This study investigates the practice of writing a novel with its starting point in family photographs. It consists of the novel itself in latest draft form as well as a theoretical commentary on the writing of it. The particular focus for discussion is how the visual informs the written text and how the visual and verbal together become ‘imagetext’.1 The novel is narrated in the first person by Lily Adams who learns from the many ancestral portraits in black and white that line the halls of her childhood home that what they embody is not visually representative of a past she has been encouraged to believe in, but rather of one she is now forced to question as the pictures speak to her, in their own voices, of a world re-focused through their own lens. A critical commentary follows in three chapters: a chapter on ‘punctum’ discusses motivation and photography as a technical and creative driver for this work, and the following one on ‘ekphrasis’ makes literary connections between two main drafts, one in third person (see Appendix) and the other (latest) in first person, looking in detail at the way ‘ekphrasis’ or visual to verbal translation has developed in these two versions. The growth of the idea from earlier beginnings is traced and related to the notion of ekphrasis as it has shaped the later drafts. The concluding chapter on ‘ekphrastic realism’ draws these strands together by making an attempt to situate my novel within the canonical intersection of ekphrasis and magical realism. These make a contribution to an understanding of the concept of ekphrasis by way of ekphrastic writing, known merely as an obscure literary genre.

As part of an extensive survey of the relevant literature on the place and practice of pronunciation teaching, over 50 ‘ELT’ and ‘Pronunciation’ handbooks were reviewed. The main ideas and arguments of all handbook writers were drawn together in the form of 11 themes which provided the basis for the research questions and the research instrument of the study reported in this thesis. The study provided a comprehensive overview of current attitudes and practice in terms of pronunciation status and role, pronunciation models and targets and pronunciation teaching techniques in one major European city,Thessaloniki, Greece. Questionnaires were completed by 327 upper intermediate and advanced EFL learners and 47 EFL teachers. Additionally, interviews were conducted with 12 EFL teachers. The study explored the extent to which ELT writers’ views agreed with EFL teachers’ views. In many cases discrepancies emerged between what the experts advised and the teachers’ perceived priorities and reported practises; possible explanations and appropriate recommendations are provided as part of this thesis. A number of factors are identified as having a different effect on the perceived status of pronunciation; learners’ age, level of English, language learning purpose, language context and L1. This thesis is an attempt to seek to establish a rightful place for pronunciation in TEFL. In terms of pronunciation models, there was an overwhelming preference for RP and GA by the teachers and learners of this study. Nevertheless, the teachers would be largely content with accented international intelligibility whereas many learners would aspire to native-like pronunciation (NLP). It is recommended that teachers should help those learners who wish to achieve NLP to do so and that an updated version of RP or GA is the most appropriate pronunciation model for the teachers to adopt and the learners to follow in the context of TEFL in Greece.

This thesis investigates the current situation of pocket electronic dictionary use in Thailand. It explores the types of dictionary owned and used by Thai learners and their teachers, and the teachers’ attitudes towards the use of pocket electronic dictionaries (PEDs). It also explores how Thai learners use pocket electronic dictionaries to write a summary in English (production) and to write a summary in Thai (reception), and strategies that Thai students use to try to solve their reading and writing problems. The participants in my studies included 30 lecturers who taught basic English courses at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok. Data was collected using a questionnaire to obtain personal information, and information about access to and use of dictionaries, including knowledge about PEDs. Of the 30 teachers, 6 were interviewed in order to gain insights into teachers’ attitudes towards the use of PEDs. For my large-scale survey on dictionary use there were 1,211 first and second year undergraduate participants. These came from the Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Science, and Faculty of Industrial Education. Of these, 27 were selected to take part in my small scale survey of pocket electronic dictionary use. The first student survey was used to gain quantitative data about the students and their use of dictionaries, while the second student survey was used to gain more qualitative data regarding their use of PEDs. Finally, 13 out of the 27 participants were chosen to take part in the main experimental studies. Data was collected using think aloud, observation, and retrospective interviews. The first eight participants were asked to read two reading passages (one in English and the other one in Thai). Using dictionaries in their PEDs, the participants were asked to write a summary in Thai for the English passage (the Light Bulb I experiment) and to write a summary in English for the Thai passage (the Water I experiment). The remaining 5 participants followed the same procedures, but additionally after the two summary tasks were completed they were asked to review their summaries again using Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary, the English-English dictionary in their PEDs (the Light Bulb II and the Water II experiments). ii The data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings revealed that the teachers used and preferred their students to use monolingual learners’ dictionaries. They noticed the presence of PEDs in the classroom but they were under-informed about the contents and capabilities of Thai PEDs. The student surveys showed that although most students possessed learners’ dictionaries in book form, only a few of those owning the learners’ dictionaries reported actually using them. In contrast, nearly half of the students owned PEDs and most of these students reported using them. A greater number of students also reported they would like to use or own a PED in the future. The findings also suggest that the teachers do not have much influence over their students’ choice of dictionaries. The experimental studies revealed how the participants tackled the reading passages and wrote summaries, the problems they encountered, and the strategies they used to solve these problems. Models of PED consultations were proposed. The use of the English-English dictionary in their PEDs helped participants to comprehend the reading text, and helped some participants when reviewing their English summaries. It was found that some participants failed to display knowledge of the PEDs they were using. The investigations reveal several factors that may hinder dictionary look up success as well as factors that may promote dictionary look up success. On the basis of this research, guidelines for buying PEDs and for teaching PED skills are proposed. This research makes a significant contribution to the field of dictionary use, especially regarding the use of pocket electronic dictionaries. Through the use of a combination of research methods it provides an account of what really happens when PEDs are used for reception and for production. It also investigates and assesses PED features in detail, something which no existing PED studies have done before.

