David Block
Biographic Data
| ID | 324684 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Block |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Block |
| SIGNATURE | BLOCK D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat de Lleida |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0783-3083 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 254 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 63 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Critical Realism in Applied Linguistics
Through conceptual and empirical means, this timely volume looks at how critical realism, a specific approach to the philosophy of science, helps uncover and refine assumptions about what constitutes valid knowledge in applied linguistics, how scholars can create it, and how applied linguistics can improve as an interdisciplinary strand of the social sciences. With contributions from leading and up-and-coming scholars in the field, the book cover…
The Importance of Structuring Mechanisms in the Policies and Practices of Sociolinguistic “Groupness” In Schools and Families
Exploring Preservice Teachers' Translanguaging Practices and Perceptions in Teacher Training: A Global Englishes Perspective
This study explores how preservice English teachers in China perceive and leverage their Chinese and English linguistic repertoires in ELT methodology training, and how a reflective understanding of their use of these repertoires can contribute to their development as teachers. To understand how their practices and conceptualizations of language and teaching are in accord with an orientation toward or away from principles of Global Englishes Lang…
The discursive construction of academic capitalism in HE: The case of Catalan university websites
Academic capitalism is about how progressively more academic activity is valued according to its capacity to accumulate human, financial and corporate capital. It is on the increase in Higher Education (HE) worldwide and in this article we examine its implantation in Catalan universities. We begin with an exploration of the bigger picture, focussing on the impacts of neoliberalism on HE worldwide, leading to the arrival of the ‘toxic university,’…
English-medium instruction in higher education and the ELT gaze: STEM lecturers’ self-positioning as NOT English language teachers
This paper explores how three Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) lecturers working in English-medium instruction (EMI) grapple with the prospect of self-positioning as English-language-teachers (ELTs), drawing on interviews in which they explicitly deny acting in this way. It begins with essential background, first discussing key concepts such as EMI, internationalization, Englishization in higher education and ‘CLIL-ised EMI…
The dark side of EMI: A telling case for questioning assumptions about EMI in HE
The neoliberalisation of higher education (HE), which began in earnest about three decades ago, and the global spread of English, which began earlier, together have motivated an exponential increase in the number of universities worldwide offering English-medium instruction (EMI) as a key part of their internationalisation policies. EMI in HE is by now a much discussed and examined phenomenon; however, all too often research does not challenge ce…
Emergent STEM lecturer identities: The shaping effects of EMI in action in an internationalised and Englishised HE context
This paper examines the emergent identities of three STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) lecturers, focusing especially on how they construct themselves with regard to their disciplines and how researchers construct them as potential English language teachers. It begins with essential background information before discussing identity as a key construct. The paper then moves to the presentation of a Foucauldian-inflected versio…
The linguistic division of labour across occupations: Moving the Discussion On
In this short paper, I begin by providing background for inquiry into the division of labour across occupations, examined from an economics of language perspective. I then critically discuss the four papers that compose this special issue on the topic, before closing with three suggestions for factors to bear in mind in future research
Language and Social Class
This entry takes on the task of discussing linguistic anthropology research on language and class in education. After briefly clarifying what we might mean by class, it focuses on three foundational figures who have either directly or indirectly influenced later research. It then discusses four key studies carried out between the 1970s and the 2000s, before moving to a brief consideration of research on English in the world carried out during the…
Raciolinguistic micro-aggressions in the school stories of immigrant adolescents in Barcelona: A challenge to the notion of Spanish exceptionalism
In recent years, a discourse of Spanish exceptionalism has arisen, whereby Spain has managed to integrate over five million immigrants in a very short period of time without the kind of social upheaval witnessed in other European countries over the past several decades. Overtly racist and xenophobic discourses have generally been, with notable exceptions, absent in the public domain. However, under the radar, visible minorities frequently suffer …
Karen Risager Representations of the World in Language Textbooks
This article reviews Representations of the World in Language Textbooks 97817830995429781783099559
Critical LPP and the intersection of class, race and language policy and practice in twenty first century Catalonia
When the Truth Is Not What Actually Happened: The Epistemology of Religious Truth in Orthodox Jewish Bible Study
Recent research on student epistemology has shifted from seeing epistemology as a stable entity possessed by individuals to a collection of more situated cognitive resources that individuals may employ differently depending on the context. Much of this research has focused on the explicit beliefs students maintain about the nature of knowledge. This paper uses data from Jewish religious chumash (Bible) study to examine how students' conceptions o…
The political economy of language education research (or the lack thereof): Nancy Fraser and the case of translanguaging
This article problematizes the politics of language education research with regard to social injustice, which is not only cultural, but also material. Its starting position is that most language education research today is, following Nancy Fraser, recognition oriented, in that it takes on culture- and identity-based injustices such as racism, gender bias, religious bias, and LGBTQ-phobia. It does not, however, have much to say about more economic…
