This chapter offers a pedagogical, analytical and heuristic framework for the critical analysis of higher education policy texts, and of the processes and motivations behind their articulations, grounded in considerations of relationships and flows between language, power and discourse. Theoretically the framework draws on critical discourse…

Examines Kenneth Burke's and Friedrich Nietzsche's similar understanding of the hortatory nature of language-using, weighed against their radically differing conceptions of the negative, which allows a distinction between two genres of dramatism, and illustrates contrasting orientations toward symbolic activity in general. (SR)

The best literature dealing with the Holocaust assumes the worthwhileness and preciousness of human life. (JH)

Summarizes the views of language presented in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four,""Animal Farm," and "Politics and the English Language." (DD)

The primary purpose of this book is to present a discussion of a stylistic analysis approach to the study of literature and a demonstration of its possible relevance to the teaching of literature. Stylistics is defined as the study of literary discourse from a linguistics orientation and is distinguished from literary criticism and linguistics in…

Analyzes the evils of political and commercial doublespeak and contends that they can be alleviated by the truth of good literature. (DD)

John Searle's book, "Speech Acts," opened with the question, "How do words relate to the world?" This paper suggests a way of answering Searle's question by relying--in spirit if not in method--on Austin's linguistic phenomenology. The existential phenomenology approach is described in Austin's phrase as a "sharpened…

A critical analysis of the time, space, and language of television soap operas. (DD)

Analyzes Stanley Cavell's essay "Notes and Afterthoughts on the Opening of Wittgenstein's Investigations," arguing that the piece provides a basis for a Wittgensteinian pedagogics. Examines the ways in which Cavell looks at Wittgenstein's representation of the figure and voice of the child in his work, suggesting that Cavell's own…

This paper discusses teaching "Black Elk Speaks" in the college classroom and examines how symbolic language is generated in our own experience. An activity is described in which students' dreams were performed in order that the students might better see how the dream functions in "Black Elk Speaks." The activity resulted in a discussion of the…

Chronicles the development of an English doctoral program which emphasized both literary study and the teaching of reading and writing. (DD)

While examining the broader educational reform movement from a critical perspective, this essay focuses on the national political manifestation of that movement--America 2000. In contrast to more traditional critiques of America 2000, this analysis argues the basic conflict between this reform effort and an "emancipatory definition of substantive…

The major thesis of this paper is that the teaching of English should be interdisciplinary. The paper shows that the works of George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare are interdisciplinary and observes that the greatest current educational need is for breadth of education and interdisciplinary linkages rather than for transmission of facts. It…