontario, CA: California Association of Bilingual Education. Debord, G. (1983) Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red. Democracy Now (2009) Noam Chomsky on the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, U.S. Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire (video file). Democracy Now!, 21 September. See www.democracynow.org/2009/4/13/noam_chomsky_on_the_ global_economic (accessed 21 September 2009). Denos, C., Toohey, K., Neilson, K. and Waterstone, B. (2009) Collaborative Research in Multilingual Classrooms. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think. Boston, MA: D.C. Heath. Dixon, P. (2008) Future of Paper, Pulp and Packaging Industry: Packaging, Logistics, Print and Manufacturing Speaker (video file). Pjvdixon Videos, 31 May. See www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HXPx6MK84gQ Dudley-Evans, T. and St. John, M.J. (1998) Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duff, P.A. (2007) Qualitative approaches to classroom research with English language learners. In J. Cummins and C. Davison (eds) International Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 973–986). New York: Springer. Duménil, G. and Lévy, D. (2005) The neoliberal (counter-)revolution. In A. Saad-Fiho and D. Johnston (eds) Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader (pp. 9–19). London: Pluto Press.

202

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Dussel Peters, E. (2006) The Mexican economy since NAFTA: Socioeconomic integration or disintegration? In D. Plehwe, B. Walpen and G. Neunhöffer (eds) Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique (pp. 120–138). London: Routledge. Edwards, R. and Usher, R. (2000) Globalisation and Pedagogy: Space, Place and Identity. London: Routledge. Epstein, R. (2002) Redesigning the world: Ethical questions about genetic engineering. In R. Sherlock and J.D. Morrey (eds) Ethical Issues in Biotechnology (pp. 47–70). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Erling, E.J. and Seargeant, P. (eds) (2013) English and Development: Policy, Pedagogy and Globalization. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Flowerdew, J. and Peacock, M. (2001) Issues in EAP: A preliminary perspective. In J. Flowerdew and M. Peacock (eds) Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes (pp. 8–24). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forgacs, D. (ed.) (2000) The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935. New York: New York University Press. Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (trans. A. Sheridan) (original work published 1975). New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham and K. Soper) (original works published 1972– 1977). New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1988) Technologies of the self. In L.H. Martin, H. Gutman and P.H. Hutton (eds) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 16–49). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Foucault, M. (1993) About the beginning of the hermeneutics of the self. Political Theory 21 (2), 198–227. Foucault, M. (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. New York: Picador. Frank, A.G. (1998) ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California Press Freebody, P. (2008) Critical literacy education: On living with ‘innocent language’. In B.V. Street and N. Hornberger (volume eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education: Vol. 2. Literacy (2nd edn) (pp. 107–118). New York: Springer. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (trans. M.B. Ramos). New York: Continuum. Gebhard, M., Harman, R. and Seger, W. (2007) Reclaiming recess: Learning the language of persuasion. Language Arts 84 (5), 419–430. Gebhard, M., Demers, J. and Castillo-Rosenthal, Z. (2008) Teachers as critical text analysts: L2 literacies and teachers’ work in the context of high-stakes school reform. Journal of Second Language Writing 17, 274–291. Gebhard, M., Willett, J., Caicedo, J.P.J. and Piedra, A. (2011) Systemic functional linguistics, teachers’ professional development, and ELLs’ academic literacy practices. In T. Lucas (ed.) Teacher Preparation for Linguistically Diverse Classrooms: A Resource for Teacher Educators (pp. 91–110). New York: Routledge. Gee, J.P. (2004) Discourse analysis: What makes it critical? In R. Rogers (ed.) An Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis in Education (pp. 19–50). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gee, J.P. (2005) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (2nd edn). New York: Routledge. Gee, J.P. (2008) Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (3rd edn). New York: Routledge.

References

203

Greenhouse, C.J. (ed.) (2010) Ethnographies of Neoliberalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996) The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2008) Diverse economies: Performative practices for ‘other worlds’. Progress in Human Geography 32 (5), 613–632. Gitlin, A. (1990) Educative research, voice and social change. Harvard Educational Review 60, 443–466. Gordon, C. (1991) Governmental rationality: An introduction. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 1–51). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gore, J. (1992) What can we do for you! What can ‘we’ do for ‘you’?: Struggling over empowerment in critical and feminist pedagogy. In C. Luke and J. Gore (eds) Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy (pp. 54–73). New York: Routledge. Gounari, P. (2006) Contesting the cynicism of neoliberal discourse: Moving towards a language of possibility. Studies in Language and Capitalism 1, 77–96. Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (trans. Q. Hoare and G. NowellSmith). New York: International Publishers. Gray, J. (2002) The global coursebook in English language teaching. In D. Block and D. Cameron (eds) Globalization and Language Teaching (pp. 151–167). London: Routledge. Gray, J. (2010) The branding of English and the culture of the new capitalism: Representations of the world of work in English language textbooks. Applied Linguistics 31 (5), 714–733. Grenfell, M. (1996) Bourdieu and initial teacher education: A post-structuralist approach. British Educational Research Journal 22 (3), 287–303. Grossberg, L. (2005) Globalization. In T. Bennett, L. Grossberg and M. Morris (eds) New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society (revised edn) (pp. 146–150). Oxford: Blackwell. Hall, S. (1980) Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis (eds) Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–1979 (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson. Hall, S. (1996) The question of cultural identity. In S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert and K. Thompson (eds) Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Sciences (pp. 595–634). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Hall, S. (1997) Representation and the Media (video transcript). Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation. Hall, S. and O’Shea, A. (2013) Common-sense neoliberalism. Soundings 55, 8–24. Hall, S., Evans, J. and Nixon, S. (eds) (2013) Representation (2nd edn). London: Sage. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M.A.K. (1993) Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education 5, 93–116. Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd edn). London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M.A.K. (1998) Things and relations: Regrammaticising experience as technical knowledge. In J.R. Martin and R. Veel (eds) Reading Science: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourses of Science (pp. 185–235). London: Routledge. Hammond, J. and Macken-Horarik, M. (1999) Critical literacy: Challenges and questions for ESL classrooms. TESOL Quarterly 33 (3), 528–544.