Some thoughts on CDS and its Marxist political economy bases
This paper is about Marxist political economy and Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) as a field of inquiry. It begins with a discussion of the traditional role of Marxist political economy in CDS, arguing that for the most part it has been limited and partial. It then considers an example of a serious attempt to carry out a Marxist political economy analysis of discourse in society – Claudia Ortu’s [2008. The denial of class struggle by British Gov…
Some thoughts on education and the discourse of global neoliberalism
This article begins with an examination of phenomena such as the market, homo economicus and entrepreneurialism, which have become salient in discussions of neoliberalism in recent years and which are central to the contributions to this special issue. In the second half of the article, the focus shifts to the author’s personal take on these phenomena, through an analysis of documents published under ‘Horizon 2020’, the current European Commissio…
What would Karl say? The entrepreneur as ideal (and cool) citizen in 21st century societies
Social class in migration, identity, and language research
This chapter begins with a lengthy discussion of key frameworks and constructs relevant to the topic of migration, transnationalism, and social class in applied linguistics. It discusses the state of research which focuses on migration, identity and language (MIL) from a political economic perspective which includes social class as a key construct. The chapter attempts to develop in more detail Jim Collins&s;s critique of the lack of class in mos…
The economics of language policy
As Michele Gazzola and Bengt-Arne Wickstrom explain in their introduction, The economics of language policy (hereafter, ELP) is an edited volume that aims to examine language policy from multiple p
Discourses in conflict: Resource inequality, class warfare and home repossessions
The topic of this paper is an ongoing discursive conflict which has arisen in Spain around home repossession and home evictions, understood here as part of a more general class warfare waged by the financial elites on the popular classes. Firmly grounded in political economy and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), it examines attempts by the governing Partido Popular to represent as undemocratic a particular kind of protest action called escraches…
The impact of globalisation, internationalisation and migration on the use and vitality of Catalan in secondary school and higher education settings
In this special issue of Language, Culture and Curriculum, the six main contributions have covered salient language and education issues in secondary school and higher education (HE) contexts in tw
Just go away and do it and you get marks’: The degradation of language teaching in neoliberal times
The marketization of education in countries like the UK may be seen as part and parcel of the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant shaper of policy and practice in many societies from the late twentieth century onwards. This paper explores how marketization has impacted on two initial teacher preparation programmes and focuses on the Cambridge English Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) as a particular kind of market drive…
Political economy in applied linguistics research
This state-of-the-art review is based on the fundamental idea that political economy should be adopted as a frame for research and discussion in applied linguistics as part of a general social turn which has taken hold in the field over the past three decades. It starts with Susan Gal's (1989) early call for such a move in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, that is, for 'investigations of the links among language structure, language us…
Lessons from the local group: A conference in honour of David Block and Bruce Elmegreen
Our understanding of galaxy formation comes mostly from two sources: sensitive observations at high angular resolution of the high-redshift Universe, where galaxies are observed to be forming, and detailed observations of individual stars and clouds in the Local Group, where telltale remnants from its formative time remain and similar processes operate at a low level today. The current conference focusses on key aspects of the Local Group, compos…
Exploring class-based intersectionality
This paper argues that language, culture and identity researchers need to take the intersectionality of identity inscriptions seriously and, further to this, that an intersectional approach which emanates from an interest in social class provides a productive way to examine the lives and experience of individuals living in multicultural societies. The paper begins with an excerpt from Corona's research on Latino adolescents in Barcelona, in which…
English as a “global language” in China: An investigation into learners’ and teachers’ language beliefs
The structure and agency dilemma in identity and intercultural communication research
Against a backdrop of rapid global transformations, the ever-increasing migration of people across nation-state borders and a wide array of language practices, applied linguists, and language and intercultural communication researchers in particular, often include identity as a key construct in their work. Most adopt a broadly poststructuralist approach, drawing on the work of social theorists working in a wide range of areas such as cultural stu…
Political economy in applied linguistics research
This state-of-the-art review is based on the fundamental idea that political economy should be adopted as a frame for research and discussion in applied linguistics as part of a general social turn which has taken hold in the field over the past three decades. It starts with Susan Gal's (1989) early call for such a move in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, that is, for 'investigations of the links among language structure, language us…
Class and SLA: Making connections
This article explores how class might be brought to the fore as an identity inscription in studies of second language learning, alongside other identity inscriptions such as gender, ethnicity and national identity, which have been the focus of rather more research. It begins by clarifying what is meant by class through a brief discussion of the work of Karl Marx, Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu as contributors to thinking about class among social s…
The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom
Exploring class-based intersectionality
