Memoire Online - Globality in the global textbook: principles and applicability

The results of the exploration of the coursebook, reported in Appendix H, shows that there are six controversial topics mentioned, which are alcoholic beverages, out of marriage relationships and revealing clothes, dealing with some dangers in particular countries, religion, and celebrating specific ideological icons.

As to alcohol, it is one of the PARSNIPs that Gray (2002) mentioned as being avoided in ELT coursebooks and yet it is mentioned using 11 referring items in H/I. Throughout the coursebook, the word alcohol or a related idea can be found (see table 5 below). As summarised in Table 5, alcohol or related terms and situations are mentioned in ten out of the twelve units.

Table 5: Referring items related to spiritual beverages in each unit of the coursebook

Referring items	Units
Image of alcoholic beverage	1
Coffee bar	2
drinking, alcohol, bars	3
Alcohol, beer, image, champagne, wine	4
Going for a dink, bar,	5
(No references)	6
(No references)	7
Beer, champagne	8
Lager, pub	9
beer	10
drinking	11
A drink, pub, champagne	12

Needless to say that in many instances these terms were repeated more than one time in the same unit such is the case of «a drink» mentioned in pages 94, 95, 96, and 132. Another example of the insensitivity with which coursebook writers treated the topic of alcohol when writing this global coursebook is manifested when they designed a situation in which two children are thinking of offering their father a lager on his birthday.

Alcohol is banned in some civil laws and in religious writings of some cultures, which makes its inclusion in the content of ELT coursebooks «inappropriate» for many societies. However, for Hill (2005), the avoidance of PARSNIP's is considered unethical, as one could not imagine an ELT coursebook without mention of alcohol especially for reasons related to socialisation and cross-cultural understanding. This means that alcoholic beverages are part of target language culture and mentioning them helps global users understand the culture and the society of the «native» users of English.

It could be said that Gray's (2002) claim about global coursebooks' avoidance of alcohol is not correct at least for H/I as the analysis revealed references to alcoholic items in 10 out of the 12 units constituting the whole coursebook. One could, then, come to the conclusion that what is inappropriate for global users is considered less important, this time, than «authenticity» of representation of target language culture.

In fact, the mention of spiritual beverages is not inappropriate for the western world and at the same time could not be avoided, as it constitutes an important component of the culture of western societies especially for doing business (Hill, 2005). Therefore, investing in target culture is «inappropriate» in this case, which shows again the impracticality of over-relying on global coursebooks and the necessity of thinking either about appropriation measures or taking the courageous decision of setting programs for developing local or glocal coursebooks.

In fact, based on the findings of this study, it could be suggested that locally produced coursebooks do not need to be hyper-local in the sense of being limited to a very specific region or even country. Local coursebooks could be designed for blocs sharing similar realities and perception about what is «appropriate» and what is not, which means similar cultures. An example could be designing coursebooks for the North African region. Such a procedure was resorted to by major publishing companies who designed coursebooks for groups of countries as indicated by Gray (2002).

This solution, in fact, allows for more localisation of content. As to the North African region, there appears to be no specific coursebook designed to meet the needs and expectation of learners from it. A possible explanation for this is that the market is not sufficiently profitable to the extent that world publishers design specific coursebooks for it. The English program coordinator in a private language school in Tunisia informed the researcher (October, 2009) that the consultant of Oxford University Press has recommended H/I for Tunisian and Libyan learners despite its weaknesses documented in this study. Compromises should be considered at the local or regional levels rather than at the global level.

The problem, then, concerns compromising, that is deciding what to avoid and what not. Such compromises that writers and publishers of H/I, as well as other coursebook writers (Bell and Gower, 1998; Hill, 2005), were obliged to make, show how fuzzy global coursebooks are and how hindering they are for «authentic» and at the same time «appropriate» content. It seems that there are really very few themes on which all humans agree, which could then be «appropriately» and «authentically» used in ELT coursebooks. Spiritual beverages would not be a problem if the coursebook was designed only for learners belonging to societies accepting them.

For learners from cultures considering the inclusion of alcohol in the content of the coursebook as inappropriate, they could have been replaced by coffee or tea, as they are acceptable components of some local cultures unless the lesson is about cultural habits. This problem is what drove some societies to design their own coursebooks like Iran (Alikbari, 2004). Localising the content of ELT coursebooks could be a viable solution in order to profit from the qualities of coursebooks published by world publishers while at the same time guaranteeing the possibility of their being used in diverse contexts without possible problems of rejection and resistance on the part of learners or institutions.

