Empowering Students Through Lexical Choice
It’s likely that many of our students today receive some, if not most, of their language input not from the course materials we use in classrooms, but from songs, TV and film, and other online sources including social media. It’s also likely that they will encounter many language items being used, but not be aware that they have a specific context that lends such terms appropriacy, but that other contexts render them inappropriate or offensive. If we want to empower our students through lexical choice, then they need to be properly informed about what those words can mean.
The content of my talk has been inspired theoretically by the work of Geraldine Horan (2013) and Liyanage et al (2015) on taboo language in English Language Teaching (ELT) and then in practice by working with L2 learners/users of English, mostly in Spain. By noticing how students use taboo language in English and how they do so in their home language(s), and how marked (or unmarked) taboo language is for them, it has become clear to me through my practice how necessary this specific knowledge about language is to my students. Rooted mostly in classroom experience, this presentation represents an early stage in the development of an action-research project, focused on the teaching of taboo and other marked language in the ELT classroom.
This practice-based presentation discusses teaching strategies and learning activities that will help practitioners aid their students’ use and understanding of terms that are taboo, in flux and connected with issues of social justice. While brief, it seeks to bridge the gap between a common reluctance about teaching taboo language and the result of our failure to do so. It will be most relevant to those working with students learning English at B2+ or above or in the upper secondary classroom.
Linguistics and Knowledge about Language in Education 