Generally, the term «representation» refers to the
reproduction of reality to present it in a different shape (Said, 1978). An
example that Said (1978) provides to argue for this definition is the image
that the West drew for the Orient to legitimate the invasion of the
Middle East. Examining the relationship between power and
representation, he contends that the importance of the term
«representation» lies in the fact that it is used to reshape reality
in order to gain imperial interests and to sustain Western domination. For
instance, Said (1985) contends that the West denies the continuous change
characterising the situation of the Orient presenting this latter in fixed
stereotypical representations while tolerating continuously changing
interpretations of Shakespeare works, for example (p. 92).
The production of Western ideologically biased
representations of the Orient, resulted in what Said (1978) called
«orientalism», which is «fundamentally a political
doctrine» (p. 204) developed by scholars who studied the Orient and behind
them politicians to maintain the subordination of the Orient to the West.
However, critics of Said's (1978) Orientalism argue that it is an
ideologically oriented work encompassing poisonous ideas (Prakash, 1995, p.
199). Such an accusation Said (1985) has already noted that it is itself
orientalist, which is a term he used to refer to opponents of scholars'
stabilisation of the representation of the Orient in a particular image that
serves the interests of the West (p. 93).
Hence, exploring the possible ideological orientations behind
the representation of cultures and minorities in a way or another is essential
in the study of their inclusivity. For Said (1978), all artefacts including
media, literature, and paintings are never neutral due to the impossibility of
dissociating them from the producer. Similarly, the textbook as a cultural
artefact was considered to be difficult to divorce from its writers' and
publishers' ideology (Phillipson, 1992; Rinvolucri, 1999).
In this study, the issue of representation will be tackled
with reference to the image of minorities, which is a concern that emerged with
modern ELT coursebooks (Renner, 1997). The minorities surveyed for evidence as
to their representation in ELT coursebooks are women, class, gays and lesbians,
and age. Preserving the inclusivity of minorities in the ELT
global coursebook is not a mere statement of the existence of
these groups but also a question of representing them in an
«appropriate» way. Indeed, Arikan (2005) argues that there are two
types of representation in coursebooks; apparent inclusivity and subtle
imbalance.
2.4.1. Defining «inclusivity»
Inclusivity as stated by Gray (2002) and Renner (1997) means
the tendency and/or attempt to include and represent all members of society
such as women, age, class, ethnic origin, and so on in ELT global coursebooks.
As explained by Gray (2002), this principle is generally carefully handled by
publishers and coursebook writers (p. 158). In fact, publishers attempt to
preserve inclusivity through adopting pressure groups recommendations. The
examples of the concern of publishers in including social classes will be dealt
with in the following section.
2.4.2. Explanations of inclusivity
Various explanations have been provided to illustrate the
tendency in textbooks towards preserving inclusivity of different world images.
There are objective and ideological explanations to this.
2.4.2.1. Objective explanations
Such explanations are termed objective due to their
connection with social awareness especially with regard to representing groups
of societies in `good' light. Example of these objective explanations are the
ones provided by Gray (2002) who attributes the satisfactory representation of
women in ELT coursebooks by the pressure exerted by feminist pressure groups.
Gray (2002) claims that «[s]uch a state of affairs is largely the result
of efforts made by groups like Women in TEFL and Women in EFL Materials»
(p. 157). In the same vein, Sunderland (1994) argues that the group of Women in
EFL Materials have provided
publishers of ELT coursebooks with a set of guidelines
concerning the representation of women entitled «On Balance:
Guidelines for Representation of Women and Men in English Language Teaching
Materials» (qtd in Gray, 2002, p. 157).
Closely related to this argument is that misrepresenting
women, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities in ELT coursebooks could
inhibit these minorities from learning effectively (Gray, 2002, p. 158).
Illustrating this need for «good» representation, one could state
Rifkin's (1998) argument that «the exclusion of girls and women from FL
textbooks may seriously impair their abilities to understand the target
language and its culture» (p. 218).
