Intertextuality and HybridDiscourses: The Infusion ofPop Culture in Educational

Discourse �

Patricia A. DuffUniversity of British Columbia, 2329 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4

This article examines the intertextualityor discursive hybridity associated with spon-taneous references to pop culture in teacher-led discussions in two Canadian highschool humanities courses with students from diverse linguistic and cultural back-grounds. The paper analyzes the linguistic, social, cognitive and affective features ofpop-culture-infused talk that make it a complex form of linguistic and cultural play aswell as meaning-making and identity work in educational settings. The means by whichpop culture references are woven into surrounding texts are examined, together withthe rationale for this discursive hybridity. The potential benefits and difficulties associ-ated with these discourse patterns for English language learners in particular are thendiscussed. The analysis suggests that the hybrid discourse involving the interweavingof non-academic and more academic texts, or the “colonization” of the latter by theformer [N. Fairclough (Ed.), Critical Language Awareness, Longman, Harlow, Essex,1992a] served, on the one hand, to engage local, fully English-proficient students and,on the other hand, to marginalize newcomers, potentially preventing the latter fromparticipating more fully in classroom speech events. As such, the pop culture discourserepresented an unequally accessible “third space” for the class, which was a site oftension and ambivalence—but also pleasure—for immigrant newcomers, in particular.

INTRODUCTION: THE INFUSION OF POP CULTURE INEDUCATIONAL DISCOURSE

The following two excerpts represent exchanges that took place in Canadian Grade10 Social Studies lessons during discussions of current events in Spring, 1999:

�This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association forApplied Linguistics in Salt Lake City, April 2002, in a research colloquium organized by Linda Harklau.

Direct all correspondence to: Patricia A. Duff, University of British Columbia, 2329 West Mall, Vancouver,BC, Canada V6T 1Z4. E-mail: patricia.duff@ubc.ca

Linguistics and Education 14: 231–276. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.Copyright © 2004 Elsevier Inc. ISSN: 0898-5898

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Excerpt 1

Teacher: Well you guys live like in the Ally McBealgeneration. Right?John: What?Teacher: Where they share a bathroom.Male student: No way.Teacher: Right? On Ally McBealbut when I=Sue: =Did you hear about the transsexual who sued the=Teacher: =when I grew up it was more strict. Wait! Let’s finish this

article.

Excerpt 2

Teacher: If something is serendipitous, or if you uh are benefited- blessedwith serendipity, you mess something up

Sue: [Coincidental.Teacher: [but it turns out to be the great=Jim: =Pull a Homer?Teacher: It’s what- it turns out- Good. Yeah you pull a Homer Simpson?

Yeah. Exactly. So serendipitous. This is a serendipitous (1.0)serendipitous discovery just because she [the cancer researcher]wasn’t able to get the uh things that she wanted . . .

These two excerpts of classroom talk contain references to Ally McBeal andHomer Simpson, two well known American pop-culture icons of late-1990 tele-vision programs. That they were discussed, however briefly, in Social Studiesclasses, in connection with articles about “cyber ethics” and serendipitous medi-cal discoveries, respectively, is significant because they reveal the discursive andintertextual hybridity of the classroom talk into which students are currently beingsocialized (Gutiérrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995; Kamberelis, 2001). Juxtaposed arethe discussion of texts directly related to the focal current events and the newspa-per texts they are based on, other current news items that are tangential to thosetexts (e.g., Sue’s reference to a transsexual’s lawsuit—not in Ally McBealbut inSue’s hometown that week—related to gendered bathroom access), and then thepop culture references to the Ally McBealshow by the teacher and in a student’selliptical reference to Homer Simpson. In fact, the use of the phrase “to pull aHomer [Simpson]” produced by Jim in Excerpt 2 illustrates the degree to whichnot only the cartoon series has been inserted into the text about scientific discov-ery, but also how the pop culture reference has become part of this student’s andteacher’s shared lexicon in the form of the idiom “pull a Homer.” In both excerpts,subsequent speakers picked up on the pop-culture reference and commented on itor introduced a related topic in response to it and the teacher subsequently broughtthe discussion back to the articles in question after several intervening turns.

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Pop-culture talk is of course pervasive in modern (or postmodern) society and indiscourse across a variety of social settings. Thus, at a certain level, these examplesare unremarkable and are easily interpreted by most readers of this article. However,the increasing presence of pop culture and its multiple functions and forms withinmainstream classroom discourse have not been adequately explored by appliedlinguists and educators, particularly given the growing diversity of our studentpopulation and what appears to be the ever-growing role of pop culture in thelives and texts of young people today. Intertextuality involving pop culture asrepresented by Excerpts 1 and 2, typically connected with American movies andtelevision programs, is a powerful resource for the display of teachers’ and students’social and cultural identities and affiliations (Maybin & Mercer, 1996) and also apotential source of consternation for those who do not have insider knowledge ofthe pop culture texts under discussion.

THE ROLE OF POP CULTURE IN EDUCATION

Why does pop culture and the talk associated with it enter classroom discourse inthis manner? Children and young adults naturally develop repertoires of fictionalcharacters and stories that are part of their background knowledge, cultural reper-toire, social practice, and indeed identity. They draw on these elements in socialinteractions for various reasons, such as to establish their group membership orshared affiliations and interests and to give them something to talk about withone another. Their pop culture expertise may also give them a sense of power andauthority. Increasingly though, people’s identification with pop culture charactersand other media narratives seems to influence talk and literacy activities withinclassrooms and academic or professional spheres, and not just their extracurricularsocial activities (e.g., Dyson, 1997). Indeed, recognizing its power and pervasive-ness, teachers in various curriculum areas now incorporate pop culture—and some-times critical media literacy as well—into the curriculum for educational purposes(e.g., Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999; Buckingham, 1998; Morrell, 2002).The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacyfor several years devoted a regularcolumn to short pieces on “Media and Pop Culture” for that reason, and other ar-ticles have also appeared elsewhere in the journal to foreground the “instructionaland curricular implications of pop culture in the classroom,” as stated in the title ofStevens’ (2001) article. She describes the reportedly very successful incorporationand critical analysis of pop culture texts, including song lyrics, video clips frompopular PG-rated movies (e.g., Raiders of the Lost Ark), and TV shows from the1960s–1980s, in middle-school science, language arts and social studies classes ata large urban American school.

Is this a case of “BICS” invading “CALP,” to use the acronyms developedby Cummins (explained and re-examined in Cummins, 2000) to differentiate Ba-sic Interpersonal Communication Skills or everyday conversational language and

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vernacular culture, and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, or academicdiscourse? What putative benefits and perils are there for students and classroomcommunities embracing students’ unofficial codes and cultures in the regular cur-riculum?

Dyson (2001) provided an example in which first-grade children, in their talk andtexts about how planets orbit around the sun, which was the content of the literacylesson, interwove images of space robots that were transformed into a hip hop radiostation; they then recited rap lyrics from a famous performer. The students weredeemed to be creative, cognitively flexible “scavengers” who used their agency toappropriate pop cultural content and genres “as a means of cultural production,that is, as a means of constructing social affiliations, expressive practices, andimaginative worlds” (p. 13). Dyson wrote:

[t]hese cultural resources reveal children’s powers of adaptation and improvisation—their symbolic and discourse flexibility; and it is children’s exploitation of thesecross-cultural childhood strengths . . . and their ways of stretching, reconfiguring,and re-articulating their resources, that are key to literacy learning in contemporarytimes. (p. 11)

Importantly, the focal students in Dyson’s study shared what she called a “cul-tural landscape,” including the same sports teams, radio stations, videos, and reli-gious discourse(s), although they used this information in different ways. In anotherexample, with an apparently more diverse population of primary students, Pappas,Varelas, Barry, and Rife (2003) examined the intertextual references to pop cultureand other media used in discussions of information texts related to the weather. Inone such case, one child, trying to explain how clouds are formed, cited a criticalepisode of “Ms. Frizzle” in which it was raining, “and the wind was blowing in thewater and it was like the wind blew and like the water flew up and made the clouds”(p. 451). The teacher then acknowledged the source to be the Magic School Bus(a TV cartoon series for children) and expanded on this answer to elicit the termevaporationfrom a boy, who had learned it from Ms. Frizzle, the magic schoolbus driver/teacher; he then successfully modified his earlier answer that cloudswere formed by dust that got “stuck together,” on the basis of his memory of thatepisode.

Shifts from more academic to pop culture oral texts are sometimes describedas intertextual and interdiscursive shifts in “footing” by speakers (Goffman, 1974;Kamberelis, 2001). Reporting on his ethnographic research situated in a fifth gradeAmerican classroom, Kamberelis (2001) contrasted traditional I-R-E format talk,controlled primarily by the teacher, with the kinds of hybrid discourse practices thatchildren on their own engaged in during a biology unit while dissecting owl pelletsand reconstructing animal skeletons. Kamberelis describes the “lamination” ofnumerous (numbered below) different speech genre fragments in the interactionsof two students, Max and Kyle, with many fragments derived from popular culture:

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The interaction began with a veiled command and consensual reply (1). This wasfollowed by a snippet of surgery activity genre similar to that which occurs on medicaltelevision dramas such as Chicago Hope or ER (2). This surgery activity genre gaveway to a locally situated Beavis and Buttheadreenactment (3). This reenactmentwas disrupted when Kyle shifted into a science activity genre because he thoughtthat he had made an important scientific discovery (4). This was followed by amedley of hybrid discourse that combined fragments from a science activity genre(5), a surgery activity genre (6), interruptions from a non-ratified party (7), a “madscientist” activity genre (8), a response to the intrusive non-ratified party (9), a surgeryactivity genre (10), and a task-related Arnold Schwarzenegger-like comment thatindexed Hollywood film genres (11). A bit later in the interaction, Max engaged inself-regulatory talk derived from a television commercial for the board game Jenga(12) . . . . Then Max enacted a task-related Star Trekactivity genre to report theimportant discovery of a hip bone (15) . . . . (Kamberelis, 2001, pp. 114–115)

Kamberelis argued that the boys in the excerpt he analyzed

appropriated discourse from popular cultural sources, but they reanimated this dis-course in internally persuasive ways to express their scientific identities and taskcommitments . . . In bringing pop culture surgery discourse to bear on their science“work,” Kyle and Max were able to manage and control the scientific activity inwhich they were engaged in ways that they probably could not were they merely“being themselves.” (p. 115)

In this sense, pop culture served as an important textual and social resource aswell as cognitive scaffold for the boys, one that was particularly effective because,as local American-born children, they shared the same reference points and inter-ests (e.g., Beavis and Butthead, Star Trek, TV medical dramas and commercials,action movies). Furthermore, pop culture enabled Max, who had been positionedas a relatively tough, marginal boy earlier in the year, to eventually be valued bythe class for the depth of his popular culture knowledge and for his creativity. Asa consequence, he was given more license to showcase that knowledge over theyear.

Lewis’ (2001) year-long ethnography of a grade five-six classroom literaturediscussions also highlights an excerpt from a discussion among a group of youngboys about a horror series book they had read independently. Fragments and refer-ents derived from various pop culture films and books were incorporated into thebanter, serving as a kind of “subcultural capital” (e.g., Freddy Krueger, Free Willy,Jaws, Care Bears, The Smurfs, The Flintstones, Bambi, and Superman) used to jux-tapose more versus less fearsome characters. Lewis remarked how this intertextualpop culture discourse animated and engaged many of the boys who otherwise wereconsidered “academic and social outsiders” within their classroom, allowing themto use language that was “playful, parodic, and performative” (p. 164) especially in

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relation to masculinity, violence, and fear. Lewis described this as a “subversive”performance in which the boys’ “suppressed selves” could appear (p. 165).

