What follows are four responses to an article published in Linguistics and Education in Vol. 10, Issue 1. The article was ``The disempowerment game: Bourdieu and language in literacy'' by Ruqaiya Hasan. 1 The four responses are followed by a rejoinder from Ruqaiya Hasan. The co-editors of Linguistics and Education, Jay Lemke and I, believed the article was an important one and therefore we sought the responses and the rejoinder.
We deliberately published The disempowerment game'' first in Vol. 10 without responses to give readers an opportunity to reflect on the article for themselves. We hope that you will read or reread the original article and then read the whole set of responses and the rejoinder in one sitting, as we had the opportunity to do. As might be expected, the responses focused on different aspects of the article. Perhaps also as might be expected, the responses primarily focused on points of disagreement even when the responder began by acknowledging general agreement with and appreciation for the insights provided in the The disempowerment game.'' The rich array of issues presented is an intellectual treat in our opinion, even if one does not necessarily agree with how any particular author treated an issue. After reading the responses and the rejoinder, we recommend going back to the original article and reading it again as the reading becomes an even richer experience (and confirms, I believe, our assessment that the article is an important one).
We want to thank James Collins, Lilie Chouliaraki, Norman Fairclough, David Corson, and Derek Robbins, for responding to ``The disempowerment game'' and for providing thoughtful commentary on a broad range of issues. We want to thank especially Ruqaiya Hasan for allowing us to solicit responses to her article and for her rejoinder, as well as for her original article.