English in a surveillance regime: Tightening the noose in New Zealand

Abstract

It is a contemporary commonplace that we live in a ‘text-saturated’ environment – a semiosphere that complements those biologically rooted spheres our bodies inhabit. The neon cityscape of Tokyo in the movie, Lost in Translation, might be thought of as a metaphor for this semiosphere, this universe of signs which regularly coalesce in clusters of meaning that some people call discourses. To extend the metaphor, you could say that we both inhale and exhale discourse, and that discourse is changed in the ‘breathing’ process. The individual is both agent and subscriber to whatever ‘truths’ are generated in his/her ongoing engagement with the semiosphere.