1.- SOCIOCULTURAL
REPRESENTATIONS IN MASS MEDIA AND ELT
Towards a Discourse for Criticism in Language
Teaching:
Analysis of Sociocultural Representations in
Mass Media
Hacia un discurso para la crítica en la
enseñanza de la lengua:
análisis de representaciones socioculturales
en medios de comunicación
Margarita Rosa Vargas Torres*
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de
Caldas, Colombia
PROFILE Vol. 12, No. 2, October 2010. ISSN
1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 179-190
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de
Lenguas Extranjeras
This article was received on
This article states that in order to exercise
citizenship with responsibility, language teachers need to popularize a
discourse for criticism in which students and teachers transcend tacit
knowledge and common sense due to meta-cognition and argumentation and reach
systematic knowledge and procedures posed by experts in the different
disciplines. As illustrated inside, the source and objective of analysis by
means of which this discourse can be contextualized in language teaching is the
language of mass media and all the sociocultural and signifying
practices that it invokes. We conclude that through the analysis of mass media
it is possible to educate students with the basic knowledge and skills
necessary to interact critically in the world.
Key words: Discourse
for criticism, citizenship, public counter-sphere, mass media.
El artículo plantea que, con el propósito de
ejercer su ciudadanía, los maestros de lenguas deben popularizar un discurso
para la crítica en el cual los estudiantes y los profesores trasciendan el
conocimiento tácito y el sentido común mediante la argumentación y la meta
cognición, y alcancen conocimiento y procedimientos sistemáticos planteados por
expertos en las diferentes disciplinas. Como se ilustra en el texto, la fuente
y objeto de análisis mediante el cual se contextualiza este discurso en la
enseñanza de la lengua es el lenguaje de los medios de comunicación y las
prácticas socioculturales y de significación que este provoca. Concluimos que a
través del análisis de los medios es posible educar a los estudiantes con
conocimientos y habilidades básicas necesarias para interactuar en el mundo.
Palabras clave: discurso
para la crítica, ciudadanía, contraesfera pública, medios de comunicación.
Introduction
Nowadays foreign language learning is a
broadly discussed subject in academic settings due to the national policies
that aim to have a bilingual
However, policymakers do not seem to be
interested in the complexities of our educational system that has very
heterogeneous contexts. These contexts go from those bilingual schools attended
by students of middle classes, mainly who have a high socioeconomic status and
live in an academic environment due to their parents’ educational level. They
have opportunities to go abroad and experience the culture of the target
language. These students have what Bourdieu (1967) calls cultural capital and
could have good possibilities of social mobility. The other group corresponds
to those students of public schools. Within this group there is also a wide
range of varieties. Students belonging to it do not have the mentioned cultural
capital because they come from communities that are at risk, with many
socioeconomic problems, with an average language exposure time of 3 hours a
week without extra practice outside the classroom. They live in a non-academic
environment because their parents and relatives are not professional and their
sociocultural environment experience is one of violence, exclusion,
discrimination and poverty. Their opportunities to go abroad are scarce or
non-existent.
From my point of view, an English teacher in
the Colombian context has the ultimate objective of generating the conditions
for all students to think, value, and act with responsibility in the exercise
of their citizenship, understood as the awareness of the obligations and rights
that citizens have in the public sphere. Students and teachers need to be able
to have clear positions about the heterogeneous situation described before and
manifested in issues of public interest such as displacement, pollution,
discrimination, and elections.
A Discourse for Criticism to Achieve the
Construction of the Public Counter-Sphere
The thesis that I defend in this article is
that in order to exercise citizenship with responsibility, teachers need to
popularize a discourse for criticism in which, thanks to meta-cognition and
argumentation, students and teachers transcend tacit knowledge and common sense
and achieve systematic knowledge and procedures used by experts in different
disciplines. In my view, the source and objective of analysis by means of which
this discourse can be contextualized in language teaching is the language of
mass media and all the sociocultural and signifying practices that it
invokes.
Through the analysis of mass media it is possible
to help students think critically i.e. provide them with the basic knowledge
and skills necessary to interact in the world they have to live in and enable
them to interpret the intention of the messages sent by the industries of
communication.
There has been a trend of thinking whose main
interest is working for the popularization of the discourse of criticism. For
instance, Giroux (1990) states that there are two basic conditions for popular
pedagogy to be real: one is having a language of criticism (concepts and
meta-concepts to be selective, documented and informed) and the other is having
a language of possibility (recognition of opportuni- ties that can give origin
to new, alternative projects) and both exist in the context of schools taken as
cultural institutions in which the social surpasses the individual and
education is considered a public discourse. In the same direction, Gee (1989)
states that for literacy to be critical and liberating, students need to be
involved in a secondary discourse (additional to the primary discourse commonly
learned at schools through formal instruction) that goes beyond instrumental
practices and that contests andand opposes dominant discourses.
