Anna Fterniati

Metapragmatic stereotypes about geographical diversity in Greece: Evidence from elementary school pupils’ responses to mass culture texts

Over the past decades, contemporary sociolinguistics has challenged the existence of fixed and rigid linguistic boundaries, thus focusing on how the speakers themselves define language varieties and how specific linguistic choices end up being perceived as language varieties. In this light, the present paper explores the influence of metapragmatic stereotypes on elementary school pupils’ attitudes towards geographical varieties. Specifically, we investigate children’s beliefs as to the acceptability of geographical varieties and their perception of the overt and covert prestige of geographical varieties and dialectal speakers. Furthermore, we explore the relationship between the children’s specific beliefs and factors such as gender, the social stratification of the school location and the pupils’ performance in language subjects. The data of the study was collected via questionnaires with closed questions. The research findings indicate that the children of our sample associate geographical varieties with rural settings and informal communicative contexts. Moreover, children recognize a lack of overt prestige in geographical variation; at the same time, they evaluate positively the social attractiveness and the personal reliability of the geographical varieties and their speakers. Our research showed that pupils’ beliefs are in line with the dominant metapragmatic stereotypes which promote language homogeneity.

Language variation in ΤV advertisements : A critical language teaching proposal

Recent studies indicate that language teaching can utilize humorous mass culture texts (e.g. TV shows, advertisements, comics, magazine articles, songs, websites), so as to enable students to detect subtle social meanings and implicit cultural values (see, among others, Archakis et al., 2014; Μοrrell, 2002; Μοrrell, & Duncan-Andrade, 2005; Stamou, 2012; Tsami et al., 2014). This study aims to propose teaching activities involving critical interpretation of humorous TV advertisements in class. The activities are designed for pupils attending the 5th and 6th grade of Greek primary school (11-12 years old). The aim of these activities is to raise the pupils’ critical language awareness by revealing hidden and normalized language ideologies inherent in the representation of geographical varieties in such texts. Thus, our teaching proposal is intended to help students realize the linguistic inequalities reproduced in such texts, thus denaturalizing linguistic homogeneity (see, among others, Blackledge, 2005). Enhancing the students’ critical language awareness is among the main goals of the multiliteracies model (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Κalantzis & Cope, 1999; Kalantzis et al., 2005; New London Group, 1999). This model aims to nurture the students’ communicative competence through the analysis of diverse genres in four stages: 1. Situated practice, utilizing texts provided by students, reflecting their sociocultural experiences; 2. Overt instruction, which helps students realize the linguistic and textual mechanisms used for the production and interpretation of texts; 3. Critical framing, referring to the critical interpretation of a text, based on the sociocultural context of its production; 4. Transformed practice that is reframing discourse and transferring meaning from one context to another, while producing a text. Following the multiliteracies model, this paper presents specific teaching activities to enable pupils achieve a critical interpretation of TV advertisements. Our proposal aims at helping students: Identify geographical variation and dialectophones; Become aware of dominant ideologies regarding geographical varieties, their mixing, and their speakers; Stop associating dialectophones with specific social characteristics (e.g. profession, age, education, place of origin, ability to use language variations/ languages considered as “overt prestige” etc.); Identify how non-standard varieties are denigrated and stigmatized in mass culture texts (e.g. through humor); Become aware of hidden and naturalized ideologies expressed through the humorous representations of geographical variation on TV advertisements; Realize the reasons for which geographical varieties are represented as humorous in mass culture texts. The above activities constitute part of a teaching material implemented in two public elementary schools in the prefecture of Achaia, Greece. According to the initial results, the pupils’ performance is enhanced both in terms of identifying geographical variation and humorous phrases and of interpreting the reasons for which geographical varieties are represented as humorous in mass culture texts.

Narrative Skills and Genre Based Literacy Pedagogy Teaching Material

This article presents and discusses the findings of a research study on the issue of literacy competency, focusing on the narrative written text production. The study examines the narrative text writing skills of 11-12 year old students (attending the last grade of Greek elementary school), before and after the first year of implementing the language teaching material introduced in 2006-07, considered to be consistent with the logic of genre based literacy pedagogy. It also investigates whether parameters such as gender, socio-educational background, and teachers’ practices regarding students’ written discourse production influence such performances. The students’ narrative skills were examined using part of the written composition test of the IEA International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (the part assessing the narrative text), revised and adapted to the Greek language and educational context. Analysis of the preand postimplementation data suggests that after the first year of implementing the current teaching material, the pupils’ narrative skills display a considerable increase. Additionally, their performances are related to their gender, social background, and practices regarding students’ written discourse production.

Teaching Multimodality in Greek Elementary School Language Arts

The digital era requires new approaches to the development of literacy through multimodal media of communication. It also requires a rethinking of the ways that research data can be used in the teaching practice, so as to support the students’ efforts to enhance multimodal communication skills. From very early on, children develop a variety of cultural experiences, by dealing with texts combining words, symbols, images, movement, graphs and sound, as well as with new types of printing and digital technology (e.g. newspapers, advertisements, magazines, movies, television and radio shows, the web, etc.). The school subject of Language Arts cannot ignore these developments, if it is to meet the actual communication needs of contemporary people. In order to meet these needs, schools should implement systematically designed practices, featuring a variety of modes and media of communication for the elaboration of multimodal texts. The present aims to investigate the degree to which Greek Language Arts textbooks attempt to develop the students’ multimodal communication skills through the elaboration of multimodal texts. More specifically, this research attempts to investigate whether the choice of texts and the activities of text comprehension-analysis and written discourse production fall under the concept of multimodality in multiliteracies. The findings indicate a great effort towards in-class elaboration of multimodal texts, in terms of both rates and different types of multimodal discourse, through varied medium site of display. However, this bears no homology with the study and use of varied modes and media, so as to provide students with sufficient means to develop multimodal experiences in Language Arts .