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This thesis, based on a purpose-built corpus of political discourse from the UK, US, and France, focuses on electoral discourse and, more specifically, on adversarial relations within electoral discourse. It draws on theories of politeness and adversariality to characterise what adversarial discourse is made of, that is, it defines the adversarial moves performed by politicians in an electoral context. I firstly ask how does one do adversariality, second, I consider the importance of individual style in the performance of adversarial moves, and third, I review the goals that politicians hope to achieve. To carry out this analysis, I consider the three traditional discourse subtypes featured in electoral discourse: debates, speeches, and manifestos. The claim of this research is that adversarial discourse does not exclusively occur in an interactional environment, as it is currently defined, but that the moves it is made of, facework, Face Threatening Acts (FTAs), evasion techniques, and stancetaking, can also be carried out in the absence of the adversary/opponent. I set out to define adversarial moves as found in interactional electoral discourse: election debates. I focus on the 2012 US presidential election debate series between the Democrat and Republican “tickets.” Second, I consider the findings from the debate series and transpose them to campaign speeches, a context in which speech acts are still performed by individuals in front of an audience, thus, still in an interactional context. Finally, I ask whether the adversarial moves I have identified so far can be found in a monologic type of electoral discourse: manifestos. I conclude that the absence of direct interaction does not impair the performance of adversarial moves, that individual style as well as personality impact on that performance, and that different types of goals motivate adversarial moves.

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The thesis is concerned with texts that mystify events being reported. It begins by focusing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a currently prominent enterprise, one of whose concerns is with the isolation of text which mystifies the nature of events described. When CDA isolates mystifying text, it is usually with the perspective of a non-analytical reader, either explicitly or implicitly in mind. However, the notion of a non-analytical reader in CDA is undeveloped from a cognitive point of view. The general structure of the thesis is as follows. In the first section, I show how CDA's approach to highlighting textual mystification is inadvertently bound up with symbolic notions of mental representation in cognitive science. In the second section, I outline theories of mental representation in connectionism and cognitive linguistics which problematise the symbolic assumptions of CDA and thus what CDA locates as mystifying text. The thesis develops cumulatively towards an alternative framework for highlighting mystification, in the third section, which includes compatible elements from connectionism, cognitive linguistics and recent psycholinguistic research on inference generation. My framework predicts how certain text can lead to mystification for a non-analytical reader who has little vested interest in a text and is largely unfamiliar with its subject matter. I show how mystification for this nonanalytical reader is connected with inference generation but, in contrast to CDA, I provide a detailed processing profile for such a reader. Attitudes in CDA towards inference generation are often inconsistent and are in conflict with recent psycholinguistic research. My framework, rooted in empirical psycholinguistic study, enables a more plausible, comprehensive and thus consistent perspective on inference generation in reading and how this relates to mystification. Finally, my framework also highlights CDA's 'overinterpretation' in text exegesis done by proxy for non-analytical readers.

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The thesis is that the native language is not learned but acquired causally. In Chapter I, I discuss the ways in which abilities may be acquired. I assume that there are at most two ways of acquisition and discuss how these may be related and how they are distinguished. In Chapters II and III, I outline the structure of infant thinking before the infant can speak, with a view to denying that at that time rationality can be ascribed to infants. I have an argument of a Kantian kind for the claim that a private language - a language of thought - must be ascribed to infants, who are agents before they are speakers. This language is, however, restricted both with respect to the kind of experience and with respect to the kind of operations it permits. In Chapter IV, I consider the possibility of the infant with the modest cognitive abilities with which the arguments of Chapters II and III have equipped him, acquiring the native language via either of the two modes of learning which I have assumed divide up the field without remainder. On my argument, the child cannot learn language off his own bat by forming a theory about the behaviour of adult speakers through which he could bring his performances into line with theirs, since the rationality necessary for theory formation cannot be ascribed to him. Even if this point is waived, the model still requires of him performances beyond his cognitive competence. The language game model fails either through being a causal model in disguise or by assuming in the infant knowledge of the very public language acquisition of which the model is to account for. If there are only two ways of acquisition and if one fails, it follows that the other must hold. In Chapter V, I draw this conclusion and sketch a causal account of language acquisition.