Gee (2002) continues explaining that in order to achieve more documented
and informed arguments, this discourse has to popularize the language and
procedures used by experts in the
evaluation of problems of knowledge. Thus, it requires a meta-language
(concepts, values, attitudes) particular of the community using it. In the case
of language teach ing from a sociocultural perspective concerned with the
analysis of cultural manifestations coming from mass media, this discourse would
contain concepts such as culture, discrimination, diversity, inclusion,
exclusion, bias, fallacies, argumentation, power, hegemony, ideology, identity
and difference, among others. This discourse is to be used inside and outside
the classroom, in public forums, in research reports, in film clubs, and in any
academic practices that contend for the analysis of media.
From this perspective, language teach ers should start understanding
students’ conceptions,
ideas, and ways of learning in order to grasp the way students think
and their subjectivity in language teaching. Research in this field should be promoted
by educational institutions. However, as Bruner (2000) explains, knowing
students’ ideas is not enough. It is necessary to know what students think
about the way they learn and the reasons for doing it. This is the meta-cognitive
gift that leads students to self-regulate their learning, to be autonomous and
to monitor the way they learn. This also has an advantage and it is that
students think about
knowledge, about how it is produced, its logic and they gain skills to
identify bias in its production.
Bruner (2000) suggests following a contrastive approach aimed to reach
procedures of experts.
In the first place, students’ common sense, subjectivity, wishes, and
affective implications should be approached because that is where systematic knowledge
is rooted. As Lipman (1987), Bruner also asserts that children are able to
understand abstract issues and to follow logical patterns in order to acquire
knowledge.
Traditionally, it has been believed that students learn by imitating
adults, by self-initiating practices and by didactic exposure. However, Bruner
(2000) highlights another aspect that is very relevant in the construction of a
discourse for criticism and cannot be neglected: the importance of interaction,
solidarity, collective aims, dialogue and inclusion. This last one is
understood as recognition and respect for difference in communities. Teach ers
and students contending for the creation of a public counter-sphere need to
have collective alternative projects. Bruner explains that from very early
stages children need to look at their mothers, to interact and to form part of
a group. To explain this insight, he reports an experience in the
and integration. This was a collective and collaborative project in
which students had a clear problem to solve (oil spilling) and they aimed to
reach a final product (addressing multinational companies with a proposal) by
means of argumentation, collaboration and commitment.
In the previous experience there are three fundamental issues for my
proposal: argumentation,
collaboration and project-work (Harris, 2003; Jolibert, 2003; Lipman,
1987; Perelman, 1988; Vygotsky, 1978). The first one has to do with the
development of procedures for students to identify fallacies or weak arguments,
and to question them with counter-arguments supported by reasons that can be
obtained independently or with the help of others. The second is about the
cooperation of students working together and encouraged by the wish to achieve
shared goals that have to be pursued collaboratively. Finally, the third one
deals with students solving a problem that requires the consultation of
different sources and the development of a plan with stages and steps that
require being followed systematically in order to answer a question or achieve
a common goal.
The idea is that by using procedures and a discourse for criticism,
teach ers and students start
varied projects in which debate and reasoning about mass media take
place in tolerant, democratic, challenging and demanding environments which
pave the way for the creation of a counter-public sphere able to oppose the way
in which cultural industries shape ideologies, ways of thinking, and acting.
A Discourse for Criticism in Language Education: The Analysis of
Sociocultural Representations in Mass Media
Figure 1 outlines the main strategies suggested in this section in
order to implement a pedagogical proposal toward the construction of a critical
discourse in language learning and teach ing. The diagram shows that without
neglecting students’ subjectivities, identities and signifying practices, and
through critical analysis of socio-cultural representations of mass media,
teachers can create discursive practices leading to interaction, collaboration
and argumentation that question dominant ideologies and promote democratic, committed
and inclusive ways of student thinking. The proposal is that mass media
comprise the text which gives context within the classroom. In addition, the
symbolic, ideological and subtle complexity
of its messages makes it worthy of analysis. This methodology has the
purpose of identifying
stereotypes, biases, fallacies, and prejudices. It also allows going
to denotative, connotative and ideological levels of interpretation about
marginal cultural manifestations so that students and teachers can build
social, alternative projects.
