Abstract
Abstract Language, in the form of talk and printed materials, is the main medium through which parents and teachers meet and their relationships are constructed. Parent‐teacher contact language enables participants to present versions of their institutional selves and their worlds to each other. These worlds are not neutral, but reflect social ideologies as well as commonsense ‘practical’ concerns. This paper analyses a letter sent from an independent secondary school in Queensland to parents of attending students immediately prior to the commencement of the winter vacation. Textual features which construct the public image of the school, and position the readers in relation to the author‐as‐institutional‐agent will be discussed. Versions of parenthood, studenthood/childhood and the school are evidenced within the text by the use of competing moral categorisations and stories. The analysis provides a method that could be applied in observing the positioning of school personnel, parents and students in oth...
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