Monday, May 4, 2015

Illustrating Modern Languages

Although textbooks have long included visual elements, these have become more prevalent in recent years, as Bezemer & Kress (2009) confirm.  Textbooks, from elementary to undergraduate, manipulate typography, color, and composition to make attractive page layouts and utilize text boxes, photos, charts, graphs, diagrams, and drawings to frame concepts and facilitate learning. However, visual elements are used in different ways for different pedagogical levels and within different disciplines. Modern language textbooks make a particularly an interesting site of investigation because with exemplification of language and culture as key pedagogical goals, verbal and visual elements are closely intertwined. Even in higher education, language textbooks tend to be colorful and lavishly illustrated with photos and line drawings.  Besides illuminating concepts and illustrating vocabulary words, visuals can also convey information about the customs, culture, geography, and social values associated with the target cultures, as well offering idealized representations of average speakers.  Different types of visuals serve different communicative and pedagogical goals.  They also convey different underlying messages about culture and the degree to which the language learner as viewer may be similar to or different from members of the target culture.
This study explores how two types of illustration—photos and line drawings—each play different yet complimentary roles in language pedagogy.  By surveying a small sample of introductory textbooks for undergraduate courses in Spanish and French, we can examine the ways that each type of visual is used to accomplish curricular goals. By doing an analysis of representative images of each type, we can also see how the two types of visuals make statements about culture, social class, and identity, sometimes obscuring the differences between the mainstream North American culture of the learner and the target culture, while at other times highlighting differences, emphasizing instead stereotypes of the colorful and exotic.
Significance
Considering the role that textbooks play in shaping course goals and disciplinary expectations, textbooks are an under-researched yet complex genre, especially since the target market is arguably the the instructors who choose the textbook just as much as it is the students who use it (Hyland, 2004).  However, some studies have looked at how visuals have been used in textbooks in various disciplines and at various levels, such as secondary English (Bezemer & Kress, 2009), primary and secondary science (Dimopoulos, Koulaidis, & Sklaveniti, 2003), college science (Darian, 2001; Rybarczyk, 2011), and American history (Masur, 1998).  A few articles have also looked at how visuals can be used in foreign language pedagogy, primarily making suggestions on how teachers can use visuals to supplement their lessons.  Bush (2007), for example, argued pictures could facilitate the acquisition of both vocabulary learning and cultural knowledge.  Kearney (2009) focused on use of images to teach culture. One study also looked at how visuals were in English as a foreign language textbooks in China (Chen, 2010), but visuals in modern language textbooks for North American college students have so far seen little research attention.
Scope of research
In order to understand how visuals are typically used in undergraduate modern language textbooks, I examined four undergraduate modern language textbooks published in the last ten years.  These were two French textbooks, Mais Oui!: Introductory French and Francophone Culture, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2009, and Motifs: An Introduction to French, published by Heinle Cengage in 2011, and two Spanish textbooks, ¡Anda!: Curso Elemental, published by Pearson/Prentice Hall in 2009, and Plazas: Lugar de Encuentros, published by Thomson/Heinle in 2005.  Spanish and French have the highest enrollment among foreign languages taught in American universities, with Spanish making up 51.4% and French 12.9% of the total enrollment for all foreign languages, according to Modern Language Association statistics for 2009 (Furman, Goldberg & Lusin, 2010).  It is reasonable to assume other foreign language textbooks offered by major educational publishers, such as German, Italian or Japanese textbooks, would follow similar patterns for their use of visuals, but even if that is not the case, most North American foreign language students are encountering Spanish or French textbooks. 
To gain a general idea of what types of visuals were used and how much reliance was placed on each type of visual, I surveyed the first 200 pages of all four texts, counting each clearly distinguishable visual object, namely photos, drawings, maps and the sort of graphs one might find on an infogram.  Excluded were recurring decorative elements such as headings, color bars and text boxes, and tables with information not strongly distinguished from other lesson content, such as tables of conjugations or exercises for students to complete.  The most visually-rich text was ¡Anda!, where 139 pages or 69.5% of the 200 sample pages included one or more photos, drawings, maps or graphs.  The two French textbooks both had 56% of the pages containing these visual elements.  In the least visual text, Plazas, only 46% of the sampled pages contained photos, drawings, maps or graphs.  Nevertheless, photos and drawings were used very widely in all four textbooks.  The breakdowns can be seen in table 1.  Although all four texts used each type of visual, drawings and photographs were used most widely, with drawings slightly edging out photos in all textbooks but one.  Because maps and graphs make up on a small percentage of all visuals, I did not analyze them further.
Table 1: Visual Breakdown for Textbooks
Photos
Drawings
Maps
Graphs
TOTAL
Photos
Drawings
Maps
Graphs
Anda
151
146
15
5
317
47.63%
46.06%
4.73%
1.58%
Mais Oui
115
161
5
2
283
40.64%
56.89%
1.77%
0.71%
Motifs
144
214
2
1
361
39.89%
59.28%
0.55%
0.28%
Plazas
90
96
11
1
198
45.45%
48.48%
5.56%
0.51%

