Hugo Bowles

Why Are Newspaper Law Reports So Hard to Understand

Abstract Newspaper law reports are an important resource for teachers of legal English because they provide material for the simultaneous practice of legal and linguistic skills. However, the comprehension of law report discourse is shown, in this paper, to be particularly difficult for the non-expert reader. Comparative discourse analysis of the way a particular case is reported in the All England Law Reports and the law report section of The Times and The Independent shows that the discourse structure of the newspaper law report is not adequately signalled by the linguistic conventions in the text. This produces a complex conceptual structure which makes considerable cognitive demands on the non-expert. Pedagogical suggestions are made for dealing with the textual and cognitive difficulties arising from the analysis.

Storytelling and Drama : exploring narrative episodes in plays

How do characters tell stories in plays and for what dramatic purpose? This volume provides the first systematic analysis of narrative episodes in drama from an interactional perspective, applying sociolinguistic theories of narrative and insights from conversation analysis to literary dialogue. The aim of the book is to show how narration can become drama and how analysis of the way a character tells a story can be the key to understanding its role in the unfolding action. The book’s interactional approach, which analyses the way in which the characteristic features of everyday conversational stories are used by dramatists to create literary effects, offers an additional tool for dramatic criticism. The book should be of interest to scholars and students of narrative research, conversation and discourse analysis, stylistics, dramatic discourse and theatre studies.

International perspectives on English as a lingua franca

English as a lingua franca (ELF) is recognised as the most interesting and controversial subject to have emerged in language teaching in the last 15 years. This collection, written by international experts in the field, brings new insight into the relationship between ELF and language teaching. It covers a wide range of areas in school and university contexts, exploring how the pedagogy of intelligibility, culture and language awareness, as well as materials analysis and classroom management, can be viewed from an ELF perspective. The chapters are written in a clear, readable style and include a set of engagement priorities that can be used as a stimulus for class discussion. Combining academic rigour with strong practical relevance, this book will appeal to applied linguists working in pedagogy and the social sciences and is essential reading for any teacher or trainee interested in acquiring an international perspective on an exciting new area of English language teaching.

Storytelling as interaction in The Homecoming

This article describes and analyses storytelling episodes in Harold Pinters The Homecoming using an interactional approach which focuses on the ways in which characters negotiate storytelling as speakers and listeners and the impact this negotiation has on the audiences interpretation of the play. Drawing on studies of conversational storytelling, the analysis shows how narrative control in The Homecoming reflects territorial control, as stories become the means by which characters battle for power within the discourse space. It also shows how characters construct their storytelling identities through the use of particular storytelling strategies and highlights the way in which Pinter uses a highly polarized storytelling style to produce particular dramatic effects.

ELF-oriented pedagogy: conclusions

The concern of this collection has been to address the many challenges facing language teachers who work with ELF, a global language, at a local level. This concluding chapter will review the main issues raised and solutions proposed in the collection in relation to pedagogy and ELF; the final section will look ahead to possible future developments in these areas.