A discourse analysis of the representation of the West in the Iranian senior high school textbooks

A discourse analysis of the representation of the West in the Iranian senior high school textbooks



Problem statement: Confrontation with the ‘West’ is one of the most important events that have affected the life of the Iranians, and many believe that this issue is a fundamental challenge. On the one hand, this confrontation has familiarized the Iranians with global developments and has caused them to be influenced by material and spiritual achievements of modernity; on the other hand, it has created a dense bewilderment and extensive gaps in different areas of Iranian life, especially in cultural and social arenas. Simultaneous with this confrontation, the representation of the West has also become a substantial part in the Iranian-Islamic culture, politics and society.

Taking a position against ‘the West’ and ‘modernity’ as well as determining the position of the West in the new world order is part of the main issues faced by different Iranian currents of thought. Assuming a stance for or against the West has been the central element of thinking about the non-Iranian world since the Constitutional Revolution. Therefore, the knowledge of the West and modernity has continued to be an important issue for the thinking in the Iranian society before and after the Islamic Revolution.

One of the most important cultural parts of Iranian society after the Islamic Revolution, which can be a platform for examining the way of thinking about the West, is the content of instructional textbooks. The researchers and specialists of curriculum planning in Iran examine and compile the contents of textbooks considering various challenges. In fact, in the process of textbooks compilation, the examination of the West has always been counted as one of the central challenges of Iran. Therefore, the representation of the ‘West’ in the texts of the educational books in the Islamic Republic of Iran can be traced as an important part of the cultural infrastructure of the Iranian society.

It seems that in order to understand the role of textbooks in shaping the mental images and impressions of the Iranians and their interpretation and judgment of the West, it is necessary to examine how the West is represented in these works simply because many judgments and individual and social attitudes of Iranian society can be formed by such texts. In line with the above argument, the current study seeks to answer the question of how the West has been represented in Iran's senior high school textbooks.



Theoretical framework of the study: The theoretical framework of this research has been derived from the theory of Nativism. In its broadest sense, Nativism is a doctrine that calls for the return to, recovery, or continuation of indigenous cultural customs, beliefs, and values. Respecting the "authentic identity of the insider" is at the center of the discourse of Nativism. Nativism usually evaluates itself against the other. It also emphasizes the belief in the superiority of ‘one's’ thoughts over ‘other's’. The nativists usually criticize the western way of thinking, which is modernity and includes the doctrines that were raised in the West after the Enlightenment Movement and Protestantism. In the discourse of Nativism, modernism is the technical aspect and objective achievements of western civilization. This part of the western civilization is always discussed in the nativist theories. In the discourse of Nativism, the source of many social and cultural corruptions in contemporary Iran is the ignorance of traditional beliefs and values and the thoughtless adaptation and extreme imitation of western culture and beliefs.



Method: In this research, the discourse governing the compilation of textbooks in Iran about the West has been critically examined. In order to select the categories of this research, by examining the sources that discuss the concept of the West, the categories and indicators of the West were first collected through inductive and comparative methods. After consulting with experts, the categories were then categorized. It should be pointed out that discourse analysis was carried out drawing upon Van Dijk's method. It is obvious that in order to explain Van Dijk's discourse analysis method, knowledge of the textual signs and linguistic elements of the texts is a must. According to Van Dijk, if ideologies are to be learned, expressed, reinforced, and reproduced through discourse, we must seek to find strategies, signs, and linguistic elements that are reproducible in the context of discourse. Therefore, in order to analyze the discourse of textbooks, each text of the textbooks that was selected and grouped into the established categories was analyzed using Van Dijk's "Socio-Cognitive Discourse Analysis".

The materials of the study included the senior high school textbooks of current use in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Eight textbooks out of the senior high school subjects published in 1400 were randomly selected. Then a total of 90 propositions were extracted from these textbooks and reviewed. Using the theory of Nativism, five categories about the West were extracted, and the selected propositions were carefully examined.



Results: The results of data analysis revealed that the authors represented the West based on the discourse of Nativism. In confronting with marginalizing the East by the Western world, the authors of these texts, using the discourse of Nativism, have called for returning to the original identity, relying on internal strength, returning to the spiritual dimension of man, paying attention to local beliefs and customs, educating the generation according to local culture, and religion-oriented concepts. As a result, just as in Orientalism which represents the Eastern culture with limited stereotypes, the senior high school textbooks have represented the West with stereotypes such as materialism, worldliness, utilitarianism, profit seeking, disintegration, collapse, aggression, colonialism and exploitation. In other words, the categories like ‘western identity’, ‘modernism’, ‘other evaluation’ and ‘western culture and beliefs’ are represented as negative characteristics of the western culture and society in these texts. Nonetheless, the authors' view of the West turned out to be radically different regarding the category of science and technology. To put this into perspective, not all the characteristics of the West were represented as negative. In fact, textbooks did not negate progress and development as well as technology; on the contrary, they suggested the formation of a local model based on local culture for the development and advances of today's technologies. Therefore, it can be concluded that a distinction was made between the culture and values of the West and its science and technology in the nativist discourse of the textbooks. This implies that we can safely utilize western technology and reject western modernism, secularism and humanism.

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Keywords: Modernity, Nativism, Orientalism, Textbooks, West