Full Description
This book explores discourses of foreign language education in Ireland through an ethnographic lens. Taking a critical approach to SLA, it locates students' language ideologies within wider discourses of language learning, such as discourses of gender and language learning and discourses of elite multilingualism. It also examines the role of the imagined identity in language learning investment in a world where English and a limited number of other 'global' languages dominate the foreign language learning experience. The ethnographic approach provides a unique insight into the way in which dominant discourses of identity, gender, and foreign language learning are both constructed and resisted in the institutional context, shaping our understanding of what it means to be a gendered being and what it means to be a language learner in a globalised world. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of SLA and sociolinguistics, as well as language teachers and language policymakers.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Transcription Conventions
Introduction
Chapter 1: Language Education in Ireland: Sociolinguistic and Scholarly Contexts
Chapter 2: Language Learning and Identity, Ideology and Elite Multilingualism
Chapter 3: Gender and Language Education: Theoretical Approaches and Current Trends
Chapter 4: Fieldwork in SMSS: Community, Space and Identity
Chapter 5: Language Choice, Discourse and Investment
Chapter 6: Addressing the Issues and Moving Forward
References
Index