204

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Haque, E. (2007) Critical pedagogy in English for Academic Purposes and the possibility for ‘tactics’ of resistance. Pedagogy, Culture & Society 15 (1), 83–106. Harvey, D. (1995) Globalization in question. Rethinking Marxism 8 (4), 1–17. Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Hasan, R. (2003) Globalization, literacy and ideology. World Englishes 22 (4), 433–448. Hayek, F.A. (1944) The Road to Serfdom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hill, D. (ed.) (2009) Contesting Neoliberal Education: Public Resistance and Collective Advance. New York: Routledge. Hobsbawm, E. (1983) Introduction: Inventing traditions. In E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (pp. 1–14). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holborow, M. (2006) Ideology and language: Interconnections between neo-liberalism and English. In J. Edge (ed.) (Re-)locating TESOL in an Age of Empire (pp. 84–103). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Holborow, M. (2007) Language, ideology and neoliberalism. Journal of Language and Politics 6 (1), 51–73. Hood, S. (2008) Summary writing in academic contexts: Implicating meaning in processes of change. Linguistics and Education 19 (4), 351–365. Hyland, K. (2002) Specificity revisited: How far should we go now? English for Specific Purposes 21 (4), 385–395. Hyland, K. (2004) Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Hyland, K. (2006) English for Academic Purposes: An Advanced Resource Book. London: Routledge. Hyland, K. (2009) Academic Discourse: English in a Global Context. London: Continuum. Hyland, K. and Hamp-Lyons, L. (2002) EAP: Issues and directions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (1), 1–12. Iedema, R. (2003) Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication 2 (1), 29–57. Jameson, F. (1998) Notes on globalization as a philosophical issue. In F. Jameson and M. Miyoshi (eds) The Cultures of Globalization (pp. 54–77). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Janks, H. (2010) Literacy and Power. New York: Routledge. Janks, H. (ed.) (2014) Doing Critical Literacy: Texts and Activities for Students and Teachers. New York: Routledge. Janks, H. and Ivanic, R. (1992) Critical language awareness and emancipatory discourse. In N. Fairclough (ed.) Critical Language Awareness (pp. 305–331). London: Longman. Jewitt, C. (2006) Technology, Literacy and Learning: A Multimodal Approach. London: Routledge. Kellner, D. (2002) Theorizing globalization. Sociological Theory 20 (3), 285–305. Kellner, D. and Share, J. (2005) Toward critical media literacy: Core concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 26 (3), 369–386. KnowledgeAtWharton (2008) Globality: Why Companies are Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything (video file). KnowledgeAtWharton, 20 November. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jI8XKJI5rU&feature=channel_page. Kress, G. (2000) Multimodality. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds) Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures (pp. 182–202). London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge.

References

205

Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Edward Arnold. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual design (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J. and Tsatsarelis, C. (2001) Multimodal Teaching and Learning: The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom. London: Continuum. Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Bourne, J., Franks, A., Hardcastle, J., Jones, K. and Reid, E. (2005) English in Urban Classrooms: A Multimodal Perspective on Teaching and Learning. New York: Routledge/Falmer. Kubota, R. (2004) Critical multiculturalism and second language education. In B. Norton and K. Toohey (eds) Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 30–52). New York: Cambridge University Press. Kubota, R. (2009) Internationalization of universities: Paradoxes and responsibilities. Modern Language Journal 93, 612–616. Kumaravadivelu, B. (1999) Critical classroom discourse analysis. TESOL Quarterly 33 (3), 453–484. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003a) Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003b) Critical language pedagogy: A postmethod perspective on English language teaching. World Englishes 22 (4), 539–550. Kymlicka, W. (2013) Neo-liberal multiculturalism. In P.A. Hall and M. Lamont (eds) Social Resilience in the Neo-liberal Era (pp. 99–125). New York: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. (2006) Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2011) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (3rd edn). Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Lefebvre, H. (1984) Everyday Life in the Modern World. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Lefebvre, H. (1987) The everyday and everydayness. Yale French Studies 73, 7–11. Lefebvre, H. (1988) Toward a leftist cultural politics: Remarks occasioned by the centenary of Marx’s death. In C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 75–88). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991a) The Critique of Everyday Life. Vol. 1: Introduction. London: Verso. Lefebvre, H. (1991b) The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Leitner, H., Sheppard, E.S., Sziarto, K. and Maringanti, A. (2007) Contesting urban futures: Decentering neoliberalism. In H. Leitner, J. Peck and E.S. Sheppard (eds) Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers (pp. 1–25). New York: Guilford Press. Lemke, J.L. (2002) Travels in hypermodality. Visual Communication 1 (3), 299–325. Lemke, J.L. (2006) Towards critical multimedia literacy: Technology, research, and politics. In M. McKenna, D. Reinking, L. Labbo and R. Kieffer (eds) International Handbook of Literacy and Technology (2nd edn) (pp. 3–14). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lemke, T. (2001) ‘The birth of bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality. Economy and Society 30 (2), 190–207. Lewison, M., Flint, A.S. and Van Sluys, K. (2002) Taking on critical literacy: The journey of newcomers and novices. Language Arts 79 (5), 382–392. Lillis, T. and Curry, M.J. (2013) English, scientific publishing and participation in the global knowledge economy. In E.J. Erling and P. Seargeant (eds) English and Development: Policy, Pedagogy and Globalization (pp. 220–242). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

