Guy Cook

The article discusses the morality of W. B. Yeats’ sonnet Leda and the Swan in the context of a widening gap between the sexual mores of earlier times and our own, and whether the poem remains a suitable choice for the teaching of stylistics. I begin by examining stylistics treatments of the poem, and its political, social and artistic context, then move on to consider charges of misogyny against the poem for eroticising and failing to condemn the rape it depicts. To assess these charges I examine other literary uses of the Leda myth both before and after Yeats, including earlier poems which romanticise the rape, and later ones which vilify it. I also consider the implications of my discussion for the teaching of other canonical poems on similar themes. The last part of the paper discusses more generally the place of morality in literature and literature teaching, including stylistics: whether teachers and analysts should promote a moral world view and moral behaviour through their choice of texts and comments on them, or whether there are other valid criteria for selecting and describing a text such as Leda and the Swan. To elucidate current views, I draw parallels with the moral didacticism of the highly influential literary critic F. R. Leavis in the mid twentieth century, and ask whether aspects of his patrician view have undergone a surreptitious revival in some contemporary pedagogy and criticism at the beginning of the twenty first.

White Rose University Press (WRUP) is an open access digital publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals and books, publishing across a wide range of academic disciplines. We are run jointly by the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. We are committed to open access dissemination of research and teaching materials, ensuring academic quality, and supporting innovation in publishing. Voices and Practices in Applied Linguistics comprises a selection of original applied linguistics-based research on the theme of the diversity of Applied Linguistics and in Applied Linguistics. It is a unique collection of reflections and cutting-edge research relating to academic, policy and professional fields of Applied Linguistics, featuring chapters written by founders of the field, established researchers, and rising stars. This accessible, eclectic and forward-looking volume is significant both for research and practice. It highlights current globalised perspectives on diversity in language use and communication, across a variety of contexts, and with a rich mix of frameworks, methodologies and participants. Compiled and edited by a team of academic experts in the field, this edited collection will be of interest to established and emerging researchers in Applied Linguistics globally. It will also be relevant to language professionals, practitioners, and policy makers. The volume draws together papers from the 2017 British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) conference, marking the 50th anniversary of its inaugural meeting. Founded in the mid-1960s, this UK-based professional association provides a forum for Applied Linguistics and its annual meeting brings together researchers and language professionals from across this field. *** Please note: you can download the ebook on its own or you can download chapters individually using the dropdown menu below. Readers can also download and cite from the PDF version of this book. This has a specific DOI and has a fixed structure with page numbers. Guidance on citing from other ebook versions without stable page numbers (Kindle, EPUB etc.) is now usually offered within style guidance (e.g. by the MLA style guide, The Chicago Manual of Style etc.) so please check the information offered on this by the referencing style you use. Further information on the order process

Patterns of food production and consumption have immense environmental impact. While much public discussion of meat eating centers on economic, environmental, and ethical issues and is based on reasoned arguments and facts, the contention of this article is that justifications of meat eating also have a more physical and less rational element which is more fully captured in the discourses of literature, marketing, and reflection on personal experience. Many people do not confront the ethical and environmental implications of their meat eating. The impact of industrial farming, or even the fact that meat is dead animal flesh, are often either not considered in justifications of meat eating, or treated as less significant than meat eating as a physical, personal, and social experience. Meat eating for many remains solely a matter of taste, in both the biological and social senses of the word.

Recent literature on language teaching has questioned the established view that a language is most effectively taught monolingually, arguing instead that the student’s own language has an important role to play, and this view is now widely accepted. While this literature draws attention to the extremism of some monolingual approaches, and advocates a judicious use of the own language, it often neglects the many educational contexts in which a very high proportion of teaching is conducted in the students’ own language. This article addresses this issue and adds to the growing literature on classroom own-language use and its pedagogic functions by examining an instance of such large-quantity use of the own language in an ‘intensive reading’ tertiary English-language course in China. Through analysis of lesson transcripts and interviews with participants, it documents the uses and functions of Chinese, and teacher and student attitudes to it. It also discusses speculatively how the large-scale use of Chinese relates to the aims of the Chinese curriculum, western influences, the textbooks, and teaching style: all matters which merit further research.

In contemporary urban society, animals have been erased in many people’s lives. They are generally encountered only as meat, pets, pests or vicariously in fiction and documentaries; yet the relation of humans to other animals is a matter of pressing environmental, social, economic and philosophical concern, and across the social and natural sciences there is increased interest in human–animal interaction. This situation gives rise to many different and often irreconcilable ways of talking about animals, and current debates about human–animal interaction are frequently polarised and based on incompatible standpoints, such as those of animal rights and human exceptionalism. This article analyses two interviews which exemplify such radically opposed views: one with a spokesperson for the Vegan Society, and one with a spokesperson for the Countryside Alliance, a pro-hunting pressure group. Both are placed against the background of other interviews collected as part of an ongoing larger research project on the discursive representation of animals. Each is shown to use and promote a way of speaking about animals which is at odds with mainstream establishment discourse. It is suggested that they represent two mirror-image reactions to the erasure of animals in contemporary urban life which, despite their differences, reflect a more intimate encounter with actual animals. One actively seeks to preserve and promote a traditional discourse, the other to innovate a new non-speciesist discourse. They thus reflect, in their uses of language, contrasting possible reactions to a major social and environmental change.

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students’ own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to the students’ own language has begun. This article surveys the developing English language literature on the role of students’ own language(s) in the language classroom. After clarifying key terms, the paper charts the continuing widespread use of students’ own languages in classrooms around the world and the contemporary academic and societal trends which have led to a revival of support for this. It then explores key arguments which underpin this revival, and reviews a range of empirical studies which examine the extent and functions of own-language use within language classrooms. Next, the article examines the support for own-language use that a range of theoretical frameworks provide, including psycholinguistic and cognitive approaches, general learning theory and sociocultural approaches. Having explored the notion of ‘optimal’ in-class own-language use, the article then reviews research into teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards own-language use. It concludes by examining how a bilingual approach to language teaching and learning might be implemented in practice.

At a time of diminishing resources, the sum of apparently minor personal decisions about food can have immense impact. These individual choices are heavily influenced by language, as those with vested interests seek to persuade individuals to act in certain ways. This makes the language of food politics a fitting area for an expanding applied linguistics oriented towards real-world language-related problems of global and social importance. The paper draws upon five consecutive research projects to show how applied linguistics research may contribute to public policy and debate, and also how, by entering such new arenas, it can develop its own methods and understanding of contemporary language use.