Students and teachers can actively incorporate, respond positively or negativelyto, or ignore pop culture topics that are raised in classes. That is, they can exercisetheir agency in such discourse. Gutiérrez et al. (1995) examined heteroglossia andmultivocality in classrooms, following on the seminal work of Bakhtin and Fair-clough. In their research on inner-city students in the Los Angeles area, Gutiérrezet al. (1995) identified two types of talk in typical content classrooms: superordi-nate(formal, academic, and mainstream) and subordinate(vernacular) varieties,along the lines of what Kamberelis and Lewis found, but in this case in whole-classdiscussions. Gutierrez et al. called these the teacher script(or epistemic and linguis-tic orientation) and the student script. They also posited the existence, or potentialfor, an unscripted space between the two, a “third space” in which “public artifactssuch as the newspaper text, and even historical events, are available for critiqueand contestation” (p. 465).1

To illustrate, in a 9th grade discussion of American current events, the officialteacher script focussed on a Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown versusTopeka Kansas Board of Education, a case connected with racial segregation inschooling. The student script that ensued included offhand comments about adifferent Brown, the musician James Brown, well known to African-Americanand other students in the class. The third, “unscripted” space was explored whena mixed-race student asked a question of personal relevance and significance:namely, how mixed-race students would be affected by such a ruling. The authorsdiscuss the importance of venturing into this cognitive, affective, and socioculturalthird space with students, affirming the knowledge and gaps contained in students’own experiences and interests. The result of this, it was claimed, was a new senseof “knowledge and knowledge representation” (p. 445) and the chance for studentsto achieve a stronger sense of identity and a clearer understanding of which dis-courses and forms of participation are important. In Gutiérrez, Baquedano-Lopez,and Tejada (2000) as well, the points of intersection of the unofficial and officialcodes and scripts in the classroom were found to generate a potential “zone ofproximal development,” a hybrid third space, in which students could enter intothe curriculum materials and discourse in a new and potentially very effective way.

Although most discussions of pop culture in the curriculum and in classroomwork seem to involve students in their elementary- or middle-school school years,high school and postsecondary settings also provide fertile domains for furtherresearch. Recently, for example, there has been media coverage of a new se-ries of courses and books intended for university students on “Popular Cultureand Philosophy” (e.g., Seinfeld and Philosophy: Irwin, 2000; The Simpsons andPhilosophy: Irwin, Conard, & Skoble, 2001; The Matrix and Philosophy: Irwin,2002). Widely viewed pop culture television programs were originally designedto be used “as a means of illustrating traditional philosophical issues to effectively

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reach readers outside the academy” (Irwin et al., 2001, p. 3), but the materialshave now apparently been adopted by many university programs as well (e.g.,Sacheli, 2002), presumably because they provide an effective form of mediationfor philosophical thought by bridging home/popular and academic cultures.

Discussions about how to incorporate pop culture into classroom discourse andeven the curriculum often assume that students share the same kind of “culturallandscape” previously referred to (Dyson, 2001). They also raise issues about howsanitized or censored the texts should be to satisfy school district codes and whetherparental permission is required (e.g., to show PG-rated video clips, to talk about“politically incorrect” South Parkepisodes or rap lyrics with strong language;Stevens, 2001). But a major issue is that students from different linguistic andcultural groups often do not have equal access to or familiarity with the local popculture scripts, texts, scripts and references that are admitted into the classroom;and even if they do, they may not find it appropriate to discuss them in class ormay not have the ability to comprehend or produce quick intertextual referencesin the classroom. English language learners, and especially those who are recentimmigrants, typically lack the necessary cultural schemata and linguistic skills tointerpret the texts may consequently be denied access to the narratives and socialnetworks of their local peers and teachers at school, at university, and in the work-place (Norton, 2000), even when those narratives take place in what is potentiallya third space for local peers. The current study therefore pays particular attentionto that population of minority learners in the last third of the article. Furthermore,although other classroom-based research has examined the roles and meanings ofpop culture in content-area literacy activities and oral discourse (Dyson, 1997), orhas examined critical pedagogical practices within media education courses specif-ically (e.g., Buckingham, 1998), more research needs to examine the characteris-tics and implications of the diffusion of pop culture in other content-area courses,especially in those with children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

INTERTEXTUALITY

According to Kristeva (1980), to whom the notion of intertextuality is generallyattributed, “any text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text is the ab-sorption and transformation of another” (p. 66). Drawing on Kristeva’s work, Boje(2001) examines what he refers to as historical and social aspects of intertextualproduction and interpretation, in his case, in primarily written organizational, man-agerial, business, and newspaper discourse. For his analyses, he poses the followingsorts of questions:

Whose social identities get constituted?Who has access to being included in the text?

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Who are the audiences this text is designed to beinterpreted and read by?

How are parts of other texts incorporated into the text(quoted or interpreted)?

What is selected as newsworthy for target audiences?What are the ‘common sense’ or ‘insider’ terms?What are the parodies, ironies and metaphorization?What interpretive matrix does the author construct for

readers to consume?

(excerpted fromBoje, 2001, p. 77)

Boje’s questions can also be extended beyond the texts themselves to the partic-ipants in the larger discourse contexts, including the readers, listeners or contrib-utors to texts, and their access to understandings, their social identities in relationto the texts, the institutions in which the texts get aired, and the issue of what getsselected as newsworthy from among the multiple texts that might be brought intoa classroom, for example.

Most research, like Boje’s, has examined intertextuality in written not oral texts.In this vein, Hyland (2000) reported on his studies of academic citation in researcharticles and Tsang (2001) described the intertextuality and interdiscursivity ofcompositions about local Hong Kong history written by bilingual undergraduatestudents in 1997. Tsang analyzed direct and indirect reporting, presupposition,negation, irony, comparison, and so on, as intertextual features of discourse, inmuch the same way as Fairclough (1992b) did. In an earlier article related to thesame larger study, Scollon, Tsang, Li, Yung, and Jones (1998) examined inter-textuality in student-written texts, in this case the genre of personal letters, usingvoice (and polyvocality), appropriation, and discourse representation as analyticconstructs. They also conceptualized intertextuality not only as the linkages amongtexts but also as the result of social actions that brought the various textual strandsand voices together in the first place.

Researchers have also analyzed oral discourse in institutional contexts whichincorporates a variety of written and spoken texts and have addressed similar setsof questions. For example, Chapman (1995), drawing on Lemke’s (1985) andothers’ research on intertextuality, examines the oral mathematics discussions ofschool-aged learners as well as differences between the oral accounts and writtentextbook explanations of the same (linear) functions. In research involving adultspeakers, Candlin and Maley (1997) examine oral mediational or dispute resolutiondiscourse by drawing on Fairclough’s (1992b) distinction of intertextualityandinterdiscursivityin professional talk; the latter refers more to different discursivestyles or genres (e.g., mediational vs. counselling vs. legal discourse) that may runthrough different types of talk and not just different texts. Candlin and Maley wereinterested in the textual, historicized, institutional, and social aspects of talk, whichyield innovative, dynamic, and hybrid “orders of discourse” (p. 204), noteworthy

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as much for what resources or cultural capital and individuals they excludeas forthose they include(Foucault, 1984) (for other examples of intertextual analyses,see Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Fairclough, 1992b;Pappas et al., 2003).

Building on this previous literature on intertextuality, in what follows I investi-gate the intertextual and interdiscursive means by which pop culture references arewoven into surrounding texts such as those in Excerpts 1 and 2, together with therationale for and possible consequences of this discursive hybridity for differenttypes of learners.

THE STUDY

Data for the analysis come from excerpts from audio and videorecorded grade10 classes from a larger ethnographic study situated in a Canadian high schoolin 1997–1999, examining the linguistic socialization of immigrant students intonew discourse communities at school (Duff, 2001, 2002a, 2002b). Students in theclasses comprised a mixture of local Canadian-born native English speakers andimmigrant English language learners mostly from Taiwan, Hong Kong and otherparts of East or Southeast Asia. The majority had been in Canada for just one tothree years and are therefore referred to as “newcomers.” In contrast, the “local”students, primarily Anglo- or Western-European Canadians, had grown up for themost part in the same middle-class neighborhood or the same city and had attendedthe same elementary school; as a result, they had vast pools of shared culturalknowledge, history, and experience. Networks of friends were also clearly definedby their cultural, linguistic, and social commonalities, with virtually no voluntarysocializing inside or outside of class between local and non-local groups. I willdiscuss examples here from the grade 10 social studies classes of Mr. Jones andMs. Smith (pseudonyms), locally raised Anglo-Canadian teachers about 30 yearsof age. Both were considered to be very competent, experienced social studiesteachers by their peers, principal, and university colleagues, especially because oftheir ability to broach social studies topics in an engaging manner and because oftheir extensive personal knowledge about the field as well. However, neither hadbeen trained to teach students from diverse linguistic/cultural backgrounds.

Mr. Jones’ Class: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Serendipitous Current Events

Excerpt 3 contains the longer stretch of talk in Mr. Jones’ class from which Ex-cerpt 1 was taken. In this class, as in other social studies classes at that grade level,the curriculum mandates the discussion of current events throughout the course.My weekly observations revealed that the discussion of current events often in-cluded many references to pop culture as well. This trend was reinforced by otherfactors: (1) the class members’ and teacher’s obvious interest in pop culture and

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their desire to discuss it in class; (2) the teacher’s recognition that these intertextualreferences engaged students differently from other kinds of content and texts; (3)the increased blurring of real or legitimate “news” events and entertainment-relatednews in television, newspaper, and magazine news coverage, now sometimes re-ferred to as “infotainment or “edutainment,” which made the discussion of “currentevents” inherently dynamic and far-ranging;2 and, possibly, (4) the power that localstudents felt vis-à-vis newcomers to chat freely about a wide range of pop culturetopics and to engage in repartee with their teachers and each other in a quick andclever way that was not possible for the non-local students.

There were seven English language learners in Mr. Jones’ class, most of whomhad been in the country for just one to three years. Generally in that class, currentevents discussions began with the discussion of a news item that was clipped fromthe morning newspaper and brought to the class by a designated student or by theteacher. These discussions in Mr. Jones’ class usually occurred on Friday morningsright before lunch and were considered by many students to be the highlight of theweek’s three classes in that subject. The entire Friday lesson was usually devotedto current events if students could come up with enough topics to sustain a coherentand reasonably controlled discussion, which the local students generally rallied todo.

In the following excerpt, the current event was derived from a 1000-word articlethat had appeared on the front page of the local newspaper the day before: “SchoolsStruggle with Internet Graffiti” (Porter, 1999). The topic was “cyber ethics” and“cyber graffiti” and a number of local schools were mentioned in it because theirstudents had breached cyber ethics by posting the names of students or teachersdeemed attractive, unpopular, and so on. Mr. Jones had brought the article to classand was reading parts of it out loud, paraphrasing other parts, and making a varietyof other comments and connections. Students did not have their own copies of thearticle.

Excerpt 3 (March 12, 1999)3

1 Mr. Jones: ((Referring to the newspaper)) Cyber ethics haveraised “questions about . . . cyber ethics and respect.”((now reading from the paper)) “‘It’s high-techgraffiti,’ said [a local school vice-principal]. ‘Somethings posted - are very hurtful, hurtful to anyone, butparticularly hurtful - to adolescents still trying tofigure things out.”’ Then it goes and - says um - yousee that the content of a lot of this is the kind of stuffthat ends up on bathroom walls but it gets publicizeda lot further on the internet plus somehow people still((=paraphrase of article abstract))

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2 Sue: We don’t write on bathroom walls anymore.3 Mr. Jones: plus somehow people still believe more - you know

there was once a study done by some people at [a localuniversity] about they wanted to study the quantityand the nature of bathroom graffiti male versusfemale

4 Sue: Way more males?5 Mr. Jones: Way more male6 Male student: Oh yeah.7 Mr. Jones: And the male graffiti, here were their findings. It was

kind of interesting. A lot of people said “well that’snot a valid topic of study.” I thought it was interesting.

8 Sue: Kind of cool.9 Mr. Jones: Um here’s what they found. They found that the male

graffiti in general and it was the study was done bytwo women who wanted to do it so ((some laughter))they had to get access to men’s bathrooms right? Likeafter hours and stuff and uh they found that malegraffiti was nastier?

((They discuss their experiences in boys’ vs. girls’ bathrooms, and graffiti, thenSue exclaims that she has been in boys’ bathrooms “so many times”; the teacherresponds below with the content initially shown in Excerpt 1))

10 Mr. Jones: Well you guys live like in the Ally McBealgeneration.Right?

11 John: What?12 Mr. Jones: Where they share a bathroom.13 Male student: No way.14 Mr. Jones: Right? On Ally McBealbut when I=15 Sue: =Did you hear about the transsexual who sued

the= ((referring to a local lawsuit in which someonecontested her lack of access to a women’s washroom))

16 Mr. Jones: =when I grew up it was more strict. Wait! Let’s finishthis article.

((several turns later))

17 Mr. Jones: It’s very hard with the internet isn’t it? Uh and hecontinues on to say - all these schools block it out oftheir school web sites but the School Board thoughtthat they would be best not to publicize it and it wouldjust die down in interest, right? ((paraphrase))

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((some turns later))

18 Mr. Jones: ((again reading)) “You know the saying in the 1950s?‘Do you know where your children are?’ Well, do youknow where your kids are on computers?” Do youknow “what they’re doing?” Right? And that’s- he’salluding to probably before your time. They used to-especially on American TV stations they used to havethis thing that came on this public service message itwould say even in my time, it’s the ’70s, and “It’s 11o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

19 Doug: It was on the The Simpsons20 Mr. Jones: Great. Doug and Shh! ((to someone else))21 Doug: It’s like22 Mr. Jones: Quiet. ((Said to other students who are chatting))23 Doug: Homer’s like eating TV dinner and it’s like

[announcement] and then he says “I told youyesterday I don’t know.”