206

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Louie, V.S. (2004) Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity among Chinese Americans. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Luke, A. (2000) Critical literacy in Australia: A matter of context and standpoint. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 43 (5), 448–461. Luke, A. (2004) Two takes on the critical. In B. Norton and K. Toohey (eds) Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 21–29). New York: Cambridge University Press. Luke, A. (2008) TESOL in the corporate university. TESOL Quarterly 42 (2), 305–310. Luke, A. (2013) Regrounding critical literacy: Representation, facts and reality. In M.R. Hawkins (ed.) Framing Language and Literacies: Socially Situated Views and Perspectives (pp. 136–148). New York: Routledge. Luke, A. and Freebody, P. (1997) Shaping the social practices of reading. In S. Muspratt, A. Luke and P. Freebody (eds) Constructing Critical Literacies: Teaching and Learning Textual Practice (pp. 185–225). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Macken-Horarik, M. (2004) Interacting with the multimodal text: Reflections on image and verbiage in ArtExpress. Visual Communication 3 (1), 5–26. Mahboob, A. and Barrett, L. (eds) (2014) Englishes in Multilingual Contexts: Language Variation and Education. New York: Springer. Martin, J.R. (1991) Nominalization in science and humanities: Distilling knowledge and scaffolding text. In E. Ventola (ed.) Functional and Systemic Linguistics (pp. 307–337). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Martin, J.R. and Rothery, J. (1993) Grammar: Making meaning in writing. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds) The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing (pp. 137–153). London: Falmer Press. Master, P. (1998) Positive and negative aspects of the dominance of English. TESOL Quarterly 32, 716–725. McArthur, T. (2002) The Oxford Guide to World English. New York: Oxford University Press. McLaughlin, M. and DeVood, G. (2004) Critical literacy as comprehension: Expanding reader response. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 48 (1), 52–62. Mikulecky, B.S. and Jeffries, L. (2007) Advanced Reading Power. New York: Pearson Longman. MIT World (2009) Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (video file). MITvideo, 16 September. See http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/124 (accessed 16 September 2009). Morgan, B.D. (1998) The ESL Classroom: Teaching, Critical Practice, and Community Development. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Morgan, B. (2009) Revitalising the essay in an English for academic purposes course: Critical engagement, multiliteracies and the internet. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 12 (3), 309–324. Morgan, B. and Ramanathan, V. (2005) Critical literacies and language education: Global and local perspectives. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25, 151–169. Motha, S. and Lin, A. (2014) ‘Non-coercive rearrangements’: Theorizing desire in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 48 (2), 331–359; doi:10.1002/tesq.126. Newfield, D. (2011) From visual literacy to critical visual literacy: An analysis of educational materials. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 10 (1), 81–94. Norris, S. and Jones, R.H. (2005) Methodological principles and new directions in MDA. In S. Norris and R.H. Jones (eds) Discourse in Action: Introducing Mediated Discourse Analysis (pp. 201–206). London: Routledge. Norton, B. (1997) Language, identity, and the ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly 31 (3), 409–429. Norton, B. (2000) Identity and Language Learning. New York: Longman.

References

207

Norton, B. and Morgan, B. (2013) Poststructuralism. In C. Chapelle and L. Harklau (eds) Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell; doi:10.1002/ 9781405198431.wbeal0924. Norton, B. and Toohey, K. (eds) (2004) Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pappas, C.C. (1997) Making ‘collaboration’ problematic in collaborative school-university research: Studying with urban teacher researchers to transform literacy curriculum genres. In J. Flood, S.B. Heath and D. Lapp (eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts (pp. 215–231). New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA. Patel Stevens, L. and Bean, T.W. (2002) Reading in the digital era: Strategies for building critical literacy. In C.C. Block, L.B. Gambrell and M. Pressley (eds) Improving Comprehension Instruction: Rethinking Research, Theory, and Classroom Practice (pp. 308– 317). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Peck, J., Theodore, N. and Brenner, N. (2009) Postneoliberalism and its malcontents. Antipode 41, 94–116. Pennycook, A. (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. New York: Longman. Pennycook, A. (1995) English in the world/the world in English. In J.W. Tollefson (ed.) Power and Inequality in Language Education (pp. 34–58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pennycook, A. (1997) Vulgar pragmatism, critical pragmatism, and EAP. English for Specific Purposes 16 (4), 253–269. Pennycook, A. (1998) English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2001) Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pennycook, A. (2007) Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2010) English and globalization. In J. Maybin and J. Swann (eds) The Routledge Companion to English Language Studies (pp. 113–121). London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2012) Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2000) English in the new world order: Variations on a theme of linguistic imperialism and ‘World’ English. In T. Ricento (ed.) Ideology, Politics and Language Policies: Focus on English (pp. 87–106). Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Phillipson, R. (2001) English for globalisation or for the world’s people? International Review of Education 47 (3–4), 185–200. Raduntz, H. (2005) The marketization of education within the global capitalist economy. In M.W. Apple, J. Kenway and M. Singh (eds) Globalizing Education: Policies, Pedagogies, and Politics (pp. 231–245). New York: Peter Lang. Ramanathan, V. (2002) The Politics of TESOL Education: Writing, Knowledge, Critical Pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Ravelli, L. (2000) Getting started with functional analysis of texts. In L. Unsworth (ed.) Researching Language in Schools and Communities: Functional Linguistics Perspectives (pp. 27–64). London: Continuum. Roberts, J. (2006) Philosophizing the Everyday: Revolutionary Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Theory. London: Pluto Press. Rofel, L. (2007) Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