The argument of the need to reflect a `good' and `real'
picture of the status of women in coursebooks as recommended by publishers is
questioned by Gray (2002) who argues that the publishers are submissive to the
pressure that feminist groups exert (p. 159). Publishers, then, are highly
sensitive to avoiding any disagreement with powerful pressure groups in society
and abroad in order to preserve the profitable circulation of their product
(Viney, 2000).
Apart from these objective arguments concerning preserving
inclusivity, some critical researchers talked about the ideological load
inherent in global coursebooks presenting it as the reason behind ethnocentric
representation of inner circle images (Phillipson, 1992; Pennycook, 1994).
2.4.2.2. Ideological explanations
It is secret to no one that ELT materials sold all over the
globe do not disseminate only language but also culture (Phillipson, 1992;
Pennycook, 1994; Canagarajah, 1999; Alptekin, 2002). As cultures are not the
same all over the world, the promotion of the purely British or
American perspective toward society through ELT could be seen
as an act of cultural imperialism, being the use of unequal resources, like
ELT, to guarantee the hegemony of particular cultures at the expense of the
others (Phillipson, 1992; Pennycook, 1994). Such view correlates with the one
advocated by Said (1978) on representation. In the same vein, Renner (1997)
contends that the
(...) cultural content is rarely, if ever, reflective of the
learners' cultural setting, but rather promotes cultural imperialism for both
Great Britain and the United States as ideals to be aimed for with little or no
critical reflection on the grave short comings (sic) both cultures have (pp.
3-4).
From Renner's (1997) position, one could deduce that, for
example, the promotion of a particular image of women, regardless of the
«good will» that could underlie it, is a kind of cultural invasion as
it is propagated along with ELT coursebooks around the globe. Such a position
was heavily addressed by researchers writing from critical perspective to
applied linguistics such as Phillipson (1992), Pennycook (1994), Rinvolucri
(1999), and Canagarajah (1999). In fact, exploring whether learners resist
cultural content, as explained by Canagarajah (1999), or accept it, is
important for the understanding of the target population and for learning to be
effective.
In the same vein, Renner (1997) presents the inclusiveness that
the publishers try to ensure in ELT coursebooks as an act of cultural
globalisation. As he put it:
The «inclusiveness» of other cultures, ethnic
groups, lands, and customs presented in EFL
ESL texts for the international
market is controlled however by the cultural norms of a
liberal economic ethic and often promotes the
«globalization» of the liberal-democratic culture (p. 4).
Hence, underneath the representation of people and settings,
in a way or another, whether positively or negatively, raises questions about
whether these representations are innocent or malignant (Said, 1978;
Phillipson, 1992; Pennycook, 1994; Canagarajah, 1999).
With reference to the primary concern of this study, which is
exploring the features that make an ELT coursebook global, it could be said
that the principle of inclusivity, if practical and attainable, is a
manifestation of the notion of «globality». The inclusion of various
groups in the content of ELT coursebooks designed for world audience could be
seen as one of the stages towards «fair» representation of
communities constituting the globe. However, in a world containing very
numerous and different communities, one wonders about the ability of ELT
coursebooks to represent them in a fair way without using the image of some
communities in the context of talking about inappropriate situations. In this
context, important questions concern whether inappropriate (but
«authentic») situations are to be dealt with or not and with which
characters from which communities (Viney, 2000).
It seems again that there can be conflict between the three
principles, investing connectedness, avoiding inappropriacy, and preserving
inclusivity, which hardens publishers' attempt to make successful compromises
in order not to lose markets (Bashogh, 1993, p. 5). In spite of such
compromises, some unresolved issues concerning inclusivity still exist, as some
researchers detected attempts of representing members of societies
«properly» while others showed that «proper» inclusivity is
not always achievable.
2.4.3. Attempts of preserving inclusivity
In his investigation of Headway Intermediate (Soars
and Soars, 1996), Gray (2002) detected a tendency to include people and
situations from around the world. As he put it, «[a] modern coursebook
like New Headway / Intermediate (1996), while still a very British
book, is much less exclusively located in Britain» (italics in
original, p. 157). This means that, in general, the book writers attempted to
be inclusive in the sense of showing awareness of the need to include images
from the entire world in global coursebooks, not only British ones. Thus,
integrating images and situations from around the globe gives the coursebook a
global outlook.
