Lees, Duncan (2021) Doing (things with) Shakespeare in China : an ethnomethodological study of Shakespeare workshops at a Chinese university. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis is an ethnomethodological study of a series of Shakespeare-themed workshops and interviews that I conducted with English majors at a university in southern China. Its overarching concern is to analyse how the participants – including me, as the teacher and researcher – made sense of, and through, Shakespeare during these educational interactions. It does so using detailed multimodal transcriptions and insights from Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA), which together show how the workshops and interviews were practically, rationally achieved in interaction, as we drew on a range of linguistic, categorial and embodied resources. Pedagogically, it combines ‘active’ and ‘rehearsal room’ approaches (which teach Shakespeare as a collaborative, playful endeavour) with the principles of intercultural language education (through which learners actively engage in multi-layered processes of interpreting and negotiating meaning in interaction). By sharing its detailed transcripts and making its claims on the basis of what is analytically observable in the audio and video data, the thesis is able to arrive at four main findings. First, it argues that respecifying Shakespeare as an accomplishment of the participating students themselves reveals the variety of things ‘Shakespeare’ can be used to mean and do, and in the process sounds a cautionary note for (intercultural) educators in terms of the assumptions they might make about their students’ engagements with his work. Second, it shows that doing Shakespeare through ‘active’ and ‘rehearsal room’ approaches provides powerful opportunities for students to make sense of and through Shakespeare, and third, that despite being written more than 400 years ago in early modern England, Shakespeare can be used effectively as an ‘authentic’ resource for intercultural education. Finally, it argues that ethnomethodological analysis can provide educators and researchers with important insights into their own practice, in ways that will be relevant beyond Shakespeare pedagogy and language education.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Study and teaching -- China, Drama -- Study and teaching -- China, Drama in education -- China, Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Dramatic production, Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Language, Ethnomethodology
Official Date:	June 2021
Dates:	Date Event June 2021 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Education Studies ; Centre for Applied Linguistics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Winston, Joe ; Mann, Steve
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain)
Extent:	324 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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