Additionally, revealing clothes (shown in 8 out of 12 units) and out of marriage relationships like dating (unit 1) and cohabitation (units 2, 3, 6, 9, and 11) are normally socially unacceptable for Muslims, which makes mentioning them in coursebooks «inappropriate» (see Appendix H). A similar conclusion was arrived at by Ellis (1990) who stated that some «inappropriate» topics like dating may not be accepted by some cultures and yet they are used in ELT practices. Despite their problematic status, out of marriage relationships are present in the global coursebook Headway Intermediate (Soars and Soars, 2003). Such a denial of the sensitivity of similar issues may give credit to interpretations relating the inclusion of these topics to the idea of cultural imperialism (Phillipson, 1992) and generally conspiracy theories or at least cultural insensitivity to problematic issues. It is worth noting that learning may not occur if learners do not trust the coursebook they use (Canagarajah, 1999), which raises questions about the reasons behind including them in a coursebook that is assumed to be global.

Depicting a particular country as dangerous could be also considered «inappropriate» and yet it was mentioned by the writers of H/I. They reserved two pages (unit 4) to talk about the dangers in Thailand representing it as an unwelcoming country to visit. This issue is

controversial as the writers of the coursebook pretend that their product is global. As mentioned earlier, «globality» necessitates catering for a global audience and this image of Thailand may result in Thai learners' rejection of this coursebook.

The exploration of the coursebook revealed also that religion, which is stated in Gray (2002) as to be avoided by coursebook writers, is dealt with even if not explicitly. There are in fact some references to Christianity while at the same time there are no direct references to other religions. If referring to Judaism could be «inappropriate» for some Muslims and possibly so is referring to Islam for some Jews, then what makes the publishers believe that Christianity is acceptable? Learners may develop the idea that there is an attempt to present it as an agreed upon religion while others are not.

This could distract their attention from concentrating on acquiring the language to thinking about hidden ideological content in the material. It could be said that the world is connected and people need to learn about each other so that they can communicate and keep «peace» and understanding, as this is a mission that education can serve. However, talking about one religion and ignoring others may be interpreted as a hidden missionary act, which might inhibit learners from trusting and efficiently using the coursebook and learning effectively in some parts of the world.

This insensitivity could legitimate researchers' claims that English is related to missionary activities (Phillipson, 1992), which is not beneficial for the global use of the global coursebook. This is another problem of imported global coursebooks. Making successful compromises is, in fact, the core problem of ELT global coursebooks. Put simply it is impossible to be global in a diverse world.

The problem of whether it is up to the West to convert towards the `dos and don'ts' of Muslims or up to Muslims to convert to those of the West is a controversial issue that could

be related to what is called «clash of civilisations» (Huntington, 1996). This contention could be avoided by either trusting and subsidising local ELT coursebooks production or at least by recommending localised coursebooks from world publishers after providing them with lists of local topics to be avoided. This «glocalisation» (Gray, 2002, p. 166) operation could neutralise learners' and teachers' resistance and rejection of global ELT coursebooks on the basis of their ideology-loaded content.

Ideological icons are one of the issues to be avoided or at least treated with equity (if equality is ever possible in ideology representation) in ELT coursebooks to evade audiences' rejection (Gray, 2002). However, in H/I ideology is not totally avoided as the analysis revealed subtle instances of ideological bias.

In fact, the content analysis documented instances of celebrating specific ideological icons that are mainly related to the West with its values and lifestyle(s). Examples of this ideological bias include arguing for replacing the wonders of the world (unit 1) with

technological advances, mentioning Armstrong (without any reference to the Russian ^YuriGagarin, for instance), mentioning Madonna (unit 11), Uncle Sam (unit 11), Frank Sinatra

(unit 12), Hemingway and Picasso (Unit 3) without any reference to icons from periphery countries. Apart from a very brief mention of Nelson Mandela (unit 1), there were no other «Third World» celebrities, which could give credit to the claim that the coursebook is embodying and serving a particular ideology, which is that of the capitalist consumerist bloc (Phillipson, 1992; Canagarajah, 1999; Riches, 1999; Rinvolucri, 1999).

Being a language teaching resource, the global coursebook communicates many ideas to learners directly and/or indirectly, which makes preserving balance in coursebooks an urgent need and a challenge. It could be argued, then, that the language of H/I is western and so is the culture to be incorporated. In fact, some authors argue that it is not a must to teach

target language culture in order to learn a foreign language and an example for this is that stated by Kubota (2002) who talked about the decision on the part of Japanese authorities to invest their own culture in ELT to avoid cultural imperialism. The idea of target culture teaching could, in fact, be seen as a form of serving particular ideological interests using global ELT coursebooks as these latter represent «textual emanation of the discourses of the institutions of a target culture» (Burgess, 1993, p. 315).

Through the content analysis it was possible to demonstrate that the writers of H/I showed only partial concern for avoiding «inappropriate» global issues. In fact, the state of «globality» may be unattainable, given the huge and contradicting amount of controversies that the writers need to consider. The global coursebook seems to fail at the level of world cultural diversity, as little consideration is given for the sensitivity of some topics and behaviours in some cultures. These caveats deprive H/I of its «globality».

