Journal of Language and Politics - Online First

Within English language textbook (ELT) research, studies across national contexts show that neoliberal ideology pervades the textual and visual content of textbooks. However, little attention has been paid specifically to social class and how its representations fit within the neoliberal discourses of ELT textbooks. In this paper, drawing on multimodal critical discourse analysis, we consider how ELT textbooks in Korea represent social class in their visual content. Contrary to earlier research that highlighted the aspirational worlds depicted in ELT textbooks as uniformly middle-class, we show that both white- and blue-collar occupations are represented, but in way that entirely decontextualize them from labor, social relations, and the broader class structures in which they are embedded. We explain this pattern in the context of English language learning in Korea, its huge success as part of neoliberal reforms, and in the current labor-market.

This introductory article to the special issue on representing societies in language teaching textbooks lays out how to analytically approach the data using multimodal critical discourse analysis. Foremost, it explains that we must place the texts into the socio-political context of the societies where they are produced. Doing such critical multimodal analysis is not about the texts per se, but is concerned rather with their role in the social and political functioning of a particular society at a particular time. This is a form of text analysis which is deeply informed by knowledge of those societies and the political and economic situations where texts are being created and deployed. To illustrate this point, the introduction reviews the classic as well as the contemporary studies of textbooks. It ends by laying out how multimodal critical discourse analysis can be used to understand the operation of textbooks within socio-political processes.

This study contributes to the field of research into discursive representations of female versus male politicians by applying Appraisal theory to a natural experiment provided by the publication of two almost identical newspaper articles, where the source of the information was either a female or male political leader. The investigation focuses on the readers’ comments, and reveals that they tend to attribute less agency to the female leader, and to rarely address her using, on the one hand, positive, and on the other hand, abusive language. This is in contrast to her male counterpart who is seen as more agentive and receives some praise, but who is also disproportionately targeted for abuse. The findings provide evidence that gender bias against women in politics persists although it may take less conspicuous forms. They also inform studies into perceptions of gender discrimination which might be less sensitive to its subtler manifestations.

We argue that grassroots participation in multilateral negotiations over norm-setting is important because grassroots discourses differ from those of multilateral organizations. To compare the two, we use sociolinguistic theories that link embodied experience, ideology and discourse. We analyze texts about domestic work from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and a grassroots organization of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body (AMCB). Findings show that AMCB’s commitment to grassroots migrants, and the embodied experiences of its members and leaders, enables their discourses on “decent work for domestic workers” to be more intersectional, more substantive and more critical than the discourses of the ILO. This case illustrates that even when the overarching norms appear to be the ‘same’, the discourses of grassroots and multilateral organizations still offer fundamentally different images of what constitutes “decent work” and what is required to achieve it.

Globally, populism is on the rise. Studies demonstrate how populism is a ‘thin’ ideology that is articulated with ideologies ranging from authoritarianism to its challenges. Here, we examine how two politicians who, at similar times in their careers, represented themselves as inclusive and democratic, yet articulated different incarnations of populism. One of these (Turkish President Erdoğan) has since become an authoritarian populist and the other (Ekrem İmamoğlu), Erdoğan’s political opposition. Both İmamoğlu in 2019 and Erdoğan in 1994 were first elected as Istanbul’s mayor. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyse their public utterances around the times of these mayoral victories. This close reading reveals how discursive strategies are used in Erdoğan’s utterances that articulate the seeds of authoritarian populism while İmamoğlu, 25 years later, uses populism to challenge these. This study offers insights into how populism can be employed to both articulate and challenge authoritarian populism.

Immigration is one of the most contentious issues of our time. Prior research about immigration reform discourse in Western Europe and the United States has focused primarily on the important role that populist rhetoric has played in recent years. The rise of the populist radical right has led to a shift in what is sayable and has normalized explicitly racist and xenophobic statements that were formerly taboo. President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, in particular, has received a lot of scholarly attention. This article contributes to this scholarly discourse by focusing on congressional debates about immigration. More specifically, this article is interested in understanding how the Republican party appealed to voters that were not swayed by Trump’s populist rhetoric and argues that their emphasis on traditional values and compassionate conservatism was a particularly important rhetorical strategy.