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Green contents in English language textbooks in Pakistan: An ecolinguistic and ecopedagogical appraisal
Author(s) -
Zahoor Mehwish,
Janjua Fauzia
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1002/berj.3579
Subject(s) - anthropocentrism , premise , transitive relation , linguistics , sociology , scope (computer science) , appraisal theory , pedagogy , psychology , ecology , computer science , social psychology , philosophy , mathematics , combinatorics , biology , programming language
The belief that English language teaching (ELT), for its global scope, should not only focus on furnishing learners’ language skills but also on raising their awareness about critical global issues, like environmental crises, led to the ‘greening’ of ELT textbooks. However, the ecopedagogical import of the green contents in ELT textbooks has a bearing on the linguistic/discursive representation of nature and the human–nature relationship in them as it conditions the way we humans perceive and treat the natural environment. Ecolinguistics, an emerging paradigm in linguistic research, offers the premise to analyse the construction of ecology in texts. This study conducted an ecolinguistic and ecopedagogical appraisal of the environmental texts in English language textbooks used in Pakistani schools at primary level, adapting Gaard’s ecopedagogical framework for children’s texts and Halliday’s transitivity analysis model. The study found that the construction of nature and the human–nature relationship in the selected textbooks principally propagated an anthropocentric worldview, thus lacking in ecopedagogical import.