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in Language Education and Research
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CRITICALLY EXAMINING TEXTS:CONTEXT AWARENESS AND IMPLICATION

Name: Akiyuki Sakai

ISSN 2187-4972

Corresponding Author:
sakai-a@kanda.kuis.ac.jp
Publication date: February, 2014

To cite this article:
Sakai. A. (2014). Critically examining texts: Context awarenessand implication. Working Papers in Language Education andResearch, 2 (1), 57-64.

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Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  CRITICALLY EXAMINING TEXTS:CONTEXT AWARENESS AND IMPLICATION
Akiyuki Sakai
Kanda University of International Studies
ABSTRACTThis study examined the way certain cultural norms are communicated throughtext. A critical discourse analysis was conducted on six randomly selectedvolumes from two Australian series of readers for school children. Results showedfavorable norms for Australia were being presented in three criteria: living(economic) standard, safety standard, and norms associated with power. The
results suggest that if these or similar volumes are to be used as second or foreign
language (L2) reading material, it may be best to inform readers with facts
related to the contents. The results also suggests it may be best to use materials
from a variety of countries of origin.

1. INTRODUCTION

Fairclough (2001, p. 1) says “the significance of language in the production,maintenance, and change in social power” is underestimated. This notion could bethreatening if we view ourselves as the passive receiver of messages through the text;
however, we realize the threat may not be as big as it seems once we notice that we all have,at least to a certain extent, freedom of being the sender of messages and indeed, we often playthat role. Van Dijk (1996) mentions access to, or control over, public discourse andcommunication as an important ‘symbolic’ resource, as are knowledge and information. In
the case of peer-reviewed academic publications, for example, there is an editorial board thatcarries and maintains certain standards and decides if one’s manuscript should be accepted
and made available to the public under the label it represents. The same could be said of othertraditional sources of information such as newspapers where the chief editor has the authority
to decide what should and should not be printed. “Members of more powerful social groups
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Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  and institutions, and especially their leaders (the elites), have more or less exclusive access to,and control over, one or more types of public discourse” (van Dijk, 2001, p. 356).
Considering a common action receivers may take against a message through a
traditional source of information, rejection seems one likely option. It is perhaps the mostavailable action receivers can take: to reject a message as an individual is to be responsible
only at the individual-level, it does not involve anyone else. I, as an adult, often reject
messages that do not match my cultural norms, or expectations, and I believe the same could
be said of many others. But when and how did I acquire the bases of my social norms?
Although a norm is an ever-changing entity, it is only natural to think that the very bases of
one’s social norms are developed during childhood, and if that is true, the messages wereceive during our childhood have a great impact on what we believe later in life.

2. BACKGROUND

It is because of the above mentioned that I became interested in looking into thediscourse in six different volumes from two Australian co-series of a reader for young
children. The volumes were randomly selected from a national university library in Australia.
The series, BOYZ RULE! and GIRLS ROCK!, are classified as year 7-10 books and they are
gender counterparts to each other as the name suggests. Each volume of the series is a shortstory of two young students engaging in an activity. A sales copy of the series says that thereaders of the series would enjoy reading them as they relate to the fun, ordeals, disasters, andfriendships in a variety of ‘daily situations’. An analysis using the Sociocognitive Approach(SCA) of the Critical Discourse Analysis was conducted to systematize the phenomena of58

Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  given reality in the volumes. Since the study was conducted on year 7-10 short books, theanalysis focused on two linguistic markers, coherence and topic choice, out of the 14 markers
SCA suggests concentrating on (Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 29). Open, axial, and selective
coding (Corbin & Strauss, 1990, pp. 13-15) were done to the data and it resulted in threeselective codes that represents dominant norm categories in the volumes: living (economic)
standards, safety standards, and norms associated with social power. Details of the findings
are as follows:
3. DISCUSSION

