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National narratives in language classrooms: Documenting mezzo‐spaces between the macro and micro of national reproduction
Author(s) -
Meadows Bryan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/ijal.12299
Subject(s) - narrative , ideology , scholarship , reproduction , nationalism , sociology , national language , linguistics , pedagogy , political science , politics , law , ecology , philosophy , biology
This study extends the current scholarship on language classrooms as sites of national reproduction. Informed by theories of discursive nationalism, the study proposes the term, national narrative, to refer to the collection of ideological affordances (i.e., nationalized potentials) that circulate in mezzo‐levels of society between macro‐level ideological structure and micro‐level national claims. Through the decisions they make regarding what and how to represent nationalized cultures, language teachers participate directly in the reproduction of nationalism in language classrooms. Qualitative analysis of survey data provided by 195 English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioners provide an empirical illustration of the national narrative concept. For language educators, the national narrative account draws attention to their role to both reproduce and transform nationalism in the representational choices they make.