Abstract
This article conducts a linguistic analysis of the history textbook from Malaysia. It studies the way language portrays the Malaysians and British during colonization and independence. These periods are chosen because their economic and political changes resulted in social shifts which continue to influence modern Malaysia. The article analyzes the history textbook for secondary years two, three and five. Transitivity from Systemic Functional Linguistics is used as a method of analysis to explain the portrayal of the Malaysians and British during colonization and independence. The linguistic analysis of Participants (the nominal group) and Processes (the verbal group) discloses two major results. First, independence and the Malaysians are portrayed positively in the chapters about independence and identities of class and ethnicity are crucial to understand the Malaysians. Second, colonization and the British are portrayed negatively in the chapters about colonization. This posits a positive us and negative them distinction in the textbook. Hence the language of the history textbook can be interpreted as implying a nationalist version of history.
Introduction
We tend to regard a textbook as a source of knowledge about a subject. This is true for the history textbook. The state confers it authority to describe a country’s past, simultaneously legitimizing the textbook’s version of history. Recently in Malaysia, contention arose about the quality and quantity of content in the history textbook. There was critique in local media about the textbook favoring a particular ethnic, political and religious group, marginalizing the contribution of other groups to the national narrative.
Such critique disputes the textbook’s authority. This is not a trivial concern because students might learn a history which is unrepresentative of Malaysia. As Said (1979) writes, all authority can, indeed must, be analyzed. This is an invitation to study the history textbook. Yet nobody voiced the role of language in articulating the supposed bias. Moreover, previous research has not studied the language of the history textbook from Malaysia.
This article studies the history textbook for secondary years two, three and five. It chose the depiction of colonization and independence. The critique in the media has centered on the portrayal of Malaysians but not the Malaysians and non-Malaysians, particularly the British who colonized Malaysia. If the textbook reproduces dominant ideology (van Dijk, 1993), as critical discourse analysis claims, there might be a positive portrayal of the Malaysians and a negative portrayal of the British (van Dijk, 1998). The article intends to explore any linguistic evidence of this portrayal.
This article poses the question: how has the language of the history textbook portrayed the Malaysians and British during colonization and independence? It is answered using Transitivity from Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) as a method of analysis.
Critique in the media about the history textbook’s content was not futile. The Ministry of Education has convened a committee to review the textbook. Moreover, civil society has organized itself through the Campaign for a Truly Malaysian History to monitor any changes which the committee might propose. This article is useful to both groups to confirm or to disconfirm claims of bias in the textbook. It can also be used to explain the role of language in conveying disciplinary knowledge about history.
Previous Research on Language in History Textbooks
In Baranovitch (2010) and Cruz (2002), the non-Han in China and Latin Americans in the United States of America respectively are portrayed negatively although this has changed in China (Baranovitch, 2010). This negative portrayal was evident in the textbook’s image and language. Baranovitch (2010) and Cruz (2002) show examples of this bias but they did not explain the linguistic strategies which contribute to this bias.
Peled-Elhanan (2010) shows the types of legitimation strategies in image and language in portraying massacre in the history textbook. van Dijk (1993) shows the role of language in portraying people positively or negatively in the sociology textbook. Peled-Elhanan (2010) and van Dijk (1993) provide the linguistic strategies but these strategies did not relate syntactic elements to functional elements, as in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL as a method of analysis can ground claims of legitimation and portrayal in a close analysis of the textbook. SFL is commonly used to understand academic discourse, including history. The previous SFL research for the history textbook presents three linguistic strategies of opinion, focus and value.
Opinion is about enabling or disabling people to voice their opinions using a Process (see ‘Method: Transitivity’ section). In Oteíza (2003), the opinions of those in power during the military coup in Chile are known but not those of their opponent.
