Knowledge and Discourse presents an ecological approach to the study of discourse in social, academic and professional practices. It brings together distinguished scholars from diverse cultures - India, China, Australia, Canada among others - and disciplines - linguistics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy. The chapters collectively illustrate the ecological approach by exploring how language makes connections between subjective experiences as people construct meaning and action.
This book offers the reader a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to the study of language as discourse, questioning traditional views of disciplinary knowledge and the role of discourse in the pursuit, construction and compartmentalisation of such knowledge. Through the variety of disciplines, experiences and approaches, the contributors show how the world and word are contingent on each other. The notions of connectivity, contingency and change are themes that run through the book, and in the interweaving of these themes readers will find persuasive illustrations of an ecological approach to applied linguistics.
1. ProloguePART I. REFELCTIVE PRACTICES2. Stranded between the 'posts':
Sensory experience and immigrant female subjectivity3. Feminist consciousness
and the ruling relations
4. Telling true stories, writing fictions, doing
ethnography at century's end: Stories of subjectivity and care from urban
China5. Producing new Asian masculinitiesPART II. SOCIAL PRACTICES6. Chinese
officialdom (Guan) at work in discourse7. Discourse of silence: Intermeshing
networks of old and new colonialists8. Interactions between Thai male sex
workers and their customers9. Media mythologies: Legends, 'local facts' and
triad discoursePART III: PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC PRACTICES10. The
linguistic construction of gender and ideology in judicial discourse11. The
domestication of rhetoric - Translating Western economic ideology to Hong
Kong12. The role of language and culture within the accountancy workplace13.
Social and interpersonal perspectives on scientific discourse14. Becoming a
psychologist: Student voices on academic writing in psychology15. Fixed and
flexible framing: Literacy events across cultures16. Teaching and learning in
Cantonese and English: Multilingual classroom practices and equity in
education17. Intercultural communication and ethnography: Why? and why not?
Colin Barron, Nigel Bruce and David Nunan are all based at the English Centre, Hong Kong University.
