ABSTRACT
It has been possible, throughout history, to see education as “a communication process between society and the individual” (Hills, 1979, p. 10). Society has used teachers to communicate its standards, and the current store of human knowledge, by using the community’s language. Thus, educational discourse provides discourse analysts with a source of a variety of texts very much tied to a context, the school. In the Western and Western-educated world of the late 20th century, this context is virtually inescapable for children age 5 to 18. An analysis of educational discourse begins to show how text interacts with context and language in textbooks and classrooms, schools and education offices. Although not denying the importance of the analysis of educational decision-making discourse—such as in the case of educational referrals (Mehan, 1986), placement (Hertweck, 1986), and policy-making (McHoul, 1986)—the focus here is on the text-context–language interface in textbooks and classrooms.
