Language, Ideology and Education

The politics of textbooks in language education

Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen, Csilla Weninger, Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen, Csilla Weninger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317803843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Lehrmethoden

This book examines the role textbooks play in the teaching of dominant and non-dominant (first and foreign) languages in a range of cultural contexts worldwide. Each chapter addresses important issues related to what constitutes "legitimate knowledge", the politics of learning materials, global cultural awareness, competing ideologies, and the development of multilingual literacies.

Language, Ideology and Education: The Politics of Textbooks in Language Education comprehensively surveys theoretical perspectives and methodological issues in the critical examination of language textbooks. In particular, it looks at:

• The Cultural Politics of Language Textbooks in the Era of Globalization

• 
  
  

• The Politics of Instructional Materials for English for Young Learners

• 
  
  

  
  
  

• Ideological Tensions and Contradictions in Lower Primary English Teaching Materials in Singapore

• 
  
  

• Creating a Multilingual/multicultural Space in Japanese EFL: A Critical Analysis of Discursive Practices within a New Language Education Policy

• 
  
  

The book is primarily addressed to those who teach and research in the areas of Foreign Language Education, TESOL, Applied Linguistics, Language Policy, Critical Pedagogy, and Textual Cultures. Although the book is focused on textbook and materials analysis, rather than evaluation, most chapters discuss implications for curriculum design and materials development and therefore will be relevant to scholars working in those fields.

Part I

Theoretical perspectives and methodological issues

1 The cultural politics of language textbooks in the era of globalization

Claire Kramsch and Kimberly Vinall

Our interest in the cultural politics of language textbooks originated in the classroom. In both the teaching of Spanish (Kimberly) and of German (Claire) at the university level in the United States, we were struck by the increased discrepancy between what the textbooks traditionally offered with regard to the structures of the language and the approach to culture on the one hand, and, on the other hand the deeper ideological and political worldviews that students would have to understand to operate in a global economy. In particular, we were struck by the increasingly touristic aspects of more recent textbooks and their systematic elision of any problematic historical and political events (Vinall, 2012; Kramsch, 1988, 2012).¹ We realized that the cultural and historical questions we were asking of our textbooks were part of a poststructuralist vision of foreign language education that was potentially in tension with the usual structuralist character of the textbook genre.

To understand the changing nature and role of textbooks in the teaching and learning of foreign languages, we chose the sociolinguistic framework offered by researchers who have theorized the role of language in late capitalism (Gee, Hull & Lankshear, 1996; Blommaert, 2010; Heller, 2010a, 2010b; Heller & Duchêne 2012), in particular in the tourist industry (Urry, 2002; Bruner, 2005; Thurlow & Jaworski, 2010), and who have conceptualized the relationship between the teaching of foreign languages and the current neoliberal ideology of globalization (Block & Cameron, 2002; Gray, 2002; Block, 2010; Block, Gray & Holborow, 2012). Because textbooks are not only textual artifacts but social and historical practices, we chose the methodology proposed by Blommaert (2005) and McNamara (2012) for complex phenomena that have to be interpreted on multiple semiotic levels. We first lay out our general historical and methodological framework. We then focus on the particular case of Spanish textbooks in order to illustrate what a poststructuralist analysis can yield. We then return to our theoretical framework to explore how the constraints of globalization can also be an opportunity to reclaim the textbook as a learning tool.

1. From language as culture to language as added value

The historical development of textbooks can be seen as having gone through three major phases that are all still with us in various forms. In the earlier part of the twentieth century, language textbooks reflected the needs of the nation-state to educate its citizens to communicate with those of other nation-states and to acquaint them with their values, history, literature and institutions. At the time of the grammar-translation method, the textbook served to promote not only the standard language of another nation-state, but also the legitimate language of the middle class of the learners’ own country through translations and constant comparisons between the foreign culture and the learner’s own. The textbook’s depiction of foreign locales, associated mostly with famous artistic or literary figures, served to enrich a “cultured” approach to language study. World War II and the need to speak to foreign friends and foes spawned the audiolingual “Army” method with its dialogues and drills.

The communicative revolution of the 1970s shifted the focus to the individual speaker in communication with other native speakers. This second phase in the development of textbooks reflected changes in the political economy of foreign language learning. People were needed who could not just appreciate paintings in the Louvre, but who could negotiate business transactions in dialogue with others. Textbook dialogues thus became more authentic, speech functions and communicative strategies were foregrounded, the focus shifted from translation and the reading of extended texts to oral communication and conversational gambits (Cameron, 2002). National cultures did not disappear but they took the form of social conventions, conversational styles, eating habits and leisure activities.