This paper argues that language, culture and identity researchers need to take the intersectionality of identity inscriptions seriously and, further to this, that an intersectional approach which emanates from an interest in social class provides a productive way to examine the lives and experience of individuals living in multicultural societies. The paper begins with an excerpt from Corona's research on Latino adolescents in Barcelona, in which…
Problematizing Interview Data: Voices in the Mind's Machine
Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit Enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660-1880
The dark side of EMI: A telling case for questioning assumptions about EMI in HE
The neoliberalisation of higher education (HE), which began in earnest about three decades ago, and the global spread of English, which began earlier, together have motivated an exponential increase in the number of universities worldwide offering English-medium instruction (EMI) as a key part of their internationalisation policies. EMI in HE is by now a much discussed and examined phenomenon; however, all too often research does not challenge ce…
Some thoughts on education and the discourse of global neoliberalism
This article begins with an examination of phenomena such as the market, homo economicus and entrepreneurialism, which have become salient in discussions of neoliberalism in recent years and which are central to the contributions to this special issue. In the second half of the article, the focus shifts to the author’s personal take on these phenomena, through an analysis of documents published under ‘Horizon 2020’, the current European Commissio…
Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit Enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660-1880
The native peoples of the Moxos region of modern Bolivia began a cultural transformation with their contact by Jesuit missionaries in the mid 17th century. The amalgamation of autocthonous and European modes formed a particular "mission culture" that endured until the Amazonian rubber boom reached Moxos at the end of the 19th century
Just go away and do it and you get marks’: The degradation of language teaching in neoliberal times
The marketization of education in countries like the UK may be seen as part and parcel of the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant shaper of policy and practice in many societies from the late twentieth century onwards. This paper explores how marketization has impacted on two initial teacher preparation programmes and focuses on the Cambridge English Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) as a particular kind of market drive…
A day in the life of a class: Teacher/learner perceptions of task purpose in conflict
Emergent STEM lecturer identities: The shaping effects of EMI in action in an internationalised and Englishised HE context
This paper examines the emergent identities of three STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) lecturers, focusing especially on how they construct themselves with regard to their disciplines and how researchers construct them as potential English language teachers. It begins with essential background information before discussing identity as a key construct. The paper then moves to the presentation of a Foucauldian-inflected versio…
Commentary: Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of globalization and the distinction of global elites 1
Citizenship, education and global spaces
En este articulo de debate, el autor examina instancias de ciudadania como logro comunicativo, es decir, como se hace en los espacios globales. El termino 'espacios globales' aqui se refiere a como las caracteristicas de ciertas grandes ciudades etiquetadas como 'ciudades del mundo' o 'ciudades globales' (Block, 2006), siendo el hogar de poblaciones etnica y linguisticamente diversas y negocios en red internacional, progresivamente llegan a carac…
The Increasing Presence of Spanish-Speaking Latinos in London: An Emergent Community
In recent years, the number of Spanish-speaking Latinos in Britain and London has grown considerably. Estimates from different sources put the population in London as high as 300,000. Unfortunately, this growing ethnolinguistic group is an underresearched minority, and information of any kind is hard to come by. In this article, my aim is to remedy this situation. First, I establish that there are by now a substantial number of Spanish-speaking L…
Niche Lingua Francas: An Ignored Phenomenon
Exploring Preservice Teachers' Translanguaging Practices and Perceptions in Teacher Training: A Global Englishes Perspective
This study explores how preservice English teachers in China perceive and leverage their Chinese and English linguistic repertoires in ELT methodology training, and how a reflective understanding of their use of these repertoires can contribute to their development as teachers. To understand how their practices and conceptualizations of language and teaching are in accord with an orientation toward or away from principles of Global Englishes Lang…
Some thoughts on CDS and its Marxist political economy bases
This paper is about Marxist political economy and Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) as a field of inquiry. It begins with a discussion of the traditional role of Marxist political economy in CDS, arguing that for the most part it has been limited and partial. It then considers an example of a serious attempt to carry out a Marxist political economy analysis of discourse in society – Claudia Ortu’s [2008. The denial of class struggle by British Gov…
What would Karl say? The entrepreneur as ideal (and cool) citizen in 21st century societies
Problems portraying migrants in Applied Linguistics research
This paper is a very personal attempt to explore the problematics of portraying migrants in Applied Linguistics research. I begin with a discussion of identity, in particular what we might mean when we use the term, and from there I go on to explore its fundamental imprecision through an analysis of a census question about ethnicity. I then consider migration and the problematics of naming migrants in research, first examining an example of my ow…
Exploring interpretations of questionnaire items
Learning by listening to language learners
The Importance of Structuring Mechanisms in the Policies and Practices of Sociolinguistic “Groupness” In Schools and Families
Speech, sexuality and the temporal lobe: An analysis of spontaneous speech of thirteen male transsexuals∗
The Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla: Some Observations on its Organisation and Use
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Links to the Frontier; Jesuit Supply of its Moxos Missions, 1683-1767.”
