It may be a bit rich coming from The Sun, a newspaper which has been at the forefront of anti-asylum seeker campaigns, but it certainly makes for a striking front page. Yesterday's Sun featured a group of children, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, holding up signs showing terms of racist abuse that might be applied to them. Asking what they have in common, The Sun then reveals another picture a few pages on, which shows the same children holding up signs saying "British".
The editorial can be found here, and the children featured go on to tell how they've been called various racist terms in their lives. There's some brief background to each term of abuse and an editorial that bangs the drum for a shared sense of British identity among all of this country's ethnic groups. I'll leave you to decide what you make of the political message, but the article gives some good material for discussion of language and representation, not just in its coverage of racist terminology but in the wider debate about a label like "British" and its use in political discourse.
Useful for:
ENA1 - Language & Representation
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Black British English vs MLE
The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...
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As part of the Original Writing section of the NEA, students will be required to produce a commentary on their piece. This blog post will pr...
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As lots of students are embarking on the Language Investigation part of the Non-Exam Assessment, I thought it might be handy to pick up a fe...
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When Dan asked what he should post about next on this blog, one of the most common responses was this, the World Englishes topic. Maybe ...