ABSTRACT

What images of the world do we find in language textbooks? What countries and continents are favoured, what key problems of the world are mentioned and taken up, what segments of the world’s populations are represented and how, what role is given to the understanding of world history, colonialism and imperialism, what role is given to the understanding of transnational processes? Are there blind spots in the representation of the world? This article challenges the tradition of focusing on the representation of ‘countries’ in language teaching – target language countries and the country of the learners. It takes an explicit global perspective, drawing on a range of critical approaches to the study of culture, society and the world: National studies, citizenship education studies, Cultural studies, postcolonial studies and transnational studies. The article argues that the approaches imply different sets of analytical questions regarding the cultural content of language textbooks. Examples of questions and analyses are taken from textbooks for a number of languages taught in Denmark: English, German and French in lower secondary school and Spanish in upper secondary school.

摘要

我们在语言教科书中能找到什么样的世界图像？哪个国家和大洲受到青睐，世界上哪些主要问题被提及和解决，世界人口的哪些部分被代表，以及如何，对理解世界历史，殖民主义和帝国主义发挥什么作用，赋予什么作用对跨国程序的了解？在世界代表性中是否存在盲点？本文挑战了在语言教学中关注“国家”代表的传统，即目标语言国家和学习者国家。它采用明确的全球视角，借鉴了一系列文化，社会和世界研究的重要方法：国家研究，公民教育研究，文化研究，后殖民研究和跨国研究。文章认为，这些方法暗示了有关语言教科书文化内容的不同分析问题。问题和分析的例子来自丹麦教的多种语言的教科书：初中英语，德语和法语，高中西班牙语。