As I completed the readings for this week, one important concept stood out to me: the power of visual text and imagery. Some people say a picture’s worth a thousand words, and given the evidence provided by Taylor-Mendes and Holliday et al., I think I agree with that saying. Taylor-Mendes’s article shed light on the use of images in EFL textbooks to perpetuate racial and cultural stereotypes. She claims that these images show race as divided by continent, often offering favorable portrayals of wealthy white people and displaying black people as poor and powerless. These images help comprise the dominant discourse of power that Holliday et al. define as “ways of talking and thinking about something which have become naturalized to the extent that people conform to them without thinking” (46). Holliday et al. provide multiple examples of how the media promotes essentializing and othering through their use of language and images in news reports, cartoons, etc. So, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for EFL students to develop accurate impressions of English-speaking countries. As educators, I think we have to do our best to help students become critical consumers of information. We can provide counter discourse to challenge the cultural and racial misconceptions that get passed on through our textbooks and media resources.
After doing the readings this week, I decided to test Taylor-Mendes’s claims about images in textbooks, by examining a variety of English textbooks that I currently use as resources for my teaching. Even though I don’t teach in an EFL context, I was curious to find out if the books I have reflect Taylor-Mendes’s findings. Approximately half of the books did indeed match what she had described. I saw pictures of African Americans standing outside of a homeless shelter, Asians walking through a crowded subway station, and white men involved in an official business meeting. Some of these textbooks even showed pictures of people in segregated settings (for example, African Americans interacting with each other instead of with a mixed racial group). However, I was happy to find that the other half of my books seemed to portray a wide variety of races interacting with each other in a wide variety of settings. For example, I noticed pictures of African Americans graduating from college and Southeast Asians enjoying fine dining in a fancy restaurant.
Later, after looking at my textbooks, I thought about all the video clips that I use to teach. (I often show students short clips from TV sitcoms, movie trailers, and/or news programs.) Even though I consciously try to choose clips that portray racial groups and cultures in an equitable way, I realize that I am also a victim of naturalized discourse. For example, I recently taught a lesson on fashion and showed my students a short clip from a Project Runway fashion show. I paused the clip frequently, and students practiced using new vocabulary to describe what the models were wearing. All in all, it was a successful lesson; however, I realized later that all of the models were white—and I didn’t even think about their race as I chose to use the video in class! I wonder what kind of message that sent my students (none of whom are white) about beauty in the United States.
As a teacher, I want to follow Holliday et al.’s advice to “take a critical stance towards our taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world (including ourselves)” (191), and I think carefully choosing images for students to see is a good place to start. I may not be able to replace all the textbooks I use, but I can make students aware of what the images portray and how those portrayals may or may not be accurate.
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