Though an increasing number of research studies have investigated the relationship between second language learning and identity, few of them have focused on the study abroad context. In this study of a group of Chinese learners in three language schools in Britain, I explore how Chinese learners’ identities (including aspects of gender, nationality, social class and as language learners) influence their English language learning journeys in Britain, and how their identities may themselves be shaped by the English language learning discourse in the language classroom and outside the language classroom. The research methodology follows broadly ethnographic and case study research principles. The data is obtained from narrative interviews, ethnographic observation, face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations, email correspondence and diary studies. From the collected data, it appears that during the English language learning journey in Britain, the Chinese learners’ social development becomes fundamental, not ancillary, to their second language learning. They have learnt about English language, British culture and British society, but perhaps more importantly, they have negotiated their identities, and have achieved new knowledge of their own senses of the self. This present study is significant, because it offers rich insights into Chinese learners’ English learning and living experiences in Britain, and it particularly explores social class identity and national identity in relation to second language learning and use, which has been under-studied in the general field of second language learning research.

This thesis investigates students’ perceptions towards English classes in a Mexican public university. I argue that the lack of engagement of a small group of students taking part in English classes which are a compulsory component in their tertiary program is not a product of a lack of interest or ability as would normally be argued. This thesis establishes an alternative possibility. Through an interpretive approach to research using several ethnographic techniques and discourse analysis to make sense of the data, the thesis suggests that in order to sustain an engaged position as language learners, students and teachers should construct dialogical spaces that could lead to a better understanding of each other and as a result a more conscious position as engaged learners of a foreign language. The data demonstrate that contradictory discourses within the institution’s policies and those from different departments contribute to a disengaged attitude towards learning English where learning a second language competes with other subjects that are considered central for future professional practice within their disciplines of interest. Data also reveal that aside from the marginalized position that English appears to have, there are issues of students’ marginalization at classroom level which could be the result of monologic positions the teachers and students that participated in this study appear to construct. To better sustain an engaged attitude towards the subject, I suggest that safe spaces could become arenas to raise the awareness of what being a language learner takes. I also suggest that many of the practices within a language classroom stem from monologic discourses and might be considered the source of many of the issues raised in this study. This research challenges some views currently held about motivation as these do not fit with understandings emerging from this study.

Chapter Three discusses the dream vision of Book I of the Vox Clamantis; it shows how Gower repeats the commonplaces of medieval didactic writers, regarding the peasant insurrection of 1381 as an outbreak of demonic derangement. It is seen that Gower makes use of the 'organic analogy' of society to show this madness as an infection of the entire social body. The sufferings of the nobility at the hands of the rioting mobs are described sympathetically in terms of 'grief-madness'. Thus Gower presents two very different, class-based, attitudes towards insanity. The discussion of Chaucer's Miller's and Summoner's tales in the following chapter continues the investigation of the link between madness and social class. Here it is seen how Chaucer undermines the traditional theological interpretation of madness as a punishment for sin by encouraging comparison and contrast of the many allegations of insanity in the texts. A rather different approach is taken in Chapter Five, which examines the major works of the civil servant Thomas Hoccleve. Far from regarding madness as essentially spectacular, the apparently insane narrator of Hoccleve's major poems stresses that insanity is a hidden and undetectable affliction. This conclusion, it is argued, contradicts the standard view of psychiatric history regarding madness in the Middle Ages. The relationship between madness, expressions of interiority and medieval autobiography is considered. The final chapter explores the association of madness, female unruliness and mystical rapture in The Book of Margery Kempe. It argues that the Book displays two contradictory attitudes towards madness. Kempe is eager to present madness as a moral abomination and she frequently invokes ecclesiastical authority to do so. Nevertheless, she herself is held mad by many of her contemporaries on account of her controversial devotional behaviour; this explains why madness is presented positively elsewhere in the Book, as a blessed condition of increased spiritual insight. In this sense the Book contains a craftily double-edged attempt by Kempe to vindicate her conduct.

This thesis begins by reviewing the literature pertaining to Scottish English pronunciation which has been produced since the late-eighteenth century. The world of authors, such as Sylvester Douglas, Melville Bell, James Murray, James Wilson, William Grant, Anne McAllister, Jack Aitken and David Abercrombie, is reviewed and its contribution to our understanding of the nature of Scottish English pronunciation is assessed. The methodology and findings of the present study are then presented. The data is gathered from speakers from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and it centres around their pronunciation of /r, l, w/ and /m/ and their voice onset times for voiceless plosives. Certain discrepancies are noted between the description of these features in the existing literature and the realisations produced by the speakers informing the present study. The articulatory nature and acoustic characteristics of all allophones of /r, l, w/ and /m/ are described. Moreover, their incidence in all phonotactic contexts is set out. Hitherto unattested realisations (such as [f] for /r/, and [w] for 1/1) are noted and discussed at length. The lexical incidence of /w/ and /m/ is investigated and a sound change is observed. Voice onset times of /p, t/ and /k/ are measured in #CV and #CCV position. Statistical analysis finds no demographic difference in VOT values, but consistent significant differences emerge between the phonemic environments. Finally, it is argued that the gulf that exists between the literature pertaining to Scottish English pronunciation and the results of the present study is indicative of the state of our knowledge of the phonetic characteristics of most English accents. Consequently, a case is made for the renaissance of phonetic investigation into all English accents.