Such a conclusion shows again the fuzziness of the notion of the global coursebook and provides arguments for localisation of ELT coursebooks or at least glocalisation (Tomlinson, 2001; Gray, 2002), which is a term referring to blending «local and international partners» (Bolitho, 2003) in order to «bring the best of both worlds to the writing process» (ibid). This means mixing cultural components derived from the global and the local in the design of the content of ELT coursebooks.

The contextualisation (Nunan, 1991; Howard & Major, 2004, p. 105), humanisation (Tomlinson, 2001), and degeneralisation (Hill, 2005) of coursebooks could mitigate Wajnryb's (1996) claims that global coursebooks present the world as «safe, clean, harmonious, benevolent, undisturned (sic) and PG-rated» (qtd in Tomlinson, 2001). This helps designing a coursebook that is as nearer as possible to learners' realities and specific daily lives for better and effective learning.

It seems that finding a compromise between being sensitive to world cultures on the one hand and promoting cross-cultural knowledge through ELT coursebooks on the other hand is not and could not be successfully accomplished relying on the global coursebook H/I, which could legitimate «de-generalisation» (Hill, 2005) of global coursebooks. This means designing specific coursebooks for specific cultures, which narrows the conditions manifested in the general guidelines imposed on coursebook writers and the compromises they find themselves obliged to make. Just like publicity is localised in global media (Gray, 2002), global coursebooks could too be localised not only to evade learners' resistance of content (Canagarajah, 1999) but also for the learners to find their voices (Kramsch, 1993) in the content as manifested in their representation.

In the following section, the practicality of the principle of connectedness will be explored in H/I.

Connectedness could encompass several components but for practical reasons it was studied in this study with reference to three features; leisure activities, the issue of language, and global connectivity. The choice of these possible features was based on the researcher's perception and expectation of what could connect global audiences.

97 different leisure activities were mentioned in H/I. Table 6 summarises them and provides the frequency of their mention in each unit.

Table 6: Leisure activities and their frequency in each unit of the coursebook

	Leisure activities	Number of times
Unit 1	Travel	5
	Sport	2
	Holiday	1
	Internet	1
	TV	2
	Party	2
Unit 2	Sport	8
	Music	1
	Party	1
	TV	2
Unit 3	Music	1
	Film	3
	Travel	3
	Holiday	1
	Sunbathing	1
	Sport	2
	Play	1
Unit 4	Travel	2
Unit 5	Travel	11
	Sport	7
	Dancing	1
Unit 6	Dancing	1
	Music	1
	Sport	1
	Travel	1
Unit 7	Travel	6
Unit 7	Sport	2
Unit 8	Travel	6
Unit 8	Film	1
Unit 9	Holiday	2
	Party	1
	Travel	4
Unit 10	Holiday	1
	Film	1
	Collecting dolls + star wars memorabilia	1
Unit 11	Travel	3
Unit 11	TV	2
Unit 12	Travel	2
	Holiday	1
	TV	1
Total number of leisure activities: 97

What could be noticed from the investigation of leisure activities in the coursebook as detailed in Table 6 is that some activities are mentioned repeatedly, such as travel and sport, while others are less frequent, like collecting dolls and star wars memorabilia and sunbathing (see Figure 9 below).

The most mentioned topic among leisure activities is travel (43 times in 12 units). It seems that for the coursebook writers travel was considered a «safe topic» (Gray, 2002) that is supposed to be admired and non-controversial all over the world; presumably, a topic that connects learners from every part of the world creating a standardised community out of standardised hobbies.

However, the way in which the writers have dealt with the theme of travel presents it as if it is easy and affordable for everyone. Issues related to the problems of obtaining visas and suffering from segregation in ports are ignored may be as westerners do not face this problem

when travelling or may be in order to preserve the rule of «aspirational content» (Gray, 2002, p. 161). The issue of travel, then, is addressed only from the perspective of the West, which could legitimate drawing the conclusion that the coursebook is «ethnocentric», to use Renner's (1997) terminology, in the sense of marginalizing the concerns of non-western local learners. Possible «ethnocentricity» in this context is related to writers' concern in dealing with the issue of travel only from the perspective of westerners not global audiences.

Sport, in turn, is a theme that is mentioned several times in H/I, as it is stated 22 times in the 12 units (see Figure 9). Sport is presented as a global practice, which makes it appear to be safe (Gray, 2002). However, the in-depth investigation shows that the kinds of sports mentioned are not available for all learners sufficiently all over the globe. For example, practicing golf, which is mentioned several times in the content, might not be possible for many learners even in Tunisia, which might inhibit the effective interaction of learners.

