Ideology in English teaching

?materials: Why should we care

Esmat Babaii
Kharazmi University
babai@khu.ac.ir
Media: prime suspect for
disseminating ideologies
 NO
!!?ideology
 ?What is ideology
Dirven et al., ‘ideology is a system of beliefs and values based on a

set of cognitive models, i.e. mental representations’ (2003, p.1)

Haynes (1989, p. 119), ‘ideology is made possible by the choices a

language allows for representing the same material situation in

different ways’.

Dirven, R., R. Frank and M. Putz (2003). Introduction: Categories, cognitive models and ideologies. In R. Dirven,
R. Frank and M. Putz (eds), Cognitive models in language and thought: Ideology, metaphors and meanings.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 1–24.
 
Haynes, J. (1989). Introducing stylistics. London: Hyman.
 
 Representations of reality

Failure success
.I failed the exam .I passed the exam

.The teacher failed me The teacher helped me pass the

.exam
These options differ in terms of agency and
locus of control (internal vs. external):
whether one holds ‘self’ responsible for one’s
success and failure or ascribes the outcomes
to sb or sth else.

For the speaker, selecting among these options

may be conscious or subconscious, though
the effect on the hearer is roughly the same.
CDA is interested in investigating how certain
discursive choices in certain institutionalized
texts and communicative settings may contribute
to creating/maintaining unequal power relations.

The texts with larger audience, therefore, are of

particular interest. Such texts such as news,
movies, political speeches, textbooks and ads are
constructed to convey certain type of ideologies
approved/prescribed by powerful organizations
and people.
 Research on textbook ideology
History textbooks: an important source of transferring ideology through
emphasizing, de-emphasizing, deleting & distorting historical facts.
Cary (1976), Lisovskaya & Karpov (1999), Tsyrlina-Spady & Lovorn
(2015) and Nelson (2015) show how certain values such as extreme
patriotism, hyper-nationalism and pro-communist ideologies are
encouraged through presenting distorted facts about the history of
Russia. Along the same line, Pine (1996) argues how in Nazi era, school
books in Germany were at the service of disseminating Nazi values.
Using SFL transitivity and grammatical metaphor, Moss (2010) detects
the ideology of determinism and fatalism in Colombian history
textbooks and believes that such a practice can raise a generation
assuming that their participation in the social activities does not count
and is not going to change anything.
In a study on Britain geography textbooks, Morgan (2003)
demonstrates the important role of these textbooks in social
reproduction of a British national identity and rejects the naive
assumption that geography textbooks present some neutral,
dehumanized facts about a country.

Ferguson et al. (2009) analyze the content of three introductory

accounting textbooks and manuals and report the absence of
ethics, issue of power relations and socio-political context in these
sources.

Hamad (2014) believes that the notion of intolerance and extremism

are implicated by Islamic science textbooks along with the
traditional teaching methodology which involves lecturing and no
dialogue.
 ELT materials ideology
Starting in 1970s, sexism is by far the most investigated topic in the critical analysis
of texts and images in ELT materials:
Hartman & Judd, 1978: women are often less visible than men, are often placed in
stereotypical roles and assigned stereotypical emotional reactions. Illustrations in the
books serve to reinforce the biased the mentioned linguistic patterns.

Porreca, 1984: content analysis of the 15 most widely used ESL textbooks (according
to a compilation of textbook lists from 27 ESL centers) is described. The study
focuses on the categories of omission in text and illustrations, firstness,
occupational visibility in text and illustrations, nouns, masculine generic
constructions, and adjectives.

Poulou, 1997: discourse roles of men and women in dialogue; men enjoying
dominace. Ansary & Babaii, 2003: firstness, visibility and social roles in locally-
complied ELT materials for junior high school students. Women were discriminated
against in all the categories and images reinforced the textual content.
Lee & Collins, 2009:gender stereotyping, both linguistic and pictorial, in a
set of 10 Australian English‐language textbooks for intermediate
learners; focus on the ratio of male to female characters, the portrayal of
women and men in social and domestic settings, the use of gender‐
inclusive expressions, and the ordering of items in female/male
symmetrical constructions. Results: Far from a balanced picture.

Gray, 2010: analysis of connections (OUP);depicting women as emotional,

irrational and having less education, they occupy less diverse jobs and
are less visible than men.

Kordjazi, 2012: visual analysis of two local and international software and
found that in both male seemed active, dominant and powerful and
female seemed reactive, subordinate and object of male gaze.
English-centrism, subliminal racism and dominance of Western culture
have also been investigated in a number of studies:

Koosha, Talebinezhad, & Taki, 2004: the international ELT textbooks

represented the discourse of western economy and consumer society
while the local materials were influenced by post-revolutionary norms
and standards

Abdollahzadeh & Baniasad, 2010: ideology in international textbooks

(hegemony of English, sexism, racism and cultural stereotypes). They
found that teachers are aware of the ideologies but they were not very
much concerned about teaching or raising awareness about them.

Gray, 2012: celebrity culture, as a pronounced feature of neoliberalism in

ELT textbooks. “hypnotic power of celebrity in contemporary culture and
its ability to distract attention from painful and pressing realities” (p. 86)
Fitzgibbon, 2013: global ELT textbooks used in South Korea; five recurring ideologies:
imperialism, linguistic imperialism, colonialism, orientalism and US-centrism, largely
through the discourse of consumerism; lower status for other countries

Pashmforoosh & Babaii, 2015: cultural contents in two internationally distributed

business English book series; representation of native speakers in global business
encounters, the culture of native speakers was the dominant culture content, and the
level of cultural presentation tended to remain in the knowledge-oriented rather than
communication-based level

Babaii, Atai, & Kafshgarsoute, 2016: social actors of different races are visually and
textually represented in four English-learning software packages; although
contemporary multimodal texts have tried to be unbiased and neutral in the verbal
mode, there are still traces of discrimination, bias, and stereotyping in the visual mode

Babaii & Sheikhi, 2018: popular ELT textbooks in language institutes; certain tenets of
neoliberalism such as market, consumerism, branding, individual
productivity/marketability as well as superficial, non-critical multiculturalism
Every body knows the dice are loaded
…
Sometimes, people say, ‘we do know
something unfair is going on but nobody
cares what we think’. The most phlegmatic,
self-destructive attitude is to take all unfair
affairs as ‘natural’, adopting a ‘let it be’
position. This is equal to giving consent to
the inequality and domination.
Bourdieu (2000, cited in Blackledge, 2005, p. 208):
symbolic domination is set up not only through the
coercion exercised by the dominator, but also
through the consent given by the dominated. The
consent to domination by the dominated is
significant because it is in this process that
domination comes to appear natural.

Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Blackledge, A. (2005). Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
 Solution 1
:Censorship and sanction

Don’t play any game as the dice

might be loaded
 Solution 2
CDA: Raise people’s awareness

.Play the game but keep your eyes wide-open

Watch others’ hands carefully.
 Final word
A single-handed teacher is not expected to change
longstanding power relation in the society but he/she CAN
question it and encourage critical thinking on the part of
his/her students.

Knowledge is power and to equip the audience with the

knowledge to uncover the hidden ideology in the texts
they are exposed to is empowerment.

Teacher’s meditating role in students’ access to textbooks

and teacher’s critical thinking skills should be emphasized
in teacher education courses. Wise teachers tend to
educate wiser students.
Thank you for listening