Decolonizing English Language Pedagogy : A Study of Cultural Aspects in English Language Coursebooks and Teachers’ reflections in Pakistan

Abstract

Language does not exist in a vacuum; it is deeply rooted in the structures reflecting and carrying dominant ideologies and social values. Likewise, foreign language teaching does not aim at a mere transmission of linguistic knowledge, but it also brings with it the ideological repercussions. In Pakistani society, English Language teaching either promotes the state-centric view of social reality or reproduces the cultural discourse(s) of colonialism. This study situated in Pakistani context points out the colonial construction of English language learners’ identities in elite Private schools drawing on Fairclough’s (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework and Mignolo’s (2009, 2011) decolonial option. The study includes language coursebooks and teachers’ reflections as two major sources of data to draw conclusions that English Language teaching in the elite private sector establishes and reinforces the dominant cultural discourse(s) of coloniality as a macro-narrative which is in a conflict with the learners’ local and other global identities.