The emergence of economic globalization in the 1990s further changed the nature of language learning and use. In this third phase, national cultures and individual communicative competence are still represented but they are reinscribed in a new discursive frame. Heller and Duchêne show how:

… during the 1990s and into the 21st century language and culture have come to be seen primarily in economic terms. This economic discourse does not abruptly or entirely interrupt or replace older discourses which treat language as political and cultural capital, associating it with the formation of the nation-state; rather, the two are intertwined in complex ways.

(Heller & Duchêne, 2012, p. 3)

Communicative language teaching (CLT) has tightened the instrumental goals of communication and has aimed at bringing language learning yet closer to the real world of work. It has not abandoned the use of cultural information and literary samples, but it has made them into icons of consumption and logos of symbolic distinction. Knowledge of a foreign language has become what Heller and Duchêne call an “added value” (2012, p. 2). Instead of the negotiation of differing worldviews and of conflicting conventions of interaction and interpretation that Breen and Candlin (1980) defined as communicative competence, it has focused on solving transmission problems or consumer concerns such as how to bring your message across and get the commodity you want.

Foreign language textbook research has given little attention to the cultural politics of textbook writing and publishing, and to the challenges posed by globalization. As the domestic scene in the US becomes socially and politically more fragmented, and as global migrations, information technologies and economic disparities make the international scene both more connected and more unstable and unpredictable, it has become more difficult to know what textbooks should prepare language learners to do. This question is nowhere more urgent than in the teaching of Spanish in the US—a language that is at the same time a gateway to global economic exchanges with Spanish-speaking countries, and a politically charged issue as it is linked to “legal” and “illegal” immigration from Latin America caused by that same global economy (see, e.g., Sassen, 1996; Massey, Durand & Malone, 2002; de Genova, 2005).

In the following we review twenty FL university-level Spanish textbooks published between 2000 and 2013 in addition to one from the 1950s, three from the 1970s, and three from the 1980s, and analyze them on both the microlevel of structure and content and on the macrolevel of discourse and ideology. We apply to this analysis a poststructuralist sociolinguistic framework that will enable us to understand the ways in which textbooks represent foreign realities and what larger sociopolitical context makes such representations possible.

2. A poststructuralist approach

The analysis of textbooks has greatly benefited from the close attention devoted to their structural features: organization of chapters, layout and design, categorization of people and events, relative textual space devoted to various activities, and the relation of text and image. The analysis has also uncovered the ideological presuppositions behind the choice of cultural topics and the ways these ideologies get reinforced through grammatical and lexical exercises (e.g., Kramsch, 1988; Gray, in press). While such structuralist analyses, inspired by critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989), have decried textbooks’ stereotypical and inauthentic treatment of foreign cultures, and led to structural improvements, they have not changed the ideological orientation of textbook practices that remain hostage to the commercial interests of publishers and to the demands of the decentralized educational system of an American liberal democracy. To understand the role that ideology plays in everyday language use in an era of globalization, scholars like Blommaert (2005), McNamara (2012), Phipps (2012) and Kramsch (2012) have advocated going beyond structuralism and have adopted a post-structuralist approach. They have drawn on such poststructuralist thinkers like Michel Foucault (1970) to examine the conflicted discursive and political space occupied by L2 discourses and the representation of L2 social and cultural practices.

Foreign language Spanish textbooks in the US occupy such a space. Designed to be used by English speakers wanting to learn the language of Spanish speakers, they are by definition in the ambivalent space of a language that is, for most students, both familiar and unfamiliar, both domestic and foreign, and which is, in California, the language of a demographic majority that is also a political minority. In addition, Spanish has become the language of a global environment and global technologies characterized by increased connectivity and exacerbated social, cultural and ideological diversity. In this context, meanings become unstable, speaker intentions unpredictable, references ambiguous (see Kramsch, 2014). Rather than criticize textbooks for their linguistic simplifications and their cultural inauthenticities, a poststructuralist approach seeks to explore the conditions of possibility of such textbooks emerging at a particular time and place and to understand how their discourse echoes other dominant discourses. It does not do away with the close analysis of textual features but it also looks at the larger social and political picture constructed by such features: Who speaks through these texts? Who is addressed? And who are the researchers themselves? What stake do they have in the topic at hand? And, ultimately, how can the textbook genre itself be re-signified to fulfill the new mission that is called for by a globalized textbook industry?