Phrasal verbs are an intrinsic part of Late Modern English, and are found in both informal and colloquial language (check out, listen up) and more formal styles (a thesis might set out some problems and then sum up the main points). They are highly productive: 'up' can be added to almost any verb to signify goal or end-point (read up, finish up, eat up, meet up, fatten up); and once a phrasal verb has been coined, a conversion often follows (for example, the verb 'phone in' was first recorded in 1946, and the noun 'phone-in' in 1967; 'dumb down' was coined in 1933, and we read of 'dumbed-down' material in 1982). Perhaps because of their pervasiveness, phrasal verbs are frequently criticized (although occasionally praised) in Late Modern English texts about language. The purpose of this thesis is to examine such attitudes in three strands. Firstly, over one hundred language texts (grammars, dictionaries, and usage manuals, among others, from 1750 to 1970) were examined to discover how phrasal verbs were recognized and classified in Late Modern English. Secondly, these materials were analyzed in order to find out how attitudes towards phrasal verbs in English developed in relation to broader attitudes towards language in the Late Modern period. Thirdly, phrasal verb usage in A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers, a corpus of British and American English from 1650 to 1990, was analyzed to determine how such attitudes affect usage. It will be shown that attitudes towards phrasal verbs reflect various strands of language ideology, including opinions about Latinate as opposed to native vocabulary; ideals relating to etymology, polysemy, and redundancy; reactions to neologisms; and attitudes towards language variety. Furthermore, it will be suggested that in the case of certain redundant combinations such as 'return back' and 'raise up', proscriptions of phrasal verbs did have an effect on their usage in the Late Modern period.

Initial investigations into English essays written by Syrian university students triangulated Syrian and British teachers’ evaluations of the essays and the lexico-grammatical features they identified as affecting the overall quality of writing, with text analyses of the sources, types and frequency of all grammatical errors. Following this, and a review of relevant literature, the thesis presents an in-depth study of relative clauses and conjunctive adjuncts as under-researched features in Arabic speaking university student writing that can enrich their writing syntactically and semantically. The relative clause (RC) analysis shows that the 'full' form RC occurred much more frequently than the 'reduced' form, and that confusion between these two forms was a prominent source of student error. 'Pronoun retention' errors indicating L1 interference were among the most frequent RC errors – as most studies of RC use by Arab learners find. Moreover, RC constructions with 'head noun' (or antecedent) in the non-subject position and 'gap' (or relativized NP/sentence) in the subject position were dominant, while other, and more complex, construction types were much less common. This supports the AHH and PDH hypotheses on the frequency/difficulty hierarchy of RC types. Conjunctive adjunct analysis reveals that 'additive' conjunctive adjuncts were more frequent, followed by 'causals'. Despite its informality, the resultive conjunctive adjunct 'so' was used most repeatedly, followed by 'also', 'but', and 'and'. Causal conjunctive adjuncts were most frequently misused, though in general conjunctive adjunct misuse is not a major weakness. Contrastive analysis between the L2 (Syrian) and an equivalent L1 (British) corpus of literature essays revealed no significant difference between the total frequencies of RCs, 'full' RCs and 'non-subject-subject' RCs. In contrast, the total frequencies of conjunctive adjuncts in the two corpora were significantly different, with the L2 corpus containing almost twice as many conjunctive adjuncts as the L1 corpus, particularly causals and additives, this latter category being most frequent in both corpora. The British students' employment of relative clause types and conjunctive expressions was generally more diverse than that of the Syrian students. Pedagogical implications conclude this thesis.

This thesis explores the interaction between context and attitude in the languagein- education experiences of multilingual refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya, East Africa. The aim was to discover how they respond to policy and practice in language-in-education and the macro-societal influences that affect their attitudes. I wanted to find out the realities the refugee learners face as a corollary of the policy and practice, and their responses towards these realities. I used an approach based on Critical Ethnography to collect and analyse the data. This generated a diversity of data, allowing for triangulation. I drew on several theoretical frameworks to explore the diverse themes emerging from the data: Cummins' (2000) Transformative Pedagogy, Phillipson's (1992, 1999) Linguistic Imperialism, and Kachru's (1983, 1994) World Englishes. I found that the provision of language education for the refugees follows the mainstream Kenyan policy, a relic of colonialism, whereby English is the medium of instruction from Class Four onwards. Mother tongues or Swahili may, in theory, be used for the lower classes but the practice is often not so. Many refugees have a love-hate relationship with English. They find it hard to master, yet like it as a passport to resettlement, jobs and further education. A few appreciate Swahili but many ofthe Sudanese find it burdensome and unnecessary. Arabic, French and Mother tongues are both appreciated and disliked, but most find their usefulness reduced. The learners face harsh realities, as most not only have to learn the new languages but also have them used as media of instruction. They devise a range of strategies to respond to these realities, for instance, making their way into English Language support classes even if by trickery .and impersonation. This study seeks to contribute to the research literature by exploring how context and attitude affect each other in the education of learners in the temporary setting of a refugee camp.