24 Students: ((Laughter))25 Mr. Jones: Uh The Simpsons. They’re so good.

Some of the texts or fragments of texts seamlessly blended into Excerpt 3 orotherwise alluded to are as follows (with turn numbers shown):

• the salacious texts beings spread on the Internet (Turn 1);• the newspaper account of them (Turn 1 and following);• interviews with a vice-principal and school board officials (Turns 1 and 17);• a university study about bathroom graffiti and gender issues (Turns 3–9);• reactions from some people about the legitimacy of the graffiti study (Turn

7);• various kinds of graffiti as texts on bathroom walls (Turns 1–9);• Ally McBealscripts about co-ed bathrooms and related banter (Turns 10–16);• a legal case in local newspapers about a local transsexual’s lawsuit (Turn 15);• past US public service announcements (PSA’s) on TV (Turns 18 and 23);• (Homer) Simpsonscripts containing references to that PSA (Turns 19–25);• narrative anecdotes by the teacher, by Sue, and others about their past activi-

ties (e.g., about their cross-gender-bathroom explorations; omitted from thisexcerpt).

Unlike most transcripts involving discourse analysis, I have included quotationmarks to flag some aspects of intertextuality in the texts, namely directly reportedspeech from the following sources: the newspaper, the television, interviews, re-actions to the UBC graffiti study, and The Simpsonsshow. Other textual elements,

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such as those listed above, are not bounded by quotation marks but are reportedindirectly or paraphrased from the article. The footing of the teacher and studentschanges quickly as they respond to different aspects of each other’s talk with differ-ent registers and social stances and not just different texts. In Turns 20 and 25, forexample, Mr. Jones validates Doug’s remarks (text) about The Simpsons, by firstuttering “Great,” and then, after telling a couple of other boys to be quiet, by affirm-ing Doug’s remarks, encouraging him to report the episode, and then followingup with: “The Simpsons. They’re so good.” In doing so, he also aligns or affiliateshimself with the media interests, sense of humor, and white-local-male identitiesof these boys, plus validates the relevance of the anecdote in relation to the cur-rent news item. Mr. Jones also shifts footing when pivoting from his discussion ofthe article to his reporting of a university graffiti study (from mid-sentence at thebeginning of Turn 3 to Turn 9), about which he then provides editorial comments(that the research was “interesting,” which he repeated twice); and when switchingfrom reading about the public service announcement in Turn 18, to his explanationabout the context for such announcements historically in the same turn. Compar-ing the oral and written versions of the cyber-ethics article is challenging in fact,because in some cases only short fragments of the article are reported directly, thenembellished upon, and intact strings of sentences from the article are read aloudonly in a few places.

In effect, considerable discursive socialization was taking place in this classabout language use, media literacy, and the desirability of incorporating texts frompop culture and other sources (e.g., The Simpsons, the local news, research on ev-eryday phenomena such as graffiti; Duff, 2002b; Wenger, 1998). The excerpt there-fore represents a very tightly orchestrated series of utterances, quick rejoinders,and (often) mutually validating comments, frequently accompanied by overlapacross speakers or sequenced turns without so much as a pause between them. Tosome extent it seemed that the students were modeling their intertextual and inter-discursive news and pop culture reporting on the banter of the morning co-hosts onboth of the pop/rock radio stations that local males and females almost all listenedto and which, some mentioned in interviews, was also one of their best sources ofdaily news and related anecdotes.

Elsewhere in the text, a male student challenges Mr. Jones’ assertion that con-temporary youth use co-ed bathrooms just like they do in Ally McBealby uttering“No way” (Turn 13); Sue counters Mr. Jones by volunteering that these studentsdon’t write on bathroom walls nowadays (Turn 2) but that she found the studyhe was reporting on about graffiti “kind of cool” (Turn 8). There is extensiveand elaborate intertextual and interdiscursive “lamination”; but this does not sim-ply entail the juxtaposition or patching together of diverse texts. Rather, thereis also embedding and re-embedding of the same texts within the same lesson.For example, the US public service announcement first is cited from the news-paper article about cyber ethics that the teacher is reading aloud, then in the

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teacher’s remarks about the announcement having been part of his own experi-ence in the 1970s, and finally in The Simpsonsshow’s appropriation of the sameannouncement to demonstrate, for comedic effect, Homer Simpson’s carelessnessas a parent. The original announcement itself was embedded in American televi-sion programming at a certain time in the evening in a particular sociohistoricalcontext.

Pop culture texts such as The Simpsonsand Ally McBealare themselves highlyintertextual and multimodal as well, with passing reference to a wealth of movies,TV shows, and literary classics in the former; and musical interludes and referencesto Barry White, in the latter. The humor, parody, irony, and allusions of the scriptsoperate on many different levels, depending on the age, cultural background, andeducation level of viewers (Irwin & Lombardo, 2001). Besides being almost end-lessly intertextual and embedded themselves, references to the same pop culturetopics or episodes might occur across different lessons and not only in isolatedlessons, and indeed it was not uncommon for there to be at least one referenceto an episode of The Simpsonsin each of Mr. Jones’ current events classes andsometimes references to the same current events story, such as the Bill Clintonscandal and reactions to it, across several lessons.

References to pop culture and related sources provided connections to the con-temporary cultural worlds and multiple curricular and extracurricular literacies ofstudents; perhaps more subversively, it enabled students to prolong and provokediscussion and forestall their return to potentially less inherently engaging lessoncontent, such as history and economics (Gutiérrez et al., 1995). Thus, extendingthe discourse provided a kind of mild and playful resistance to returning to theregular content plus offered local students, in particular, what might be viewed as(inter)textual gymnastics, the fairly pleasant and manageable challenge of tryingto make quick connections among the diverse textual strands.

The infusion of pop culture into classroom discussions and into mainstream me-dia coverage of “news” items of the sort is discussed during Current Events4 wasvery commonplace in Mr. Jones’ class. Excerpt 2, at the beginning of this article,comes from the lesson a week earlier (March 5, 1999), after a local male student’spresentation about a new diagnostic test for breast cancer (see Appendix A, Turns74–78). In the extended ensuing interaction, and in the other current events top-ics that are volunteered, the following elements were interjected into the opendiscussion (from Turn 21):

• a George Burns’ joke by Mr. Jones about sneezing, after he sneezed (Turns29–31);

• myths and rituals connected with sneezing and blessings (Turn 44);• the physics (i.e., force) of sneezing, blinking, and air flow; and someone’s

comments about the Guinness Book of World Records(connected with eye-popping, which was connected with sneezing) (Turns 48–59);

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• a student’s comment about Homer Simpson and serendipitous discoveries inmedical research (Turns 65–77, as seen in Excerpt 2);

• an observation about Prince Charles’ and others’ left-handedness after theteacher throws something with his left hand to a student in the hallway,and related talk about handedness and related superstitions (Turns 114–127,131–147);

• an announcement about the trading of Wayne Gretsky to another hockey teamand mention of another hockey player, Pavel Bure (Turns 148–161);

• an extended discussion about Barbara Walters’ interview earlier that week(in March, 1999) featuring Monica Lewinsky (Turn 162–178);

• comments about Seinfeld, John Lennon, Catcher in the Rye, and the rockband AC/DC (Turns 178, 182, 185).

The class also continued to discuss the issue of breast cancer research, proactiveinterventions, treatment types, false positives, the need to seek second opinionsfrom doctors when faced with serious illness, and so on. Again, this extendedexcerpt involves numerous types of texts, beginning with classroom managementat the beginning of the class, then negotiation of the student’s presentation of thenewspaper article and his own opinions about the reported research in the article,and other kinds of texts on which the jokes, comments and observations listed abovewere based. The “Monica Interview” discourse (see Appendix A, Turns 162–178and reported speech between her and Bill Clinton) and legal case in which TheCatcher in the Ryewas discussed as the impetus for criminal activity among youngmales (Turns 184 and 185) also contain multiple layers of discussion and texts,extending over more than 20 turns by the teacher and students.

Finally, another level of intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the excerpt is re-lated to the ironic or insulting banter that takes place between the students and Mr.Jones, and which he seems to invite; in relation to his being human, as opposed tobeing Superman (Turns 1–4) and his left-handedness (i.e., the question/observation“Are you a lefty?” in Turn 114), helping a few students make the case that Mr. Joneswas weak, or worse: “an agent of the devil” (in Turn 126; see also Turns 106–127and 137–147). There were often disciplinary and other classroom-management in-teractions including students’ requests to use the bathroom, repeated efforts to keepstudents from all speaking at once, and the need to respond to visitors at the door.

In the February 26, 1999 lesson, in relation to current events presentations on(1) the Guatemalan “Truth Committee” and (2) a naval captain’s punishment forsending sexually explicit email from his Defense Department computer, there werereferences to the following media networks, programs, and other aspects of popculture:

• the Canucks (Vancouver hockey team), and rumours about the tendency of oneof the students in Mr. Jones’ class to skip classes after a team had lost a game;

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• The Price is Right(when waiting for a student presenter to begin);• Entertainment Tonight(as an example of a show that provides positive profiles

of entertainers so as to promote their latest projects);• Net Vista (the school’s internet system; and references to problems with the

integrity of messages and account owner’s responsibility for messages sentout using their accounts, a topic returned to on March 12, as in Excerpt 3);

• a newspaper account of a similar case of inappropriate email use, in whichinappropriate sex cartoons were sent to a United Way worker; and students’views of whether this was harassment or an innocent joke;

• problems with receiving unsolicited pornographic email or links;• the National Geographictelevision show;• Fox TV, The Simpsons, NBC shows (three interconnected media references);• Inside Edition(biased reporting in stories);• the Stanley Cup and World Cup (and law enforcement issues following

games);• America’s Most Wanted(a TV show, in connection with the recent murder of

a local school girl that had been discussed during this lesson and in previouslessons).

These items were not presented as a list; rather, they were referred to in connectionwith or in between the discussion of other current events topics. For example,while waiting for the second student presenter to come up to the front to give herpresentation, Mr. Jones uttered:

[Student’s name], “come on down! You’re the next contestant.” Speaking of “comeon down you’re the next contestant,” do people in this class, while she [student] putsher title on the board, do people in the class know Ms. X, the special needs teacher. . . ?

He then tells about this teacher’s experience going on the Hollywood gameshow, The Price is Right, and explains that it is important to be passionate abouta show in order to be selected as a contestant. This anecdote was followed bysome repartee about Bob Barker, the longtime, then-octogenarian host of the show,and certain aspects of the teacher’s experience, including the fact that she hadwon. Basically, this was a way of filling time and keeping students’ attention,while the presenter got organized. Following that story came the second student’spresentation, which led to a discussion of online sexual harassment. The class thentalked about various different American programs such as Entertainment Tonight(mentioned by Mr. Jones) and Inside Edition(mentioned by Ken) and the fact thatthe shows develop sensational programming to improve their ratings. Therefore,Mr. Jones used these examples to make the point that “we have to be critical ofour sources of information” because “they focus . . . on not the important stuff

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but just what grabs people’s interest.” This point was raised in connection witha student’s report about a new allegation of sexual abuse or misconduct by BillClinton that had evidently been reported on the tabloid show Inside Edition. Mr.Jones’ appropriation of these game show, talk show, or TV “news magazine” genresand topics in his class is similar to an American male teacher’s use of the DavidLettermantalk-show format for interaction with the adult women in his Englishconversation classes in Japan documented in Duff and Uchida (1997).

