A Critical Discourse Analysis of Amuzesh e Novin e Zaban e Farsi within van Leeuwen’s (2008) Framework

Textbooks play an important role in education. They need to be analyzed and evaluated critically. In teaching a foreign language, the selection of textbooks is necessary; therefore,  it is important to evaluate them. The purpose of this study was to challenge the ideology in the analyzed textbooks, within van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework, and to make the authors and teachers aware of their biases.The materials were eight units of Amuzesh e Novin e Zaban e Farsi series, selected randomly, analyzed within van Leeuwen’s critical discourse (2008) framework. The results showed that inclusion was used many times and on the contrary exclusion did not have many frequencies. This signifies the lack of secrecy. Iranian nationality, Islamic-Iranian culture and Islam were emphasized. The poor have been paid attention to. This prompts a feeling of solidarity among Iranian people. But gender discrimination could be observed. It suggested one of the shortcomings of these series. The deletion of ethnicities and subcultures was observed. Although the impacts of Arabic on Persian were obvious, Farsi was admired, too. Iranian conventions, like Nowruz were also appreciated. One of the applications of this research is to contribute to the improvement of the textbooks written for teaching Persian to the speakers of other languages. Moreover, such studies may show the implicit impacts of textbooks on the addressees, and cause the production of less biased textbooks. If there is less bias in the textbooks, none-Persian speakers will trust them more. Consequently, this study helps the spread of Persian and Iranian culture.
Extended Abstract:
Introduction
The role of textbooks in teaching languages is significant. Therefore, analyzing these textbooks is essential. As Tomlinson (2013) says, teaching materials are necessary for students to learn better. The purpose of this study was to reveal the hidden ideology in the Amuzesh e Novin e Zaban e Farsi series, a textbook for teaching the Persian language to speakers of other languages. The analysis was done within van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework. This analysis might help teachers and learners to have a broader vision of the implicit aims of this series. They can almost be aware of the goals of the author, and consequently realize the representations of the social actors, considering their gender, ethnicity, race, and religion, in the series. The research questions of the study were as follows:

What is the ideology dominating the contents of the Amuzesh e Novin e Zaban e Farsi series?
What are the most and the least frequent components of van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework represented in the series?

  The research was a critical discourse analysis of the content of the textbooks. Critical discourse analysis, as an approach to discourse, surveys the influence of text on creating, maintaining, and validating injustice in society (Van Leeuwen, 2015). This study took a qualitative approach. However, the frequency of the representations of the components of this framework was also important. The components of the framework are shown in Figure 1.
Several studies on textbooks have been done within critical discourse analysis frameworks. Yarmohammadi et al (2006) analyzed the representation of social actors in second and third grade high school and pre-university English textbooks using van Leeuwen’s (1996) framework. Although in these textbooks the frequency of the inclusion component was more than the exclusion one for both male and female social actors, for women, suppression was used more than backgrounding. Therefore, there was a discrimination against women.
Figure 1. Social Actor Network (Van Leeuwen, 2008, p.52)
Methodology
The content analyzed in this study was eight units of the Amuzesh e Novin e Zaban e Farsi series written by Ehsan Ghabool. This series contains five volumes. Overall there are 27 units in this series, and for the selection, simple random sampling was used. Auditory exercises were also scrutinized. The method of analysis in this research was content analysis based on van Leeuwen’s (2008) critical discourse analysis framework. All of the selected sentences were analyzed based on this framework. Two weeks after the first analysis, a second analysis was done to check for the interrater reliability. The percentage of agreement was about 88%. Van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework was applied in the analysis of the content, and the components of some parts are given later in this paper. The words containing social actors were underlined and the related components were written below them. The table of frequency was also provided.
Results
Some parts of the results of the analysis are presented here. The words containing social actors were underlined and the related components were written below them. Then, the tables of frequency of the representations of the components of the framework were given.
A sample of the sentences and the components are as follows. This is a selection of the first lesson of the fifth volume of the Amuzesh e Novin e Zaban e Farsi series.
ایران و اسلام
without any social actor
 علاقه‌ی ایرانیان به دین مقدس اسلام از همان آغاز ظهور این دین مقدس شروع شد
                        suppression                  activation, classification, association
 
