Abstract:
With the advent of globalization, especially in its third phase (see Robertson, 2003), global relations of domination have undermined abuse of power at national and local levels (Fairclough, 2001). Global ELT textbooks, as corollaries of the globalization process, are not immune to the embedment of discriminatory discourses, as various studies have shown (see for example, Gray, 2010, 2012; Babaii and Sheikhi, 2017). On the other hand, a social actor analysis of verbal and visual discourse will contribute significantly to the disclosure of discriminatory discourses (see van Leeuwen, 2008; Hart, 2014). The current study, therefore, reduces the gap in research on ideology of ELT materials by probing into the nursery rhymes in children and young-adult ELT textbooks. Visual representation of social actors in the images accompanying nursery rhymes in Magic Time, English Time, Let's Go and Family and Friends were, thus, examined, using van Leeuwen's (2008) framework. Regarding results, the most frequent exclusionary discourses in the corpus included religion, nationality, race, and gender respectively. Significantly, it was found that monochromatic depiction of social actors constituted a strategy for the discursive construction of otherness in Family and Friends. Additionally, a process, called whitenization of blacks in the terminology of the current study, was found to be at work in which blacks were depicted as having the facial features of whites.
Machine summary:
Visual Representation of Social Actors in ELT Nursery Rhymes Mahmoodreza Atai 1, Esmat Babaii 2, Ebrahim Isavi 3* 1Professor Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran 2 Associate Professor Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran 3 PhD Candidate Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran Received: 2017/09/19 Accepted: 2018/02/17 Abstract: With the advent of globalization, especially in its third phase (see Robertson, 2003), global relations of domination have undermined abuse of power at national and local levels (Fairclough, 2001).
Visual representation of social actors in the images accompanying nursery rhymes in Magic Time, English Time, Let's Go and Family and Friends were, thus, examined, using van Leeuwen's (2008) framework.
To reduce this gap, this study examined the images accompanying nursery rhymes in the Magic Time, English Time, Let's Go, and Family and Friends, using van Leeuwen's (2008) framework for the visual construction of social actors.
Regarded from the globalization viewpoint, it can be stated that ISAs also include transnational organizations such as the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fun (IMF), and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) the discourses of which serve to inculcate their audiences with ideological agendas in the best interest of the powerful groups (see Robinson, 2005; Kumaravadivelu, 2006, for details on the way transnational institutions contribute to social inequalities).
In order to narrow this gap, the current study examined the way social actors were visually represented in the nursery rhymes of four series of ELT textbooks for children and young-adult learners.