"The Role of Language in The War on Terror" @ next KOTESOL meeting.

Hello Teachers:
 
We've been working hard to find a great speaker for our December KOTESOL (Korea Teachers of English To Speakers of Other Languages) meeting. Will Lingle, a recent graduate of the University of Birmingham MA Applied Linguistics program - a teacher in Korea since 2001 who is currently teaching at Pukyong National University - will present his research findings: The Role Of Language in "The War on Terror": A Critical Discourse and Analysis.
 
What: December Chapter Meeting
When: Saturday December 13th at 2:30pm
Where: On the 4th floor of the ESS in Nampo Dong: subway exit #7 (unmarked), turn left around the corner, the building is on the left.
Who: All members and non-members invited.

Cost: Free

Abstract:

Since the revelations of US abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, the issue of treatment and legal status of US prisoners in the "war on terror" has been the subject of US Congressional hearings, military courts-martial, and much public debate. Critical Discourse Analysis, with its focus on real-world texts and issues of abuse of power, is well-positioned to contribute to this debate, especially the role of language in depicting the actions of American forces.

In this research four texts--a government list of interrogation techniques, a BBC news report and a human rights report describing interrogation conditions, and a statement made by an Abu Ghraib prisoner about abuse he witnessed by US forces--were compared using Halliday's Functional Grammar (FG), focusing on Material clauses to compare the texts' portrayals of physical actions.
 
Conclusions from the functional analysis were tested using both specialized and large general corpora. Results from both analyses indicate a correlation between the harm described--and the believability ascribed to it--and proximity to the violence itself. The talk will include brief introductions to Systemic Functional Grammar and corpus linguistics, and discussion of their valuable, real-world applications in the classroom.

We look forward to seeing you there.

For further questions please email Peter at bgkotesol[at]gmail.com