3.1 Living (Economic) Standard
Both BOYZ RULE! and GIRLZ ROCK! have skateboarding as a topic. Both versionsof the skateboarding stories promote the importance of wearing protective gear while skating(Arena & Kettle, 2003A, p.3; Arena, Kettle, & Arena, 2006, p.13). Such a reminder of safety
precautions may look good and seem reasonable to appear in a book for children; however,
we should be alert to the fact that it may also lead to promote purchases of protective gear.
Purchase of all the gear, a helmet, wrist guards, elbow pads, and knee pads, can easily double
the cost associated with skateboarding as an activity. During my trip to Italy seven years ago,
I saw local children playing soccer in a semi-open area in more than several different
neighborhoods of different cities. What surprised me was that some of them did not evenhave an ordinary soccer-ball, what they had was a ball they made with some newspaper andpacking-tape. In such a context, one cannot deny the possibility of there being parents who
are willing to buy their child a skateboard but are having second thoughts because they canafford only the skateboard deck and not the whole package. I have to say that the living
standard illustrated in the book is fairly high.
59Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  More illustrations of a fairly high standard of living are found in the book Skater
Chicks. When Rosa arrives Jules’ house with her new skateboard, Jules says: “Hey, I didn’t
hear your mum’s car in the driveway” (Arena, Kettle, & Arena, 2006, p.2), which implies
that Rosa’s mother usually drives Rosa to Jules’ house despite the distance of travel being
short given the fact that Rosa takes the travel on foot and/or a skateboard. Jules is playing avideo game on PlayStation console when Rosa arrives, which means that the console isthought to be a typical possession of a child. Skateboarding requires smooth ground, such asa paved road or a skate park, and both are available to children in the book. Rosa has adifferent kind of outfit on to look like a typical skater on top of her new skateboard andprotective gear. If these are all details of a ‘daily situation’ as the sales copy says, then thetarget readers must live in a context where they are far away from striving for necessities.
Other example details supporting this notion from other books of the series are as follows:•

A child practices an electric guitar in a garage: you may have a parking space but not agarage in many parts of the world or in levels of a society•Children being able to eat all and whatever they see in the house•

Children being able to waste food and not feeling bad about it•

A child not really caring about his basketball being stolen•

A child having two basketballs and giving one to a friend for no particular reason•A child receiving a basketball from a friend for no particular reason and not being
surprised
In addition to the examples above, perhaps the most explicit example is in Cooking