208

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

Rowsell, J. (2013) Working with Multimodality: Rethinking Literacy in a Digital Age. London: Routledge. Ruccio, D.F. (2008) Introduction: What are economic representations and what’s at stake? In D.F. Ruccio (ed.) Economic Representations: Academic and Everyday (pp. 1–31). New York: Routledge. Saad-Fiho, A. and Johnston, D. (eds) (2005) Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader. London: Pluto Press. Schleppegrell, M.J. (2004) The Language of Schooling: A Functional Linguistics Perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schleppegrell, M.J. and Colombi, M.C. (eds) (2002) Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages: Meaning With Power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schleppegrell, M. and de Oliveira, L.C. (2006) An integrated language and content approach for history teachers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5, 254–268. Schleppegrell, M.J. and Go, A.L. (2007) Analyzing the writing of English learners: A functional approach. Language Arts 84 (6), 529–538. Schleppegrell, M.J., Achugar, M. and Oteíza, T. (2004) The grammar of history: Enhancing content-based instruction through a functional focus on language. TESOL Quarterly 38 (1), 67–93. Scollon, R. (2001) Action and text: Towards an integrated understanding of the place of text in social (inter)action, mediated discourse analysis and the problem of social action. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 139–183). London: Sage. Scollon, R. (2008) Discourse itineraries: Nine processes of resemiotization. In V.K. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew and R.H. Jones (eds) Advances in Discourse Studies (pp. 233–244). London: Routledge. Scollon, R. and Scollon, S.W. (2003) Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. New York: Routledge. Scollon, R. and Scollon, S.W. (2004) Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. New York: Routledge. Shapiro, S.J., Wong, K., Perreault, W.D. and McCarthy, E.J. (2002) Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach (10th Canadian edn). Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Sherlock, R. and Morrey, J.D. (eds) (2002) Ethical Issues in Biotechnology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Singh, P. and Doherty, C. (2004) Global cultural flows and pedagogic dilemmas: Teaching in the global university contact zone. TESOL Quarterly 38 (1), 9–42. Starfield, S. (2004) ‘Why does this feel empowering?’: Thesis writing, concordancing, and the corporatizing university. In B. Norton and K. Toohey (eds) Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 138–157). New York: Cambridge University Press. Stein, P. (2004) Representations, rights, and resources: Multimodal pedagogies in the language and literacy classroom. In B. Norton and K. Toohey (eds) Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 95–115). New York: Cambridge University Press. Stein, P. (2008) Multimodal Pedagogies in Diverse Classrooms: Representation, Rights and Resources. London: Routledge. Swales, J. (1994) From the editors: From John M. Swales. English for Specific Purposes 13, 200–203. Takahashi, K. (2013) Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

References

209

Takaki, R. (1989) Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Penguin Books. Thompson, G. (2004) Introducing Functional Grammar (2nd edn). London: Hodder Education. Toohey, K. and Waterstone, B. (2004) Negotiating expertise in an action research community. In B. Norton and K. Toohey (eds) Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 291–310). New York: Cambridge University Press. Torres, C.A. (2009) Education and Neoliberal Globalization. New York: Routledge. TVO (2009a) The Debate: Politics in the Classroom (video file). TVO.org, 2 September. TVO (2009b) Anton Allahar: Competition Lecture, Why is the Whole World Not Developed? (video file). TVO.org, 15 September. See http://bigideas.tvo.org/episode/131012/antonallahar--competition-lecture (accessed 15 September 2009). Unsworth, L. (1999) Developing critical understanding of the specialised language of school science and history texts: A functional grammatical perspective. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 42 (7), 508–521. Vandrick, S. (1995) Privileged ESL university students. TESOL Quarterly 29 (2), 375–381. Vandrick, S. (2009) Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Vandrick, S. (2011) Students of the new global elite. TESOL Quarterly 45 (1), 160–169. van Lier, L. (2008) Agency in the classroom. In J.P. Lantolf and M.E. Poehner (eds) Sociocultural Theory and the Teaching of Second Languages (pp. 163–186). London: Equinox. Voloshinov, V.N. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik) (original work published 1929). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wallerstein, I. (ed.) (2004) The Modern World-system in the Longue-durée. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Ward, S.C. (2012) Neoliberalism and the Global Restructuring of Knowledge and Education. New York: Routledge. Watkins, S. (2010) Shifting sands. New Left Review 61, 5–27. Wells, G. (2009) Dialogic inquiry as collaborative action research. In S.E. Noffke and B. Somekh (eds) The Sage Handbook of Educational Action Research (pp. 50–61). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Williams, J. (2005) Learning English for Academic Purposes. Québec: Pearson Longman. Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, R. (1980) Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays. London: Verso. Williams, R. (1985) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (revised edn). New York: Oxford University Press. Willinsky, J. (2008) Of critical theory and critical literacy: Connections to the legacy of critical theory. In K. Cooper and R.E. White (eds) Critical Literacies in Action: Social Perspectives and Teaching Practices (pp. 3–20). Rotterdam: Sense. Žižek, S. (1997) Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism. New Left Review 225, 28–52.

Index

academic reading skills 34–37, 65–66, 182 Advanced Reading Power (Mikulecky & Jeffries, 2007) 31, 32 against the text, reading 56, 67, 100, 149, 182 agency and critical literacy 180 Emilia’s agency in the classroom 121, 144 for meaning-making, obscured by teaching biases 168 obscuring of 44, 56, 67 of the practitioner in collaborative research 188 alternative scripting 121 Anderson, B. 126, 137 Anderson, G.L. 15 Apple, M. 102, 126 articles, theoretical vs practitionerfocussed 18, 39, 51, 189 Athanases, S.Z. 17 attention-drawing behaviors (students’) 31 authentic texts 33 author’s own experiences 7–10, 130

Block, D. 24, 72, 90 blogosphere 175 Blommaert, J. xv, 22, 68, 72, 153 Bourdieu, P. 7, 68 boyd, d. 71 Brenner, N. 98 Brown, H.D. 62, 64 Brown, W. 97 bureaucracy 87, 99 Byrnes, H. 51 Cameron, D. 18, 72, 90, 188 Canadian cultural practices 124–152 capitalism 98, 130 see also free market economics; neoliberalism choice analyzing author’s choices using functional grammar 132 freedom of consumer choice as tenet of democracy 24, 126 individual choice as feature of neoliberalism 87–88, 97, 98–99, 197 lexicogrammatical choices 117–118, 121, 130–134, 135–136, 145–149, 195 Chua, A. 129 Chun, C.W. 17, 22, 123, 158 citizenry, neoliberal 97 classrooms bringing in the political 2, 11, 99–110, 153–180, 161–162, 173 classroom practice vs theory of critical literacies 151–152, 187, 192 dialogic spaces in the classroom 7, 9, 25–28, 45–46, 49, 94, 110, 119–120, 149, 160, 172, 176, 180, 182–183, 185

Bakhtin, M. 49, 72, 182 banking model of education 168, 170, 182, 186 Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach (Shapiro et al, 2002) 43 Bean, T.W. 51 Benesch, S. xiv, 10, 11, 12, 64 bias authorial bias 51, 99, 131, 133, 164–165, 177 professorial bias 168 210