Ms. Smiths’ Class: Films, Media Frenzies, and the Royal Family

Often excerpts with pop culture references were spontaneously embedded withindiscussions of historical or other social studies topics and not just in the currentevents segment of class, presumably for similar reasons: to engage the audience, tospark further discussion, and to make some kind of principled point as well. In Ms.Smith’s grade 10 Social Studies course one day, a frequently chatty Indo-Canadian(Punjabi) student made a sweeping comment about corruption in India, in connec-tion with a relative’s recent visit there. She also observed that there was relativelylittle news reporting about South Asia in the local or national Canadian media.In response to these points, the teacher mentioned the movie Titanic, which hadjust been released in theatres. There was only one local boy in the class, 10 or 11native-English-speaking local teenage girls, and the remaining 17 students werefirst-generation Asian-Canadians or landed immigrants, many of whom were stillenrolled in ESL classes. As a rule, only the local girls spoke voluntarily.

Excerpt 4 (April 15, 1998)

1 Ms. Smith: You- you raised so many things and but India’scorruption I think it’s true we don’t hear about SriLanka very often, everyone’s so focused for exampleon the - Titanic which I still have yet to see right? Butevery day

2 Sue/Liz: You haven’t seen it?3 Ms. Smith: you know ships sink not every day but often. The

Philippines- there’s these big ships sinking with tonsof people on board. They’re poor people. They’re notgoing to make some huge American movie aboutthem or - people in Indonesia - ships sinking becausethey’re overcrowded or whatever they’re not going tomake some blockbuster about it right?

4 Sue/Liz: Eighty- eighty-six years ago yesterday.5 Ms. Smith: Yeah - but - the Titanic a bunch of rich Americans -

maybe this is a very cynical view6 Sue/Liz: Excuse me.

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7 Ms. Smith: but a bunch of rich Americans sink and we have to talkabout it until I want to scream. Yeah?

8 Sue/Liz: That’s the same with - Diana9 Ms. Smith: [Yes.

10 Sue/Liz [and the Royals. It just - like there there’s biographiesevery night on them - and my mom sits there and watchthat- watches them

11 Ms. Smith: Yeah?12 Sue/Liz: and I’m like “Mom get a life.” You know like -

((someone laughs in background)) it’s done with and itwas - a tragedy right?

13 Sue/Liz: Yet people die in [an accident14 S: [But now15 Sue/Liz: But there are special people who16 S: You know there’s17 Sue/Liz: And they’re not royal you know.18 Ms. Smith: Yeah.19 Sue/Liz: Like she was a great person but there’s so many other pe-

great people out there who die every day and - it’s just astragic that nobody cares and

20 Ms. Smith: Yeah.21 Sue/Liz: this goes on for several months afterwards.22 Ms. Smith: I agree with you and I think that’s just one more thing

for- that I wanted to raise from Janet’s point and onething about what you said about India’s corruption, it’sslightly exaggerated what you said but - is that kind of uh- I don’t think the Indian government wants us to comein and say “we know better, we’ll help you” right? Theydon’t want that paternalistic attitude from us.

Here, Ms. Smith’s purpose was to highlight the exaggerated media coverageabout certain topics, such as new movie releases or about topics of great con-cern to Americans, versus the correspondingly little coverage about contemporarytragedies of a similar nature around the world, such as poor people perishing atsea in Asia. She also tried to temper Janet’s overgeneralization about corruption inIndia and how it should (or should not) be dealt with by the local or internationalcommunities. Along the way, however, came a sequence of more than a dozen turnsabout why the British Royal Family, especially Diana (Princess of Wales), whohad died at the beginning of that academic year more than seven months earlier,should generate so much ongoing interest and media coverage in Canada.

The discourse here again involves many kinds of texts, topics, and discoursefragments:

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• reported stories of corruption in India (Janet’s narrative of her aunt’s trip,etc.); and recent news reports with relatively little coverage about South Asiancountries (prior to Turn 1);

• the media frenzy surrounding the Titanic sinking (Turns 3, 5 and 7);• Titanicand other “blockbuster” movies about mainly affluent Anglo-American

people versus tragedies in the Philippines or Indonesia involving the drowningof poor local people (Turn 3);

• the date that the Titanic ship sank (86 years earlier, according to one student)and the implied newsworthiness of that historical event (Turn 4);

• the teachers’ critical interpretation of the media’s coverage of Titanic (Turns5 and 7);

• Diana’s death and the media aftermath of that event (Turns 8–21);• biographies of the British Royal Family (e.g., on A&E Biography) (Turn 10);• reported speech between a student and her mother who watches Royal bi-

ographies on television (“Mom get a life”) (Turn 12);• hypothetical “paternalistic” speech between the West and India, as reported

and critiqued by Ms. Smith, and India’s need to manage its own internalaffairs (Turn 22).

In other words, as in Mr. Jones’ class, some attention was being paid to criticalmedia literacy and also the global significance and bias of reported “news” itemsor viewpoints. There was also talk among the students and teacher about the ap-parently surprising fact that Ms. Smith hasn’t seen the Titanicyet (Turns 1 and 2);a student’s (mock) astonishment at the teacher’s unflattering reference to “a bunchof rich Americans” (Turn 6); students’ examples of excessive media coverage ofother pop culture icons or topics, and related comments. Ironically though, thelocal girls’ apparent pleasure at responding to Ms. Smith’s “cynical” commentabout the Titanic and their eagerness to discuss Diana’s case, despite their veiledcriticisms of the media coverage, actually betrayed some genuine interest in thesesame topics. In other lessons, students in both courses happily mentioned the recentactions of Prince William or the ongoing saga of Bill Clinton and Monica Will-insky, while at the same time complaining that too much press time was devotedto these topics. Shortly after the point at which Excerpt 4 ended, for example, afterJanet had added further comments to her concerns about social issues in India,another local student continued with the theme of the Royal Family as follows:

Excerpt 5 (April 15, 1998)

1 Caroline: I mean this is probably like really off topic but - sinceyou mentioned like the Royals - I don’t understandwhy everybody is obsessed with Prince William.

2 S or Ms. Smith: Neither do I.

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3 Caroline: ’Kay like - I’ve read like a thousand times that someguy was- just because his mom died everyone’s alllike all of a sudden like - paying attention to him –and - it’s not like you’re going to go to like meet himand (xx) “oh hey you oh” you know like “you (xx)”like the three thousand people who did this

4 SS: (xx)5 Caroline: It really bugs me like - that everybody’s like so

obsessed with them.6 Ms. Smith: Yeah they’re almost like movie stars those two – guys

- now for - what?7 Sue: For all the wrong [reasons though.8 Liz: [They were just born into it. It’s not like they’re - they

didn’t [(xx)9 Sue: [Prince Charles is like going to like premieres and (xx)

10 Ms. Smith: Yeah okay. So let’s leave current events for now andlet’s go back to . . .

Caroline, a local aboriginal student, declares that “everybody” is “obsessed”with Prince Williams in Turn 1, and a number of other students as well as the teacherconcur that they don’t understand why “the Royals” are accorded movie-star likestatus to the point that, as another student observes, Prince Charles is going topremieres and receiving media attention like a pop star would (Turn 9). In thisexcerpt, therefore, they are drawing on television and other recent reports of thecomings and goings of the Royal family—here, William, his brother, and his fatherCharles, in particular—no doubt fueled by the recent visit of Prince Charles andhis two sons to their city two weeks earlier and the overwhelming interest shown inPrince Williams by hundreds (or “three thousand” teenaged schoolgirls, accordingto Caroline) during a visit to a nearby school district. As before, these interjectionsand observations come from several of the local girls in the class, with largenumbers of non-local students restricted to the peripheral role of observers.

In sum, the incorporation of pop culture into this excerpt illustrated the students’and teachers’ recognition of the uneven coverage of significant world news andthe overexposure of certain events or pop culture icons in contemporary pressreports, which they then perpetuate or recreate in a sense by spending time talkingabout the same topics. The resulting discourse was a hybrid of news, anecdote,personal opinion and reaction, and various aspects of popular culture. Both previousepisodes allowed Janet, Carolyn, and Sue or Liz (whose voices were very similarand were both local Anglo-Canadians) to divulge aspects of their personal livesand histories as well as social aversions and alignments.

In a different excerpt, Ms. Smith used pop culture as a way of making thetopic of an upcoming Irish referendum and the history of conflict in Ireland more

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relevant to the class, perhaps within an accessible cognitive space for them, bymentioning a recent film about Ireland and Irish-Americans, The Devil’s Own(Columbia Pictures, 1997), and also by mentioning the prominent male actors inthe films (Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, one of whom plays an Irish-AmericanNew York policeman and the other a young IRA terrorist). Ms. Smith might haveassumed that these actors were of potential interest to the large number of local girlsin the class and she herself was interested in Irish history and political struggle.

Excerpt 6 (April 15, 1998)

1 Ms. Smith: And once people start being killed then it makeseverything go that much deeper and that much moredifficult to sort of - overcome because your relativeswere killed and people were hurt and - and it justentrenches it further and further and it- it’s- one of theother reasons that I was interested in this becausethere have been so many good films coming out ofIreland in the last few years. And on the weekend Isaw one it wasn’t - the greatest but but wasn’t badwith Harrison Ford

2 S: I saw that one.3 Ms. Smith: What was the name of that young good-looking guy?4 S: [Oh5 Ms. Smith: [Brad Pitt.6 S: Um.7 S: Oh The Devil’s Own.8 SS: Devil’s Own.9 S: I’ve seen that.

10 S: The worst accent. Brad Pitt’s trying to be Irish. He’s(xx) ((tries to imitate Pitt’s poor accent and somestudents laugh)) So American it’s awful.

11 Ms. Smith: But it- it’s not the best of the films coming out of there.There are many good films that deal with this conflictand there are some lines in that film which I really likedand some things that he points to that I liked.

A number of students immediately pick up on this reference to the film bysupplying the name of the movie (in Turns 7 and 8), by commenting on the fact thatthey have seen the film (Turns 2 and 9), and then even critiquing attempts by BradPitt, and American actor, to produce an Irish-English accent (Turn 10). Ms. Smithalso refers to other films about Ireland and provides a disclaimer that this one, TheDevil’s Own, is perhaps not the best but that it has some memorable commentarieson the Irish conflict. Again, the hybrid text blends talk about real-world conflict and

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then fictional characters and movie scripts (texts) that some students are familiarwith and can therefore help Ms. Smith to explain the context for the current Irishnews item. By doing so, she attempts to bring students into a hybrid third curricularspace. Pop culture, in effect, serves as a discursive “hook” or priming device, evenin public education, as an article about a leading Canadian TV and radio journalistand political commentator recently pointed out:

. . . [Rex] Murphy uses pop-culture references more than you’d expect from someoneso learned. He considers them essential for opening a dialogue. [Murphy says:] “Ifyou go now to a campus, the currency of our time is the reference to celebrity. Youwill not go out and cite John Milton and expect any general group [to respond]. If youwant to connect with a group, either by camera or print, the coin is Homer Simpson,the coin is Oprah.” He has found that his jokes and pop-culture references primehis audience for more important ideas, when the need arises. “You buy the right topeople’s serious attention,” he said. “The one time that you want to speak directlyto people, and you actually, in a deep sense, mean what you say, you’ve bought theright to do so.” (Wigod, 2003, p. F18)

INTERTEXTUALITY, POP CULTURE AND SILENCE: AMBIVALENCE,STRUGGLE, AND PLEASURE FOR ENGLISH

LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Hybrid discourse involving the interweaving of non-academic and academic textsor the “colonization” of the latter by the former (Fairclough, 1992a) in this classcontributed to the active linguistic, cognitive, and affective engagement of lo-cal, fully English-proficient students; many, but certainly not all, responded toand supplied topics and commentaries about the pop culture themes and currentevents topics that arose. However, by doing so collectively, the discourse that theyco-constructed posed difficulties for newcomers who were unable to participatemore fully, either by means of oral comprehension or production, during class-room speech events. It is really no wonder that they could not participate more:the classroom discourse was very complex, requiring students to ascertain therelevant connections among points in order to establish some coherence and cohe-sion. Elsewhere, I have also discussed how the explicit positionings of classroommembers as in-group versus out-group (alien) members also affected their partic-ipation (Duff, 2002b). Intertextuality involving pop culture references associatedwith American movies and television programs primarily not only served to makelesson content more relevant to the lives and interests of local students, it wasalso a powerful resource for the display of class members’ various social and cul-tural identities within the school (Duff & Uchida, 1997; Maybin & Mercer, 1996).That is, discursive practices such as these united, engaged, and often delightedthe local students and their teachers, allowing them to display and co-construct

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their identities, knowledge, interests, past experiences, sense of humor, and so-ciocultural affiliations.5 It helped retain students’ waning attention, which is anongoing challenge for teachers, as they sometimes acknowledged in class. Un-fortunately, the practices also seemed to exclude most of the ESL students fromthis English-speaking discourse community and positioned them as outsiders toit. Without the cultural reference points that might facilitate their comprehension,they had difficulty understanding what their classmates were talking or laughingabout. However, asking for explanations in class or attempting to enter into discus-sions might open them up to ridicule and confirm their difference and otherness.Silence protected them from humiliation but it did not help them gain easy accessto the valued cultural capital and practices of their English-speaking peers.

