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A corpus-based analysis of textbooks used in the orientation course for immigrants in Germany: Ideological and pedagogic implications

A corpus-based analysis of textbooks used in the orientation course for immigrants in Germany:... Abstract Contextualized within immigrants’ acquisition of specialized knowledge about the host country at the institutional level, this article examines a 64295-word corpus of textbooks written for participants of the orientation course in German politics, history and culture. Corpus-based techniques (“keyness,” collocation and qualitative examination of concordance lines) are deployed to explore the corpus. The findings reveal that the collocational patterns of the identified keywords construct particular world views vis-à-vis Germany. For instance, the keyword DDR (German Democratic Republic (GDR), aka East Germany) frequently co-occurs with negatively connoted lexis while collocates of the keywords denoting present-day Germany (e.g., Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany) and Staat (nation, country, state)) facilitate the portrayal of Germany as a nurturing welfare state that is popular among foreigners. It is argued that such discursively-construed opposition between the “bad” GDR and the “good” Federal Republic of Germany helps to legitimize the German reunification. Furthermore, it is found that certain keywords (e.g., Sie (you), Kurs (course, class) and z.B. (e.g.)) are “metadiscourse resources” ( Hyland, 2005 ). Their pedagogic effects are discussed in relation to the ideological implications of the research findings. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Language and Cultural Education de Gruyter

A corpus-based analysis of textbooks used in the orientation course for immigrants in Germany: Ideological and pedagogic implications

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by the
ISSN
1339-4584
eISSN
1339-4584
DOI
10.1515/jolace-2016-0030
Publisher site
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Abstract

Abstract Contextualized within immigrants’ acquisition of specialized knowledge about the host country at the institutional level, this article examines a 64295-word corpus of textbooks written for participants of the orientation course in German politics, history and culture. Corpus-based techniques (“keyness,” collocation and qualitative examination of concordance lines) are deployed to explore the corpus. The findings reveal that the collocational patterns of the identified keywords construct particular world views vis-à-vis Germany. For instance, the keyword DDR (German Democratic Republic (GDR), aka East Germany) frequently co-occurs with negatively connoted lexis while collocates of the keywords denoting present-day Germany (e.g., Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany) and Staat (nation, country, state)) facilitate the portrayal of Germany as a nurturing welfare state that is popular among foreigners. It is argued that such discursively-construed opposition between the “bad” GDR and the “good” Federal Republic of Germany helps to legitimize the German reunification. Furthermore, it is found that certain keywords (e.g., Sie (you), Kurs (course, class) and z.B. (e.g.)) are “metadiscourse resources” ( Hyland, 2005 ). Their pedagogic effects are discussed in relation to the ideological implications of the research findings.

Journal

Journal of Language and Cultural Education – de Gruyter

Published: Sep 1, 2016

References

  • Shaping a new society : Immigration integration and schooling in Germany
    Wegmann
  • How gender fair are German schoolbooks in the twenty - first century An analysis of language and illustrations in schoolbooks for mathematics and German
    Moser
  • Discourse particles in corpus data and textbooks : The case ofwell
    Lam
  • On the F word : A corpus - based analysis of the media representation of feminism in British and German press discourse Discourse
    Jaworska
  • Definitions in science lectures
    Flowerdew
  • Aspects of vocabulary knowledge in German textbooks
    Neary