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A semiotic deconstruction of the construal of affect and attitude education in EFL textbooks published in China
Author
Zhu, Jian Bin
Supervisor
Teo, Peter
Abstract
It is now a common agreement among linguists that discourse analysis inevitably involves analyses of meanings arising from the interplay between multiple meaning-making resources. Like various other communicative contexts, the evolving multimodal pedagogic environment for teaching English as a Foreign Language (henceforth EFL) warrants a social, semiotic, and linguistic explanation. Drawing on the theory of social semiotics and situated within the pedagogic context of EFL education in China, this study aims at illuminating how verbal and visual semiotic resources are co-deployed to construe the curriculum objective of affect and attitude education in a set of EFL textbooks published in China. Specifically, this study focuses on how both verbal and visual semiotic resources are employed by the textbook writers to construe positive attitudes toward the learning of English, China, and foreign cultures, and how the verbiage and image interact in these meaning-making processes.
Based on the discourse analysis of both verbiage and image in 19 EFL textbook extracts, the main findings of this study are as follows:
(1) Abundant positive verbal appraisal resources are employed by the textbook writers to articulate positive attitudes toward learning English, China, and foreign cultures.
(2) Images play an essential role in realizing attitudinal meanings in the EFL textbook excerpts. Most of them are presented in frontal eye-level angles to align the readers’ with represented participants and to evoke their positive attitudes toward learning English, China, and foreign cultures.
(3) In the process of construing the curriculum objective, verbal texts and visual images are generally found working in tandem to articulate similar positive attitudinal meanings. However, verbal and visual attitudinal meanings are also found in dissonance where some dimensions of the visual attitudinal signify an impersonal attitude toward the represented participants and may discourage the viewers to align with them. These findings have significance for both English teaching and textbook producing.
Based on the discourse analysis of both verbiage and image in 19 EFL textbook extracts, the main findings of this study are as follows:
(1) Abundant positive verbal appraisal resources are employed by the textbook writers to articulate positive attitudes toward learning English, China, and foreign cultures.
(2) Images play an essential role in realizing attitudinal meanings in the EFL textbook excerpts. Most of them are presented in frontal eye-level angles to align the readers’ with represented participants and to evoke their positive attitudes toward learning English, China, and foreign cultures.
(3) In the process of construing the curriculum objective, verbal texts and visual images are generally found working in tandem to articulate similar positive attitudinal meanings. However, verbal and visual attitudinal meanings are also found in dissonance where some dimensions of the visual attitudinal signify an impersonal attitude toward the represented participants and may discourage the viewers to align with them. These findings have significance for both English teaching and textbook producing.
Date Issued
2011
Call Number
PE1068.C5 Zhu
Date Submitted
2011