It is fair to assume that all textbooks use visuals for both aesthetic and pedagogic purposes.  However, identifying which purpose is served by each visual is likely not possible, especially since a given visual can serve multiple purposes.  For example, a line drawing illustrating a new set of vocabulary or a photograph of a cultural artifact also enhances the overall visual appeal of the text.  Indeed, it is possible to argue that an aesthetically pleasing presentation increases positive affect and probably enhances learning.  Nevertheless, many visuals do serve an identifiable pedagogical purpose, and different types of visuals are uniquely suited to being used in different ways in foreign language teaching.    
Visuals and pedagogical purposes
Different types of visuals tend to be used in similar places in lessons and for similar purposes. In all four books, new chapters begin with title pages with large photos, often setting a topic for a chapter, such as housing, family, food or holidays.  Plazas differs slightly in that each chapter introduces a different country or region rather than a topic, but the title pages still use a large photo to introduce each place.  With very few exceptions, in the textbooks that I surveyed, new vocabulary is introduced with line drawings, and this tends to occur at the beginning of lessons.  According to Bush (2007), the use of pictures for vocabulary teaching has a long history, dating back to at least to the beginning of the 20th century, and contemporary research has suggested that visuals can speed up vocabulary learning and increase retention.  Illustrations, generally line drawings, can also display everyday scenarios where language might be used, another feature that often occurs at the beginning of new lessons.  Photos, on the other hand, seem to convey information about the customs, culture, geography, and social values of the countries associated with the languages, as well offering idealized representations of average speakers.  Although line drawings do include cultural elements, these more often convey universal human traits and behaviors, probably in an attempt to translate concepts as unambiguously as possible.  Photos frequently accompany readings, which tend to occur near the ends of lessons, and often, therefore, at the ends of chapters.  Line drawings are used in exercises more frequently than photos are, but sometimes photos are used to illustrate an exercise without directly connecting to the questions.  The predictability of placement for each type of visual relates to its suitability to the pedagogical purpose. 
Line drawings
Non-photographic illustrations are widely used in foreign language texts, as already illustrated in the statistics from the survey (Table 1).  I have chosen to call these line drawings because they usually have clearly defined black outlines and limited to no shading, although most do have color.  Many illustrations sit direct on the page with no background or frame.  In other words, the illustrations used in foreign language texts lack the diverse artistic range of illustration used in storybooks or even science textbooks. It is rare to find a line drawing without a clear-cut pedagogical purpose, typically to introduce vocabulary or to reinforce vocabulary in exercises.  Some textbooks used drawings more frequently to introduce vocabulary while other textbooks used it more frequently in exercises.  These two combined uses, however, made up the majority of for line drawings in all texts.  The breakdown for the four textbooks can be seen in Table 2.
Table 2: How Line Drawings are Used
TOTAL
Vocab
%
Ex
%
Vocab+ ex
Anda
146
72
49.32%
35
23.97%
73.29%
Mais Oui
161
69
42.86%
77
47.83%
90.68%
Motifs
214
144
67.29%
47
21.96%
89.25%
Plazas
96
44
45.83%
47
48.96%
94.79%