Inde x

EAP classroom as a site of power 2 embodied lived histories 30, 141, 194–195 and the historical body 20, 28, 30, 72, 141, 144, 162, 175, 183, 194–195 and neutrality 11, 31, 50, 116, 123, 169, 173, 179 as nexus of embodied lived histories 28 pod arrangements 41–42 power dynamics 177 ‘smart’ classrooms 42–43, 186 time constraints in the classroom 100–101, 102, 139 use of first language in classroom 65, 127, 136–137 co-construction of knowledge/meaning in the collaborative research method 40, 188–189 counter-hegemonic meanings 150, 182 and critical literacy practice 180, 195 facilitating 120 and the functional grammar approach in the classroom 45–51 students in dialogue with text vs decoding of text 37, 38 teachers and students together 135–136, 160, 165, 171, 181–182, 185 vs banking model of education 170–171 Colás, A. 23 collaborative inquiry research method xiii–xiv, 15–20, 38–40, 151, 187–188 common sense as commonality of critical literacy practices 196 ‘disrupting the commonplace’ model 141 hegemonic ‘common-sense’ discourses 73, 91–92, 98, 150, 151, 183, 195 vocabulary of neoliberalism 96–97, 99 vs good sense 4 communities and critical literacies practice 197 congruent and incongruent expressions 57, 61 consumer cultures 125–126, 128, 138–139, 193 contextual knowledge in the classroom 182–183

211

decontextualization of academic literacy practices 159 importance of context for EAP students 12, 33 and social capital 193–194 and static identities 64 of topics in ELT textbooks 124, 154–155 controversial subjects ELT publishers avoiding 84, 123, 150 teachers wary of 139–145, 185 Cope, B. 13 corporatizing universities 22 Couldry, N. 97, 99 counter-hegemonic pedagogy, critical 8, 91–92, 99, 109, 144, 150, 152, 195, 198 critical literacies pedagogy accused of ‘indoctrination’ 106, 108–110, 168–169 bringing in the political 153–180 ‘catch-all’ approach not recommended 145 classroom practice vs theory of 151–152, 187, 192 commonalities of 194–198 and critical reflexivity 192–194 critiques of 171–172 debate over critical pedagogy in EAP 11 definitions of xiv, 3–4, 99–100, 134 ‘disrupting the commonplace’ model 141 dissemination of research into real classrooms 151–152 Emilia’s views of 190–191 expanding beyond the textbooks 159 functional grammar as scaffold for 14 impact on teacher 185 importance of early teaching of critical thinking 178 lack of practical advice on 102, 192 needed for participation in society 12 and nominalizations 56 not limited to Western pedagogy 162 potential challenges 139–140 and power dynamics in the classroom 177 teacher role in 151–152, 153–180

212 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

critical literacies pedagogy (Continued ) toolkit for critical literacies pedagogy 12, 14, 38, 186 valuing knowledge from non-traditional sources 179 critical thinking/critical reading (vs critical literacies) 51, 99–100 cross-disciplinary nature of EAP 33 culture cultural differences as hallmark of ELT publishing 157–158 cultural identities and the empty vessel theory 166 cultural plurality and neoliberalism 69–70 cultural vs national identities 137–139, 156–157 culture of the Other 130, 139, 150, 193, 194, 197 definitions of 125 multiculturalism 129, 130, 138, 150, 158 national vs cultural identities 126, 137–139 curriculum as mediator of dynamic interactions 72 as a political instrument 108, 157–158, 173 suitable EAP curricula 159–160 ‘customers,’ students as 22, 102, 193 de Oliveira, L.C. 132–133 Debord, G. 94 de-centering of the subject 137 deconstruction of discourses 151, 183 democracy democratization via new technologies 70 and freedom of consumer choice 24, 126 fundamental anti-democratic nature of neoliberalism 97 and globalization 70 dense structures of academic texts 55–56 detachment, student 16–17 Dewey, J. 181 dialogic spaces in the classroom addressing the sociopolitical context 9 allowing students to contribute their knowledge 185

creating reading subject positions 45–46, 49 and critical literacy 7, 110, 149, 160, 180, 182–183 discourses in place 25–28 and ‘doing school’ 172 interdiscursive dialogicality 94 teacher’s role in 110, 119–120, 176 digital textual practices 3, 13–14 see also multimodalities discipline-specificity of academic language 33, 37, 159 discourse allowing competing discourses into the classroom 94 common-sense discourses and critical literacy 196 deconstruction of discourses 151, 183 discourse itineraries 19, 72, 93 discourses in place 20, 25–28 EAP as integration into discourse community 150–151 EAP students need to understand specific academic discourse communities 33, 37, 90, 159 EAP students understanding all levels of 12 hegemonic Discourses 67 interdiscursive dialogicality 94 MDA (mediated discourse analysis) 19 move away from focus on errors to academic discourse 184–185 objectivity/neutrality 116–117 oppositional discourses as means to interrogate texts 93 role of EAP teacher in developing understanding of 93–94 students constructing counterdiscourses 183 ‘disrupting the commonplace’ model 141 diversity 126, 129, 173 Dixon, P. 88 Doherty, C. 72 ‘doing school’ 172 dominant readings, avoiding 120 Duff, P.A. 187 Duménil, G. 23 Dussel Peters, E. 23

Inde x

EAP (English for Academic Purposes) aims of 10 contextualisation of EAP for this research 20–24 debate over 10–12 new directions for 13–14 economic representations 97 economics, free market 23, 68, 87, 97–99, 126, 128, 193, 197 Edwards, R. 68 electronic dictionaries, use of 30 Ellison, N. 71 ELT publishing (textbooks) avoiding controversial subjects 84, 123, 150, 153, 158, 176 cultural positionings (narrowness of) 157–158 decontextualization of academic literacy practices 159 EAP textbooks as cultural constructs 123 focus on bland topics 123–124 generalized texts 33 not following functional grammar approaches 185 politicization of 158 embodied lived histories classroom as nexus 28, 30, 141, 194–195 definitions of 20 and the ‘expert’/’non-expert’ division 175 and freedom to disagree with the teacher 162 and racialization 144 students’ double roles 72 students’ voicing of 183 teachers’ 194–195 empowering research 18, 188 empty vessel theory 166, 168, 170, 186 encyclopedias 35–36, 66, 182 engagement, student positively influenced by co-constructive approaches 46, 60 positively influenced by selection of topics of interest 62–64, 84, 158, 159, 174–176 signs of student detachment 16–17 entrepreneurship of the self 88–91

