Textbook language, ideology and citizenship

Abstract

This paper presents aspects of the results of a long-term research project on the relations between language and ideology in text-teacher-student interaction in Social Science and Natural Science classrooms in northern Colombia and their implications for citizenship education. The results presented here concern a grammatical conspiracy (Martin 1988) of historical determinism found in the transitivity and grammatical metaphors of a history textbook. I present examples of each of the grammatical features in question, arguing for the inclusion in the category of grammatical metaphor of historical present, inanimate Sayers and Behavers and some non-ergative processes. I then consider how the various grammatical features conspire to present a deterministic view of history which precludes the possibility of change as a result of human intervention. Finally, I suggest that Colombia, in striving towards a more harmonious society, has need of a different view of historical processes as susceptible to human agency.