The consistently observed silence of English language learners during these cur-rent events discussions could be attributed in large part to the rich intertextualityand hybridity of the discourse, the speed of turn-taking and topic nomination, andtheir lack of required cultural schemata and confidence in speaking. This analysiswas also supported in interviews with both local students and recent immigrantsin the class whose first language was not English, most of whom did not regularlywatch the English TV programs or movies referred to, for a variety of reasons.Hybrid discourse practices allowed local students to introduce and test the bound-aries of permissible topics. Some were clearly enthused about discussing a topicthey might not have expected to hear about in grade 10 social studies, such asthe differences between graffiti in men’s and women’s bathrooms or how internetgossip could be likened to bathroom graffiti.

However, this textured, pop-culture-laden talk was a complex, even bewilder-ing form of both sociolinguistic and intertextual practice for ESL newcomers.What was cultural play for some was heavy cognitive and identity work for oth-ers and there seemed to be little common ground or third space (Alvermann &Heron, 2001). Of course, silence, in and of itself, does not necessarily imply a lackof intellectual engagement on the part of listeners and is itself a co-constructedphenomenon (Morita, 2002); but there was little evidence from English languagelearners that they were fully engaged nonverbalparticipants in these discussionswho comprehended the discourse well.

This apparent marginalization of English language learners—or, at best, periph-eral participation in the sense of Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998)—wasperceptible not only in classroom observations but also in their interview accountsof the challenges they faced participating in classroom discussions or in localstudents’ criticisms of newcomers’ lack of contribution to or engagement with dis-cussion topics (Duff, 2001, 2002a, 2002b). However, it could also be argued thatthis apparent peripherality provided “an opening, a way of gaining access to re-sources for understanding through growing involvement” (Wenger, 1998, p. 100),with a reduced level of risk to newcomers who were generally not expected to con-tribute much to these discussions. Although “growing involvement” and a greater

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“approximation of full participation” (p. 100) did not really characterize thoseimmigrant students who had spent more years in Canada in comparison withnewcomers in the context of current events discussions, their level of cognitiveengagement was likely greater and less taxing, based on their increased familiaritywith local linguistic and cultural practices. As Morita (2002) points out, there aremultiple ways of participating in classrooms, with one option, chosen by manyquiet local students in any class setting, being attentive silence. However, a keyconsideration, according to Wenger (1998), is whether the students are in fact evenconsidered to be legitimate potential members of the classroom community in thefirst place:

Granting the newcomers legitimacy is important because they are likely to come shortof what the community regards as competent engagement. Only with legitimacy canall their inevitable stumblings and violations become opportunities for learning ratherthan cause for dismissal, neglect, or inclusion. (p. 101)

What did the interviews reveal about the status of the newcomers? Eight localand eight nonlocal students in Ms. Smith’s class who were asked about participationpatterns produced the sorts of comments found in Table 1 about the inabilityof ESL (also referred to as Asian, Oriental or Chinese) students to participateactively in discussions. The students attributed nonlocal students’ reticence to thefollowing factors: (1) their limited (or poor) language ability; (2) fear; (3) culturalbarriers; (4) over-use of Chinese; (5) antisocial stances; (6) shyness; and (7) theperceived irrelevance of topics connected to Asian or Asian-Canadian pop cultureand news (with 1, 2, 6, and 7 mentioned by newcomers in particular). Studentsrarely attributed others’ or their own silence to the pace, content, and textuality ofinteractions.

Similar comments were generated in interviews with the 20 or so research par-ticipants in Mr. Jones’ class (see Table 2), who were asked specifically about popculture talk in current events discussions, and about reasons for the variable levelsof participation witnessed in their course within and across groups. Local studentsseemed reasonably respectful of the need for newcomers to slowly get used tolocal “routines”; as one student put it: “they’re like just sitting back and also likeobserving . . . as to how it’s all working,” The same student put participation pat-terns in perspective: “we’ve got about let’s say twenty Caucasians in our class andten Asians but only about six of those Caucasians really are the loud ones.” Otherlocal students found that silence represented a lack of interest in the discussions orcontent; “cultural barriers” between the different ethnic groups; weak English; alack of initiative and a deliberate unwillingness to share their views; an “edginess,”“fear” or “denial” related to not being in their own “comfort zone.” Local studentsalso noted that although they found the discussions fun, they wouldn’t participateeither unless they knew enough about a given topic to contribute something. The

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Table 1. Paraphrased Interview Comments About In-class Participation, Socialization, andAttitudes Across Ethnolinguistic Groups (T: Ms. Smith; Ss: Students)

Comments from local (NES)students (n = 8)

Comments from newcomer/oldtimer(NNES) students (n = 8)

• “Oriental population” doesn’t want to say thewrong thing; their English isn’t very good; they’reconstantly told to “speak up!!” (Janet)• “Cultural walls” exist; people don’t interact withthose who are different; some [local Ss] are moretalkative or opinionated; ESL Ss are trying tocomprehend; difficult for them to make spontaneouscomments (Caroline)• “Asians” aren’t very social; they’re very quiet;don’t speak unless asked; shy. My friends are not“newer immigrants”—they’re more “Canadian”;their English is very good and they’re almost exactlylike me (Susan)• [ESL Ss] are doing their thing and we’re doingours; confident [local] “loudmouths” speak but don’tcare about what they say; Asian Ss are shy (like me),don’t participate much; language barriers are aproblem; my friends were born here (Bev)• “Asian Ss” participate less than others–they’re shyspeaking English; “Caucasians” stay with their ownfriends; cool, popular, loud Ss speak most in class; Tgives everyone a chance (Eve)• T wants all Ss to participate; most don’t. Majorgroups are “Chinese” and “English”; I’mCanadian-Chinese, not ESL. Female Ss speak more;males are still learning English. Ss don’t like tointeract with people with different L1. (Lynn)• One S [mostly] speaks during discussions. SomeSs are shy; Ts shouldn’t single out [quiet] Ss; a bigbarrier exists between two totally separate groups inclass (“Chinese” and “non-Chinese”); we don’tsocialize. (Glenda)• 90 percent of Ss never speak, esp. “Asian” Ss;they’re shy; they speak too much Chinese so can’tunderstand English; my friends aren’t Chinese (Lori)

• “Asian Ss” are afraid their Englishisn’t good, they’ll be laughed at,shunned. (Bradley)• “ESL Ss” sometimes don’t understand;younger (elementary) Ss can socializemore with people from other places;difficult for high school Ss (Mark)• English-speakers stick together; othersdo the same; it’s not good; difficult totalk to others because of language; weare afraid, feel left out; they don’t likeus; younger children don’t have the sameproblems with racism; some say we are“freaks” (Carla)• There’s racism toward Ss who don’tspeak English well (Anita)• It’s hard to make friends withCanadians; the girls are mean (but not inSS10); Taiwan classes have 40–50 Ss;we don’t talk or discuss (Mary)• My friends are mostly Korean andJapanese; in class I listen; some Ss liketo give their opinions (Barb)• I don’t like discussing; I’m not a goodspeaker; I’m shy. If Ss who’ve learnedEnglish a shorter time speak maybepeople will laugh; better relations withown culture (Ron)• When some of my friends speak (not inSS10), Canadian boys laugh; if I speak,some “White people” won’t understand;it’s uncomfortable. (Alex)

newcomers in this class claimed to understand at least 60 percent of the talk (whichseemed somewhat inflated in some cases, judging by their level of comprehensionof my interview questions), but noted that English names were very difficult forthem. Several said that they enjoyed hearing about scandals, movies, TV shows,and major local or international events (such as the Columbine shooting, the warin Kosovo, trouble in Iraq, and local murders), that current events was “fun,” al-though they didn’t necessarily understand what the issues were. However, they felt

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Table 2. Interview Comments About In-class Participation, Socialization, and AttitudesAcross Ethnolinguistic Groups (T: Mr. Jones; Ss: Students)

Comments from local (NES) students Comments from newcomer/oldtimer(NNES) students

• I guess they [ESL students] don’t really know likewhat the routine is? Like we know that you know likeyou can say this or . . . go onto something else . . .

[but] they don’t know that so they might be hesitant. . . it’s really their own choice. (CF)• Some people . . . aren’t really interested enough totalk about [issues] in class (MH1)• Typically [ESL students] don’t offer information orthey don’t feel comfortable speaking English. It’d belike me speaking French over in France . . . Iwouldn’t say I have the knowledge to get into an indepth conversation . . . but they have it know how ofhow to do it but they’re a little bit hesitant to get intoa conversation which can be outside the boundariesof what they what they know how to say? So they justdon’t want to look like a fool? Um and there’re justthe people that sleep . . . . You can’t force a person toenjoy doing stuff in class. They have to want to beable to do it? I don’t think there’s really any way toget the ESL people to an active part of the class unlessthey want to. Most of them they’re active with theirown, with other ESL people? But I don’t think it’s somuch that the non ESL people have a problem withthem? It’s just the ESL people are just insecure. (JH1)• [The ESL students] are kind of edgy. Like theydon’t like to share their opinions that much and Idon’t know if it’s some kind of fear of like denial orsomething or being put down or something but Idon’t know. I haven’t I haven’t noticed that they’reopen with their ideas? (MZ)• I think sitting there and listening to everybody talkabout it is fun to do. Especially when you cancomment even though you don’t have to . . .

Anything’s pretty fun to talk about ‘cause we usuallywouldn’t talk about a boring subject. (PD)• A lot of this is like my home, . . . where I’ve beenbrought up, and a lot of them have like just movedhere or something, so that uh . . . it’s not really liketheir area and stuff so they like just sitting back andalso like observing like you are in the classroom, asto how it’s all working.. . . It’s also not to do just withthem because if you look like we’ve got about let’ssay twenty Caucasians in our class and ten Asians butonly about six of those Caucasians really are the loudones. (SW)

• For sports things it’s pretty hard for meto understand what they are talking aboutbecause I don’t know any names of thebaseball players or like the basketballteams and things like . . . But . . . I like togo to movies and I’m kind of interestedin movie sections of the newspapers, sothat movies is not a very difficult problem. . . I don’t really say anything unless Tpicks on me because I don’t really feellike um I need to participate ‘cause otherpeople has a lot of things to say and Iusually agree with what they already said. . . . It is good for you to express yourfeeling but it’s also good for other peopleto hear your views ‘cause that can helpyou and other people to understand betterunderstand each other better? . . . Um wecan’t like force [people] to speak orexpress their feelings so I think the bestthing is for them to feel like oh I want tosay this and I think it really depends onthe people who are quiet? If they chooseto be remain quiet and not talk probablythat’s okay because it’s better than . . .

them to say something that they don’teven mean. . . . Sometimes classatmosphere is kind of important too?Even if . . . [ESL newcomers] don’t sayanything? They’re always listening toother people so when this person whowas born in Canada who’s really good atEnglish speaks about that person’sopinion and some other people like laughor like say something back about it? Thenthe people who are listening even thoseESL students who feel like so even if theysay something? Um those people wholaughed at that person’s opinion wouldlaugh again and make fun of them? So Ithink um if we be polite and kind ofattentive and always listening, then thosepeople who don’t speak a lot will havebetter chance in expressing their feelingsmaybe? (BK, Korean, 4 years in Canada)

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Table 2 (Continued)

Comments from local (NES) students Comments from newcomer/oldtimer(NNES) students