213

errors, focus on students’ 66, 178, 184–185 ethnographic research 15, 17, 187–188 everyday, the as commonality of critical literacy practices 196 critical engagement with 3–7 definition of 5–6 ‘disrupting the commonplace’ model 141 and ‘doing school’ 172 everydayness 6 and grammatical metaphor 56 interconnectedness of knowledge and identity 179 and neoliberalism 24, 91, 96–97 and the political 172–173, 175 ‘expert’/‘non-expert’ division 175 Facebook see social media false consciousness 4 first language use in class 65, 127, 136–137 Fish, Stanley 163–172, 182 fixing meanings 4–5, 74, 77, 100, 102, 111 Flint, A.S. 141 Flowerdew, J. 10 focus on form 178, 184–185 Forgacs, D. 4 Foucault, M. 14, 24, 91, 102, 151 Frank, A.G. 68 free market economics 23, 68, 87, 97–99, 126, 128, 193, 197 Freebody, P. 100, 102, 109, 145, 173, 177 freedom to disagree with teachers 109, 161–162, 167–168 freedom from bureaucracy vs freedom from want 87–88, 98–99 freedom of consumer choice as tenet of democracy 24, 126 individual freedom 23, 98–99 Freire, P. 168, 170 functional grammar beginning to appear in EAP textbooks 185 in collaborative research 38–39 Emilia’s views of 190–191

214

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

functional grammar (Continued) and heightened awareness of academic language 60–61 key linguistic features 43–44 not addressing reading against the text 67 as part of critical literacies toolkit 12, 14, 186 putting into practice (Spring Term) 43–51, 53–62, 66, 182, 183 putting into practice (Summer Term) 132–134 Gee, J.P. 67 generalized texts 33 genre analysis 10 geosemiotics 65 Gibson-Graham, J.K. 97, 120–121 Gingrich, Newt 70 Giroux, H. 102 Gitlin, A. 18, 188 Globality (YouTube video) 75–88, 92–94, 110–122, 182 globalization classroom discussions of 77–91, 94, 111–122, 182–183 and consumer identities 138–139 definition of 68–71 as dominant discourse 193 EAP institutions directing flows of capital 20–21 and English language teaching 22–24 ‘Future of Paper, Pulp and Packaging Industry’ 88–91 global subjectivity of EAP curriculum materials 72 Globality (YouTube video) 74–88, 92–94, 110–122, 182 the ‘globalization script’ 120–121 as keyword in classroom discourses 73 and ‘multiculturalism’ 129, 130 and neoliberalism 23, 68–69, 81, 87–88, 98, 183 recontextualization of neoliberal globalization 183 good sense 4, 99, 196 Gordon, C. 24, 91 Gore, J. 171

grammatical errors, focus on 66, 178, 184–185 grammatical metaphor 53, 55–56 Gramsci, A. 3–4, 5, 175, 196 graphs/diagrams, use of in textbooks 132, 133–134 Gray, J. 84, 123–124, 158 Greenhouse, C.J. 23 Grossberg, L. 70 Hall, S. 3, 4, 5, 77, 137, 138, 139 Halliday, M.A.K. xiv, 14, 74, 132, 195 Hammond, J. 74 Hamp-Lyons, L. 11, 13, 74, 93, 159 Haque, E. 11, 150 Harvey, D. 23, 55, 70, 98 Hasan, R. 123 Hayek, F.A. 23 Heath, S.B. 17 hegemony common-sense discourses 150, 151, 183, 195, 196 critical counter-hegemonic pedagogy 8, 91–92, 99, 109, 144, 150, 152, 195, 198 definitions of 5 and the ‘disrupting the commonplace’ model 141 in Globality 81, 87, 93, 183 and globalization 70 hegemonic Discourses 67 and ideas of the nation-state 138 and market rationality 91–92 and ‘multiculturalism’ 129 in multimodalities 95 and neoliberalism 98–99 and ‘neutrality’ in the classroom 169, 173 revealed by choice of words 117–118 hidden curricula 10 high stakes testing 12 historical body, as element in classroom classroom as nexus 28, 30, 141, 194–195 definitions of 20 and the ‘expert’/’non-expert’ division 175 and freedom to disagree with the teacher 162

Inde x

and racialization 144 students’ double roles 72 students’ voicing of 183 teachers’ 194–195 Hood, S. 51 human capital 22, 23–24 Hyland, K. 11, 13, 33, 74, 90, 93, 159 ‘hyphenated’ Americans 136–137, 143, 146–147, 150 ideal citizens 126 Ideal vs Real (imagery) 75–77, 83–84 identity as commonality of critical literacy practices 194–195 consumer identities 138–139 critical literacies practice and addressing ‘Othering’ 197 cultural vs national identities 137–139, 156–157 culture of the Other 130, 139, 150, 193, 194, 197 and economic representations 97 and globalization 69–70 historically lived identities 20, 28, 30, 72, 141, 144, 162, 175, 183, 194–195 ‘hyphenated’ Americans 136–137, 143, 146–147, 150 identity vs the process of identification 137, 179 interconnectedness of knowledge and identity 179 national vs cultural identities 126, 137–139 and second language learning 64 social identities of EAP students 154–157 static identities 62–64 student identities as thinkers 186 ideology, professorial 168, 172 Iedema, R. 19 IELTS 12 image-text combinations 13, 74–75, 76–77 imagined communities 126, 137 immigrant students importance of EAP for 10 ‘integrated’ vs new immigrants 126–127, 138, 142–144, 148

