Abstract
This article is a reflection on the choice to apply Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in a large scale study in which South African history textbooks were analysed for their construction of African consciousness. The article begins with an evaluation of history textbooks analysis as a field of study. It then explains my rationale for adopting CDA in a field where most studies are qualitative content analyses. This is followed by the explanation of my practical adaptation and application of Norman Fairclough’s version of CDA mixed with functional linguistics and visual semiotics. Only a few examples of the findings in the larger scale study are given to elaborate on this application. The article ends with a reflective evaluation of my application of CDA. I conclude that, though fraught with challenges, the application of CDA offers a worthwhile alternative methodology in the analysis of history textbooks.
Highlights
Introduction, contextualisation and research problem History textbook research can be considered, at the very least, to be a century old
One outstanding application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in history textbook analysis is by Barnard (2003) who published in his book Language, ideology, and Japanese history textbooks in which the linguistic tenets of CDA were used to reveal the influence of the context in how textbook producers use language, playing their part in the socialisation process
The critical question that this paper aims to answer is: How can CDA methodologies be applied in the analysis of history textbooks? The reflections in this paper stem from a larger-scale study in which I analysed the construction of African consciousness in South African History textbooks (Maposa, 2014)
Summary
In relation to the shortcomings of textbook analysis, Weinbrenner (1992) lamented the absence of any specific theory guiding textbook analysis methodologies. There is very little evidence of CDA methodologies being applied in the analysis of history textbooks (Nicholls, 2003; Oteíza & Pinto, 2008; Morgan, 2010; Pingel, 2010: Morgan & Henning, 2013). It is on the basis of the foregoing background that I present in this paper some reflections on the application of CDA as a methodology with which to analyse history textbooks. The reflections in this paper stem from a larger-scale study in which I analysed the construction of African consciousness in South African History textbooks (Maposa, 2014). This paper will not dwell on presenting the detailed findings of the construction of African consciousness in South African history textbooks as they can be found in other papers
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