Open Collections

Reflections of a language educator : (dissonant discourses, creative language, mindful expressiveness and their implications for language education)

University of British Columbia

This dissertation examines the creativity of language in producing discourses beyond the ordinary modes of expressiveness. While conducting a critical analysis of discourse and language, the dissertation explores the creativity of language and examines the psychological, linguistic, and philosophical implications of language creativity and its relation to modes of thinking. While drawing on Ricoeur's theory of language creativity, Hairi Yazdi's theory of knowledge by presence and Langer's theory of mindfulness, the research looks into the functions and implications of the theories for language education. The dissertation discusses the role of mindfulness, immediate consciousness and knowledge by presence in generating creativity within language and discusses how changes in modes of expressiveness may give rise to changes in styles of thinking. The research scrutinizes the role of creativity in developing discourses that empower intelligibility and enrich the language thus arguing that language education consists in offering new ways of being. While conducting a critique on pervasive methods of language education and their mere emphasis on techniques, the dissertation offers a new hypothesis for language education and language learning and examines new ways of teaching English to language learners with English as their first, second or foreign language. The dissertation has a special concentration on writing and language and explores their relationship within ordinary and non-ordinary discourses. In line with this emphasis, the author presents numerous examples of language creativity in his own writing to substantiate the promotion of the plurality of meanings, thereby going beyond the reduction of language. The dissertation demonstrates the practical implications of understanding the creativity of language for language education and argues that language educators can not enrich the discourses of education and language education as long as they do not creatively question the existing discourses.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-11-07

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/14691

Language and Literacy Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace