EDITORIAL

Introduction to Proposed
Special Issue: Popular Culture
and Classroom Language
Learning
Attention to the role of popular culture in language classrooms is by no means
new. In the 1970s scholars proposed the use of popular culture as an alternative to the traditional literary canon then predominant in the English language
arts curriculum (see, e.g., Kirby, 1976). Early scholarship argued that integrating popular culture into language classrooms could render the curriculum more
relevant to students lives and hence lead to greater interest and motivation to
learn.
Since then, interest in media and popular culture has intensified as electronic
media have proliferated (Arnett, 1995). Influenced by the emerging fields of critical media studies (see Hall, 1997) and critical media literacy (see Alvermann,
Moon, & Hagood, 1999), we increasingly view communication as an interchange
of multilayered and multimodal semiotic signs. Electronic media, often infused
with popular culture, embed spoken and written language in other forms of symbolic communication including graphics, photography, video, and music (see, e.g.,
Moje, 2000). Some claim that this proliferation of media and popular culture has effected changes in the very cultural environment of industrialized societies (Arnett,
1995). In particular, while popular culture was once considered exclusive to private
spheres or lifeworlds (Gee, 2000), it is now making incursions into public institutions such as schools. As a result, popular culture has become an increasingly
significant issue in both first and second language and literacy research. Scholars (e.g., Alvermann et al., 1999; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Dyson, 1997; Gee,
2000; Knobel, 1999) contend that the infusion of multimedia and pop culture referents across social domains is changing the very meaning of what it means to be
proficient and literate in a language.
Direct all correspondence to: Linda Harklau, Departnemt of Language Education, 125 Aderhold Hall,
University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA. E-mails: lharklau@coe.uga.edu, zuengler@wisc.edu
Linguistics and Education 14: 227230.
Copyright 2004 Elsevier Inc.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISSN: 0898-5898

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Yet the role of popular culture in schooling is by no means uncomplicated and

is often marked by ambivalence. One of the original reasons that advocates in
the 1970s argued for the incorporation of popular culture in classrooms was its
entertaining and engaging nature (Alvermann & Heron, 2001, Lotherington, this
issue; Rymes, this issue). It can evoke a sense of irreverence and transgression that
is pleasurable. At the same time, however, popular culture can be violent, profane,
sexist, and racist and thus not represent values that educators want to endorse or
perpetuate. It is often tied to youth cultures (James, 1995) and thus engages children
and adolescents in ways that implicitly or explicitly exclude adult educators (see
Rymes, this issue). Popular culture also poses major challenges in a pluralistic
society since it is often more culturally specific than transcendent. As such, it can
be deployed as a boundary marker for social groups. It can be used to exclude
not only adult educators but also peers within the same classroom who do not
share the same cultural identities and understandings (see Duff, this issue). Also,
as Zuengler (this issue) notes, popular culture is frequently produced or coopted
by major international corporate interests and attempts to manipulate youth as
consumers. As a result, there can be disconnects and even competition between
media-based popular culture and family or school-based language and literacy
practices (Alvermann & Heron, 2001; Arnett, 1995).
Nevertheless, in spite of our ambivalence, as Lotherington (this issue) points
out, we as language educators ignore popular culture at our peril. It is crucial
to understand the role of popular culture in language and literacy development
given that children and youth are the greatest consumers of media (Arnett, 1995).
Overlooking it may result in a curriculum that is out of step with students and
societys lived experience outside of school.
In spite of accelerating interest in the semiotics of popular culture, to date there
has been very little linguistic work documenting how, when, and why popular
culture referents are taken up in educational settings. This special issue provides
four diverse and complementary perspectives on how popular culture is (or is not)
discursively manifested in classroom language and literacy practices.
Drawing upon notions of intertextuality (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993)
and discursive hybridity (Gutirrez, Larson, & Rymes, 1995), Patricia Duff analyzes the linguistic, social, cognitive and affective features of pop-culture-infused
talk in Canadian high school classrooms. Specifically, Duff shows how popular
culture functions as a resource for the display and contestation of teachers and
students various social and cultural identities in classrooms. Duff also suggests
that knowledge of pop culture is unevenly distributed in multilingual and multicultural classrooms and explores consequences for classroom communication.
Jane Zuengler draws on Gees (1999) conception of cultural model to understand the functions of popular culture in one U.S. high school sheltered civics class.
Zuengler closely examines classroom interactions among language minority students, their teacher, and translator aide regarding popular culture and consumerism

