Chapter 5: A Short History of the Peaceable Discourse Needed for Critical Language Pedagogy: Exploratory Talk for Critical Dialogue¹

Whether in peace education or regular critical language pedagogy classrooms, the actual language needed for critical dialogue is not clearly specified at all in existing first or second language literature. This chapter considers independent lines of research that have the potential to eventually offer specifics on this matter: L1 classroom studies of exploratory talk and oracy, language tools in an L1 critical literacy classroom, the limited and insufficient studies of small group political discussion and citizenship education, and rhetorical analyses of (logical) arguments at the phrasal level. These lines have been entirely isolated one from another and also have not apparently been drawn on in critical language pedagogy. The purpose of the chapter is to make them visible as potential resources to stimulate research and materials development in this area.