Synopses & Reviews
The Narrative Construction of Identities in Critical Education explores the issue of identity construction in conversational and humorous narratives, as well as the exploitation of such texts in language education programs cultivating critical language skills. Based on approaches from discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, the study first proposes a model of analysis focusing on the linguistic and discursive means narrators use to construct a variety of identities in everyday stories told in peer groups. The data investigated comes from recorded conversations among adolescents belonging to different sociocultural groups. It involves past events of their personal and social lives and refers to their relationships with, and behavior towards, their peers, families, teachers, and other authority figures. The authors then suggest how this kind of material and analysis could be included in language teaching curricula, aiming at raising students' critical language awareness. In this context, a model for the exploitation of conversational narratives in language teaching is proposed.
About the Author
ARGIRIS ARCHAKIS is Associate Professor in Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics at the Department of Philology, University of Patras, Greece, where he has been working since 1997. He has carried out research and published extensively on the analysis of various discourse genres, like youth conversational narratives, classroom discourse, (adult) students' literacy, parliamentary discourse, and media discourse.
VILLY TSAKONA is Assistant Professor (ministerial approval pending) in Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis at the Department of Education Sciences in Pre-School Ages, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. Her main research interests and publications involve the analysis of humorous genres and political discourse.
Table of Contents
List of tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: ON THE THEORY OF IDENTITIES
Introducing Identities
Defining Identity
PART II: IDENTITIES IN CONVERSATIONAL NARRATIVES
Narrative Theory, Data, and Methodology of the Study
Analyzing Conversational Narratives
PART III: IDENTITIES IN CONVERSATIONAL NARRATIVES: A MODEL FOR THEIR EXPLOITATION IN LANGUAGE TEACHING
Narratives and Language Teaching
Narratives and Critical Literacy
Exploring the Narrative Construction of Identities in Class
Conclusion
Endnotes
References
Index