Language and Change research stream seminar

Popular Culture and English Language Education: Perspectives from Cultural Studies

Speaker: Dr Angel Lin
Hong Kong University

Biography
Angel Lin received her Ph.D. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. She is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. Angel Lin is well-respected for her versatile, interdisciplinary scholarship in language and identity studies, critical discourse analysis, bilingual education, new literacies, and youth cultural studies. She has published six research books and over seventy research articles and book chapters. She serves on the editorial boards of prestigious international research journals including: Applied Linguistics, Journal of Critical Discourse Studies, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, and is an Associate Editor of Linguistics and Education.

Abstract
Many educators have brought popular culture in different forms into their classrooms for a diverse range of educational purposes including development of critical media literacy and empowerment of ESL students and urban youth. The English language educator is, however, often baffled by this diverse range of literature, without a roadmap or some conceptual tools to help them in understanding both the challenge and potential of using popular culture in English language education. In this presentation, I attempt to outline the contradictions inherent in popular culture from the perspectives of cultural studies, and summarize the popular culture and education literature in terms of some accessible tools and frameworks that teachers can draw on in designing their own ways of exploiting popular cultural texts, topics, genres and practices in their specific pedagogical contexts.