“Telling Tales: Changing Discourses of Identity in the ‘Global’ UK-Published English Language Coursebook” by John Kullma

from the

Introduction

“Activities, tasks, functions and understandings do not exist in isolation; they are part of broader systems of relations in which they have meaning” Lave & Wenger, 1991

Discourses of identity

Orders of discourse

Discourse is language use seen as a type of social practice

Technologization of discourse

The particular configurations of conventionalized practices

Influences how ideas are put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others

Governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about.

A process which involves one discourse community being colonized by, and embedding in its own discourse, the discursive practices or genres of another, often unwittingly.

Globalising discourses of identity in ELT

Socio-cultural theory

Framing

an important role of the language teacher is to attempt to lead the learner towards ownership of the new language

to mediate between these new voices and their first language voices

describes the process by which a particular news item is presented to the audience

principles of selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little
tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters

the content of the English language coursebook is: ‘reframed, reinterpreted, and “rewritten” by students’ counter-discourses’

serve to ‘detach themselves [the students] from the ideology of the textbook and construct for themselves more favorable subjectivities and identities’.

The increasing centrality of the learner

Findings from the initial analysis

Findings

from the

Initial

analysis

between 1971 and 1999 the most noticeable change concerned the ways in which the learner had gradually become more central

the learners’ own lives became the central organising narrative of the coursebook by the end of the 1990s

guided by protocols designed to help come to more detailed understanding of how the learner had by the 1990s become a central focus of interest in the coursebook

in what ways are features of personality and personal qualities focused on

In what ways is personal change focused on

in what ways are lifestyle practices focused on

Explaining changing discourses of identity
in the UK-published coursebook

the global UK-published coursebook for adult learners at the beginning of the twenty-first century can be said to increasingly ‘reify’ learner narratives and to encourage ‘techniques’ of self-examination and self-evaluation and ‘vocabularies for self-description’

The emphasis on personality and personal qualities in the ‘global’ coursebook bears traces of a discourse of individualism.

expressive individualism

defines the person in terms of his capacity to articulate and enact his unique experience, particularly expressions of taste and feeling

Conclusion

Writers, teachers and learners need to address issues of culture and identity deeply

Discorses of individualism, consumerism, the medicalisation of everyday life and psychotheraphy should be taken into account

Exploring identity frames and discourses of identity in the UK-published coursebook

Coursebooks published between 1971 and 1999 were selected: Headway, Reward, Cutting-edge, Workout

Initial analysis: concerned with determining the overall orientation of the coursebooks ascertaining if there were noticeable changes in the cultural orientation of coursebooks in the 28 years

Protocols: Topics, Types of people, Elementals of language, task types, roles of play, Features of design, visual images

Khusniddinova Risolatkhon
Student of Webster University
Instructor: Ms. Klara