This book provides an accessible introduction to a range of ways of analyzing language in context. It will be of interest to students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in education and in language study, such as English Studies, Masters in Education, Masters in Applied Linguistics and teacher training courses.

The Workbook is
* accessible: it assumes no previous knowledge on the part of the
reader so it defines key terms, provides theoretical background on the
approaches discussed and guides students through detailed analysis

* practical: it offers a 'hands-on' approach to data analysis

* authentic: the 24 data examples analyzed and discussed are drawn
from published work by experts in specific fields of language analysis

* academically rigorous: the data selected in the workbook is from
important research projects in the field of language study

* wide ranging: analytical methods are drawn from sociolinguistics,
sociocultural approaches, ethnography, multimodal approaches and discourse analysis. Contexts exemplified are drawn from education, the media, informal communication, new technologies, child youth and adult settings. Data examples are included from a range of national contexts including the UK, US, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong, Japan and Pakistan.


The Workbook includes a general introduction, followed by four main parts. Part 1 looks at approaches to spoken interaction; Part 2, approaches to written texts; Part 3, multimodal approaches; and Part 4 ethnographic approaches.

This Workbook is required reading for the Open University course: Language and Literacy in a Changing World which forms part of an MA in Education and MA in Education/Applied Linguistics.

The companion volume for the Course is Language, Literacy and Education (ISBN 1 85856 288 0)