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on issues such as propaganda, endorsements, and impulse buying. She asks

how language is used to selectively validate cultural models and looks at beliefs
and value judgments inherent in these models. Zuengler also illustrates how popular culture functions in classroom discourse to construct, reflect, and resist cultural
models (Gee, 1999; Giroux, 1994).
Heather Lotherington documents a disconnect between standardized language
and literacy tests and childrens literacy practices. Drawing on case studies of youth
in the Toronto area, Lotherington documents how children acquire digital literacies
through screen-based play mechanisms (e.g., video games and interactive internet usage), pop culture socialization, and postmodern metaliteracies. Lotherington
suggests that childrens language and literacy practices in peer-mediated, pop culture saturated interactive media extend beyond the boundaries of many classroom
teachers proficiencies. She further finds that these practices may be polarized from
the literacy practices evaluated in mandated province-wide, standardized literacy
testing.
Finally, Betsy Rymes illustrates how words layered with pop cultural meanings infiltrate one elementary classroom phonics lesson. Rymes shows how these
words provide a means for English language learners to display communicative
competence as well as to index their membership in a group of competent English speakers. However, at the same time, she also finds that the very fact that
these words are associated with childrens popular culture threatens the teachers
identity as competent language instructor. Rymes argues that the contrast between
students and the teachers zones of comfortable competence reveals the necessarily community-based, context-dependent nature of communicative competence.

REFERENCES
Alvermann, D. E., & Heron, A. H. (2001). Literacy identity work: Playing to learn with popular media.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 45, 118.
Alvermann, D. E., Moon, J. S., & Hagood, M. C. (Eds.). (1999). Popular culture in the classroom:
Teaching and researching critical media literacy. Newark, DE and Chicago, IL: International
Reading Association and National Reading Conference.
Arnett, J. J. (1995). Adolescents use of media for self-socialization. Journal of Youth and Adolescence,
24, 519533.
Bloome, D., & Egan-Robertson, A. (1993). The social construction of intertextuality in classroom
reading and writing lessons. Reading Research Quarterly, 28, 304333.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social
futures. New York: Routledge.
Dyson, A. (1997). Writing superheroes: Contemporary childhood, popular culture, and classroom
literacy. New York: Teachers College Press.
Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. New York: Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (2000). Teenagers in new times: A new literacy studies perspective. Journal of Adolescent
and Adult Literacy, 43, 412420.

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Giroux, H. A. (1994). Disturbing pleasures: Learning popular culture. New York: Routledge.
Gutirrez, K., Larson, J., & Rymes, B. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom:
James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review, 65, 445471.
Hall, S. (1997). The work of representation. In S. Hall (Ed.), Representation: Cultural representation
and signifying practices (pp. 1364). London, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
James, A. (1995). Talking of children and youth: Language, socialization and culture. In V. Amit-Talai &
H. Wulff (Eds.), Youth cultures: A cross-cultural perspective (pp. 4362). New York: Routledge.
Kirby, D. (1976). Popular culture in the English classroom. English Journal, 65(3), 3234.
Knobel, M. (1999). Everyday literacies: Students, discourse, and social practice. New York: Peter
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Moje, E. B. (2000). To be part of the story: The literacy practices of gansta adolescents. Teachers
College Record, 102, 651690.

Linda Harklau
Departnemt of Language Education
University of Georgia, 125 Aderhold Hall
Athens, GA 30602, USA
Jane Zuengler
Departnemt of English
University of Wisconsin-Madison
600 N. Park St., Madison, WI 53706, USA