• It’s just the fact I think there’s a lot more of us? ButI think T does a really good job at trying to bringeveryone into the conversation, into the discussion.(SB)• Usually [in class] I don’t say much because I don’tknow about things ‘cause I do tons of things? Like. . . I only hear maybe the huge issues? But yeahthat’s why I don’t participate that much. I just listenand then I can maybe say something if I have aquestion . . . . I don’t like when everybody knowsabout something and I don’t know about it I’m likeuh you know like I’ll just listen and then I’ll knowabout it from then on . . . [ESL students] don’t knowmany people so they’re shy. They don’t want to saythings. They don’t want to say something wrong?People make fun of them. (SM)• I wouldn’t participate if I hadn’t heard about [atopic] before but if I have been reading about it in thepaper and hearing about it on the news and have astrong opinion about it then I might participate . . . Ifsomebody doesn’t know how to speak English andthey want to participate it’s pretty hard so they wouldhave to learn English and they’d have to sort of keepup with current events generally? . . . ‘Cause if youjust find out about at the discussion, you don’t knowvery much about it . . . So just basically you shouldknow English and maybe read the paper. (LS)• [How often do they talk about their country oforigin?] Not often. Ever. ‘Cause most of thosestudents that are from places other than Canadahappen to be ESL students who . . . probably aren’tparticipating as much as the other students justbecause either they don’t have a comfort zone for itor they don’t have the language skills for it . . . Anopen atmosphere is . . . important [to participate] anda teacher leading and possibly even students askingthe opinions of all students and not just the ones whoare ready to give it because you know that my handwill shoot up for whatever issue we’re discussing butprobably the ESL student beside me won’t? And soit’s important that person is asked ‘cause theiropinion is just as much or possibly more relevant forthe issues if we haven’t actually asked them right?And I don’t think that happens enough becauseteachers don’t want to kind of invade their space likethat. . . . Teachers don’t want to wreck the comfort

• Sometimes they talk about a person oranything I haven’t heard it before it isquite hard to understand what they aretalking about . . . Even though in HongKong I don’t know that person and thenwhen I was talk like talking with myfriends about about that I always askwhah “who is he?” like something likethat. ((laughs)) . . . Sometimes they willtalk about the movie right? Even though Ihaven’t seen it and I still have some sortof idea. [But I woudn’t speak] becausesometimes it takes me quite a long timeto think about my opinion . . . eventhough in Chinese I just like I need a longtime to think. (KY, Hong Kong, 2 years)• In social class there are many regularstudent? And this teacher will say somekind of difficult word that you don’tknow even what’s the meaning? But ESL[class] when this teacher think oh theword is too difficult they will use theother one, will make it you easier to youknow what that’s meaning. . . . Some ofthem [topics] are easy to know what theymean but sometimes you don’t evenknow what is that. But you try to listen toit and you can go back home and find itwhat was that and when you find it yougo it’s so interesting . . . Like when theytalk about the sport thing, that Canucks,what was that but it sound like so familiarto me. I like hear from somewhere else,and I just go ask my dad what is(Canucks?). Oh a sport team I just look atthe newspaper and then oh oh this is howthe sport going. It is how to play . . . Ithink movie is yeah uh part of[discussion] uh they stay the name of themovie? And then uh who is the char uhthe actors? Oh they say he or she is sofamous and I don’t even know what is thename? And I just read on the newspaper?And just find out Chinese, and then ah ohit’s [so-and-so] ((laughs)) . . . [We neverdiscuss Chinese topics] maybe there’s

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Table 2 (Continued)

Comments from local (NES)students

Comments from newcomer/oldtimer(NNES) students

zone you know? They want tohave a teacher studentrelationship but it’s the only wayto somehow get it out of themoften? So if you ask in nice waysthen usually they’ll give theiropinions and some I think if wecontinue to do that will kind ofcome out of their shells and starttalking more . . . A lot of them areamazing people who I could bevery good friends with but thereare things like language barriersand just really separate lives.There’s no motivation to blendthe two at all . . . I don’t reallycare about Gretzsky leavinghockey or something though it isa national event and it is a bigdeal, it’s those kinds of thingsaren’t going to be the ones that Ibring into the classroom. Butthey will be ones that I participatein . . . Most of the students in thisclass don’t sit down and read thepaper or anything either but forthe popular culture aspect like themovies and even things like radiosongs and stuff. Different types ofradio. They’re missing a lot. AndI think that might be one of thespots where um the segregationstarts between ESL students andus because they don’t have thesame radio stations and theydon’t have the same they don’twatch the same movies and . . .

they’re not as absorbed by thesame pop culture that we are. Youknow? They have their own. Andit’s definitely there. (SK)

some Cantonese or Chinese who are interested in it but justlike Canadian won’t even think oh what’s that. I don’t evenknow a bit about it . . . . Maybe sometimes I’m too shy totalk [to local students] but they will talk to me and I just liketalk a bit but often it’s too like shame, . . . too shy? Mm itseem like you’re afraid to say something wrong and peoplewill laugh at you but I think people won’t do that but youjust think of that . . . But in ESL class, in class and just likefriends? So I when I talk if I say it wrong, no one will laughbecause we know each other. (MC, Hong Kong, 2 years)• Uh like [I understand] seventy percent or something. [But]like uh childrens are talking about the current events? It’spretty difficult for me to understand . . . . [and] it’s hard tospeak. (YS, Japan, 2.5 years)• [I understand] eighty to ninety [%] . . . I like to listen to itbut I don’t really like to ask questions . . . I think uh I don’treally like to speak . . . like all eyes looking at me. [Butcurrent events and pop culture talk] I think it’s likeentertaining, and you can like fun or something like with it.(RC, Hong Kong, 6 years)• Uh sometimes um I think I don’t really understand whatthey are talking about [in this class] . . . Um maybe uh askhim after school after class or maybe we just uh go backhome and ask our tutors . . . I’m kind of nervous [to speak]because English is not my first language so sometimes somewords is difficult to say it in front of the whole class. Thereis another local people so it is a so kind of shy . . . Becausewe are born in China so we don’t really need to know aboutanother country’s social. We already know a lot of ourcountry. . . . Some people] want to say their opinions toother ones. There’s some of them who don’t want to showour opinion, talk to others . . . . [I understand] about sixty[percent]? . . . I think it . . . if they can uh speak it in a easierway, so we can easier to understand. But you know mostpeople in the class is local people so they they need to speakthat way then . . . . Sometimes I think some local studentthey may not like another country’s student . . . just like myfriends say uh mm some of the student always mm look atthem in a special way? . . . Kind of difficult because wecan’t really speak English all the time. So they may notunderstand what we are talking about. So we are difficult tocommunicate . . . we need to organize in our brain to speakout English . . . . [Instead] we just listen. We don’t need totalk in the class. I mean we just only talk a few time in class.(TN, Hong Kong, 1.5 years in Canada)

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no obligation to contribute to the discussion and, indeed, said they would not beable to do so, even if asked, because it would take too much time to compose asuitable response and, besides, there were local people willing to do the talking.Furthermore, like the students in Ms. Smith’s class, they also felt quite intimidatedby the prospect of speaking in class and by possible reactions such as mockeryfrom local students.

UNDERSTANDING SILENCE: JENNY’S CASE

Jenny, an English language learner in Mr. Jones’ class was a capable and motivatedstudent who, like her peers, was silent throughout current events discussions. Atalented musician, Jenny had come to Canada from Taiwan the previous year. Shewas still taking ESL classes and studied for three hours a week with an out-of-classEnglish tutor. She sat at the front of the classroom, where all of the Asian femaleEnglish language learners chose to sit. In current events, she explained, “lots ofthings pop up” and students were expected to “just think it and tell all the class.” Sheconceded that it was “very interesting” and “fun” but there was no easy way to helppeople understand the various cultural references in current events discussions. Shepersonally found the most interesting component of current events to be “somethingthat’s in the tabloid,” plus movies and TV shows; of secondary interest to her werekey world events, perhaps because she talked about such developments with herfamily at home (in Chinese). She admitted that she had never talked about moviesin class herself, or about Taiwanese or Chinese topics because they might notinterest the whole class. What she particularly enjoyed was being able to listen todifferent people talk and to hear “different opinions and something really funnywill comes up.” That is, she could observe controlled yet free-flowing discussionamong local students without feeling that she had to take a stand herself. Jenny feltthat she understood much of the banter, but that some impediments were studentsspeaking quickly, using slang (e.g., she used the example of “that guy sucks”)and other unfamiliar expressions, and “lots of people speaking the same time soit sometimes get confused.” Jenny herself got the news from reading a Chinesenewspaper four to five times a week, watching the local dinner-hour news, readingTeen Peopleand Peoplemagazines once a month or while at the supermarket,and by reading Taiwanese news (in Chinese) on the internet. She talked aboutTaiwanese news with her Taiwanese friends and family. When her classmatestalked about something “funny,” she assumed it was about a TV show. The funnieror more ironic the references, the bigger the impression it made on her. But mostlyshe remembered those items and events that the teacher had elaborated on andexplained to the class. She wished that the teacher would “explain the event more”and give his own opinion about things to a greater extent.

Jenny said that she participated more in ESL class than in her science, math orsocial studies classes for the following reason:

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in ESL class all the student are like um their English is their second language andsometimes um you speak in the class so they your classmates won’t have some opinionin your pronunciation or something like that or your your um like your speaking . . .

[but] um English speaking kids they sometimes point that out um I don’t re feel umreally good about that they will like repeat a [mispronounced] word and someonewill laugh. So that’s kind of threat me to like discussing.

Cause in Taiwan we don’t usually have . . . discussion in the class so you have to. . . we have to have the courage to um like speak aloud in the class. And that’s achallenge . . . for the student from Asia and sometimes when you have the courageand you speak up, but someone like sort of threaten you so it’s hard to speak again. . . Yeah I think listening is much funnier than speaking.

She noticed that some of the local students (e.g., Sue) were more “talkative” and“involved” in discussions than others but that there were no talkative ESL studentsin either this class or in her math and science classes. In other words, Jenny wasa peripheral and mostly silent participant in discussions, who questioned her ownlegitimacy and competence in participating more actively, based on the reactionsof some of her local classmates in the past to the accented speech of newcomerslike her. Her fears were echoed by others. Nevertheless, she felt that she was doingreasonably well in class.

Hybrid texts, therefore, were a patchwork of local pop culture that was affec-tively charged and often humorous to observe but not easy to contribute to. Itprovided students like Jenny some exposure to the pop culture interests and per-spectives of her peers in a relatively safe environment, something that she andothers truly desired access to, but were unable to achieve through their own per-sonal social networks, since they had been unable to establish friendships with localstudents. Most newcomer students, like Jenny, said that they liked the affectivelycharged talk that accompanied current events, including references to pop culture.Even though they could scarcely follow it, it was engaging. McKeown and Beck(1994), in their discussion of ways of promoting students’ engagement with so-cial studies texts, describe rules for “interestingness” proposed by Schank (1979),Anderson, Shirey, Wilson, and Fielding (1984), Kintsch (1980), and Graves et al.(1988), such as having an inherently interesting topic, unexpectedness, and per-sonal relatedness; readers’ (or listeners’) identification with characters; novelty;activity; and emotional/cognitive interest (see also Schumann’s (1994) discussionof how emotion mediates learning). The hybrid texts in my research had many ofthese characteristics for the local students, and for newcomers they had vicariousinterest potential: students enjoyed observing the interactivity and emotional en-gagement of their peers and teachers in many cases but only wished they couldunderstand what the issues, references, debates, anecdotes, and jokes were about.In order for them to fully engage with the topics and links they needed far morescaffolding, priming, or explanation by others.

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CONCLUSION

Pop culture is a potentially rich, powerful and engaging classroom resource but onethat is perhaps less globally accessible than is often assumed and should thereforebe examined carefully. Even when accessible, in that it is available through local orinternationally syndicated media, the cultural references and English names maybe unfamiliar to students. By including pop culture in their lessons, Mr. Jones,Ms. Smith, and various local students (especially the local boys and Sue in Mr.Jones’ class, and the local girls in Ms. Smith’s) attempted to make discussionsmore interesting, relevant, and appealing to them and to enhance their in-classrapport with one another. This was achieved with uneven success, however.

