[Lecture] Moral Education in English Language Education, 10 Mar.

Time: 15:30-16:30, Thursday, March 10, 2016
Venue: Room 210, School of Foreign Languages Building, South Campus, Sun Yat-sen University
Organizer: School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University

Abstract: This study investigates the multimodal representation of social values and their ontogenetic development in EFL textbooks in Hong Kong. Adopting a social semiotic perspective, this study considers social values in textbooks as complex semiotic discursive constructs involving language and visual images, and attempts to map out the choices available in their multimodal construction. Two broad categories of value construction, articulation and embedding, are proposed, and system networks are developed to provide an explicit metalanguage for the identification and understanding of social values in EFL textbooks. Analysis shows that the values represented in the textbooks mainly serve the purpose of cultivating good citizens and “whole persons”, rather than political/ideological control. It is also found that the social values follow a clear pattern of development from the personal domain (e.g., hygiene habits and healthy lifestyle), through the interpersonal domain (e.g., politeness and respect), to the altruistic concern of the whole of mankind. It concludes that the systematic modeling of the patterns and the multimodal construction of social values in textbooks provide an explicit metalanguage for the understanding and critical analysis of moral values, which contributes to both moral education and critical literacy.