Urszula Clark Boeken

Exploring the ideological dimensions of literacy debates, this book highlights the historical roots of these discussions and their suppression by British governments. Urszula Clark emphasizes the critical relationship between language and national identity, particularly during identity crises. By comparing the UK's situation with that of other English-speaking nations like Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, she illustrates how such crises resonate globally, making this analysis both timely and significant in understanding contemporary literacy practices.

Exploring the interplay between language and identity, this book delves into how individuals use linguistic features of English to shape their identities tied to specific geographic locations and imaginative contexts. With insights from diverse international examples including the UK, US, China, and India, the author combines field research and innovative investigations to provide a thorough examination of this dynamic relationship.

Focusing on language and literacy, the book explores how UK secondary schools can effectively integrate grammar and metalanguage into their curricula. Based on research conducted in three diverse schools, it highlights the benefits of emphasizing linguistic structures for all students, particularly those with English as a second language and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The author advocates for a socially just and democratic approach to education, making this work a valuable resource for applied linguists, educators, and policy makers seeking to connect theory with practice.

Although there are many studies on linguistic variation as it relates to both "traditional" and "new" media such as film, TV, newspapers, and online behavior, little has been written about spoken performance in overt but face-to-face conversations. This book bridges that gap, and focuses on an "in between" zone between casual face-to-face conversations and the type of heavily scripted language of most traditional spoken media. The book draws upon a substantial amount of empirical data in its investigation of the role played by performance texts in creating, maintaining and challenging imagined communities and focuses upon the ways in which performance contributes to people's sense of the kinds of use for which dialect/variational use is appropriate and those for which it is not. It sheds light on how such stylization intersects with multiple social indexes and how performers and other creative artists challenge and mock hegemonic practices through enregistering a defined set of linguistic variables in the context of their performance and other associated written texts.