Abstract
Educational researchers active in the critical study of language as ‘discourse’ are interested in language as a social practice. In other words, they investigate the way language constructs and is constructed by a wide variety of social relationships. These relationships might be as varied as those between writer and reader; teacher and student; test maker and test taker; school and state. What makes the researchers ‘critical’ is the shared assumption that social relationships are seldom constituted on equal terms. Social relationships may reflect and constitute inequitable relations of power in the wider society, on terms that may be defined, amongst others, by gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. For this reason, critical discourse research is centrally concerned with the way language is implicated in the reproduction of and resistance to inequitable relations of power in educational settings. It is important to note, however, that there is no coherent ‘field’ of critical discourse research. Although critical discourse researchers share a common interest in language, power, and social justice, they are associated with a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, education, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy.
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Norton, B. (1997). Critical Discourse Research. In: Hornberger, N.H., Corson, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4535-0_20
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