What this suggests is that line drawings are generally used to illustrate generate clear-cut semantic connections for learners.  When drawings are used to teach vocabulary, words are sometimes redundantly labeled but not always.  In other words, many illustrations in a modern language textbook involve a dialogic relation with the text, where the visual and verbal elements exist in a complementary relation, each adding part of the needed meaning.  The image does not merely illustrate the text.  In other words, to use a term from Barthes (1977/2004), there is a relay relationship between the verbal label in the target language as new information paired to the image portraying a familiar concept. Most frequently, in fact, vocabulary is taught by labeling items in a scene.  An example is Mais oui!, p. 91 (Figure 1). This page shows two rooms, a bedroom and a living room, each with various objects labeled. No English translations are given and the new words are not listed elsewhere on the page. 
Figure 1:
Photos, in contrast, are usually anchored to texts in foreign language texts, meaning that “the text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image, causing him to avoid some and receive others… It remote-controls him toward a meaning chosen in advance” (Barthes, 1977/2004, p. 156).  The photos, thus, serve as illustrations with the themes of the adjacent text suggesting what elements of the photo should be salient to the viewer. Some textbooks attach captions or questions to photos, but in general students are less frequently bidden to extract specific meanings from photos compared with line drawings. 
In foreign language lessons, vocabulary is often taught in semantic sets based on theme or topic.  As already mentioned, words may be organized within a scene, such as a street, a classroom, a table setting, or a family tree.  Similarly, words can name parts of something, such as a computer, a car, or the human body.  Arnheim (1969/2004) offers an explanation of why line drawings are particularly effective as part of a scene or arranged in semantic sets, as is usually done in foreign language textbooks, since placing objects in the contexts with which people usually associate them makes identification easier and more efficient.  Kress and van Leeuwen (2009) divide such visual arrangements into two types, namely classificational processes, i.e. in taxonomies like family trees, and analytical processes, where participants are shown in part-whole relationships.  In either case, the structures organize semiotic information and make new words more salient and therefore easier to remember.  Rather than simply listing words as they might be encountered in a set of flash cards, the terms are visually arranged on the page as a set and the relationships between parts or elements exemplified.  Again, this can be observed by looking at Figure 1. Classification schemes are usually incidental in exercises, however.  In other words, words in the original vocabulary set can recur in exercises, but they are not usually organized in ways that explicate the semantic relationships.  After all, here students are expected to recall the words without much prompting. In fact, both photos and line drawings are used in exercises at different times, though line drawings are more frequent in all the textbooks studied. 
Another way that most textbooks use line drawings is to illustrate dialogues.  Chen (2010) found a widespread use of cartoon characters in Chinese EFL textbooks and the frequent use of speech bubbles to create dialogic relationships in the text.  The North American modern language textbooks use a similar technique, though some textbooks use a whimsical style while others draw figures in a more sober style.  In ¡Anda!, for example, just over 20% of the line drawings used in the textbook were in dialogues.  All four textbooks did use drawings for this purpose, but occasionally photos were also used for this purpose, mostly in Motifs.  Using line drawings makes it easy for a textbook to indicate the setting and participants in a conversation, adjusting the context and content to the vocabulary presented in the lesson.  Line drawings allow relevant details such as the time of day, the formality of the situation and the age of the participants to be made clear without confusing learners with the sorts of incidental details that might be shown in photos. 
In fact, drawings are uniquely suited for highlighting salient details of a scene or object while excluding less important details, a feature that makes them good for illustrating dialogues, teaching vocabulary and triggering recall, all the ways that foreign language textbooks prefer to use drawings.  Comic books and graphic novels also depend on abstracting out the most visually salient features of objects and individuals, as Scot McCloud explains in Understanding Comics (1994).  “When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its ‘essential meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t” (p. 30).  Similarly, in a study of an anatomy atlas, Kim Sawchuk, Nicholas Woolridge and Jodie Jenkinson (2011) found that line drawings were much better at capturing salient anatomical features compared with photographs.  The authors ascribe this to the psychology of vision, in which “just one of the three physiological ‘channels’ of visual information, that of light and dark, provides virtually all the information necessary to decode complex real-world scenes” while the richer detail of photographs adds “unnecessary visual complexity” (p. 455).  Although much less detail is needed to call up an appropriate semantic concept for foreign language students compared with teaching the intricate relationships between bones, muscle fibers, nerves and blood vessels to medical professionals, the principle still applies.  Too much information can be confusing.  Arnheim (1969/2004) also discusses this problem.  “The more particular a concept, the greater the competition among its traits for the attention of the user” (p. 142).  Stylized and simplified art, then, allows “the advantage of singling out particular properties with precision” (p. 143).
¡Anda!, 83 is an exception that proves the rule (Figure 2).  This page is one of the very few pages in the textbook sample where new vocabulary is illustrated through photographs.  Of the six images represented here, only one is unambiguous.  In the shopping picture, for example, the body language might prove distracting, and the same is true for the picture of listening to music.  It is unlikely that the shopping picture is attempting to convey “pointing” since that is could not be one of the “sports and pastimes that Mexican students of the UNAM enjoy,” but the boy reclining on the sofa could easily be “relaxing,” especially since the earbuds are barely visible in the tiny picture and it is difficult to tell if the item on the floor is a CD cover or another piece of printed material.  The most ambiguous picture in the set, however, is “tomar el sol,” or in other words, “taking in the sun”. The most salient element here is the large and lavishly decorated building in the background.  It is true that two or three exceptionally tiny figures in the foreground appear to be sitting on the grass, but others look like they are simply milling around.  Furthermore, while the weather appears pleasant enough, the sun is nowhere in sight.  Depending on previously learned language, consulting a dictionary or working through the pictures in class could clear up the difficulties, but it is unusual for language textbooks to teach vocabulary by using photographs with contingent ambiguities such as these.