Some implications of this research are that more work needs to be done: (1) toexplicitly raise teachers’ and students’ awareness of the elements of pop culturethat are important to people from different backgrounds, and which permeate theirtalk; (2) to explore how pop culture contributes to the co-construction of knowl-edge, social/cultural identities, and participation patterns, such as social/discursiveinclusion and exclusion at school; (3) to “unpack” hybrid texts such as those ex-amined here so teachers, students, and applied linguists can understand better the(socio)linguistic and semiotic forms and functions of texts and also the obstacles aswell as welcome challenges they pose for different kinds of students (Fairclough,1992b); and (4) to give newcomers the tools they need to comprehend texts suf-ficiently well so as to follow and, over time, contribute to classroom discussionsmore comfortably (Duff, 2002a). Otherwise, the potential cultural “third spaces”that might become arenas of learning for all students will be restricted to thoseprivileged enough to have grown up in local neighborhoods speaking English andenjoying the same vaunted cultural capital.

Acknowledgments:I would like to express my gratitude to the National Academy of Educa-

tion/Spencer Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Councilof Canada for their research support and to the research participants who providedme access to, and insights into, their hybrid practices and texts. I would also liketo thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

NOTES

1. This notion of postcolonial, cultural, third spaces (also referred to as interstitial, “in-between,”liminal spaces and borderlines to be occupied or negotiated) can also be traced to the writings ofBhabha (1994), particularly in reference to the international contexts in which minority group members’identities are performed, co-constructed, contested, hybridized, displaced, and so on.

2. The line between “news,” “entertainment,” “infotainment,” “pop culture” and other formsof media is becoming increasingly blurred in these postmodern times, with celebrity updates ap-pearing on the front pages of newspapers, news items quickly transformed into comedy talk show

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monologues and dramatic series (such as Law and Order), Hollywood celebrities transformed intopoliticians almost overnight, and the major American news networks (e.g., ABC) being taken overby entertainment syndicates such as Disney, Time-Warner, and Sony. One example of this blurringof news and pop culture was an article appearing in the national news section of the Vancouver Sun,a reasonably respectable daily newspaper, announcing that it was a “Canadian cultural milestone”that an episode of The Simpsonsin February 2002, would depict the (fictitious) Simpsons family vis-iting Toronto (Atherton, 2002, p. A15), as if international celebrities or political heros were aboutto arrive.

3. Transcription conventions follow: Pseudonyms or initials identify student speakers who canbe identified. Question marks indicate high-rising intonation; quotation marks are used for reportedspeech; latching of quickly succeeding utterances is shown with =; a short unconnected dash indicatesa short pause; a connected dash usually indicates a self-correction; interruption is shown with [at thebeginning of both overlapping utterances; pause lengths are shown in parentheses (1.0) indicatingseconds; other comments about utterances, contexts, or reactions are shown in double parentheses (()); [ ] provides information to assist with the interpretation of the referent; (xx): two unclear words; M:unnamed male; F: unnamed female.

4. The line between “news,” “entertainment” versus “infotainment,” “pop culture” and otherforms of info/media is becoming increasingly blurred. For example, a recent article in the nationalnews section of the Vancouver Sun(a reasonably respectable daily newspaper) announced that it wasa “Canadian cultural milestone” (p. A15) that an episode of The Simpsonsin February 2002, woulddepict the Simpsons family visiting Toronto. Atherton (2002) writes: “The episode has already beenthe subject of numerous articles in newspapers across the country, and inspired a context sponsored byThe Simpsons’ Canadian broadcaster, Global TV” (p. A15). One reason for this increasing tendancyfor pop culture topics to be included in the first section of newspapers, instead of in the entertainmentsection, may be that prominent pop culture news sells more newspapers.

5. For example, one 16-year-old local boy, who had spent the previous year at a boarding schoolfor aspiring hockey players, never failed to mention sports news in class, even though the teacher hadtold students that that was not the purview of current events discussions, a point that many studentsaffirmed in their interviews. It was simply his chance to assert his identity as a sports enthusiast and itwas tolerated (if not appreciated much) by the class. Mr. Jones and sometimes other students usuallyprovided friendly comments in response to the sports talk as well.

APPENDIX A

(March 5, 1999)

1 Mr. Jones: Um no it’s good to admit everybody’s human. It’s goodto know that.

2 Sam: Are you going to admit [to (xx)3 Mr. Jones: [I ‘cause I know you I know you guys think of me as

Superman and all but [you know4 Joe: [Yeah right.

((several minutes later, after attendance is taken))

5 Mr. Jones: All right! (4.0) So (2.0) it is Friday. It is current eventsday, (1.0) Uh and then if we get current events done thelast class believe it or not and they’re not as . . .

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generally quite as talkative as you. Uh they’re pretty theyhave a lot to say as well - uh but we spent the whole periodon current events but I don’t always like doing that. [Bythe end of the period

6 Male: [Let’s do it7 Female: [I love doing that8 Mr. Jones: It’s like abusing a good thing by the end of the period it’s

a bit . . . too much talking too much chitchat. Well whatwe’ll move on to . . . is the stock market if we get theretoday and as I told you (1.0) we’ll have - ah little quizzesafter we cover these topics. Okay? So you voted to learnmore about - uh and it’s not going to be oh! how do yougo and make money? I mean I can tell you how to makemoney right?

9 Female: How?10 Mr. Jones: Buy low sell high.11 M: That’s pretty [(xx)12 Mr. Jones: [All you need to know. But (1.0) it’s (0.4) like (0.4) why

does it exist (0.4) what function does it serve. How doesit work (apart from?) the basics. That kind of thing. ((Hediscusses future planned lessons on unions, the stockmarket, and economics and why it will be interestingmaterial for a couple of minutes)) Okay? So we’ll we’llgo through that for a while (0.6) um (2.0) and that’s all Iwant to say but I guess before we get into any of that -we’ve got ((snaps his fingers and clicks his tongue))current events by Mr. H [Mike] so he can come on upand next week (3.0) Joe a week from today. Is that bad?Uh you can erase uh (1.0) yeah erase anything here ((onthe board)). (3.0) Is there only one eraser? (2.0) Haaahh!((long sigh)) Move this over here.

13 Mr. Jones: Oh that’s interesting! ((referring to headline))14 SSS: OH!

((1 min; Mike writes headline the on board))

15 Mr. Jones: SS ten G ((=class section)) (1.0) M (1.0) H ((MH standsfor initials of student’s name. T drags out surname))(3.0) March fifth right? ((writing in notes))

16 Mike: Yeah.17 Mr. Jones: All right. Whenever you think they are paying attention

you can ((taps twice)) go for it. ((T moves to back of

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room; 5.0)) All right – [two students] please give yourattention?(3.0)

18 Mike: All right? “Hair test touted as tool for breast cancerdiagnosis” ((title)) (2.0). ((reading from notes))Sophisticated X-ray studies conducted on a single hairmay reveal whether a woman has breast cancer (0.4) andcould help doctors diag uh diagnose other cancers. (1.0)The leader of this research at the University of NewSouth Wales in Australia (0.4) says this new find isalmost unbelievable (0.4) unbelievable. It was discoveredby mistake. For years she had studied skin changes inbreast cancer patients. Before she went to Japan whereone of the world’s three large synchotron’s (0.6) orX-ray centers - is located, she stopped off at a hospital inEngland to pick up some skin specimens. When shefound that they had been accidentally thrown out shetook hair samples of people (1.0) with and without breastcastor breast cancer instead. They X-rayed the hairs andfound that those from cancer patients - had uniqueabnormalities compared to those of healthy people. (1.0)She says that although this test appears highly accurate itis being tested on too few women to know how useful itwill be. I think that this type of cancer detection is a hugestride in cancer research. It is not only highly effectivebut it all is also very cheap and relatively simple. A fewhairs can be sent by mail for a few dollars to the labwhere they will be tested. It is much cheaper than currenttesting with mammograms and could help a lot of peopleby detecting cancer at an early stage and possibly savetheir lives uh life because of this.

19 ((applause))20 Mr. Jones: Ah here comes a sneeze. No I’m not?21 F: Don’t do it!22 Mr. Jones: ((Sneezes)) Hoooooo!23 SSS: ((laugh))24 Mr. Jones: Questions or comments. You’re supposed to say “bless

you”.25 Sue: Bless you!26 Mr. Jones: As in “God bless you” or whatever. That’s like27 MZ: You’re not allowed to remind us [(xx)28 Male: [Why is that. Why is that.

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29 Mr. Jones: That’s a really hokey joke30 SS: You’ve told us31 Mr. Jones: Right? George Burns said (1.0) I went to heaven had a

near death experience and (0.4) God sneezed. I didn’tknow what to say. (1.0) ((softly)) That’s the joke.

32 M: Hmm!33 Mr. Jones: (He thought of that?) Right?34 M: Hmm.35 Mr. Jones: That’s a bad joke eh? That’s a good clean joke. I’m not

allowed to ask for the gesundheit? Is that bad luck?36 MZ: Yeah.37 Mr. Jones: Okay. Why do we say bless you.38 MZ: ‘Cause your soul’s trying to escape.39 Mr. Jones: ‘Cause you may be possessed by the devil [and (xx)40 MZ: [Oh what’s gesundheit mean.41 Mr. Jones: It means42 SS: (xx)43 Mr. Jones: It means good health or (0.4) bless you in German.

((Some chatter and discussion about German meaning))

44 Mr. Jones: The idea was that you are uh - you’re possessed back inthe middle ages you must be possessed by the devil whenyou sneeze or the devil’s trying to get in. That’s whereGod [bless you (xx)

45 Sue: [I like sneezing - but I don’t like the devil!46 Mr. Jones: Great.47 Mike: I don’t like him either.48 Mr. Jones: I don’t know how we’re getting so off M’s topic. ((M

laughs.)) It’s terrible. Just ‘cause I sneezed. I’m sorry Mthat I sneezed. Um (1.0) do you know you always shutyour eyes when you sneeze and therefore uh it’s bad (onyour eyes?)

49 Jim: You can’t keep them open?50 Mr. Jones: Pay attention to that. You cannot keep them open when

you sneeze.51 F: Really?52 Mr. Jones: Do you know why?53 Mary: They’ll pop out?54 Mr. Jones: Exactly. Mary’s right. (1.0) Mary’s right. It’s a safety

mechanism. There’s so much force in a sneeze (1.0) likea hundred miles an hour or something that your eyescould

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55 F: Well [(xx)56 M: [(xx)57 Mr. Jones: It protects your eyes from popping out.58 ((Lots of chatter.))59 Stan: What about people in The Guinnesswho can like pop

them out when they want to.60 Mr. Jones: I don’t know. Anyway. We’re already like - way off

topic. So here we go so I bet there might be somequestions or uh comments on this uh nice medicalfinding. Now oftentimes with a medical finding (3.0)((closes grade book?)) I’m going to give uh Mike fullcredit for choosing this article. I think it’s relevantand I think it may have a controversial aspect which iswhat we look for in current events articles right? Ifsomething was all positive and all that we could uhsay is great! good news (0.6) then I might not givehim full credit for the article selection because - itmay be important but it’s not - something that’s goingto lead to discussion. There is believe it or not evenabout this- often with medical advances there’s twosides. Oh great a benefit? But there’s a concern. Thereis a concern with this one. It it- the benefits faroutweigh the concerns but there is a concern. But youcan just about what that might be ‘cause I want togive a chance first to check - if any before I do myquestions and stuff are there any (0.8) questions?Comments? It sounds like good news right?

61 Sue: It was found by accident.62 Sam: (xx)63 M: What?64 Mr. Jones: Say that. That’s good.65 Sue: It was found by accident.66 Mr. Jones: Lots of (0.4) scientific discoveries are right? Can you

think of other examples? (You learn?) (0.6) There’s[there’s numerous examples

67 F: [Most of the (xx)68 Mike: Biology is all (1.0) mistakes.69 Mr. Jones: Do you know the word uh starts with an s that (1.0)

um a mistake that turns out to be a great thing?((2.0))

70 M: (xx)71 Mr. Jones: Seren

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72 Sue: Serendipity.73 Mr. Jones: If something is serendipitous, or if you uh are

benefited blessed with serendipity, you messsomething up

74 Sue: [Coincidental.75 Mr. Jones: [But it turns out to be the great. . .76 Jim: Pull a Homer?77 Mr. Jones: It’s what it turns out. Good. Yeah you pull a Homer

Simpson? Yeah. Exactly. So serendipitous. This is aserendipitous (1.0) serendipitous discovery justbecause she wasn’t able to get the uh things that shewanted. Now Mike said a small sample of women.It’s only fifty one women that they tested so far whichis (0.6) not a big sample. But it’s an indication, (0.6)and what good news because mammograms (1.0)which women over a certain age are supposed to geteach year which is like an X-ray of the breast right?These are uncomfortable? These are expensive?Women in most of the world don’t have access to it?Like in [Canada

78 Stan: [Is it bad?79 Mr. Jones: and the United States they do (1.0). Is it bad for

women to?80 Stan: To get it?81 Mr. Jones: Because of the X-ray?82 MZ: It you like (xx)83 Mr. Jones: Is it an X-ray or is it an ultra sound? I don’t know. I’m

not like totally

((Some responses are offered))

84 Jim: It’s sort of like an X-ray. But one’s not going to hurtyou if you happen to be (xxx)

85 Mr. Jones: Yeah I wouldn’t want to say whether it’s X-ray X-rayor ultra-sound it’s (1.0) it’s some way of lookinginside and looking for irregularities right?

