Foreigner and foreignness in textbook literature

Abstract

The paper deals with the question how the elementary school history textbook treats a role of a foreigner and the concept of foreignness as a universal indicative attribute of everything foreign in general. Using critical discourse analysis and referring to representative examples the authors point at often dubious implications and recurrent implicit and quasi self-evident assumptions hidden in the history textbook. The analysis relies heavily on the methods of pragmatics, especially on Grice "principle of co-operation in discovering the implicit messages" i.e. the notion of otherness in history textbooks. It reveals that the "other" is represented in (at least) two distinct ways. In the first place history textbooks were found to encourage the construction of national (Slovenian) identity by differentiation from foreigners that are European and Christian, where the process of identification can be both negative (enemies that try to destroy "us") and positive (the developed west). Secondly, there is the absolute "other"; non-European and non-Christian, where no positive identification is possible. In either case what we are witnessing, is the construction of a European identity.