VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– CAO DUY TRINH CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN EDUCATION: WHAT IDEOLOGICAL IMAGE DOES AN ENGLISH COURSE-BOOK (AMERICAN HEADWAY 4, 2005) CREATE THROUGH ITS LANGUAGE? (Phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán trong giáo dục: Hình ảnh tư tưởng nào được xây dựng qua ngôn ngữ của một giáo trình dạy tiếng Anh (American Headway 4, 2005)? A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy HANOI 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES –––––––––––––––––––––––– CAO DUY TRINH CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN EDUCATION: WHAT IDEOLOGICAL IMAGE DOES AN ENGLISH COURSE-BOOK (AMERICAN HEADWAY 4, 2005) CREATE THROUGH ITS LANGUAGE? (Phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán trong giáo dục: Hình ảnh tư tưởng nào được xây dựng qua ngôn ngữ của một giáo trình dạy tiếng Anh (American Headway 4, 2005)? Major: English Linguistics Code: 62.01 A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor Prof. Nguyen Hoa (Ph.D) HANOI 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where the reference is made in the text of dissertation, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the dissertation. This dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree of diploma in any other tertiary institution. CAO DUY TRINH Date: 04/10/2014 i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Foreign language teaching is not merely the introduction of a language but also the transmission of values and ideologies.
Language teachers do not only aim at learners’ language competence and performance but also the attitudes and behaviors of the learners towards their language speakers’ community. Language educators provide the students with the linguistic rules and the social rules governing the language, the values underlying such language and the social contexts from which that language emerges. For a foreign language course-book, the designers should consider the linguistic knowledge, the teaching and learning methods and the ways the teachers and students view and interact with the world “out there”. In this dissertation, the course-book “American Headway 4-2005” is chosen for an analysis from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective.
Herein, certain values which make up “an image” created by English language textbook writers, are worked out. The analysis is done mostly through the wordings and the illustrations in the lessons. Before the analysis, some working concepts such as values, ideology, power, English language teaching and the politics of this teaching as well as American values and ideologies will be defined and reviewed. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the research methodology is also revisited.
Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and Norman Fairclough's textual analysis as theoretical foundation and analysis framework are discussed. The researcher justifies on the ground of Marxist viewpoint. The above issues are, perhaps, not new to the researchers of socio-linguistic and applied linguists. This study is hopefully an interface of them all.
The typical image found will prove that certain values are purposely introduced and reinforced in the course-book. These values belong to and characterize different ideologies of the main stream of American, and often tend to give a sanitized version of the American life. They might be beneficial to our Vietnamese learners and we hope to be able to share many of their “globally” good values. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Through this minor work, values education and critical awareness in foreign language courses may attract the attention of the teachers and students of English in Vietnam.
The learners are urged to adopt whatever is suitable to them, the Vietnamese, and to avoid alien ways of life. Since then, our Vietnamese learners’ image of a good American English speaker is not necessarily exactly the same as the one of the Americans’. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could never have finished this dissertation without the help of many people. My thanks go to Prof.
Nguyễn Hòa, my supervisor, for his continuous support during the years I did my M. His knowledgeable understanding of linguistics and related disciplines is always the trusted source for my consultation. I want to thank the professors and the visiting professors of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, ULIS and their staff. Professor Hoàng Văn Vân and Assoc.
Professor Lê Hùng Tiến have been very considerate and helpful to me. I have benefited from their knowledge and professionalism in research. For this thesis, Thai Nguyen University has offered me a good financial sponsorship. I am grateful to that.
My home university, Thai Nguyen University of Sciences, has always been standing by me, urging me in my study. I am thankful to the university’s leadership, all the colleagues in and out my Department of Basic Sciences in the University for their assistance as I am working on this thesis. I appreciate the valuable advice and useful help from all of my Ph.D student class- mates in Hanoi. They are very nice and willing to share their experiences and to help when I am looking for solutions to research problems.
I will always bear in my mind and recognize the encouragement of the international professors and friends. Language, culture, politics and society always go together. Their interesting talks have inspired me to greater efforts in my study. I would like to take this chance to thank Emeritus Professor Markus Brodman, Zurich University, Switzerland; Professor Frank Morgan, Williams College, USA – Vice President of American Mathematical Society (2009-2012); Emeritus Professor Marcel Morales, Grenoble University, France; Doctor Fred Rohrer, Zurich University, Switzerland; Mr.
