Sloganization in Language Education Discourse: Conceptual Thinking in the Age of Academic Marketization - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1788921852 ISBN 13: 9781788921855

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2018

Synopsis

This volume focuses (self-)critically on sloganization as an emergent phenomenon in language education discourse. Motivated by an increasing uneasiness with a number of widespread concepts in current language education research that have become sloganized, this volume comprises a collection of chapters by international scholars that scrutinize the discourse of language education, identify popular slogans and reconstruct the sloganization processes. It promotes critical self-reflection of scholars and professionals in the field of language education – a field that has widely been dominated by the need to develop new, innovative approaches and practices, at the expense of self-critical work that attempts to situate the field and its approaches within wider historical, cultural and conceptual contexts.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Schmenk is Professor of German and Applied Linguistics at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Stephan Breidbach is Professor of English Language Education, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. Lutz Küster is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures/Teaching Methodology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.

Review

This timely collection of courageous, critical and disturbing case studies of scholarly branding to promote academic research should remind teachers and researchers, but also administrators, publishers and funding institutions to keep scholarly discourse honest if it wants to remain legitimate. Sloganization is a pervasive phenomenon well worth further critical investigation. (Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, USA)

In an age of sound bites and tweets, marketing and impact agendas, here comes a book of sane, reasoned, advocacy for a critical view of the slogans which dominate language education worldwide, in English. The authors, drawn from an extensive and impressive array of contexts and sub-disciplines of Applied Linguistics, Modern Languages and Language Pedagogy, offer up their slogans to the slaughter and leave us destabilised and with a clearer view of the ways in which our work is easily colonised by words, heavy with ideological character. If ever a book was needed as an antidote to impact and lazy band-wagonism, this is it. (Alison Phipps)

Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1788921852
• ISBN 13: 9781788921855
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: Schmenk Barbara, Breidbach Dr. Stephan, Küster Lutz