Just what is Standard English? Is it correct English? Should grammar be taught?
The answers to such questions invariably provoke controversy. In this handy A to Z guide to language and literacy, Ronald Carter unpicks the meaning of key terms like proper English', real books', text', and discourse', and the ways in which concepts are used - and abused - by teachers, politicians, linguists, journalists and employers.
Each concise definition is cross-referenced, and supported by extensive examples and by references to further reading. Designed as a dictionary, but possessing an...

This collection shows students of English and applied linguistics ways in which language and literary study can be integrated. By drawing on a wide range of texts by mainly British and American writers, from a variety of different periods, the contributors show how discourse stylistics can provide models for the systematic description of, for example, dialogue in fiction; language of drama and balladic poetry; speech presentation; the interactive properties of metre; the communicative context of author/reader. Among the texts examined are novels, poetry and drama by major twentieth-century...

In this text Ronald Carter addresses the discourse of English as a subject of teaching and learning. The topics investigated include: grammar; correctness and standard English; critical language awareness and literacy; language and creativity; the methodological integration of language and literature in the curriculum; discourse theory and textual interpretation. The work presents a collection of revised, re-edited and newly written papers which contain extensive contrastive analyses of different styles of international English. These range from casual conversation to advertisement, poetry,...

In 1963 President John F. Kennedy was shot, Sylvia Plath published The Bell Jar, and the Beatles were in their prime. This was a changing world, which British and Irish writers both contributed to and reflected in drama, poetry and prose.
The Routledge Guide to Modern English Writing tells the story of British and Irish writing from 1963 to the present. From the first performance of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in the 1960s to lad novels and Chick Lit in the twenty-first century, the authors guide the reader through the major writers,...

Riddle Why is a telescope like a bad excuse? Answer Because anyone can see through it.

The authors of this book would like to help anyone - but particularly students of English - to "see through" language, whether as the instrument of perception or as the evasive code. They write about texts, and the making of texts, and how texts are made to carry various kinds of meaning; and the topics they choose to write about range from the lexicon of car maintenance manuals to the role of grammatical modality in literary criticism. Their aim is to help students who may have...

Wonder uses his knowledge of the street to get through college and to navigate his way through the Dynasty, a notorious Chicago housing project. By maintaining close ties to his childhood friends, Wonder finds that the balance of both words just may be possible.

This volume presents the state of the art in terms of stylistic research and application, including EFL and ESL language classroom situations. Some of the most prominent scholars from a variety of backgrounds in the field of pedagogical stylistics show how theory, empirical studies and new technology, including corpus analysis, can be integrated into the classroom.