Using a checklist that focused on representation of women,
age, and social class, Arikan (2005) investigated the visual materials
representing people in Headway Intermediate (Soars & Soars, 2003)
and Think ahead to First Certificate (Naunton, 1993) and concluded
that
the majority of the visual materials in these coursebooks
represent the middle class social strata composed of the middle aged
individuals in a way that the numbers of both genders represented seem to be
similar. However, the critical study of the discursive practices making up
these images unearth (sic) the fact that there are many imbalances in such
representations (p. 35).
Arikan (2005) claims that there are two kinds of
representation in the investigated coursebooks; apparent inclusivity and hidden
(or subtle) imbalance. To illustrate this point, Arikan (2005) provided data
concerning the social classes of the human images in Headway
Intermediate (Soars and Soars, 2003) using the content analysis
method. He found that the
`middle' class is the class represented in 84.44% of the
total number of human images in the coursebook. Such visibility of the middle
class was at the expense of representing other classes such as the `lower'
class, mentioned only in 2.2% of the images.
As for the lower classes, Arikan (2005) claims that they are
«represented through individuals from the third world except for those who
are eccentric individuals living in the U.S. or the U.K» (p. 37). An
example of what Arikan (2005) identified as an eccentric individual from the
West is the portrait of a young man on page 83 funnily pretending to be a
Hollywood star, which is the only picture of a lower class individual not
belonging to «the third world».
It could be stated, then, that the inclusion of some groups
of society in the coursebook Arikan (2005) investigated is misleading, as while
minorities were represented (manifested in the inclusion of third world
people), they are represented in an inappropriate manner (only lower class
people). This is, in fact what is meant by subtle imbalance. Another
illustration of what Arikan (2005) calls subtle imbalance in the representation
of minorities concerns the representation of women. Arikan (2005) claims also
that the number of female humans in the images of Headway Intermediate
(Soars & Soars, 2003) and Think Ahead to First Certificate
(Naunton, 1993) represents only 29.80% of the total 302 images, which shows
under-representation of women (Arikan, 2005, p. 36).
Therefore, Gray's (2002) assertion that «the most
cursory look at a selection of modern global coursebooks produced in the UK
shows that [misrepresentation of women] is no longer the case» (p. 157)
seems to be incorrect. Actually, Gray (2002) does not provide evidence to
illustrate his claim. Based on the findings of Arikan (2005), a possible
refinement of Gray's (2002) statement is that misrepresentation of minorities
seems to have moved from being clearly visible to being subtly hidden (Arikan,
2005, p. 36).
Additionally, Mineshima (2008) analysed the content of a
Japanese ELT coursebook Birdland Oral Communication I (Yoshida et al.,
2007) for evidence as to the issue of gender representation. She used
qualitative and quantitative analyses of the representation of language and
pictures in the textbook and found that
(...) there seems to be ample evidence to suggest that the
textbook examined in this study exhibits fairly egalitarian representations of
the two genders. It has succeeded in maintaining a generally well-balanced
proportion of females to males in text and pictures, and in describing both
genders in a variety of personalities and interests, emphasizing multiformity
of individuals regardless of their gender (p. 16).
For Mineshima (2008) coursebook writers are successful in
being inclusive as far as the issue of gender is concerned. However, what is
interesting to note is that this claimed balance may be counter to prevailing
cultural values. This could mean that besides teaching the language, coursebook
writers may end up also promoting cultural values that are different from
«native» Japanese ones. This could raise the issue of cultural
imperialism, especially for critical readers, viewing that two native speakers
were among the authors of the coursebook investigated by Mineshima (2008).
As far as being culturally inclusive in EFL materials, Renner
(1997) comments that modern ELT coursebooks reflect rather than ignore native
cultures. He claims that «books now produced for the international market
include a variety of realia taken from native and non-native speaking countries
reflecting diversity of the native culture» (p. 2). This quote shows that
publishers are sensitive to representing various images from around the world
in modern coursebooks. However, it remains unclear how and to what extent
different local
cultures are represented in coursebooks produced in the Inner
Circle (Kachru, 1985). Such issue will be one of concern of the content
analysis of Headway Intermediate (Soars & Soars, 2003) reported in
Chapter Four.