Certainly, it could be said that learners need to have an idea about several kinds of sport practiced around the globe. Nevertheless, following authenticity recommendations (Nunan, 1988; Banville, 2005), investing locally popular kinds of sport is better than dealing with kinds of sport rarely practiced by local users of the global coursebook. The point, then, is that it could be hard for learners to be engaged in talking about a topic with which they might have no sufficient previous experience. This is again one of the controversies of designing a coursebook for all the users of English around the world.

Such a finding could strengthen the idea that global coursebooks are tailored to meet the needs of westerners and, therefore, implementing it in non-western countries could be a form of loading it with a weight that it could not handle for very objective reasons related to the diverse complexities of diverse learning contexts. Such finding may give credit, again, to calls for degeneralisation and contextualisation of coursebooks (Block, 1991; Tomlinson,

2001; Hill, 2005). Dealing with leisure activities that are mainly related to a particular socioeconomic class could be seen as a kind of standardisation of hobbies that results from the worldwide penetration of globalisation. From this perspective, the global coursebook seems to be a globalisation agent that benefits the politically and economically powerful bloc, whose elite is thought to be working to preserve the state of the art favouring the West (Phillipson, 1992).

In addition to travel and sport, Figure 9 shows that other aspects of leisure activities are used in the content of H/I such as holiday and sunbathing (7 times), party, music, and dancing (8 times), watching TV, film, and play (13 times), and collecting (twice). Using these forms of youth culture could, to a certain extent, provide the coursebook with clients who want to see the world always bright even if it is not genuinely authentic, which means not closely linked to learners' local realities. It seems that there is an attempt to impose a particular vision of the world. A critical exploration reveals how limited indeed is the horizon that the coursebook suggests. However, this is done in a subtle way that may not be obvious for non-critical users and observers.

It seems that using leisure activities as a connectedness aspect seems to be a cosmetic change that embodies, whether consciously or unconsciously, ethnocentric orientations, which coincides with critical thought concerning the existence of the discourse of power in language (Fairclough, 1989) and ELT (Pennycook, 1994; Canagarajah, 1999; Rinvolucri, 1999).

It seems that the writers of H/I were very committed to using what they called Standard English and British everyday English despite the existence of only two remarks to American

English (Units 3 and 4). There were only two instances of referring to another slightly different variety, which is American English. The absence of any other variety from what are called periphery countries (Pennycook, 1994) in spite of the rising importance of Asian varieties worldwide (Graddol, 2000) demonstrates a shortfall, or may be choice, of the writers to cover global varieties and, hence, to be really global at the level of language.

However, for practical reasons it could be stated that in order to preserve effective communication, users need to share a unified phonological code that connects people (Jenkins, 2000). One wonders whether marginalising global varieties of English is effective or not and, perhaps more importantly, is acceptable or not especially with the rising importance of Asian varieties. New Englishes are continuously and persistently gaining ground especially in Asia (Graddol, 2000), which makes the persistent use of a variety spoken by a very limited elite a hegemonic act (Phillipson, 1992). Such a neglect of New Englishes could deprive learners from the opportunity to benefit from intercultural information that could be provided by using various varieties, reflecting the real state of English worldwide or even the real language used in Anglo-American societies (Yule et al., 1992).

Additionally, the rise of English worldwide is expected to be fashioned mainly by Asians' use of it in business (Graddol, 2000), which means that the real need of learners practicing business is of Asian varieties, or at least an idea about them, viewing the economic advance of some Asian economies. Another rationale for the need of using world Englishes (Kachru, 1985) in ELT global coursebooks is the avoidance of the charges that global coursebooks promote stereotypes by presenting the UK and USA language variations as the most important ones and neglecting other varieties.

Global connectivity is explored in terms of the frequency of mention of countries and continents in H/I. The results of the exploration of H/I in terms of use of global settings reveal that these settings are predominantly Western. Figure 10 illustrates this finding and provides the percentages of mention of other global settings.

In fact, 47% of the locations mentioned in this global coursebook are European compared to only 3% for Africa, for example. This sharp difference shows, again, the limitation of H/I to cater for a really global audience. What is interesting concerning global connectivity is the relative importance of the mention of Asian countries (18%), which may be to show awareness of the spread of English across non native contexts. It could be also a compensation for the numerical and functional misrepresentation of Asians in the coursebook.

It is worth noting also that 79% of the locations are Western, as 47% refer to Europe, 28% to America, and 4% to Australia. Such a dominance of Western locations could legitimate drawing the conclusion that H/I is ethnocentric as it promotes the dominance of

the West and pays partial consideration to the rest of the globe, which deprives the global coursebook from being really global.

Globality in the global textbook: principles and applicability

4.2.3. Controversial topics mentioned: