Bill Green and future changes for English?

Notes from: English, literacy, rhetoric: changing the project?

Green explores a historical perspective of English, where there is a building upon past from English as Literature, to English through the lens of cultural perspective. Thinking historically involves engaing with difference and dispersion.

Morgan 1995: 110

One way of answering the question 'What is English?' is to ask 'What was English?' That is, in exploring how the past has lefts its marks in subtle or blatant ways upon the present, we often reveal what is taken for granted within a subject area.\

Literature or the 'literary' shaped in accordance with the print apparatus & its associated cultures and industries.
A new semiotic and cultural landscape forming all around us, shift in emphasis & orientation...from print apparatus...to digital-electronic apparatus.
Literacy is (re)emerging as a curriculum dominant.

Green comments on Wayne Sawyer re split between English and literacy.  Field becoming increasingly governmentalised, rationalised, regulated - imperative of accountability



Critical literacy enshrined in various official curriculm and policy documents, while being often highly framed in practice.

Green notes the growing power of reductionist views of literacy e.g. standardised testing with an 'official literacy' prevailing despite what research and ' the New Literacy studies' suggest (advocate for multitliteracies/critical literacy - transforming educational landscape) - yet much classroom practice & teacher education remains conventional and functional (p11)

Central concept - notion of rhetoric as new organising principle for English. Green consistently argues for bringing together English-as-language/Personal Growth/ ie traditionally introspective perspective with 'socially critical awareness of language as a public medium (p.12)


Green sees Kress (& associates) work on multimodality as a key reference point. introduces a new theory of multimodality into curriculum debate -   to laying new distinctive projects for English with concept of rhetorice emphasising communication as a political/social act. English teaching is fundamentally about communication and the making of meaning...now reconceptualised & reenergised...with a new semiotice landscape, new cultures and techologies of communication and representation....bringing together rehetoric, ethics & aesthetics into new curriculum synthesis...the possibilities and challenges for English teaching are immense (p 14-15)


a general consensus exists that a new paradigm has emerged or threatens to: English-as-literacy

p.16 Green sees literacy as far too limited a reference-point ...for curriculum renewal - sees rhetoric as new curriculum dominant - Green would like to see move from English-as-literacy to English-as-Rhetoric ie. doing things with texts - increasingly multimodal texts - self consciously working with texts of all kinds to create effects in and on the world...(notes that Richard Andrews and others have been arguing for this for some time)

Green's own observation - English teaching is well placed...."to provide a critical forum for the development of a rhetorical consciousness addressed to and informed by the digital convergence of technology,literacy and the arts"

Comments (p.17) on 2000 & 2003 NSW English syllabuses (Senior & 7-10) which deliberately embraces ' a cultural studies model with an acommpanying critical literacy pedagogy, while retaining the traditional emphaiss on close textual study' (Sawyer, 2005:15) - Green sees this as something of a hybrid, while undoubtedly a progressive compromise.