DeKu Go Blog

The article that I am going to lead the discussion about is titled "Ecological Language Education Policy", which is an article from the book "Handbook of Educational Linguistics" written by Nancy Hornberger and Francis M. Hult. The first author, Hornberger, is a professor of education in University of Pennsylvania as well as the director of educational linguistics program. Her research interests are mulilingual language education policy and practice, focusing on inndigenuous and imigrant heritage language education   The second author is Francis M. Hult. He is an assistant professor in applied linguistics in University of Texas in San Antonio. His academic interests include language planning and curriculum development. He is also a co-editor of Handbook of Educational Linguistics. This article mainly talks about the ecology of language in relation to language planning an policy. The authors discuss the basic principles of language ecology, its ap...

Even though I am not in total agreement with Paul Gee's ideas about Discourse, as a student of linguistics, I am more or less familiar, but not necessarily in agreement with, his ideas that he explained in his article "Literacy". So, this writing should not be seen as an arguing for Gee's sake, but more about my way of interpreting his work from the perspective of a student of linguistics. The first thing that came to my mind when reading this article was that his notions of Discourse was no more than an expansion of how linguists--at least under some traditions--understand language. First, what I understand from his idea of Discourse is extended from the notion of language. There were times in the history of linguistics that language was attempted to be separated from its social context. Under Saussurean's tradition, for example, language was divided into two aspects: langue and parole . While langue is defined as the abstract system of language, parole re...