The benefit of language play for language learning is not recognized in English education. Based on the idea that teachers’ perception of teaching and learning affects their teaching practices, this study sought to examine teachers’ perception of language play in the English classroom. The specific purposes of the study were to discover commonalities and differences in elementary teachers’ and pre-service teachers’ perception of language play and to provide suggestions for including language play in teacher education and classroom instruction. Separate group interviews were conducted with 7 in-service and 9 pre-service teachers at the elementary level, in which the participants shared their responses to 3 language play texts that highlight rhyme, rhythm, and nonsense compound words. The topical analysis of the data revealed that both the teachers and pre-service teachers focused on understanding the words in the texts and did not recognize their playful aspects. However, the in-service teachers interpreted the texts more actively than the pre-service teachers and shared ideas for using language play texts in the English classroom. Based on the findings, the paper emphasizes that pre-service English teacher education needs to include language play as one of curricular contents, which should continue into teacher education.

This paper examines the distributional patterns of ‘swearing’ expressions produced in cyberspace in response to NAVER internet news articles. A range of contextual features associated with the use of swearing expressions are identified in terms of their tendency to be formulated as response cries produced as part of affectively-loaded assessments. Serving as a resource for managing face through footing shift, the ways in which swearing expressions are formulated and deployed embody the writer's orientation to treating the cyberspace where they are situated as a form of ‘social situation’ where at least some form of face/impression management is required. The predominant use of their variant forms is analyzed not simply as an attempt to outsmart the institutional attempt at controlling their use but as a collusive act through which the fellow participants are co-implicated in a collective word play organized as a cyberspace-specific form of language game. The tendency of the swearing expressions to cluster and resonate with each other suggests that swearing in cyberspace should be treated not simply as an unconstrained individualized act but as an act embedded in interactively-organized ‘word play’ activities that are obliquely, but crucially, geared to enhancing consensual grounds for shared affective stance among the members of the cyber-community of practice.

Motivated with the poetic utterance that "all this is signified by their language" as Heaney's own word, this essay shows that Seamus Heaney, not just by resisting past colonial domination with a decolonial literary system, has successively served for playing the colonial language in his poetic representation and finally achieved the poetic autonomy. Under and after the colonial experience, Most of Irish poets have continually struggled against English political system and its language as a colonial one. But Heaney has consistently defended poetry as agent for redressing injustices in the corrupt world and at the same time as something to be re-established and celebrated in his own right. The process of Haney's quest for playing colonial language of his Irish identity as a poet can be effectively understood by examining the way in which he employs the poetic of redress. The main subject of Heaney's poetry is to find out his Irish identification with the past linguistic tradition and its continuity. The subject is linked with the questioning of how to turn to playing the colonial language between English language and Irish language so called Gaelic which has been dominated by the ideology of colonialism. The major focus of this essay is in his redress of poetic language and playing colonial language as well as how he appropriate language in his poetry. In this regard, This essay tries to search for the true linguistic attitude which Heaney has made every effort to materialize in his poetry. In short, Heaney's poetics can help his writings maintain the positionality of the decolonial dicourse and the decolonial literature.