Talking across languages in Guyanese schools: A discourse analysis.

摘要

This thesis argues that texts that incorporate Creole and that are used in the high school English classrooms of Guyana help to facilitate Creole language interactions. Texts that incorporate Creole and that are used to teach English in Guyana's high schools do this in an educational setting where the language of instruction is English.; Literature written and published about the English Creole situation in Guyana has focused on Creole English as a legitimate language and have made very little effort to address the situation as it relates to texts that incorporate Creole and how the different reading of them are implicated in English language acquisition and the English classroom.; English Creole is used alongside the Standard English during an English lesson and it is the preferred language of speech for both the teacher and student even during an English lesson. This thesis is an inquiry into the role the texts that incorporate English Creole play in the language interactions of English classrooms in four high schools in Guyana. It does this in part through a textual analysis of a mandatory English text and an intertextual analysis of those texts, written and spoken, involved in the English lesson.; This thesis takes up Craig's (1983) theory of teaching English as a bidialectal programme. This theory suggests that in a language situation like Guyana's, Creole needs to be acknowledged and taught alongside the target language---Standard English.