This thesis examines the impact of Data-driven learning (DDL) or classroom concordancing on a group of adolescent students in Greece seeking to investigate the degree of motivation to learn grammar when involved in DDL and the effectiveness of DDL in the teaching and learning of grammar. The study introduced concordance-based grammar materials to the experimental group, whereas a conventional grammar book was used with the control group, examining common grammar items and patterns. The analysis of classroom data gathered during DDL sessions offered insights into the improved noticing skills of the participants but also into the difficulties when involved in DDL with regard to unknown vocabulary and the Key Word in Context (KWIC) concordance format, which underlined the need for considerable teacher guidance. The qualitative evidence drawn from questionnaires and interviews suggested that the majority of the participants acknowledged the contribution and potential of corpora, but the degree of motivation to study grammar further varied. Most learners also expressed their preference for concordance-based learning, rather than their previous mostly passive learning experience, and further access to corpora, but without total abandonment of the conventional grammar book. The qualitative evidence was supplemented with analysis of test performances of the two groups, according to which more participants of the experimental group scored higher than those of the control group in each test. All these findings pointed to important gains and represent a preliminary step in the development of corpus-based grammar teaching to EFL adolescent learners.

This thesis provides a post-modern critique of the profession of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). This critique derives from the findings of a progressivist applied ethnographic study of group of ESOL teachers working at an institution of higher education in Britain. The analysis of the findings using post-modern theory revealed that there was a complex mêlée of discourses (in the Foucauldian sense) at work in the research setting: a localised idiosyncratic discourse containing the voices of the teachers and the management, and a dominating mainstream discourse containing institutional and academic voices. The teachers in their classroom practices and their construction of these practices reproduced the norms of this dominant discourse in a pedagogy which can be described as weak communicative language teaching. This reproduction resulted in contradictions in their practices and constructions of their practices with regard to learner-centredness and to the superiority of the pedagogy, as well as to tensions and conflicts between the ethos of education and the requirements of an ‘industry’. Three arguments emerge from these problems: 1. The pedagogy helps to maintain the low-status of TESOL because it reduces teaching to a series of ‘universally-applicable’ techniques and skills, the rudiments of which can be taught on a one-month training course. This pedagogy suits the institutional voice which regards TESOL as a private-sector industry. 2. This modernist ‘scientific’ pedagogy constructed as ‘universally-applicable’ and superior to other ways of teaching is potentially inappropriate because it cannot respond to social, cultural and political contexts of the classrooms in which it is used. 3. The pedagogy is legitimised with theories of learner-centredness that claim to be responsive to students’ needs engendering learner autonomy and self-actualisation while creating a ‘democratic’ and participative classroom. Using Focauldian theory, it can be seen that learner-centredness in fact masks the subtle operation of biopower, and is commensurate with a pedagogy designed as a commodity. These arguments can be located in wider shifts in education and professionalism in late-modern consumer capitalism where the public sector is being invaded by private-sector discourses. I finally propose the possibility of an alternative post-modern pedagogy with a commensurate post-modern critical profession.

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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.