Identity (re)construction and the culture of resistance in Algerian textbooks of French and English

Abstract

This chapter analyses the effects of the colonial past on (re)constructing national identity in foreign language classrooms through a critical discourse analysis of Algerian French and English schoolbooks. It demonstrates how the French-language textbooks emphasise teaching Algerian culture through the narrative of anti-colonial resistance, which I refer to as a “culture of resistance”. The “culture of resistance”, which is, arguably, a colonial legacy that is embedded within the historical representations (Algeria was a French colony, 1830-1962) in the textbooks of French, is absent in the English textbooks. These texts rather focus to a greater extent on developing the students' intercultural skills. Teaching French, on the other hand, became a matter of culture and identity, rather than linguistic utility. This chapter, therefore, argues that the promotion of resistance against the cultural hegemony of the former coloniser in French instructional materials has contributed to the crisis that the learning of the French language is witnessing in Algeria today.