“REPRESENTATION OF NATURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS IN SECONDARY SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS: AN ECO-CRITICAL STUDY OF GRADE 10 AND 11 LESSONS”

Abstract

This study explores the issue of nature and environmental lessons in Grade 10 or Grade 11 secondary school textbooks in Pakistan, on the basis of an eco-critical and eco-linguistic. The study is based on the ecolinguistics model introduced by Stibbe and the Critical Discourse Analysis presented by Fairclough, according to which the linguistic options and discursive strategies are used to build human-nature relations and influence the establishment of environmental values in educational discourse. By using qualitative textual analysis, two lessons will be carefully chosen (purposely) and analyzed (earth and environment Grades 10) and Clean Water and Sanitation (Grades 11). The results show that textbook discourse is mostly anthropocentric and utilitarian, despite explicit addressing the issue of environmental concerns. Nature has been strongly positioned as an inactive resource to be used so that it benefits the humans, and the arguments to protect the environment have been primarily viewed as developmental and survival based. There is an insufficient amount of ethical action towards the environment, where sustainability is often expressed in technical and managerial language and seldom in the form of ecological interdependence, care, and justice stories. Although the Grade 11 lesson illustrates a further development of social awareness, as it connects environmental degradation with the health and inequality of people. It still marginalizes the non-human ecological systems and supports the anthropocentric hierarchies. Eco-linguistically, the textbooks replicate the dominant “stories we live by” that normalize human dominance over nature and structural offerings excuses of environmental destruction. The analysis shows that Pakistani textbooks at secondary level should be more eco-centric in nature to instill significant environmental ethics. Through combining an ecological concern, moral responsibility and critical approach to power relations, educational discourse can serve the end of sustainable development and ecological sustainability of education more effectively. Keywords: Ecolinguistics, Environmental Ethics, Textbook Discourse, Representation of Nature, Sustainability, Critical Discourse Analysis.