86 Mr. Jones: Right? (1.0) and um (1.0) you know it’s alwaysimportant in life this- so not just for women with thatdisease. It’s always important (to get) secondopinions. I just read in uh (1.0) I just read in thenewspaper about a woman whose doctor said “oh wellthere’s this thing but it’s nothing to worry about.

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I judge it to be not a problem” and then (1.0) ((inhalesaudibly)) turned out it was. It was cancer and by thenit was too late. So you know if you’re ever unsure laterin life (0.4) a second opinion is always a good idea.Right? If you have the slightest doubt of confidence inyour doctor’s - diagnosis. So anyway but that’ll helpyou later in life to not get sick. So (0.4) uh what couldpossibly be controversial about this. Lucy?

87 Lucy: I heard that um [they think88 Mr. Jones: [Nice and loud.89 Lucy: They think it might be the treatment for the cancer

that causes a lot of the differences in the hair? Likefrom the therapy?

90 Mr. Jones: Oh. Cause they were testing women who already haveit.

91 Lucy: [Yeah.82 Mr. Jones: [and who’ve already maybe had treatment. Yes Mike.93 Mike: Says that (1.0) women if (1.0) where is it (0.4) if

women had permed or colored hair within the pastthree months (0.4) then it could be (0.4) not tooaccurate.

94 Mr. Jones: Okay. So there’s that concern. So it’s not just a magicthing that works every time. They had some falsepositives . . .

((discussion continues about false positives and about the chances of gettingcancer for several turns and aggressive proactive surgery for high-riskwomen)) . . .

95 Mr. Jones: They also believe this may not just apply to breastcancer. It may be used for many cancers in the futurewhich would be - promising (0.4) for people who livein poorer countries - they may be able to just send in ahair (1.0) and get the benefits of the kind of testing wecan have here uh (0.4) just by sending it through themail they can have it tested, so it’s good it’s a bigmedical advance perhaps (0.4) and a good choice oftopic. Uh Stan.

96 Stan: Well I mean- like if people don’t want to know (0.4)sort of have this kind of test then they’re going to tellyou no matter what.

97 Sue: Yeah.

INTERTEXTUALITY 269

98 Stan: If if you wanted to just like live like oh okay wellmaybe I’ll live maybe I don’t. I mean don’t get thetest. I mean you kind of have to go out of your way toget the test done anyway (0.4) and I mean—Iwouldn’t mind knowing if I’m going to get cancereven like when I’m thirty or whenever ‘cause thenyou can - try and prevent it or [whatever.

99 Mr Jones: [And be ready for it.100 Sam: Yeah.101 Mr. Jones: To attack it when it comes. [I agree.102 Sue: [You can also do – the things that will prevent it.103 Mr. Jones: Very insightful of you. I guess the radio was just

trying to make a story out of this ((referring to storyabout American woman who had taken drasticmeasures of double mastectomies because of familyhistory of breast cancer)). Right? So by youdiscussing it with me I realize I’ve thought about itmore. ((discussion with a student finishing an in-classtest for several turns. . . ))

104 Jim: What radio station did you hear it on.105 Mr. Jones: ((Laughs)) CBC. CBC with no advertisement ((says a

bit more about the radio station after this, regardingthe radio being on strike))

106 Mr. Jones: Can I throw this to you? ((to someone outside door))107 M: Yeah.108 Mr. Jones: What if it hits the floor and gets dirty.109 M: I’ll have to come and beat you up.110 Mr. Jones: See that’s like John (xx) right?111 F: Yeah.112 M: Oh yeah!113 Mr. Jones: Nice spiral and everything.114 Jim: Are you a lefty?115 Mr. Jones: I’m a lefty! You bet! Proud of it!116 Sue: Men are more prone to be lefthanded than women.117 Mr. Jones: Are we?118 Sue: Yeah.119 Mr. Jones: And the - percentage of lefties is increasing in the

population (0.4) and leh left handed people have ashorter life expectancy.

120 Jim: Yeah. The Doors?121 M: They used to think left-handed people were witches.

270 DUFF

((Teacher discusses practices in Ontario that affected his cousin’s use of hisleft hand and similar practices elsewhere for several turns))

122 Mr. Jones: They did that in BC schools. They did it all acrossCanada and the United States [and other places.

123 Sue: [Why! What’s?124 Mr. Jones: ‘Cause . . . the left hand is the hand of the devil? It’s a

belief? The word sinister comes from um Latin for (1.0)uh it’s associated with left it’s sinister bad right? Allkinds of bad associations with left handed that if you’releft handed you’re (1.0) all kinds of things, agent of thedevil.

125 M: Like is that [(xx) left handed (lefty)126 Sue: [That’s why I call you the agent of the devil.127 Mr. Jones: I am the agent of the devil.

((several turns later; more about T’s cousin; banter about lefthandedness;Japanese views, asks YS for his views))

128 Mr. Jones: [Remember that (xx). Now we have other we do havesome significant current events this week I believe. Wehave an unprecedented situation and others. I saw SamJoe and Karl (1.0) so you don’t have to hold your handsup. You can=

129 Sam: =With the left hand thing though?130 Mr. Jones: Oh still on=131 Sam: =After that (1.0) Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, (1.0) they

said they all think he was left-handed, so he wrote like(1.0) backwards?

132 Mr. Jones: Oh he could do [mirror writing.133 Sam: [(xx) yeah he did like mirror writing?134 Mr. Jones: Yeah.135 Sam: But that wasn’t but he could also write normally?136 Mr. Jones: He was very [skilled.

((extended discussion about LDV and about the connection between genderand lefthandedness; Mr. Jones gives examples from his family; about sportsand handedness)

137 Joe: Do you know that everyone is born left-handed but likethe best overcome it - and become right-handed?

138 Mr. Jones: ((start of a laugh.))139 Joe: It’s true140 Mr. Jones: What are you saying Joe? What are you saying!

INTERTEXTUALITY 271

((a few turns later))

141 Mr. Jones: Oh but left-handed people are known to be creative and allkinds of good things. Leonardo da Vinci? Prince Charles?

142 SS: (Wow)143 Mr. Jones: That’s all I want.144 Sue: Prince Charles seems creative. ((possibly ironic))145 Mr. Jones: Oh he’s creative.146 M: Yeah.147 Mr. Jones: Okay thank you Joe for your insult and input.

((long intervening discussion about a current event involving the provincialpremier in a legal case about corruption in connection with a casino licensefor about five minutes for which the police had raided the premier’s home; Kand J develop topic; discussion of how to get permission to obtain a searchwarrant; this event led to the downfall of the premier; the issue ofgovernment-run casinos, etc.))

148 DE: And it’s uh I heard this thing on the news that it’s the lastlike - franchise player that - traded out of - Alberta.‘Cause they traded Wayne Gretsky. [(xx)

149 Mr. Jones: [Well actually you know you’re sports story could be tiedinto a bigger issue right?

150 F: (He’s not?)151 Mr. Jones: Sports alone doesn’t really cut it.152 DE: [In Canada.153 F: four seasons.154 Mr. Jones: Why is it believed that . . . yes Canadian hock Canadian

hockey teams which is=155 F: =(xx)156 Mr. Jones: part of our culture. It’s believed they’re not going to be

able to afford (1.0) the big superstars in the future. Right?And this is an example of that ‘cause he was coming upfor free agency and Calgary felt he could they could notpay that kind of salary so he has to go a major - marketUS team - with the stronger dollar down there - and lowertaxes um they seem to be able to afford better players. Sothis may be

((several turns later, a student reads something from a newspaper clipping he’sbrought about sports))

157 Mr. Jones: (That’s quite?) something. [The biggest comeback inyears.

272 DUFF

158 PD: [And Pavel Bure - Pavel Bure left the game after [their(xx) found out

159 DE: [They keep predicting it.160 PD: And they lost.161 DE: Bure wasn’t playing though.

((discussion of a plane crash into a gondola in Italy for about 100 turns by JK;talk about black boxes by J, whose father is a pilot; then discussion of acriminal case and comparison with a civil case))

162 Mr. Jones: All right there’s one other current event. I don’t knowthat it’s important at all . . . but it was big. I don’t- Idon’t know really how much . . . relevance it has but I’mjust curious. Put up your hand if you saw any part of that. . . Monica [interview.

163 Sue: Ahaha! ((Words are covered by someone laughing.))164 Mr. Jones: It was big right? [It was a big . . . ah165 F: [I heard about it but I didn’t see it.166 Mr. Jones: public . . . headache. Right?167 M: The reason they edited [(one the radio?)168 Mr. Jones: [‘Kay I’m curious . . . what did you think Molly? How

much did you see?169 Molly: I just saw the first part of it . . . because no one wanted to

watch it in our (xx)170 Mr. Jones: You know what I’m curious about? From what you saw

. . . eh what’s your opinion of Monica Lewinsky fromwhat you saw.

171 Molly: She’s just like I don’t know she’s over it . . . and shedoesn’t care anymore? You know like . . . I don’t know.Lots of things she said was were to keep her out oftrouble?

172 Mr. Jones: In the even in the interview?173 Molly: Yeah and . . . after it or somebody said like . . . she was

just like a woman who had never been loved before orsomething ((somebody laughs))

174 Mr. Jones: Well that’s not really true.

((many turns later; broad discussion of interview))

175 Mr. Jones: She said “I love you” to him and he said - “that means alot to me” [(xx)

176 M: [But he never said it back to her.177 Mr. Jones: He said “that means a lot to me.”

INTERTEXTUALITY 273

178 M: Sounds like a Seinfeld (episode?)

((many turns later))

179 Mr. Jones: That’s what I’m saying. Yeah it was exactly like that. So it[Barbara Walters’ interview] was bizarre - and it wasAmerica gets uh characterized - as a very open societywhich it is right? I mean - people around the world aresometimes amazed at what gets publicly discussed inAmerica. ((continues with this theme, referring to publicdescription of R. Reagan’s colon cancer surgery yearsbefore; then some turns later a student talks about a USpamphlet about JKF assassination she came across in theStates; many turns later . . . .))

180 Sue: It’s weird that the guy who assassinated JFK and the otherguy who assassinated um . . . uh . . .

181 Mr. Jones: [Lincoln?182 Sue: [(xx) no - John Lennon . . . and [lots of other ones183 Mr. Jones: [Mark David Chapman184 Sue: Said that - both like quoted Catcher in the Ryeand said

like - that made me do it it’s my inspiration blah blah blahand it’s . . . some studies were done just a couple of yearsago and it’s said like to have a really bad influence onteenage males.

((discussion of Catcher in the Ryefor 20+ turns))

185 Mr. Jones: Yeah . . . well that is you know they say um . . . I just readin the Vancouver Sunan editorial that said that some guywho was . . . claiming . . . something in court and he heldup a copy of Catcher in the Ryeto the judge. You knowand they were . . . sort of joking about how as soon as you -tell a judge that you were influenced by Catcher in the Rye. . . the judge is (basically saying no?) (xx) a bit you know.I mean it doesn’t (xx) but yes many . . . uh have claimedbut you know what? People will always claim stuff right? Imean the night stalker in LA - he was influenced by theAC/DC song (Night Power?) ((laughter)). And it’s trueright? Listen to the words of that song. It’s a pretty evilsong uh (back to back?). Uh - numerous people thatalways say - oh you know I heard satanic voices on suchand such and that explains it well - then you get an issue of- ah do you go around censoring this stuff?

274 DUFF

186 Students: No.

((many turns about censorship issue))

187 Mr. Jones: Yeah I . . . I agree with you. So listen next day . . . wedid it just like the other class. Next day for sure for surefor sure. Come prepared with your questions and I willdo like uh . . . (xx) lecture about the stock market. Right?You want to learn about the stock market?

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