DEPICTION OF ECO-CULTURES IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS: A MULTIMODAL ECO-CRITICAL INQUIRY

Abstract

It is believed that English language teaching (ELT) materials should not only furnish students’ communicative and language skills but as a global language it should construct positive ecological behavior to overcome environmental crises and other ecological issues. So, at primary level, employing eco-cultural values in course contents of ELT textbooks through discursive/linguistics features as well as visual modes might help to cultivate students’ behavior towards preservation of social and eco-cultural values for the betterment of human-nature relationship.  As an emerging field in language research paradigm, ecolinguistics offers a lot of analytical tools with which a research would analyse any text/discourse with multiple perspectives.  This study adopted Arren Stibbe’s eco-critical discourse analysis (ECDA) (2020) with addition of multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) by Kress and Leeuven (2006)  to investigate how eco-cultural ideologies were propagated in the 5^th class English language textbook published by National Curriculum Council Secretariat, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, Govt. of Pakistan, under single national curriculum policy. Through eco-critical analysis of linguistics features and visual modes, it was found that balanced eco-cultural values were propagated explicitly as well as implicitly in the selected textbook. This study could be a beneficial addition in present ecological research arena and might be helpful for English language learners, teachers and course designers.