Catastrophe, where the girls fail at baking cookies and say: “Maybe we can’t make the best
bickies in the world, but we can buy some!” (Arena, Kettle, & Dinbergs, 2006, p.32).
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Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  3.2 Safety Standard
I am familiar with Japanese and American norms and they both tell me that for safety
reasons a child should not be playing alone in a basketball yard or walking/skateboarding to afriend’s house if it is a driving distance. However, in Basketball Buddies, Billy finds Sam
playing in a basketball yard alone and decides to join him. In Skater Chicks, Rosa takes atrips to Jules’ house, the trip her mother usually gives her a ride to, alone. Since these settings
are part of daily situations, it can be understood that the neighborhoods in the books are safe
for children both in terms of people and traffic they have within.
Another but different kind of contribution towards illustrating safety of the context
can be seen in Rock Star, where Billy gets carried away playing Sam’s electric guitar andsmashes it on the garage ground like a heavy metal guitarist, braking it into pieces. Although
the incident only takes place in Sam’s dream, it can be seen as sending a message to readersthat heavy metal music (and rock and roll in a greater sense) is disruptive and disorderly.
Many adults would find the image of the rock legend being illustrated in the story is after
Jimi Hendrix. While Jimi destroying his guitar is only one aspect of rock legend to an adult
who knows Jimi and other legends, Billy destroying Sam’s guitar may be seen as the generalcharacteristic of the whole rock culture to a child, as it is being presented as a typicalbehavior of a rock star. The presentation may be reflecting a negative attitude the society has
towards rock culture that is often criticized for being associated with excess pressure anddrug use, in order to keep children away from it. Towards the end of Rock Star, after Sam
awakes and finds his guitar nice and sound in one piece, he chooses not to show it to Billy
and asks Billy to play basketball together instead, as if he is staying away form the whole
exciting but dangerous concept of a rock star. The ending may be seen as promoting an idea
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Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  not to take a risk to disturb the safe living that is there otherwise.
3.3 Norms Associated with Power
Although the series are gender specific, there is no mention of boys being better thangirls or girls being better than boys in the books of either series. Instead, the idea of boys andgirls being equal in terms of ability and/or power is being promoted through examples suchas Rosa being able to skate as well as boys at a skate park (Arena, Kettle, & Arena, 2006,pp.30-31), both Jules and the boys cheering Rosa on (Arena, Kettle, & Arena, 2006, p.31),
and Jess and Sophie being as irresponsible as Sophie’s brother for the mess they make in thekitchen (Arena, Kettle, & Dinbergs, 2006, pp.23-25 & 32).
While that is how the series looks at gender differences, the way they treat nationalidentities is very different and comes across as rather shocking. One book that reveals theirattitude towards national identities is Test Cricket, in which Tom and Joey explicitly andrepeatedly glorify Australia and put England down and make a generalization that it is what
everyone does (Arena, & Kettle, 2003B, pp.2-5, 15, 19-20, 26, & 28-29). It was after I readthis particular book that I realized I was previously not too aware of the messages of national
power in the books. The straight presentation associated with power in Test Cricket made me
re-examine the books and the findings were surprising: great cricketers such as Brett Lee,Steve Waugh, Sir Donald Bradman, Allan Border, and Mark Taylor are being introduced as
Australian while Tony Hawk is being introduced as a skateboarding legend but there is noreference to him as being American. The same goes for basketball legend Michael Jordan.
From these findings, communication through the books is clear: great people from Australia
are from Australia while those from the US are from elsewhere. No information is being
falsified, but the degree of presentation on information items is different depending on the62Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  national origin of the items. Such presentation generates a message that, from what theirrecord shows, Australia is strong. An item in the trivia section of the book puts a turn of thescrew on this by saying: “The most runs scored in one day of cricket are 721! Of course thatrecord is held by Australia” (Arena, & Kettle, 2003B, p.37).

4. CONCLUSION

The theme of this paper has been how and what cultural norms are communicatedthrough text in some volumes of Australian readers for young children. This paper provides
some examples that support Moscovici’s notion of social representations resulting from daily
life and being sustained by communication (cited in Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 26). The
analysis shows that the discourses in the volumes privilege and marginalize certain voices torepresent particular knowledge, attitudes, and ideologies desirable for a particular context.
Finally, The results suggest that if these or similar volumes are to be used as L2 readingmaterial, it may be best to inform readers with further facts related to the contents. Theresults also suggests it may be best to use materials from a variety of contexts.

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper is based on a presentation given at 2013 CamTESOL Conference on English
Language Teaching. I thank for a funding support from the Research Institute of Language
Studies and Language Education at Kanda University of International Studies to attend theconference.

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Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  2	  No.1.	  February	  2014,	  57-­‐64	  6. REFFERENCES
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Arena, F., & Kettle, P. (2003C). Basketball Buddies. Boyz rule. South Yarra:MacMillan.
Arena, F., & Kettle, P. (2003D). Rock star. Boyz rule. South Yarra: MacMillan.
Arena, F., Kettle, P. & Dinbergs, H., S. (2006). Cooking catastrophe. Girlz rock. SouthYarra: MacMillan.
Arena, F., Kettle, P. & Arena, J. (2006). Skater chicks. Girlz rock. South Yarra:MacMillan.
Corbin, J. & Strauss, A. (1990). Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, andEvaluative Criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13, 3-21.
Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power. New York: Longman.
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Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2009). Critical discourse analysis: history, agenda, theory, andmethodology. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis(pp. 1-33). London: Sage Publications Ltd.

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