Figure 2:
 If, as McCloud argues, cartoons and line drawings abstract out the particular and leave the essential and universal, for the same reason, drawings are not usually the best vehicle to convey cultural information where contingent detail creates richer and more vivid impressions and feels like a better simulation of real life.  Social semiotics uses the idea of modality to relate the truth value of a linguistic or visual statement (van Leeuwen, 2005).  Cartoons and line drawings offer an abstract modality. “The more an image represents the deeper ‘essence’ of what it depicts or the more it represents the general pattern underlying superficially different specific instances, the higher its modality from the point of view of abstract truth” (p. 168).  However, for everyday visual purposes, photographs tend to offer a higher level of “naturalistic modality” (p. 368) because a range of features align to make photographs feel more like the real world—degree of detail, clarity of background, color saturation, contrast, and so on.  By pretending to open a window into the world of the target language and culture, photographs give the viewer a voyeuristic sense of participation in the same way that travel guides and tourist brochures do.
Photos
Both photos and line drawings, along with all other types of visuals, help make modern language textbooks more aesthetically appealing.  Photos differ from line drawings, however, in ways that make each especially suited to different pedagogical roles.  If the reduced ambiguity of line drawings make them well-fitted to teach and review vocabulary, photos are useful for evoking more nuanced responses.  For that reason, photos serve two important roles in foreign language textbooks.  First, photos are used to frame topics/themes, a role frequently seen in the introduction to new chapters or units.  Second, photos can more easily convey complex cultural information, making them preferred as general illustrations and particularly preferred to illustrate reading texts.  In Arnheim’s terms, then, photographs can function not only as pictures but as symbols (1969/2004).  As pictures, they capture various details and qualities, such as what one Parisian café looks like, and as symbols, serve as representatives of essence, of what it means to be French, for example.  The symbolism of photos tends to be created through juxtapositions and contrasts, as Burgin (1976/1999) argues.  These juxtapositions can occur within the frame of a single image or through the siting photos next to each other in a layout.  In any case, photographs are not slices of reality, but generate ideological framings.
The photos used in foreign language textbooks have a fair degree of variety, but also follow predictable patterns in distribution, content, and pedagogical deployment.   Photographs tend to be used on chapter or unit title pages, to accompany readings near the ends of chapters and to illustrate exercises or cultural points following the instructional materials at the beginning of lessons.  Except for the large pictures used on title pages, most pictures are small, occupying less than 1/8 of a page.  Frequently they occur in sets, for example, in exercises. 
Photographs in all four texts also portray many of the same subjects.  During my survey of the first 200 pages of the textbooks, I classified photographs as containing cultural information of the following types: architecture or monuments, typical scenery, cultural activities, works of art or cultural artifacts, food, representative speakers (either anonymous or labeled with names), celebrities or famous individuals associated with the culture, cultural activities such as celebrating holidays, playing sports, dining, shopping, and finally, ethnic color (usually members of minority groups wearing typical costumes).  Obviously, classifying images in this way involved making judgment calls.  For example, would a picture of students playing soccer be seen as an unmarked instances of people playing sports anywhere or was it an attempt to convey that soccer is a typical sport for students in France or Columbia, a preferred pastime in this culture?  In general, I assumed the latter unless the photo appeared particularly unmarked, say a hand holding a cell phone or a classroom scene indistinguishable from a North American one. These photographs that seemed to lack cultural intent were classified separately.  Although making these judgments is an imperfect process, it is clear that most photos do convey information about the artifacts, customs, activities, or ethnicities associated with the target culture and language.  Using this approach, I calculated that photos with novel cultural content ranged from 73% to 96% of the photos used in the given book. 
Not surprisingly, people are represented frequently in the photos; in fact, more than 50% of all photos are medium shots or close-ups of people. Of these, one third are pictures of celebrities or notable figures, and two thirds are simply representative speakers of the language being taught.  People are also frequently represented as engaged in cultural activities such as shopping, dining, playing sports, and so on.  These types of pictures make up just under 20% of all photos.  Pictures of architecture—particularly famous buildings—are also common, much more common than pictures of scenery.  In the sample, pictures of architecture make up nearly 15% of all photos whereas pictures of scenery make up less than 4%.  This makes sense when one considers that a major goal of photos in modern language textbooks is to generate impressions of culture and setting.  Scenery only gives clues about setting whereas architecture includes cultural and historical information, and indeed, displays cultural achievements.  Furthermore, some of the buildings represented may be familiar to students from travel or media.  While in one way this may stereotype the culture, its familiarity may also generate positive feelings about the culture, and thus, conceivably enhance motivation.  This would also be true for pictures of familiar ethnic dishes and probably also explains the large number of celebrity pictures in all textbooks.
Photographs are not as strongly tied to specific pedagogical purposes as drawings.  Although most dialogues use drawings, two textbooks did make occasional use of photos with dialogues.  An example makes the case.  In ¡Anda!, p. 4 (Figure 3), typical Spanish greetings are illustrated with both drawings and photographs, but different elements come into focus in each case. With the drawings, the time of day and body language of participants are the strongest elements, though gender is also evident.  In the photographs at the bottom of the page, again, the body language is relevant, but here photographic details of dress and setting, emphasize formality levels more clearly than the drawings the drawings do.
Figure 3:

