31.2882, Review: Applied Linguistics: Ulum, Köksal (2019)

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Subject: 31.2882, Review: Applied Linguistics: Ulum, Köksal (2019)

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Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2020 16:36:05
From: Nasiba Norova [nasiba.norova001 at umb.edu]
Subject: Ideology and Hegemony of English Foreign Language Textbooks

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-504.html

AUTHOR: Ömer Gökhan  Ulum
AUTHOR: Dinçay  Köksal
TITLE: Ideology and Hegemony of English Foreign Language Textbooks
SUBTITLE: Globally and Locally Written Practices
PUBLISHER: Springer
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Nasiba Norova

SUMMARY

A collaborative work of two scholars, Ömer Gökhan Ulum from Mersin University
and Dinçay Köksal from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, ''Ideology and
Hegemony of English Foreign Language Textbooks” brings a stimulating and
refreshing critical analysis of English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks
to the field of Applied Linguistics. The book is a dissertation project turned
into a monograph by the authors. Accordingly, it follows the structure of a
dissertation, being divided into seven chapters including Introduction,
Literature Review, Methodology, Data Analysis, Findings & Interpretations,
Discussion and Conclusions & Implications. I would highly recommend the book
to anyone interested in the growing field of textbook evaluation, as well as
to all EFL pre-and in-service teachers, university students, Education
ministries of governments and publishing houses who must know the impact of
ideological and hegemonic practices in textbooks.

Chapter 1, Introduction, states a major aim and the significance of the study.
By emphasizing the practical role of textbooks in EFL contexts, the authors
raise an issue of ''hidden agenda'' in the textbooks propagating certain
ideology and hegemonic beliefs on language learners. The authors note the
absence of involvement of students and teachers in the analysis of ideology
and hegemony in EFL textbooks. Accordingly, the study attempts to unravel not
only the ideology and hegemony in the textbooks, but also neglected and
undermined ideologies uncovered in the content by interviewing the teachers
and the students who use those textbooks. The study aims to investigate the
ideologies, value orientations, and hegemonic practices prevailing in globally
and locally produced EFL textbooks. The significance of the study also stems
from the research gap the researchers found while reviewing the literature.
The adopted theoretical framework is Critical theory drawn from
Post-structuralism. The rationale behind their choice is that
“post-structuralism underlines the heterogeneity of the text as well as its
political and ideological aspects” (p. 7). Therefore, in the following
Literature Review chapter, they go over the concepts elucidating the notion of
ideology and hegemony from many perspectives, including politics.

The second chapter of the book, Literature Review, defines the key concepts
that influence the textbook content and stance. The authors' review includes
various topics including globalization, the role of English in the
globalization process, the diversity of Englishes or the development of World
Englishes, the concept of ideology, including some political, linguistic,
economic, and cultural ideologies. All these concepts are tied to the textbook
evaluation process which is also explained in this chapter. As they assert
“Textbooks [include]… representations of political, cultural, economic
negotiations and conflicts. In that sense, textbooks cannot be innocent and
pure” (pp. 42-43). 

The third and the fourth chapters describe the Methodology and Data analysis
processes respectively. The chapters comprise the description of research
design, employed methods, settings, instruments, and involved participants.
The mixed-methods approach was chosen for this study, in which qualitative
(semi-structured interviews and textbook or documentary analysis) and
quantitative data (questionnaire using a Likert scale) was involved. The study
focuses on both descriptive and interpretative phenomenology to examine the
ingrained ideology and hegemony of EFL textbooks. In total 18 EFL textbooks (6
globally written and 12 locally written in Turkey and Iran), 1176 participants
(1014 students and 162 students) were involved. The participants were students
and teachers having affiliation to two preparatory schools of two universities
and five high schools located in the city of Adana, Turkey. All instruments
used for the analysis, including questionnaires for textbook analysis and the
semi-structured interview, were piloted and examined using statistical tools
for reliability and validity purposes.

The fifth chapter includes information on the findings of the data analysis.
The results pertaining to ideological elements, and hegemonic elements
identified from the students’ and teachers’ interview transcripts are
described. The interview analysis and salient coded data are presented
thoroughly. The findings also include the documentary analysis of locally and
globally written EFL textbooks in which they analyzed the textbooks for the
presence of ideological elements pertaining to culture, economy, religion,
history, education, language, sports, politics, law, gender, partialism,
multiculturalism and affirmative action in the textbooks.

The sixth chapter, Discussion, is devoted to discussion of the findings
concerning research questions imposed at the beginning of the study. The
researchers systematically investigated the compounds of ideology and hegemony
in both globally and locally written textbooks used in Turkey and compared and
contrasted their findings with other scholarly work similar to theirs. It is
worth noting that the book is very comprehensive in determining the elements
of ideology and hegemony depicted overtly and covertly in the textbooks. The
major finding of the study is that, the inner-circle countries' cultural
ideologies and hegemonies in globally written textbooks were prevalent, while
expanding-circle countries were mainly present in locally written textbooks
along with the hegemony and ideology of host/local countries (Turkey and
Iran). While discussing a research question on participants’ perceptions about
underlying ideological and hegemonic practices existing in the EFL textbooks,
the chief finding showed a discrepancy in views of student and teacher
populations. The high school and university students’ perceptions and
teachers’ perceptions did not match on many aspects of ideology and hegemony
of the textbooks, thus demonstrating varied pedagogical values and educational
demands/needs. 