In the following sub-section instances of the failure of
publishers to cater for the issue of inclusivity will be dealt with.
2.4.4. Unresolved issues
The unresolved issues concerned instances of failure in
representing women, gays and lesbians, age, and class «appropriately»
in ELT coursebooks.
The first surveys that investigated inclusivity of some
members of particular societies in ELT coursebooks focused on the
representation of women (Hill, 1980; Porreca, 1984). Gray (2002) commented, for
instance, that women in earlier textbooks of 1980s were «underrepresented,
trivialised and stereotyped in a wide selection of British and North American
coursebooks» (Gray, 2002, p. 157). As a result of this misrepresentation,
there appeared calls for resolving the issue of women's invisibility in ELT
global coursebooks (Renner, 1997; Mineshima, 2008).
An example of misrepresentation of women is sexism, which is
«a system of beliefs and practices that affirm the dominance of men over
women» (Renner, 1997, p. 6). Carroll and Kowitz (1994) documented the
existence of such practices in ELT coursebooks through studying the use of
pronouns and adjectives. They found that male pronouns are more frequently used
than female ones, the term angry was most of the time used with women, and that
the adjectives pretty, busy, and beautiful were used only with women (qtd in
Renner, 1997, pp. 2-3). For Renner (1997), this sexism in representing women in
earlier ELT coursebooks shows, on the one hand, that there is no successful
attempt to be properly
inclusive in depicting women in some coursebooks and, on the
other hand, the rising attention to representation in global coursebooks.
Additionally, Cunningsworth (1995) stated, for example, that
famous male characters were represented 18 times while female famous characters
were mentioned only twice (ibid). Such an imbalance shows that
misrepresentation of women moved from being apparent to being subtle or hidden
(Cunningsworth, 1995; Wilson, 2005). This does not suggest, however, that
coursebook writers plan to misrepresent women. Instead, it highlights the fact
that, on the one hand, the linguistic and the cultural contents are striving
for a place in coursebooks and that, on the other hand, publishers and writers
are trying hard to find acceptable compromises (Bashogh, 1993).
Other groups who are documented not to be included in the
content of ELT coursebooks are gays and lesbians. While in the Middle East and
Asia mentioning these groups in the content of ELT textbooks is
«counter» to cultural values of these societies, in the West it is
not the case. Backgrounding these groups is considered to be a promotion of the
vision that heterosexuality is, to use Renner's (1997) terminology,
«somehow superior to, or more «natural» and «normal»
than homosexuality, bisexuality, or lesbianism» (p. 5). This neglect of an
authentic and existent social group is considered heterosexist although this
issue is closely related to the question of «inappropriacy» (Gray,
2002) of some issues for various cultures. In this example, it could be said
that the concern for inclusivity is marginalised for the sake of avoiding
inappropriacy.
This is evidence for the compromises (Bashogh, 1993, p. 1)
that coursebook writers make in order to cater for a very heterogeneous
audience spread all over the world. Homosexuality, meanwhile, is documented to
be overtly dealt with in ESL coursebooks
produced in North America (Gray, 2002). However, Thornbury
(1999) argues that it is essential for the representation of these groups to be
properly addressed in ELT coursebooks.
Social class and the elderly, in turn, are documented to be
under-represented in ELT textbooks, which may provide learners with an
«inauthentic» picture about life especially contributing to the
process of creating stereotypes (Clarke & Clarke, 1991; Cunningsworth,
1995). Investigating the representation of the above stated categories,
Cunningsworth (1995) found that elderly people and adults were represented less
than teenagers and that women were fairly represented in terms of number but
not in terms of the functions fulfilled (qtd in Arikan, 2005, p. 31). This is
another instance of the subtle imbalance.
The concern of this thesis is to explore the features of
«globality» in the global coursebook and the extent to which
publishers' concern in implementing inclusivity, avoiding inappropriacy, as
well as investing in connectedness is successful and attainable. This issue is
important because it contributes to the literature on the value of global
coursebooks as ELT commercial materials were marketed on the assumption that
they fit learners all around the globe (Bashogh, 2003).
