Forthcoming Language Education Seminars
Tuesday 14 October 2008
Dr Chefena Debenna
Eritrean Mother Tongue Education Policy in a Global Sociolinguistic Perspective
Room: EC Stoner 7.73a
Time: 12:30 - 2pmEritrea, the newest and a small country in the Horn of Africa, has a population of 3.5 ml who speak nine different languages. Its mother tongue education policy, guided by the legacy of egalitarian social policy, was declared upon independence in 1991. However, language policy in Eritrea is least debated, publicized and research area of study. According to the rhetoric level all languages have equal status and equal opportunity to develop and so nine ethnic group use their languages as medium at the primarily school level. Eritrea’s adult literacy rate is 15 % while 80% of its population live in the rural area.
This paper investigates the viability of this policy given the controversy and resistance it generated among some communities and in the light of the emerging language values and attitudes. An overview of evaluations of language policy decisions by Eritrean scholars vis-à-vis existing paradigms on in multilingual context is given is given. The nation-state triple tasks - of guaranteeing linguistic equality of its diverse communities, forging nationalism and mediating in global sociolinguistic processes is discussed. Amid the global discourse of linguistic right which informs Eritrean language policy versus the global sociolinguistics processes which exert influence locally are analysed. The consequences of language policy decisions and public evaluation is viewed against the backdrop of nation-building which the state claims to be engaged in. How state fulfils is function of mediating between the world and the village in terms of delivering and ensuring equal distribution of communicative resources to enable its citizens to survives at both local and global systems is critically analysed. The paper also gives an overview of the impact of globalization with regard to recent narrative of Eritrean nationalism. Finally, the paper identifies the salient issue involved in language policy decisions that need to be addressed and critically debated .
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Prof. Ken Hyland (Institute of Education, University of London)
Being Swales and Cameron: Constructing identity in applied lingusitics
Room: EC Stoner 10.70
Time: 12:30 - 2:00 pm
Identity is a central organizing principle of our social worlds, yet remains something of an elusive and contested concept. Recent research, however, has emphasized the close connections between writing and the construction of an author’s identity as we negotiate representations of ourselves through the discourses of our communities. In academic contexts this is often viewed as a repressive and determining system which privileges certain ways of making meanings and so encourages the performance of certain kinds of identities. We can, however, see disciplinary conventions as pattern of options which allows writers to actively accomplish an identity through discourse choices. In this paper I show how this is achieved in the work of two leading figures in applied linguistics: John Swales and Debbie Cameron. By comparing the work of each author with a broader applied linguistics corpus of 750,000 words, I show how their linguistic choices reflect distinctive discoursal identities which marks out their work from the broader corpus. I suggests how disciplinary status can contribute to an independent creativity shaped by shared practices.