یکی از موفقیت‌های اسلام این است که ملل مختلف با زبان‌ها و فرهنگ‌های گوناگون، آن را پذیرفته‌اند.
suppression      utterance autonomization        association, activation, participation   suppression
A sample of the tables of frequencies is as follows:
 
Table2. Some of the components of van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework and their frequencies




Activation


Passivation


Backgrounding


suppression




783


166


459


105




classification


Physical identification


Functionalization


possessivation




783


166


459


105




Relational identification


Appraisement


Participation


Association




101


102


678


105




As shown in Table 2, the frequencies of activation (783) and participation (678) were more than those of other components, and after them, backgrounding (459) and non-discourse-oriented (302) were the most frequent ones, respectively. Components such as detitulation, inversion, distillation, and connotation were never applied.  According to the results of the analysis of the first unit of the first volume, the inclusion component was applied for male social actors more than female ones. The roles were given to women and girls going to school or the market. Only once a mother goes to an office. But most of the time, the father goes to an office. For male social actors, the backgrounding component was used more whereas for female social actors, the suppression was applied more. In fact, there was discrimination against women. This fact is similar to the results of Yarmohammadi et al’s (2006) study in which the analyzed textbooks showed men going to work and women making breakfast. The association component was used more for women in the seventh unit of the first volume. It represents intimacy between them. Another component meaning spatialization was used for the word “mosque”. It represents Islam and Muslims. So other religions were not mentioned. In the ninth unit of the second volume, the classification component represents some social actors without mentioning their gender such as “elder people” and “children”.  It seems that they were important for the author. Taking care of old people and educating children were paid attention to. In the first unit of the third volume, there was not any gender discrimination. The honorification component was used for “Jesus Christ”. So, it can be said that there is a representation of Christianity.
In the fourth unit of the fifth volume, the poor and the rich people were differentiated radically. It means that the rich people were cruel and the poor were oppressed.  In the fifth unit of the fifth volume, spatialization was also used for the words such as“class” and “university”. It showed how teaching and education are important. The importance of the Persian language was clear in the utterance autonomization component.  In all of the selected units, the frequency of inclusion was more than exclusion, and in almost all of them, there was gender discrimination against women.
 
Conclusion
The objective of this research was to analyze the representation of social actors in Persian textbooks within van Leeuwen’s (2008) critical discourse analysis framework. This framework has some components related to different social actors in texts. The components were scrutinized and the frequencies of them were counted. Overall, the reflection of inclusion was more than exclusion in the textbooks, showing that the author in this series attempted to be trustworthy and honest to the non-Persian learners of Persian. Despite this, there was some bias in it. There was a considerable difference between the representation of the female social actors and the male ones and it was in concordance with Yarmohammadi et al (2006)’s findings regarding this aspect. However, Dabbagh (2016) believes that it is related to the Iranian culture. Ethnicity and cultural differences were almost ignored. This might be evidence of bias against these social factors. Islam was also observed more than other religions practised in Iran. However, this might be because this series has been published in Mashhad which is one of the sacred Islamic cities in Iran. 
There was an ideology of racial, cultural, and religious integration. Iranians were included more than other Persian speakers living in other countries. Maybe it was because this series has been published in Iran. Consequently, this series was a projection of an ideal country. It means that the author has tried to show justice and all of the positive aspects of Iranians. Concerns for the poor, science, education, and customs are all the ideals of Iranians represented in the Amuzesh e Novin e Zaban e Farsi series.
Conflict of Interest
There was no conflict of interest in this research.
 
Acknowledgment
Appreciation goes to all the people who helped us in doing this research, in particular Dr. Jalal Rahimian, who is a professor of linguistics in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at Shiraz University.