One pedagogical purpose almost uniquely tied to photographs is to provide a visual support for readings.  In fact, a notable percentage of photographs are anchored to a cultural text. In other words, each unit and review section has one or two sidebars about some aspect of the focal country or culture.  These are almost always illustrated with one or more small or medium-sized photos. The visual interest of these photographs is often not that high, however.  These images often seem to be more iconic than aesthetic. Over the four textbooks, proportion of photographs anchored to cultural sidebars and supplementary readings averages 28%.  In fact, maps and graphs are sometimes used in this way as well though line drawings seldom are.  Even when photos are not part of a cultural sidebar or illustrating a reading passage, they are at times given captions in the target language and sometimes used as visual aids to make cultural or linguistic points. Both Spanish textbooks sometimes use captions to explicitly call student attention to the visual content of photos. However, both French texts go further by asking students to make inferences from photos.  Mais Oui!, for example, uses questions about photos to preview concepts to be taught in the chapter.  Motifs uses the strategy even more frequently, both at the beginning of chapters and for small photos interspersed through the chapter.  These questions can call attention to cultural features or simply practice the target language for the chapter.
While photos are often used to give impressions about culture, they often have a looser relationship to the linguistic content of a lesson.  This is probably why although both photos and line drawings are used in exercises, drawings are used more for this purpose in all four textbooks. However, sometimes a photo sets the stage for an exercise even when the photo isn’t used in the exercise. An example is ¡Anda!, page 148 (figure 4). The picture shows a woman and a little girl looking at an electronic device, but the text merely says that Esperanza’s young niece is going through the stage where she always wants to know why.  The student is therefore instructed to answer “why” questions playing the role of Esperanza answering her niece.  Any picture of a woman and child could work here.  Presumably showing the child looking at the device simply suggests the child’s curiosity.

Figure 4:

There is a final category of visuals that I have chosen to categorize under photographs, but this classification is somewhat problematic, and that is samples of common genres.  Mostly used in exercises, these reproductions of apartment listings, real estate ads, menus, cinema listings, railroad timetables, and similar types of texts allow students to practice language in ways that simulate immersion in the target culture, offering students a chance to make both cultural and linguistic connections.  The genres used are recognizable to North American students yet different enough to be interesting.  For three of the four textbooks these reproductions made up around seven to ten percent of photographs.  Mais Oui!, however, was an interesting exception with over 31% of photographic images falling into this category.   It might be interesting to look further into the use of sample genres within foreign language teaching, particularly since this category of visuals occupies an intermediate space between verbal and visual content.  However, I will not analyze this type of visual further here.
Cultural analysis
The Modern Language Association’s (2007) report on “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World” gives nearly equal emphasis to linguistic and cultural objectives in foreign language education.  In a study of how modern language professors teach culture, Xinxiao Yang (2012) found that many teachers depend heavily on textbooks to present cultural information.
In any cultural analysis, a key question is, “How do visual, oral, or written texts create as well as reflect their social and ideological contexts?” (Elias, p. 230).  Whatever their intentionality, the visuals in a modern language textbook reveal some things about a culture and conceal others.  As curriculum designers interact with art directors, certain selections are made that must have rhetorical outcomes.  As Lawrence Prelli (2006) demonstrates in Rhetorics of Display, “whatever is revealed through display simultaneously conceals alternative possibilities; therein is display’s rhetorical dimension” (p. 2).  Whether the process is intentional or not, the line drawings and photos convey one set of messages about the cultures represented, simultaneously blocking another possible portrayal.  “Displays are rhetorical because the meanings they manifest before situated audiences result from selective processes, and thus, constitute partial perspectives with political, social, or cultural implications” (Prelli, 2006, p. 11).
The visuals in foreign language texts, too, must do this.  Two goals, at least, come through.  One is to position the learner as both different from and similar to members of the target culture.  The target culture needs to be alluring in its difference yet accessible in its similarity.  This goal may not always be conscious, but it is certainly intentional.  The second goal is to convey a probably unintentional yet certainly predictable message of Western capitalist values.  For an American textbook publisher, mainstream, profit-based, dependent on middle class values about education, technology and consumption, how could it be otherwise?

The dance of the divide
Foreign language education cannot afford to “other” too much.  However, there is a dilemma.  The target culture needs to be “other”—exotic, appealing, interesting to the gaze. Some scholars have, in fact, discussed the concept of a “tourist gaze,” in which a culture and its scenes become the object of a gaze (MacCannell, 2001), a notion that can probably be adapted to the current discussion.  On the other hand, the premise of the language teaching process is that the learner will be able to bridge the cultural and linguistic divide, to cross the gap of language and cultural difference, if not to assimilate, to interact and to cooperate.  That the goal is both desirable and achievable is what drives the teaching process.  Kenneth Burke’s notion of identification is relevant here.  To achieve the goals of rhetoric, Burke claims, an individual, separate from another individual, must “identify himself” with the other (1969, p. 20) insofar as their interests conjoin.  “Thus, he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another” (p. 21).  In other words, rhetoric uses strategies of identification to bridge differences between groups.  “Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division…” (p. 22). Yet for language learning to proceed, the gap must be bridged, and while this is not easy, minimizing the differences may help.  For example, vocabulary words can connect to familiar concepts.  The photographs in the FLT textbooks are caught in this dance of the divide, offering the familiar to make identification possible and the novel to generate interest in the exotic “other”. 
In practical terms, identification is created through images connecting to the world of the college student as target audience.  This means, ultimately, the portrayal of superficial differences and important similarities.  An excellent example is the large photo on page 60 of Motifs, introducing Module 3, “Chez l’ étudiant,” (Figure 5).
Figure 5:
In fact, Motifs, organizes its first three units around university life.  Module 1 is about classmates and classrooms, Module 2, university life and Module 3, family and home, but with an emphasis on student spaces.  The picture shows two students eating breakfast.  Certain features of the space, such as the tiles on the counter and kitchen walls, and the meal—croissant, coffee cup—feel different than North America, but two roommates chatting over breakfast with a magazine probably feels familiar. The message the picture sends is that some superficial aspects of French life are different but that much is also similar.  In France, too, young people socialize and interact with popular culture in ways very similar to North American students.
While youth culture in different places and at different time has demonstrated a willingness to rebel against or resist the status quo, that is not the version of youth culture portrayed in modern language textbooks.  Instead these textbooks adopt a globalization model that offers familiar links between world cultures and North American youth culture, namely, familiar portrayals of celebrity culture, mass media, technology, and consumerism.  It is surely notable that one-third of the people portrayed in the four textbooks are celebrities, many of whom will already be at least somewhat familiar to North American students.  Motifs, for example, not only introduces Audrey Taotou and Nicolas Sarkozy, but also points out that Jodie Foster is a fluent French speaker.  Another good example of creating identification through global popular culture comes from ¡Anda! page 171 where a picture with limited visual appeal offers significant semiotic value (Figure 6).  In the picture captioned “un concierto de Marc Anthony,” the singer is barely recognizable.  He is small and at the bottom, the focal point, but just barely in the frame.  Marc Anthony is likely to be a familiar celebrity to many North American students, but the singer himself is not highlighted here. Instead, the focus of the photograph is the trappings of a typical concert experience, the floodlights suggesting stardom, and the band and instruments.   The photograph, in fact, would be a lot more visually effective if the singer was larger and more central or framed more obviously, and if the backup band wasn’t almost as prominent.  Marc Anthony is appropriated as a member of the Spanish-speaking culture and yet portrayed as indistinguishably urban, modern, and middle class—in other words, just like us. 