The last chapter, Conclusions, reiterates the focus, the objectives, the
research questions, and evaluations of major findings by giving detailed
implications and recommendations to EFL in-service teachers at high school and
university, EFL learners, language policymakers, and the textbook
authors/publishers. 

EVALUATION

There are plenty of strong points of the book that need to be mentioned first.
To begin with, the organization of the book is excellent; all sections are
very clearly organized, and very readable. The literature review encompassing
definitions of key terms associated with a variety of ideological and
hegemonic compounds is well-defined and concise. The review section
effectively brings different economic, political, theoretical, pedagogical
concepts together to clarify the subject matter and its significance for
status quo.  Apparently, the authors intend to make the book accessible to all
kinds of reading audiences and provide very systematic review. Clearly, this
is a plausible aspect of the book as well. Yet, they keep subtle epistemic
stances until the end of the section, and do not clearly indicate the research
gap or the niche in the field of textbook evaluation while examining and
defining ideological and hegemonic components in general. Also, while
introducing the notion of World Englishes (WE) and the countries described in
Kachru’s three circles, the authors convey their opinions subtly regarding WE
ideology in textbooks. Additionally, at the end of the chapter, they provide a
definition of two approaches, a Process-based, and Application based approach
of ideological meaning analysis; yet it is vague how these approaches are
related to their study and how they could be implemented in general. Finishing
up the chapter with these definitions is confusing.

The methodology section is also well organized and coherently put for the
reader to clearly picture the study with the possibility to replicate it, if
one desires to. However, what confused me is to determine who the principal
investigator (PI) or the person who conducted the interviews, collected and
analyzed the data is. By looking at the cover of the book, many assume that it
is a collaborative work of two scholars, yet it is not reflected in the
methodology when they describe the PI and they refer to the person as “He” or
the “Researcher”, for example, “the researcher had worked as an English
teacher at state schools for several years” (p.49). This ambiguity distances
the reader from the writer(s) and generates distrust in relation to
collaborative work. In this chapter, the authors also explain the process of
documentary analysis, i.e. textbook evaluation process, in which they analyze
ideological and hegemonic elements through the checklist suggested by them.
The checklist is neither included in appendices nor described in the
Methodology section and the statements of the checklist remain problematic to
the reader. It is also unclear if the analysis included only a
language/textual component, or a multimodal semiotic approach was applied to
the analysis. The uncertainty deepens when they discuss both images and
textual representation of ideology and hegemony in the textbooks when they
mention the findings in the subsequent chapters. How the checklist functions
in this case is problematic for not only understanding the process of
documentary analysis, but also to implement it for replication purposes.

The chapter I found particularly enlightening is the Discussion section in
which they review their findings and put them in juxtaposition with other
similar works conducted in the area. Thus, they were able to accomplish the
goal they pursued, which is to determine ''what is contained in the textbook
as ideology, (and) what is not contained as well'' (p.3). Accordingly, they
found the topics which were excluded or ignored in the textbooks, such as
''racism, critical thinking, sex education, gender-related issues including
LGTBQ+ population, feminism, poverty and some political issues''. Indeed,
finding out the exclusion of these topics from the textbooks is an exceptional
discovery for the study; however, one wonders whether these topics have to do
with the general scope of the study which is ideology and hegemony. At least,
it remains unclear to the reader. 

Last but not least, the last section comprising conclusive remarks and
implications for a variety of population engaged in education is done very
thoroughly, enumerating recommendations to avoid “ideological and hegemonic”
biases. The implications, in particular, exclusively highlight and exemplify
the role of English and EFL textbooks can play not only in the educational
life of language instructors and learners, but also for their identity
construction and future endeavors. Yet, the researchers failed to mention the
limitations of their work as well as recommendations for the future work to
avoid them. 

To sum up, despite some shortcomings, I would like to reiterate the excellence
of the book. It is very comprehensive and well developed and highly suggested
to read, reflect, and apply to teaching and language learning practice.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I am a first-year Ph.D. student in Applied Linguistics at the University of
Massachusetts Boston, specializing in ESL & bilingual education. I obtained a
BA in English Philology (BSU), an MA in Applied Linguistics (UPV), and an MA
in English: TESL (MNSU). My research interests include how multilingual
speakers use their linguistic and cultural capital to construct their
identities; exploring bilingual speaker-identities through narratives, and
integration of Global Englishes in the ESL writing curriculum, textbook
evaluation. Currently, I am a Research/Graduate assistant and ESL instructor
at UMass Boston.





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