215

privileged students 9–10, 21, 157, 194 use of first language in classroom 65, 127, 136–137 incongruent and congruent expressions 57, 61 individual choice as feature of neoliberalism 87–88, 97, 98–99, 197 infantilization of students 158, 186 initiation-reply-evaluation sequence (IRE) 29–30 ‘integrated’ vs new immigrants 126–127, 138, 142–144, 148 Intensive English Programs (IEPs) 9 interdiscursive dialogicality 94 Irvine, P. 15 Islam and Democracy (video) 163, 164 Ivanic, R. 12 Jameson, F. 69–70 Janks, H. xiv, 2, 12, 31, 56, 67, 99, 149, 151, 195, 196 Jeffries, L. 31, 32 Johnston, D. 68 Jones, R.H. 72 Kalantzis, M. 13 Kellner, D. 69, 71 King, Rodney 9 knowledge producers, students as 38, 149, 152, 159, 170, 180, 185–186 Kress, G. 13, 14, 74, 75, 179 Kubota, R. 130 Kumaravadivelu, B. 21, 184 Kymlicka, W. 129 L1 use in class 65, 127, 136–137 Lakoff, G. 196 Learning English for Academic Purposes (Williams, 2005) 66, 124, 126–127, 148–149 Lefebvre, H. 5–6, 7, 13 Leitner, H. 96, 97, 99 Lemke, T. 23, 24, 95 Lévy, D. 23 Lewison, M. 50, 141 lexicogrammatical choices 117–118, 121, 130–134, 135–136, 145–149, 195 ‘liberal’ multiculturalism 130, 138, 150

216

Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

liberal-humanist philosophical tradition 51 linguistic imperialism 22 linguistic remediation models 158, 186 Louie, V.S. 129 Luke, A. xvxvi, 22, 99, 100, 102, 145, 152, 173, 177, 192–193, 194 Macken-Horarik, M. 74 market economics 23, 68, 87, 97–99, 126, 128, 193, 197 marketization of EAP programs 22 Martin, J.R. 37 McLaren, P. 102 MDA (mediated discourse analysis) 19 meaning-making see also co-construction of knowledge/meaning; critical literacies pedagogy and active inter-speaker understanding 116 avoiding dominant readings 120 classroom as ‘legitimate’ arena for 172 danger of teachers directing towards a certain interpretation 119 fixing meanings 4–5, 74, 77, 100, 102, 111 as fundamental aim of EAP 94, 152 interconnectedness of knowledge and identity 179–180 with the Jennifer Wong text 148–152 and multimodalities 13–14 power dynamics in meaning-making 172 social semiotic views of 74 socially situated meaning makings in the classroom 19 and the use of students’ first language 65 ‘mediating institutions’ 22 metalanguage, use of 132–133 metaphor, grammatical 53, 55–56 metaphors of the market 99 Mikulecky, B.S. 31, 32 model minority discourses 127, 129, 130 Morgan, B. 71, 104, 158, 159, 173, 175, 186 motivation for learning, topic interest as 62–64, 84, 158, 159, 174–176 multiculturalism

cultural differences as hallmark of ELT publishing 157–158 and globalized consumer cultures 129 ‘liberal’ multiculturalism 130, 138, 150 multimodalities see also videos co-construction of knowledge less ‘legitimate’ than in classroom 172 comprehension of text-visual as key component of academic literacy 13–14 and deep understanding of discourses 94 dynamic discursive interrelationships 94 Emilia’s increased use of 159–160, 186–187 and fixing of meanings 74, 77, 92 need for critical engagement with 186 need for reliable technology 42, 186–187 need for teacher training in 186–187 privileging one way or another of speaking 195 students’ production of 121–122 text-image combinations 13, 74–75, 76–77 national vs cultural identities 126, 137–139 nationalism 126, 139, 193 neoliberalism and consumer cultures 125–126, 128, 129 as dominant discourse 193 EAP programs as neoliberal nexus sites 22–24 EAP topics as neoliberal discourses 123 and education 97 as an ‘everyday discourse’ 96–97 and globalization 23, 68–69, 81, 87–88, 98, 183 individual choice as feature of neoliberalism 87–88, 97, 98–99, 197 the neoliberal citizen 97 neoliberal entrepreneur of the self 88–91 neoliberalization 98–99 and the notion of community 197

Inde x

recontextualization of neoliberal globalization 182–183 social consequences of 96 neutrality of authors 50 in the classroom 11, 31, 50, 116, 123, 169, 173, 179 Newfield, D. 74 nexus analysis 19–20, 22–24, 28 nominalizations 37, 43–44, 51–62, 67 non-Western pedagogical stereotypes 160–162 Norris, S. 72 observation as research tool 17, 39 Occupy Movement xvi, 4, 70 online research skills 35–36, 66, 182 organic intellectuals 175 O’Shea, A. 4 Other, culture of the 130, 139, 150, 193, 194, 197 Pappas, C.C. 18 paradigm of design 14 paragraph structures 34, 37 paraphrasing 52 partiality (vs impartiality) 187, 195 participatory research method 17–20, 187–188 passive constructions 43–44, 58, 130–131 passivity in neoliberalism 90, 97 teachers as passive technicians 184 Patel Stevens, L. 51 Peacock, M. 10 Peck, J. 98 Pennycook, A. xiv, xv, 10, 11, 21, 69 personality factors 62–64 place, discourses in 20, 25–28 plagiarism 52 pod arrangements (in classrooms) 41–42 political, the and the blogosphere 175 curriculum as a political instrument 108 EAP classroom as a political site 2, 11, 99–110, 153–180 even seemingly neutral texts can become political 31

217

fear of the political in the classroom 102, 103–104, 107–109, 161–162, 173 as a lived experience 104 and the personal 141–142, 145 Politics vs politics 2, 4, 172–173 presented as the domain of the ‘expert’ 175 and teacher training 102–103 Politics in the Classroom (TVO, 2009) 160, 163–172, 182 postmodernism 69–70, 138–139 power academic discourse as power-laden form of capital 173 in the collaborative research relationship 15, 39–40 as commonality of critical literacy practices 195–196 and critical literacy 51, 99–100, 177 critical literacy’s role in redistribution of 198 critical speaking back to power 141–142 debates of study of power in EAP 11 democratization via new technologies 70 EAP classroom as a site of power 2 interconnectedness of knowledge and identity 179 and multimodalities of communication 13–14 and the need for teacher’s self-reflexivity 196 nominalizations as part of discourse dynamics 56 power differentials and social capital 193 power dynamics in meaning-making 172 and resistance 14 resistance to 5, 14, 90–91, 112, 198 revealed by choice of words 117–118 ‘truth’ in texts via power/knowledge formations 102 pragmatic vs critical approaches to EAP 11, 183 preferred meanings 77 Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (Brown, 2000) 62 privileged students 9–10, 21, 157, 194