Our view of the Spanish missionary Church results from the convergence of two streams of historical writing. The first uses the activities of a particular religious order or its most illustrious members to frame the foundation and growth of a missionary enterprise. The second pursues a thematic approach, emphasizing the importance of the missions as foci of Spanish culture in a native world. Within this second stream falls the particularly North …
Yucatan on Microfilm: Existing Collections and Finding Aids
Over the past two decades, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the University of Alabama, the University of Texas at Arlington, and the Universidad de Yucatán have produced microfilm copies of primary source materials in the Yucatán. While their films only begin to tap the rich documentary resources of the peninsula, the combined holdings put a large corpus of materials for reconstructing the Yucatecan past within the reach of schola…
Ritos y tradiciones de Huarochirí
Language, Authority and Indigenous History in the Comentarios Reales de los Incas
Seeking new bases for SLA research: Looking to cognitive science
La iglesia y los Lupaqas durante la colonia
Monumento catechetica hispanoameriacana (siglos XVI-XVIII). Volume 2
Monumenta catechetica hispanoamericana (siglos XVI-XVIII)
Authentic video and classroom observation
A day in the life of a class: Teacher/learner perceptions of task purpose in conflict
Quincentennial Publishing: An Ocean of Print
These contrasting pronouncements on Christopher Columbus's transatlantic navigation in 1492 crystalize the extreme division of opinion that characterized the recent quincentennial. The five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's first voyage inspired among other things a world's fair, several replicas of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, two feature films, and an opera. Commemoration of the event also inspired, in time-honored tradition, the…
Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit Enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660-1880
The native peoples of the Moxos region of modern Bolivia began a cultural transformation with their contact by Jesuit missionaries in the mid 17th century. The amalgamation of autocthonous and European modes formed a particular "mission culture" that endured until the Amazonian rubber boom reached Moxos at the end of the 19th century
Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit Enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660-1880
Not so Fast: Some Thoughts on Theory Culling, Relativism, Accepted Findings and the Heart and Soul of SLA
This paper is meant to be a response to claims made by several prominent applied linguists in recent articles about second language acquisition (SLA) research These claims are as follows (1) The existence of multiple theories in SLA research is problematic (Beretta 1991), and the field should be united around a single theory or a few theories (Long 1993), (2) The alternative to such a concerted effort is a relativistic stance where ‘anything goes…
Communicative orientation of language teaching observation scheme: Coding conventions & applications
Learning by listening to language learners
Exploring interpretations of questionnaire items
Learners and their meta‐pedagogical awareness
This article begins by introducing the concept of meta‐pedagogical awareness The term has its roots in several disciplines, in particular teacher development, language awareness, applied linguistics and educational research into self‐directed/regulated learning. The article then presents two case studies of EFL learners describing and evaluating their lessons, making the point that in the course of face‐to‐face interviews carried out over a ten‐w…
Problematizing Interview Data: Voices in the Mind's Machine
Globalization and Language Teaching
‘This book represents a major theoretical and empirical statement on the impact of globalization on language policies and practice around the world. It addresses diverse and complex questions on the subject from a variety of perspectives, and in a broad and richly comprehensive manner . . . An invaluable resource.
Cruz y arado, fusiles y discursos: La construcción de Los Orientes en el Perú y Bolivia, 1820-1940
In this long and meticulously documented book, Pilár García Jordán studies nation building in Peru and Bolivia: more specifically, how each country conceived and implemented the incorporation of “Los Orientes,” their eastern territories. In examining how politicians made policy at an enormous remove from the polis, the author describes two Andean Orientalisms, each characterized by erroneous assumptions, fits and starts, and by failure more than …
Multilingual Identities in a Global City: London Stories
Opening with a discussion of the key issues of globalization, migration, multiculturalism, multilingualism and global cities, David Block then turns to four detailed case studies: East Asian students
The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom
Sociology (42 works) · Linguistics (28 works) · Philosophy (26 works) · Political science (25 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (23 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (22 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (16 works) · History (15 works) · Law (15 works)