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Article published In:
Interdisciplinary approaches to the language of pop culture
Edited by Rocío Montoro and Valentin Werner
[English Text Construction 16:2] 2023
► pp. 144–168

Stylistics, pop culture, and educational research

A systematized review and case study

| University of Sunderland

This paper explores how educational research and stylistics, fields that rarely intersect, can be in closer dialogue in the study of pop culture texts, artefacts of interest to scholars in both disciplines. I establish in a systematized critical interpretive synthesis that educational research tends to treat pop culture texts as documents. I show that this in turn tends to drive content-focused analyses that stay, from a linguistic point of view, at the surface of the texts. In response, I offer a stylistic analysis of a pop culture text, an episode from the situation comedy The Big Bang Theory that features an English language learner. I employ conversation analysis to interpret the dialogue and demonstrate how a linguistic approach opens up readings on the discursive construction of phenomena such as belonging and exclusion.

Keywords: research synthesis, systematized critical interpretive synthesis, interdisciplinary approaches, telecinematic language, conversation analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pop culture texts in the education research tradition: A systematized review
    • 2.1Phase 1: Reasons for the review
    • 2.2Phase 2: Deciding what is relevant
    • 2.3Phase 3: Reading the studies
    • 2.4Phases 4–6: Determining how the studies are related, translating the studies, and synthesizing translations
  • 3.The synthesis
  • 4.Results of the review
    • 4.1Historical readings
    • 4.2Synchronic readings
    • 4.3Instrumental teacher training explorations
    • 4.4How teachers are portrayed
  • 5.Reading pop culture texts as documents: The consequences
  • 6.Pop culture as art in language: Taking a linguistic approach
    • 6.1The stylistic analysis of a pop culture text
      • 6.1.1Turn-taking between the native speakers
      • 6.1.2Preference organization and the native speakers
      • 6.1.3Recipient design in the native speaker talk
    • 6.2The contrasting pattern: The native speakers and Mrs. Petrescu
      • 6.2.1(Not) turn-taking with Mrs. Petrescu
      • 6.2.2(Not) talking with Mrs. Petrescu: Repair and audience positioning
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00058.man
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