This paper proposes using mass media for the text to be analyzed and
meaningful context to
provoke critical analysis in language learning and teach ing
processes. But, why mass media? Because in mass media the symbolic and the
political are connected and through them it is possible to understand the way
students feel, think and act; that is, students’ identity. If a public
counter-sphere with an alternative proposal for education is able to appeal to
students’ subjectivities, affective implications and signifying practices, it
can constitute a strong political force in the field of education (Eagleton,
1984). Critical thinking is a source for teach ers and students to defend
themselves against the manipulations of mass media and to
react conscientiously, but also it is a tool for identifying students’
signifying practices (Bernstein,
1996; Gee, 2005; Gee & Allen, 2001).
Consequently, students require analytical tools to question and read
these texts critically. The procedures include reversing stereotypes by means
of transcoding and approaching denotative, connotative and ideological levels
of analysis; designing social and interdisciplinary projects that will allow students
to work collaboratively; and selecting materials that introduce alternative
cultural manifestations in the classroom.
Hall (2003) states that the terrain of cultural studies to which media
analysis belongs is an open
field for teach ers as intellectuals to contribute to the
democratization of society. This is due to the fact that recalling Gramsci’s
words (1976), “in a bourgeois democracy, hegemony is accomplished by means of
persuasion and consent of the marginal or contesting groups of society and not
only by force and authority of the dominant classes” (p .80). Therefore, it is argued
that cultural industries have to consider the reactions, preferences, and
identities of marginal communities in order to be hegemonic in Gramscian terms.
In this sense, Fiske’s contributions (1987) toward the theory of reception are
valid. He explains that television audiences are not passive and participate
actively in the cycle of communication; they are consumers but with their
reactions, they circulate meanings, and can even become producers. In language learning,
the agency of students is evidenced when they select the language and style
they want to use to present their arguments. In many cases, they have to
contest or struggle with academic discourses and choose their own rhetoric or style,
thus constituting themselves performatively through discourse (Canagarajah,
1999).
Hall (2003) illustrates this situation with the reversal that British
producers had to make on the decision of ending with the series Cagney and
Lacey (Barbara & Barbara, 1982) because, supposedly, one of the
characters promoted lesbian behaviour. The women’s movement in
preferences. Hall (2003) and Van Dijk (1997) also suggest different
procedures for identifying
and reversing stereotypes or false generalizations about given
communities as they are presented in popular culture (films, publicity,
television, press, internet, etc.). One is trans-coding or re-signifying previous
beliefs that students may have.
For example, in a language class the problema of racism in the
by appealing to denotative and connotative levels of the language.
Appendix 1 illustrates other methodological proposals or language teach ing
activities that can be used in the language classroom to put into practice a
socio-cultural perspective on language teach ing. Students are provided with
images of black people taken from different sources that entail elements of
history, geography, and culture as they are presented in mass media. For example,
with the analysis of the images of black people in photography such as the ones
presented in the British Press (Hall, 2003) in films such as Bowling for
Columbine (Moore, 2002) on television and in advertising, students start
describing them denotatively by referring to the explicit elements
in those artifacts. Then, in a process of argumentation, students
describe them connotatively,
reporting on contextual elements, emotions, meanings of images, etc.,
and, finally, they have to reach the ideological level in which they have to
identify political elements related to power
relationships and their consequences for society. Different projects
about the diversity of language in
Anglo-speaking countries and in
In this context, the analysis of cultural manifestations of mass
media, the heterogeneity within
and across schools can be managed by taking advantage of the contact
that all students have with the views and perspectives that circulate on
television, radio, publicity, newspapers and all those sources of mass media
that Hall (2003) calls popular culture2. To enable
students to be critical of all the messages that mass media are permanently sending
is a teach er’s obligation that we cannot neglect. The information coming from
these sources is a medium with which to contextualize language topics by making
them meaningful and attractive.
A didactic trend that has had great importante in the implementation
of foreign language learning programs is the project-work methodology (Harris,
2003; Jolibert, 2003). This practice encompasses a sociocultural perspective
because it focuses on meaning and language use rather than on form. This
approach facilitates an interdisciplinary perspective because different subject
matters are taught in the foreign language, and transversal projects that
integrate a problem of knowledge can be introduced. For example, the problem of
pollution could be seen from different disciplines, such as social studies,
sciences and language; consequently, multiple sources have to be consulted and reported
inter-textually.
