Natia Botkoveli

ABSTRACT

This paper aims at examining the processes of Soviet identity construction in English language textbooks published from 1930 to 1991 in Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (GSSR). Research on foreign-language textbooks has pointed out their ideologically laden nature. As Wang has put it, “textbooks are never a neutral vehicle in forming and transforming knowledge” (2016: 2), as they always serve the interests of certain groups. The highly ideological context of foreign language teaching and learning in the Soviet Union presents us with an interesting setting to investigate how locally-produced representations of the foreign language and culture help to construct two imagined communities (Anderson 1991, Kanno & Norton 2003) of speakers at once, i. e. community of learners and community of foreign language speakers. My paper will focus precisely on the discursive constructions of Soviet vs “English-speaking” communities in English-language textbooks and how they are supposed to shape learners’ affiliation and engagement with each of these imagined communities. The data for this case study comes from a corpus of 23 English-language textbooks, published between 1930 and 1991 in the GSSR and used in secondary-levels of education (grades 5 through 10 or 11). The multimodal analysis of these textbooks reveals that the target culture and English-speaking community is constructed via ideological juxtaposition of the Soviet lifestyle vs Western culture. The paper shows how the English language textbooks were being used as tools to form imagined communities and highlights the ways of constructing the icon of the perfect Soviet citizen in opposition with “the Capitalists”.

Keywords

Soviet textbooks; Georgia; Teaching English; Linguistic ideologies; Imagined communities; Linguistic propaganda

References

1. Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso.

2. Kanno, Y. & B. Norton. (2013). Imagined Communities and Educational Possibilities: Introduction. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2(4), 241–249.

3. Wang, D. (2016). Learning and becoming: Ideology and national identity in textbooks for international learners of Chinese. Cogent Education, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2016.1140361.