This thesis is an argument about the nature of language teaching methodology, relating general educational principles to current theories of language acquisition and use. Chapter I discusses what constitutes appropriate knowledge about language teaching methodology. It argues for a Popperian epistemological model, providing that methodological innovation is seen as analogous to social policy-making. Chapter II outlines current views of the nature of language, its use and acquisition, and argues that the creation of meaning through interaction and negotiation with other language users is a central feature. Chapter III examines a number of possible polarisations of the process of language acquisition into strategies for acquiring the tokens of the language and strategies for turning them into a negotiable and value-laden system of use. Criticisms are offered of some of these, particularly Krashen's, and a pedagogically orientated distinction between accuracy and fluency is presented. • Chapter IV examines the methodological implications of making this distinction, and particularly the need to establish a 'natural' setting. Group work is seen as central to this. Chapter V explores the role of meaning in language teaching and briefly considers some curriculum design proposals. It is argued that the organisation of a syllabus is less important than the methodology used, and that a syllabus should have educational content. Chapter VI draws'on the argument so far to outline a model of teaching methodology which emphasises substantive as well as linguistic content, and depends upon interactive methods. The final chapter returns to the general model of methodological enquiry and argues that successful development of the practice of teaching depends heavily on a combination of administrative channels for effective innovation and feedback with a constant process of analysis of theoretical concepts in terms which have direct relevance to teachers. This thesis performs the latter activity.

The inadequacy of Chinese language skills of the South Asian language minorities has raised concerns among educators and policymakers in recent years. Further to the notification given by the Equal Opportunities Commission to the Education Bureau of its concerns about the education of language-minority students, the provision of educational support to them became one of the priorities in the "Initiatives of the 2014 Policy Address" of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. This study adopts habitus as a research method to gain a deeper understanding on the South Asian language minorities' language acquisition in Hong Kong. Whilst there are a number of initiatives to enhance the teaching and learning of Chinese for language-minority students, in this study I work closely with a group of six language minorities who studied in and graduated from the most historical designated school in Hong Kong. In attempting to understand the complexities of language practices and strategies employed by the participants to cope with their language needs in Hong Kong, I draw heavily from Bourdieu's notions of symbolic power, habitus, capital and field. The study uncovers the familial and linguistic habitus of the participants. All of them were multilingual speakers with various degrees of proficiency. Socioeconomic status appeared to have an effect on the motive for the student participants to re/produce Chinese language as their cultural capital. Meanwhile, Chinese language in terms of Cantonese was much valued by the graduate participants when they had opportunities to interact with their Chinese counterparts after they had left the designated school. The acquisition of Chinese language among the South Asian language minorities presents an interesting issue for those working in the educational field. Lacking primary familial and linguistic habitus of Chinese, the language minorities rely heavily and even entirely on the schools to help them cultivate their linguistic habitus of Chinese. I draw specifically from the relational notions of habitus and field to argue that the language minorities' linguistic habitus of Chinese can only be inculcated effectively through exposures and immersion in arenas where the Chinese counterparts are located.

Metaphoricity is often regarded as a distinctive linguistic phenomenon, in opposition to literal, or non-figurative language. Recent research from a corpus-linguistic perspective has begun to show, however, that such a dichotomist stance to metaphor does not bear scrutiny. Current categorization of metaphoric language is unable to address the fuzzy, ambiguous nature of metaphoricity with any definitive set of linguistic characteristics (Deignan, 2005; Partington, 2006; Philip, 2011). Moreover, a metaphor’s ability to violate or bend the limits of linguistic conventions (semantically, lexically, grammatically) is what gives those who employ them a certain degree of freedom in their use of language. The focus of this thesis is to explore and compare the lexical characteristics of metaphoric and non-metaphoric instances of language from a corpus-based perspective. Hoey’s theory of Lexical Priming (2005) presents a usage-based account for both the psychological motivation behind our understanding of language and our ability to use language fluently to communicate within a given context. Presently, the theory accounts for both spoken and written language within particular domains but little attention has been paid to figurative language and in how far priming can account for its usage. This research aims to present an account of how lexical priming can be extended to account for metaphoric instances of language. The focus of this thesis is to explore the relations of collocation, colligation, semantic association and pragmatic association in metaphoric and non-metaphoric instances of the items cultivated (v), flame (n) and grew (v) within a corpus of nineteenth century writings. Hoey’s Drinking Problem hypothesis, an outcome of the Lexical Priming theory is shown to provide an explanation for what drives us as language users to identify metaphoricity. The findings reveal differences in the lexical behaviour between metaphoric and non-metaphoric uses: as a metaphor, it can be argued that cultivated, flame and grew are qualitatively different lexical items, when compared to their non-metaphoric use(s). These findings suggest that lexical, grammatical, textual and pragmatic manifestations in language carry a great deal of importance in distinguishing between subtleties in word senses and meanings. Moreover, the findings show a metaphoric sense of an item appears to be dependent on the primings activated in a reader. It could be argued, based upon the lexical priming approach, that metaphoricity is inherent in the language user rather than the language itself. The research concludes more generally that corpus linguistics, as a method, can offer an explanation for why we recognise metaphoric uses of an item successfully.