Graham Smart | Carleton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Graham Smart

Environmental Education Research, 2022

Abstract This article reports on a study that investigated the extent to which the discourse used... more Abstract This article reports on a study that investigated the extent to which the discourse used to approach environmental issues in English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) textbooks in Brazilian public secondary schools helps students develop critical environmental literacy. We focused our discourse analysis on the outside materials incorporated into the content of the textbooks. To inform our discourse analysis, we drew on theories of discourse genres, discursive affordances and entextualisation. The primary conclusion we take from the study is that Brazilian textbook designers integrate outside materials to enhance the content of textbooks, and while this is a commendable aim, these outside materials are unsuitable for helping students develop critical environmental literacy. Although the textbooks may potentially succeed in cultivating a ‘shallow’ form of environmentalism that raises students’ eco-awareness, they appear to fall short of providing an educational experience that would be appropriate for fostering students’ criitical envir onmental literacy, and thereby preparing and motivating them to act in their daily lives in ways that further environmental sustainability.

Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 2005

This manuscript has been reproduœd from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from th... more This manuscript has been reproduœd from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, sorne thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of cornputer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard rnargins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyri'ght rnaterial had to be rernoved, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., MPS, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sedioning the original, beginning at the upper leflhand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exp...

This chapter draws on scholarship from several different fields to construct an account of the ro... more This chapter draws on scholarship from several different fields to construct an account of the role of writing in the social formation of economy. The account explores three facets of this topic: We begin by considering the part that writing has played throughout recorded history in the development of objects, practices, and institutions that have enabled and organized human economic activity. Next, we turn to the modern academic/professional discipline of economics, tracing its discursive origins and subsequent evolution through a series of landmark theoretical texts, and then examining the discourse of the discipline from a rhetorical and social constructionist perspective. And finally, we look at how the science of economics produced through this disciplinary discourse has over the last two centuries become an essential conceptual and analytical resource for government policymaking as well as for corporate and individual action.

For the last eight years I have been observing the continuing public debate over global climate c... more For the last eight years I have been observing the continuing public debate over global climate change as it plays out daily across a multiplicity of internet-published texts on the Web. This research has focused on argumentative texts — that is, texts taking a clear position on an issue of contention, with a claim and supporting evidence — produced by social actors intensively engaged in the climate-change debate. In earlier work (2011) using Maarten Hajer’s (2005) ‘argumentative discourse analysis’ approach to analyse a large corpus of internet-published texts, including articles from news websites, blogs, and online reports and press releases from environmental groups, think-tanks, and other organisations, I identified two ‘discourse coalitions’ — clusters of social actors sharing a common ‘macro-argument’ (Toulmin 1959), or position, on climate change. I labelled one of these clusters of actors the ‘climate-change crisis discourse coalition’ (hereafter referred to as the ‘advoca...

Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice

This study examines publicly voiced resistance by a Canada-wide community of scientists and citiz... more This study examines publicly voiced resistance by a Canada-wide community of scientists and citizen supporters against what they perceived as the Canadian government's efforts to undermine publicly supported science, with its concern for empirical evidence, in order to facilitate a narrowly pro-industry orientation in its policy-making. Using Hajer's argumentative discourse analysis (ADA) to interpret a corpus of some 700 Web-published texts, the author identified a macro-argument collectively produced and publicly communicated by the Canadian scientific community. The study also showed how this macro-argument served as a vehicle for two ideological representations: a virtuous self-representation of the scientific community itself and a negative representation of the motives and actions of the Canadian government. The findings of the research contribute to our understanding of how collective argumentative positions emerge within the discourse of a major scientific controversy. At the same time, the study offers policymakers insights in how they might communicate more effectively with communities of scientific experts.

Written Communication

This study extends a line of inquiry established by researchers using narrative theory to investi... more This study extends a line of inquiry established by researchers using narrative theory to investigate the discourses of psychiatry. Drawing primarily on theories of narrative and genre, the study analyzes a series of autobiographical books intended for an audience of youth suffering from mental illness. Our research investigates how the rhetorical design of the books harnesses the discursive affordances of autobiographical narrative to encourage a particular uptake on the part of a reader suffering from mental illness. Performing an analysis of four of the books in the series, we found them to exhibit a design in which autobiographical narrative is used to prompt an anticipated uptake by the reader: motivation to commit to therapy and engage in lifelong self-care. The study offers insights to authors producing texts intended to support psychiatric practitioners in guiding youth toward recovery from mental illness.

Tesl Talk, 1982

EJ272776 - Advanced Listening Comprehension Training in Occupational ESL.

A workshop was developed at the Bank of Canada to give instruction in writing brief summaries of ... more A workshop was developed at the Bank of Canada to give instruction in writing brief summaries of financial analyses to junior economists entering the bank after university. These employees were expected to write these analyses for the senior officers of the institution. It had been found that the specialists had not learned strategies for exploring their statistical data with the objective of identitying the deeper meaning or story in the data and then presenting it in the expected format. They had been following a restrictive sequence of procedures and producing unconnected series of relatively superficial observations about their datf., which did not satisfy their audience's need for a story. The workshop had three goals: to make explicit the information needs of the readers, to develop the specialists' ability to use writing strategies for better analysis, and to enable the specialists to provide sharply focused and effectively structured summaries that re' esented their best judgment, as technilal experts, about the essential story contained in the data. The content of the workshop included discussion of the writing process, direct contact with the audience for the texts, and instruction in developing a preliminary writing plan, drafting, and revision. The workshop has resulted in texts containing more meaningful anri-ises, moI direct discussion of the analyses between the specials id the senior officer, and increast, confidence and analytical c lities in the specialists. (MSE)

Genre and the Performance of Publics, 2016

Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 1999

Drawing on an extended ethnographic study of the textual practices of economists at the Bank of C... more Drawing on an extended ethnographic study of the textual practices of economists at the Bank of Canada, this article looks at narrative construction as a communal process of corporate knowledge making. Employing theories of narrative, genre, and distributed cognition as a conceptual frame, the article traces three stages in the development of a narrative known in the bank as the

English for Specific Purposes

The CASE International Journal of Educational Advancement, 2003

The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, 2010

The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, 2012

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Professional Communication, 2009