Figure 6:

Another theme of global consumer culture is technology.  All four textbooks portray technology at use in many places and for many purposes, but the books also aim to convey a sense of hipness by using technology even when not necessary.  The child looking at the electronic device in Figure 4 is certainly an example.  Another clever example is an exercise on page 234 of ¡Anda!, where  a laptop and a smart phone are used as framing devices for imagined conversations about housing and real estate.
Figure 7:

Line drawings can also hide cultural differences while instead revealing assumptions about economic status and social class.  The living room shown Figure 1, for example, contains a sofa and pillow, easy chair, a floor lamp, a low coffee table, a large TV on a stand, a CD player in a cabinet with a few CDs on top, a vase, a fruit bowl, an iPod, and curtained windows with a railing visible outside.  The railing is the only clue that the living room might be in an apartment, but there are no other clues about what type of home this might be or where in the world it might be located.  The bedroom picture above it is similarly unmarked, except it shows a mountain poster with a headline, “La Suisse.”  Dialogues, likewise, typically represent participants of ambiguous ethnicity in middle class settings doing things in ways largely indistinguishable from North America.  The pictures in shopping dialogues, like the multi-frame sequence shown on page 207 of Plazas, (Figure 8) could portray any North American mall.  Only the Spanish in the word bubbles suggests otherwise.  In this case even price tags, brand names, or other contextual clues were excluded, although this is not always the case.

Figure 8:

Foreign language textbooks offer many clues about the appearance and ethnicity of average speakers, the architecture and scenery of the country, typical street scenes and leisure activities, paintings and artifacts, and the popular culture enjoyed by members of the target culture.  In this way foreign language textbooks are little different than travel guides, offering a sunny and cheerful version of the culture for the tourist gaze.  Sometimes the parallels are nearly exact, as in the page from Motifs’ module on travel, “Voyager en France,” (Figure 9).   This page gives examples of sites to visit in Paris.  The only reason the Eiffel Tower is not shown here is because it is shown in a striking night shot at the beginning of the unit.

Figure 9:

But what is being concealed in these textbooks?  In a few very rare cases, a few things are revealed, for example, ¡Anda! page 161 illustrates environmental issues in Honduras (Figure 10).  A small picture at the bottom of this introduction to Honduras shows forest being cleared, and the text mentions that forests are in danger.  Of the 21 country profiles in this book, only this layout showed a brief glimpse of something other than colorful natives, beautiful scenery or notable architecture, the sorts of images expected in any tour guide. 

Figure 10:


Perhaps a modern language textbook is not the place for a full discussion of the sorts of social and economic troubles faced by different countries.  But entirely avoiding such issues probably misses important learning opportunities. One of the professors surveyed in Yang’s (2012) study expressed similar misgivings about textbook portrayals of culture.   The professor complained that most individuals portrayed in textbooks are university students and told Yang that “all of their families have money, and all of the families take vacations. It has something to do with they are trying to show the North American students the best aspects of so-called culture” (quoted in Yang, p. 52).  This professor and another interviewed by Yang said that they understood that textbook publishers would want to present target cultures in a positive light but believed that university students had the maturity to handle a more realistic and nuanced portrayal.
Similar to travel guides, however, the images presented both reveal and conceal.  Ironically, authors and textbook publishers labor to emphasize exotic difference while also building solidarity based on middle class values, global youth culture and familiar technology.  As Prelli observes, “…the rhetorics of display often are deconstructed by exploring how those situated resolutions conceal even as they reveal, what meanings they leave absent even as they make others present, whose interests they mute as well as whose they emphasize, what they condemn as well as celebrate, and so on” (page 11).  With the exception of occasional “ethnic color,” the representatives of each country are urban and middle class.  While this may help learners find connections to identify with the target culture, it probably also misses opportunities that could come from building deeper connections beyond the dominant narrative, of seeing both sides as global citizens who together might tackle global challenges.