In this sense, the selection of pedagogical material for language
teach ing and for any area of
knowledge has ideological and political implications. Whether teach
ers are aware or not of these implications, any time they select given material
they are opting ideologically. In her article about the construction of
identity in bilingual schools, Truscott (2002) reports that children in
bilingual schools have stereotyped views about British, American and Colombian
citizens.
They believe that the British are polite, educated, red-haired, and
drink much tea, and Americans are superficial and their views about Colombians
are quite negative (irresponsible, not very honest, etc.). These perceptions
might be the consequence of stereotyped instruction understood as the repeated false
generalization of partial features of those people who shape a hegemonized
ideology, considering no other possibility than the values fostered by the
people with power in the society.
A proposal towards bilingualism should take into account varied
material and those marginal
manifestations should be fore-grounded because he messages that
circulate among the industries f communication and that are received massively
by our students are partial, biased and homogenized. They belong to and
represent the dominant ideology. Students face them spontaneously and most of
the time are permeated by their influence and repeat uncritically what the
media show. Mass media have a double function: cognitive and ideological. With
mass media people are informed (cognitive level), but they are also persuaded,
manipulated
and led to feel a particular way (ideological level). It is necessary
to incorporate the possibility to contrast and make visible what mass media hide.
For example, commercial movies from
Additionally, music and its juvenile varieties can be another source
of analysis. Language classrooms have to be open to students’ likes and
expectations and debates and discussions about them so that students are
invited to bring, present, analyze and defend their favorite bands in front of
their classmates, regardless of the genre they choose. The rest of the class
must tolerate and respect their classmates’ preferences.
Some activities that can be implemented in language classrooms from a
socio-cultural perspective have to do with the use of the ability that Lomas (1999)
calls semiological competence; that is, reading images and interpreting
the polyphonic and polysemic messages of mass media, mainly publicity. He
suggests that teach ers should unfold a methodology to identify aspects such as
denotation and connotation. It means starting from the descriptive, general
level of explicit elements in images. At this level, consensus is easily
reached. Students are given an image of publicity and have to enumerate the
general and evident characteristics. For instance, some features could be an
evening dress or a woman wearing make-up who is slim, beautiful, etc. And then
they have to go to the stage of the connotative level in which students are to
express their feelings and emotions towards the pictures and give the conventional
value assigned by our culture to those elements; for example, the evening dress
means ‘elegance’ and the make-up, vanity.
Mórtola (2001) includes the ideological level in this analysis. At
this stage, students can approach issues regarding female roles in society,
sex, gender or male chauvinism, for example. It is important that, depending on
the proficiency level of the students and their socio-cultural backgrounds, the
teach er has to grade the complexity of the task, select the language items to
be used, determine a scoring system coherent with the methodology and the
complexity of the task. If necessary, code switching can be used with beginners
but without losing the perspective that the most important issues in the
activity are meaning, language use and cultural awareness.
Conclusion
This paper has proposed a comparative approach to media discourse that
starts from students’ personal views, feelings and emotions and continues with
analysis and interpretation of mass
media contents. Students may thus develop critical thinking skills and
tolerance towards opposing views. This process fulfills one of the main
responsibilities of education: giving students strong social and participatory
skills to react, interpret and make reasonable decisions in a society that
demands selective citizens with autonomy of opinion.
The insights presented imply a view that language classrooms must go
beyond teach ing the four
communicative skills. Teach ers are to create a democratic environment
for all students in which a participatory model of language, didactics and
culture that takes mass media representations as sources of information and
analysis is implemented. For this reason, an academic approach to media
discourse is necessary to understand its language and look at its contents
critically, with the view that the overall education of our students for
language teach ing cannot neglect this responsibility.
Throughout this paper we have defended the idea that teaching a
language is teach ing a culture, a way of living, acting and valuing, and our responsibility
as English teach ers is to create a trend of thought that can counteract
instrumental perspectives in language teach ing and contribute to the
transformation of society and the generation of alternative projects. This can
only be achieved by working collectively and collaboratively, making real
Freire’s assertion (1989) that every educative act is also political, which in
this context means that instrumental views in language teach ing have been
proved insufficient and more integral perspectives committed to the
transformation of society are required.
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About the Author
Margarita Rosa Vargas Torres is an English teach er at Universidad
Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. She holds a Masters in Education with
emphasis on university teaching from Universidad Pedagógica Nacional and a Masters
in Applied Linguistics to the teaching of English as a foreign language from
Universidad Distrital. Currently her research interest is on the critical
analysis of mass media and its use in language teachers’ education.
© 2010 by PROFILE
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