218 Power and Meaning Mak ing in an E AP Cl assroom

racialization 127, 129, 139–145, 193, 197 Ramanathan, V. 71, 184, 186 rational markets, assumption of 97, 99 reading academic reading skills 34–37, 65–66, 182 reading against a text 49, 56, 67, 100, 149, 182 reading methods for academia 34–37 ‘reading smart’ 34, 65–66 skim reading 33–34, 36, 37–38, 65–66, 182 as a social practice 100–110, 157 recasts 165, 185 reflective practice 184, 192–194, 196 register, academic 37–38, 43–44 remediation models (linguistic) 158, 186 research method (collaborative inquiry) 15–24, 38–40, 151 research skills, teaching 31–32 researcher-practitioner relationship xiii–xiv, 39–40, 187–192 resemiotization during classroom discussions 78–79 definition of 19 of discourses 49 of Globality 92 of ‘globality’ to ‘un-globalization’ 113 of globalization 73, 87–88 of ‘ideology’ 65 of the Jennifer Wong text 149 and neoliberalism 98 and ‘new actions’ 72 of videos 92 of YouTube videos 74 resistance 5, 14, 90–91, 112, 198 rights, and ‘ideal citizens’ 126 Roberts, J. 6 Rodney King case 9 Rofel, L. 125 Ruccio, D.F. 97 rules, classroom 26–28, 65 Saad-Fiho, A. 68 Schleppegrell, M.J. 12, 14, 37, 43, 55–56, 57, 132–133 Scollon, R. 15, 19, 20, 25–26, 28, 72, 94, 162 Scollon, S.W. 15, 20, 25–26, 28, 72, 94, 162

second language acquisition (SLA) frameworks 12, 39 self-reflexivity 196 Share, J. 71 silences in classroom discourses 91 Singh, P. 72 Sirkin, H. 76, 77, 114 skim reading 33–34, 36, 37–38, 65–66, 182 ‘smart’ classrooms 42–43, 186 social, the ELT privileges the psychological over the social 104 social capital 7, 129, 193–194 social class 8, 157 social justice 4 social media see also multimodalities; YouTube videos co-construction of knowledge less ‘legitimate’ than in classroom172 and democratization 70 and discourses of power 196 globalized sharing of lived experiences 71, 94 and meaning-making 13 social participation and EAP 12 social semiotic, language as 14, 195 spontaneous philosophy 3–4 Spring Term classes 41–67, 73–95, 182, 183 Starfield, S. 22 static identities 62–64 subject positioning 4, 43–51, 90–91, 182 subject-subject research method 15 subtexts, helping students understand 101 Summer Term classes (post-advanced) 96–122, 124–152, 182–183 Swales, J. 10 systemic functional linguistics (SFL) see also functional grammar based on meaning-making and contextualized use 51 in collaborative research 39 language as a social semiotic 14 and nominalizations 53–54 practical applications of 66 Takaki, R. 143 talking back to texts 48, 169, 183

Inde x

Tea Party Movement 4 teachers co-construction of knowledge/meaning with students 135–136, 160, 165, 171, 181–182, 185 in the researcher-practitioner relationship xii–xiv, 39–40, 187–188, 192 students’ freedom to disagree with teachers 109, 161–162, 167–168 teacher accountability 102 teacher role in critical literacies pedagogy 151–152, 153–180, 184, 185 teacher training (on critical pedagogies) 102–103 as transformative intellectuals 184 technology see also multimodalities; social media in the classroom 41–42 democratization via new technologies 70 Emilia’s views on 35–36 and globalization 70 must be reliable 42, 186–187 TESOL/Applied Linguistics applicability of this research to 17 and globalization 22–23, 71 and neoliberalism 24 textbooks, EAP avoiding controversial subjects 84, 123, 150, 153, 158, 176 as cultural constructs 123 cultural positionings (narrowness of) 157–158 decontextualization of academic literacy practices 159 focus on bland topics 123–124 generalized texts 33 as neoliberal cultural constructs 123 not following functional grammar approaches 185 politicization of 158 text-image combinations 13, 74–75, 76–77 ‘tiger mom’ narratives 129 time constraints in the classroom 100–101, 102, 139 TOEFL 12 Toohey, K. 19, 189 toolkit for critical literacies pedagogy 12, 14, 38, 186

219

topic sentences 34, 37 transition words, noticing 32 Tumblr see social media Twitter see social media university contexts for EAP 21–22 Unsworth, L. 37 Usher, R. 68 van Leeuwen, T. 14, 72, 74, 75 van Lier, L. 144 Van Sluys, K. 141 Vandrick, S. 9, 157, 194, 196 ventriloquization, as teaching tool 45, 87, 116 videos see also multimodalities ‘Future of Paper, Pulp and Packaging Industry’ 88–91 Globality (YouTube video) 75–88, 92–94, 110–122, 182 greater impact of 187 Islam and Democracy 163, 164 as multimodal texts 74 Politics in the Classroom (TVO, 2009) 160, 163–172, 182 vocabulary learning 28–29 Voloshinov, V.N. 73, 83, 116 Walcott, Rinaldo 163–172 Waterstone, B. 19, 189 Watkins, S. 98 wealth, and EAP context 9–10, 21, 157, 194 Wells, G. 31 Western vs non-Western pedagogical stereotypes 160–162 Wikipedia 31, 182 Williams, J. 34, 65, 66, 124, 125, 126, 139, 148, 159 Williams, R. 5, 67, 125, 141 Willinsky, J. 50–51 Winter class 182 Winter Term (January to March) 28–38, 65 YouTube videos ‘Future of Paper, Pulp and Packaging Industry’ 88–91 Globality 75–88, 92–94, 110–122, 182 Žižek, S. 129, 130