References
Arnheim, R. (2004). Pictures, symbols, and signs. In C. Handa (Ed.), Visual rhetoric in a digital world (pp. 137-151). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. (Reprinted from Visual thinking, pp. 135-144, 1969, Berkeley: University of California Press)
Barthes, R. (2004). Rhetoric of the image. In C. Handa (Ed.), Visual rhetoric in a digital world (pp. 152-163). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. (Reprinted from Image-Music-Text, pp. 32-51, Transl. by S. Heath, 1977, New York: Hill and Wang)
Bezemer, J. & Kress, G. R. (2009). Visualizing English: A social semiotic history of a school subject. Visual Communication, 8(3), 247-262. http://dx. doi: 10.1177/1470357209106467  
Burgin, V. (1999). Art, common sense, and photography. In J. Evans and S. Hall (Eds.), Visual culture: The reader (pp. 41-50). London: SAGE Publications. (Originally published 1976; Reprinted from The camerawork essays, pp. 74-85, 1997, London: Rivers Oram Press)
Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bush, M. D. (2007). Facilitating the integration of culture and vocabulary learning: The categorization and use of pictures in the classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 40(4), 727-745. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/85663121?accountid=12967
Carney, R. N., & Levin, J. R. (2002). Pictorial Illustrations Still Improve Students' Learning from Text. Educational Psychology Review, 14(1), 5-26.
Chen, Y. (2010). Exploring dialogic engagement with readers in multimodal EFL textbooks in China. Visual Communication, 9(4), 485-506.
Darian, S. (2001). More than meets the eye: The role of visuals in science textbooks. LSP & Professional Communication, 1(1), 10-36. Retrieved from ej.lib.cbs.dk/index.php/LSP/article/download/1909/1912
Dimopoulos, K., Koulaidis, V., & Sklaveniti, S. (2003). Towards an Analysis of Visual Images in School Science Textbooks and Press Articles about Science and Technology. Research in Science Education, 33(2), 189-216.  
Elias, A.J. (2006). Critical theory and cultural studies. In B. McComiskey (Ed.), English studies: An introduction to the discipline(s) (pp. 223-274). Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English.
Furman, N., Goldberg, D. & Lusin, N. (2010). Enrollments in languages other than English in United States institutions of higher education, fall 2009. Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/pdf/2009_enrollment_survey.pdf
Heining-Boynton, A. L., Cowell, G. S., Leloup, J., Caña Jiménez, M. C., & Torres-Quiñones, S. (2009). ¡Anda!: Curso elemental. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Hershberger, R., Navey-Davis, S., & Borrás, G. (2005). Plazas: Lugar de encuentros (2nd ed.). Boston: Thomson/Heinle.
Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Kearney, E. (2009). Images as a resource for cultural learning in the foreign language classroom. In C. M. Navarro (Ed.), Practical approaches to foreign language teaching and learning (pp. 33-66). Bern: Peter Lang.
Kress, G. R., & Van, L. T. (2009). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Jansma, K., & Kassen, M. A. (2011). Motifs: An introduction to French (5th ed.). Boston, Mass: Heinle Cengage Learning.
MacCannell, D. (2001). Tourist agency. Tourist Studies, 1(1), 23-37. doi: 10.1177/146879760100100102
Masur, L. P. (1998). `Pictures have now become a necessity': The use of images in American history textbooks. Journal of American History, 84(4), 1409-1424.  
McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics: The invisible art. New York: HarperPerennial.
MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages. (2007). Foreign languages and higher education: New structures for a changed world. Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/pdf/forlang_news_pdf.pdf
Prelli, L. J. (2006). Rhetorics of display. Columbia, S.C: University of South Carolina Press.
Rybarczyk, B. (2011). Visual Literacy in Biology: A Comparison of Visual Representations in Textbooks and Journal Articles. Journal of College Science Teaching, 41(1), 106-114.
Sawchuk, K., Woolridge, N., & Jenkinson, J. (2011). Illustrating medicine: line, luminance and the lessons from J.C.B. Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy (1943). Visual Communication, 10(3), 442-468. http://dx. doi: 10.1177/1470357211408816
Thompson, C. P., & Phillips, E. M. (2009). Mais oui!: Introductory French and Francophone culture (4th ed.). Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin.
Van Leeuwen, T.  (2005). Introducing social semiotics. London: Routledge.

Yang, X.X.  (2012). Capturing the intangible: Teaching cultural perspectives in foreign language classrooms at the university level (Doctoral dissertation). University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming. Retrieved from ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing. (3525675).

No comments:

Post a Comment