Henry - Vietnam Representative for Asian iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Rural Life Development Foundation - and his wife, Melissa Henry. My special thanks go to Professor Neal Koblitz, University of Washington, the creator of Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography, the founder of the Kovalevskaya Prize for developing countries, the great social activist and a trusted friend of Vietnam. His profound comments and suggestions for my thesis make me more confident about the research results. I also express my deep gratitude to David John Grealy and Assoc.
Nguyễn Văn Độ for their valuable suggestions. Last but not least, I want to say many thanks to my beloved wife for her love and kind reliance. My son and our little daughter have also cheered me on a lot. Thank you very much! v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .viii LIST OF TABLE. ix LIST OF FIGURES. x LIST OF APPENDICES.
xi PART I INTRODUCTION. 1 1 Rationale for the study. 4 3 Object and scope of study. 5 PART II DISSERTATION DEVELOPMENT.
8 CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW.1 A brief overview of CDA .2 Critical discourse analysis .2 Tenets, objects and elements of CDA .3 The other views of CDA .4 Syllabus design and the wider society .5 The works of CDA .6 Values, culture, ideology and power. 26 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.4 Power as constructed by values .8 Image and ideological image .1 Defining the framework .1 Systemic Functional Grammar .2 Fairclough’s Textual Analysis. 59 CHAPTER 3 THE ANALYSIS .1 The social context of the textbook under analysis. 67 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .1 Interpretation for the values expressed by the writers in the course-book .2 Explanation for the American values created in the course-book .1 Societal determinants at societal level - American history, society, culture, politics & economy .2 The political English Language Teaching as institutional determinant at institutional level .3 The American ideologies as situational determinants at situational level of discourses .4 The “other American” in the world’s eyes.
168 PART III CONCLUSIONS. 186 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CDA Critical Discourse Analysis CIA Central Intelligence Agency CFL College of Foreign Languages CL Critical Linguistics CLS Critical Language Study CLT Critical Language Teaching CP Critical Pedagogy CT Critical Theory ELT English Language Teaching MR Members’ resources SFG Systemic Functional Grammar SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics TNU Thai Nguyen University TNUS Thai Nguyen University of Sciences The USA The United States of America VNU Vietnam National University ULIS University of Language and International Studies viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLE Table Page Table 1 - Process types, their meanings and participants. 49 ix LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 1. Elements of culture.
Fairclough’s analysis of an image. The image of Mr. Happy, the British English speaker. Discourse as text, interaction and context.
Situational context and discourse type. The visible image of a typical American English speaker. 148 x LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix Page Appendix 1. 190 xi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale for the study Human struggles are carried into the language of lessons.
Most people learn the language, the events and their national spirit in kindergartens, schools, universities and, for a few, in PhD lecture-halls. However, from the standpoint of political economy, whether a society is fair or unfair, to a large extent, depends on its distribution of wealth, not on language. Marx (1859) says, in political economy, distribution is distribution of products but before that it is the distribution of the means of production and the distribution of the members of the society among the various types of production. Thus, it is understandable that in the social structure of modern production, dominant values under the influence of ideologies and control of power can decide the social distribution realms.
Moreover, it should be remembered that tendencies of bias distribution are clearly expressed by and reflected in human language, including language in classrooms. And oppressed people also use language as their arms to liberate themselves from the domination. Language never exists for itself. Human beings use languages to give information, to persuade other people, to entertain each other, to maintain relations with other people, to construct mental representations of the world and to express our membership, our individuality, our mood and emotions.
Language does not exist in a vacuum. There are always other people we talk with and display our attitudes with. Language does not only mean grammar, vocabulary or syntax. It rather means what we want to say, to whom, where, when, why, how, and what we keep silent for.
Language is the society with all its dos and don'ts. Especially, the ties between language and other social elements such as culture, education and politics are very firm. Saussure (1959) thought that "different languages cut up reality in different ways" and we know "every language can be said to be a particular system of representation that mirrors, and indeed so reinforces, the 'world' of its speakers." 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Language does not merely mean linguistics but also life.
As a social practice (Fairclough, 2001), language contains values. In different texts, values can be expressed in discourses and other types of representations such as photographs, paintings and artistic products. When values are mentally and physically represented in such ways, they will make up certain symbolic images of a society, including the typical image of, say, “the hero” of a society. This is exactly what the dissertation is looking for in an English course-book.
In 2007, the author’s M. thesis “Exploring ideological power relations in a global document: the Berne convention for the protection of literary and artistic works” was successfully defended. Now, the study of the image of “the standard speaker" of English in a course-book – “American Headway 4-2005”is another research with the similar methodology.