As we first analyze the structural features of the textbooks at hand, we will keep in mind three major themes of poststructuralist thought identified by McNamara (2012). In his view, a poststructuralist approach in applied linguistics entails the following:

1 “a form of social and political engagement expressed in a sustained critique of current social, political, and cultural forms and an ethical pre-occupation with questions of justice” (McNamara, 2012, p. 477). As the poststructuralist sociolinguist Jan Blommaert points out, “every utterance displays a wide variety of meaningful features which, each in isolation, are pretty meaningless but become meaningful precisely through that simultaneous occurrence in the utterance … meaning emerges as the result of creating semiotic simultaneity” (Blommaert, 2005, p. 126). We analyze how language and language use make meaning in the textbooks under study: meaning as standard dictionary definitions, or meaning as social, political and ethical construction? What semiotic universe do these textbooks construct?

2 “a putting into question of stable truths and the stable structure of the linguistic sign, a critique of the idea of system, and a rejection of belief in the idea of ‘progress’” (McNamara, 2012, p. 477). We analyze the way language learning is conceived: as the progressive transmission of stable truths, or as a joint exploration of contingent truths? To what extent do textbooks deal with linguistic, social and cultural variation, parody and language play, argument and debate? How much history do they bring into the teaching of culture and how do they deal with the sometimes conflicting versions of history between English speakers and Spanish speakers?

3 “a critical awareness of the role of desire and the presence of the irrational within social structures” (ibid., p. 478). We analyze the kind of learner motivation that is fostered in these textbooks. To what extent do textbooks take into consideration the deep desires of adolescents to escape their familiar environment and explore new horizons outside the usual boundaries of Western logic and rationality? How do they prepare learners of Spanish to deal with the ambiguities, uncertainties and irrationalities of a global world order?

Poststructuralism is a research approach that is suited to the complex environment in which we live in a global era. It offers both a new way of viewing this social and cultural reality and a new way of researching it.² In the following analysis we examine the foreign realities represented by Spanish textbooks by asking questions prompted by the poststructuralist realities of a global economy.

3. Analysis

In the following we heed the questions raised by McNamara’s three poststructuralist themes to explore how the 27 textbooks at hand view the expression and communication of meaning, the notion of language learning and of learner motivation.

3.1 How is meaning expressed and communicated?

3.1.1 Meaning is linear

The textbook ¿Cómo se dice …? (Jarvis, Lebredo & Mena-Ayllón, 2009, p. iii) begins with an invitation to the student: “As you embark on your journey to discovering the Spanish language, allow us to be your guides, together with your instructor, in offering you these tips to make the journey more productive, more interesting, and more enjoyable.” As students progress through each chapter of the textbooks, they “journey” from one grammatical and lexical structure to another in a linear, systematic way: in the context of a travel agency students learn the subjunctive to express desire and preferences, “Es preferible que yo viaje hoy,” “It is preferable that I travel today,” so that they can then move on to the next structure, expressing suggestions. (Levy-Konesky & Daggett, 2004). This journey takes them not only through the structures of the Spanish language but through the informational features of one Hispanic country after the other. Indeed, the majority of textbooks employ an organizational structure that is as linear as a tourist’s itinerary as it resembles a traveler’s checklist.

3.1.2 Meaning is structural/factual

The student’s journey is characterized as “gathering information about the people who speak it and the countries where it is spoken” (Spaine Long et al., 2013, p. iii, our emphasis), more specifically, information about the “traditions, pastimes, and geography of the wide variety of Spanish-speaking countries” (Renjilian-Burgy, Chiquito & Mraz, 2008, p. IAE 5). This information consists largely of cultural facts. The chapter opener generally presents a snapshot of the focus country with a postcard-perfect photo of popular tourist destinations such as national parks, picturesque streets or villages, and famous monuments. The chapter in Puntos de Partida (Dorwick et al., 2012) that focuses on the seasons and weather includes a picture of a tourist in the tropical rainforest of Costa Rica. With these images, and through culture boxes and practice dialogues, students accumulate facts, such as statistics on population and country size. The post-reading activities ask them to reproduce these isolated pieces of information by answering factual questions.

3.1.3 Meaning is decontextualized

In addition to acquiring factual information, students learn conventionalized situational meanings. The introduction to ¡Claro que sí! (Caycedo Garner, Rusch & Domínguez, 2013, p. AIE-iii) states that: “Culturally correct understanding leads to appropriate cultural behavior. If students are taught what to say, when and where to say it, and to whom to express it in a particular manner, they will begin to attain an insight into the cultural implications of language and of their actions.” In Puntos de Partida, students even receive a list of the tasks that must be realized to complete the process—such as what the receptionist needs to ask the traveler and what services the traveler needs to request—and they receive formulaic expressions such as “Quisiera … un corte de pelo” or “hacerme la manicura,” (“I would like to … have a haircut” or “have a manicure”) (Knorre et al., 2009, p. 552). In other words, students are taught decontextualized phr...