A Critical Analysis of Learning and Teaching Goals in Gardner’s Theory of Attitudes and Motivation
A Critical Analysis of Learning and Teaching Goals in Gardner’s Theory of Attitudes and Motivation
Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, motivation
M. Samaie, R. Sahragard and R. Parhizkar
Shiraz University, Iran
Bio Data
Mahmood Samaie is an assistant professor in English Language Teaching. He obtained his PhD degree from Shiraz University in 2006. He is affiliated with Ilam University, Ilam, Iran. His main interests are in the area of Critical and mainstream Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, and Pragmatics and their interface with the issues in English Language Teaching.
Rahman Sahragard is an assistant professor in Applied Linguistics. He obtained his PhD degree from Leicester University, England in 2001. He is now affiliated with the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. He teaches Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Research Methods, and Materials Development at postgraduate level. He has two forthcoming books on research methods and language teaching. He has written several articles and presented papers at both national and international conferences.
Reza Parhizgar is an assistant professor in TEFL. He obtained his BA in English Literature from Shiraz University, his MA in TEFL from the American University of Beirut and his PhD in TEFL from Allameh University in Tehran. He has been affiliated with Shiraz University since 1980. His areas of research are in Critical and mainstream Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics and pragmatics. He is also actively involved in translation from English into Persian and vice versa. He has published more than a dozen articles, three of which have appeared in the Asian EFL Journal.
This is a report of a critical analysis of one aspect of Gardner’s theory of attitudes and motivation. The analysis examines a few pieces of discourse produced by Gardner and his associates on the topic of learning and teaching goals in that theory. Looked at from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, the theory is found to be problematic at least as far as the discourses on its learning and teaching goals are concerned. More specifically, the discourses on the topic assume a great deal of ideological slanting in the sense that they typically involve the superiority of the second language community and the things associated with it but the inferiority of the first language community and the things associated with it. This ideology, whose main axis is the second or foreign language group’s values, culture, etc., is termed here as ‘xenocentrism’.
See pages 151-191
[/private]Category: Main Editions, Volume 8 Issue 4