There is a requirement, within Key Stages One to Four of the National Curriculum for English, that pupils should be taught various aspects of Knowledge About Language which draw on an explicit understanding of English grammar. Many English teachers find themselves ill-equipped to deal with grammar, not only because they have gaps in their own knowledge, but because they struggle to reconcile the teaching of grammar with the progressive philosophies which have underpinned English teaching in recent decades. A number of studies have explored the philosophies of English teaching. My aim was to examine the perceptions of trainee English teachers on grammar and its place in English teaching within the context of changing definitions of English, and specifically the National Curriculum version that they would be teaching to. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative data from questionnaire surveys and interviews enabled me to make a detailed description of trainees' prior experience of learning grammar and their feelings about teaching it. However, when I came to analyse their understandings of grammar and English, I came up against issues of interpretation and epistemology which caused me to re-think my analytical approach and my overall methodology. The problem was that questions on the meanings of grammar and English teaching had generated a complex, wide-ranging and often contradictory set of responses. I felt a conventional method of coding and analysis could not adequately reflect the intricate, shifting nature of trainee perceptions at this early stage of their apprenticeship. Allied to this were problems of epistemology: the dangers of treating data as fact at a time when the view of my respondents on teaching and on themselves as teachers were in a state of transition. My solution was to change my analytical method, to treat the data as discourse, to use discourse analysis to explore the multiple meanings of English and grammar for trainee teachers and to construct a model which could reflect the fluidity, the contradictions and the potentialities of this discourse. In this way I was able to provide evidence of a transformative process whereby trainee constructions of grammmar were broadening and becoming more compatible with their constructions of English and of themselves as English teachers, while at the same time demonstrating the contradictions and conflicts which continue to characterise subject English.

This thesis sets out to characterise English as a World Language, in contrast with English used in homogeneous, intranational settings. After a brief introduction, the relevant literature is reviewed in two chapters: firstly the concept of an international variety of English is challenged and, following this, there is consideration of current thinking under the headings of English as an International Language and English as Lingua Franca. This preliminary part of the thesis leads to some hypotheses concerning the way in which EWL might be characterised, with particular attention to attitudes among different sorts of speaker. Chapter Five introduces methodologies (1) for finding data-providing participants and (2) assessing their language-related attitudes relevant to the research questions. It continues by (3) examining ways of obtaining spoken data and (4) of transcribing and (5) analysing it. Chapter 6 presents the specific methodological choices for this thesis. The following four chapters provide results. Firstly, brief results are given of tests applied to ascertain participants' language-related attitudes. Following this, the results of analysing and explaining the spoken data itself are given. Chapter 8 closely compares one EWL conversation with one homogeneous one and draws tentative conclusions about what might be found in the remaining conversations: that EWL may be characterised by greater convergence among speakers, irrespective of whether or not they are native speakers. Chapter 9 examines the whole suite of conversations in this light and the previous results are generally confirmed: the speakers in homogeneous conversations tend to be as divergent as they are convergent, where in EWL conversations they try their best to maintain an atmosphere of comity. Chapter 10 completes the results section by comparing the performance of six speakers in particular, who each participate in an EWL conversation and in a homogeneous one. They are found to draw on convergence strategies for their EWL conversations while being more direct and divergent in their homogeneous ones. Chapter 11 attempts to summarise the preceding chapters and to draw some conclusions from the results.

This thesis consists of two mixed-methods studies: a validation study and an application study of Dörnyei's (2009a) L2 Motivational Self System with participants from China. The quantitative part of the validation study involved 1,154 Chinese middle school and university students from mainland China and the follow-up qualitative study consisted of ten Chinese university students at a British university from mainland China. Structural equation models and correlational analyses validated the L2 Motivational Self System in China. The issues of family, face, responsibility, and pressure clarified the motivational role of the Chinese family and explained the main relationships in the system. Differences in the motivational orientation of the two sub-groups demonstrated the ability of the system to represent different age groups. The application study involved an intervention programme that I developed at a British university in order to motivate my participants to put more time and effort into learning English by enhancing their vision of their Ideal L2 self. The programme contained 31 participants who were international students from China. The programme made most of the participants more motivated to learn English and all of them more confident in their English. There was a significant increase in the strength of the participants' Ideal L2 self as a result of the programme. The vision of the participants' Ideal L2 self and their goals for learning English became more clear and specific due to the programme. Motivation and confidence were found to mutually affect each other. Most of the participants' imagination improved as a result of the programme. They became more proficient in English, more aware of the importance of English in their lives, and their attitudes toward learning English became more positive due to the programme.