Focus is about emphasizing or deemphasizing people. In Moss (2010) and Oteíza and Pinto (2008), using non-humans as Participants (see ‘Method: Transitivity’ section) minimizes the contribution of people to a historical episode. This emphasizes inevitable progress in Moss (2010) and deemphasizes the military’s misdemeanor in Oteíza and Pinto (2008). Barnard (2003) shows blame avoidance through blaming a defunct Participant, Japan’s Imperial Army, not Japan the country, for Japan’s World War II atrocities.
Nominalization is commonly used to avoid blame. This refers to changing an adjective or verb into a noun (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 637). Through nominalization, the people which an adjective or verb describes are not mentioned. This serves to remove the cause but leaves the result for a historical episode, as in Barnard (2003), Coffin (2006), Moss (2010), Oteíza and Pinto (2008) and Peled-Elhanan (2010), where the result of negative historical episodes are named but not their cause.
Value is about evaluating people. Evaluation is realized in adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs. This provides a positive or negative perception about people. In Oteíza (2003) and Oteíza and Pinto (2008), the pre-military government is evaluated as incompetent, which prefigure its deposing. In Tann (2010), the British are evaluated negatively while the Singaporeans are evaluated positively. Using evaluation to posit one group as positive and another group as negative is also reported in Barnard (2003), Coffin (2003, 2006) and Peled-Elhanan (2010).
Common linguistic strategies seem to contribute to the textbook’s notion of historical truth (Coffin, 1997) across countries, be it Australia (Coffin, 1997, 2003, 2006), Chile (Oteíza, 2003; Oteíza and Pinto, 2008), Colombia (Moss, 2010), Israel (Peled-Elhanan, 2010), Japan (Barnard, 2003), Singapore (Tann, 2010) or Spain (Oteíza and Pinto, 2008) and across languages, be it English (Coffin, 1997, 2003, 2006; Tann, 2010), Hebrew (Peled-Elhanan, 2010), Japanese (Barnard, 2003) or Spanish (Oteíza, 2003; Oteíza and Pinto, 2008). These might be generic linguistic strategies for the history textbook, which requires more research. No research has employed SFL for the history textbook from Malaysia in Malay. Hence its linguistic strategies are unknown. Moreover, except Coffin (2003, 2006), previous research has not studied colonization and independence. This article hopes to narrow the gap in the literature.
Methodology
Data: History Textbooks
History is compulsory for secondary years 1–5, ages 13–17 in public education in Malaysia. The textbook is the major instructional material to teach history although other materials often supplement it. The Ministry of Education (MOE) selects a panel to write the textbook for students throughout Malaysia. The panel produces a draft, which is reviewed for quality control (MOE, 2011). After reviewing, the MOE publishes the textbook through Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
This article chose the latest textbook for secondary years two, three and five. It excludes the textbook for secondary year one because it does not deal with colonization or independence and the textbook for secondary year four because it concerns world history. Two clarifications are required. First, I limit colonization to the British and not the Dutch, Japanese and Portuguese who briefly colonized Malaysia. Second, I use ‘Malaysia’ and ‘Malaysians’ to refer to people living in any historical period in present-day Malaysia although Malaysia did not exist until 1963.
The textbook details are presented in Table 1. The chosen chapters for analysis are about colonization and independence. Colonization brought economic and political changes to result in social shifts. These shifts impacted Malaysia in numerous ways, including its system of government, agriculture, industry and ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. Independence has Malaysia adapting to these developments. Both colonization and independence are made up of numerous historical episodes, a sequential order recounting a step in the process of colonization or independence.
Data.
Both colonization and independence contain two prominent groups of colonizer and colonized. The British are the colonizer and the Malaysians are the colonized. The textbook separates Malaysians and non-Malaysians because the Malaysians are part of the reader’s group while the British are not part of the reader’s group. This posits an us–them distinction. van Dijk (1998: 317–318) mentions that discourse about us tends to increase our positive values and decrease our negative values while discourse about them tends to increase their negative values and decrease their positive values. The writers and readers being Malaysian, us is Malaysian and them is British. Yet the textbook has to be analyzed to discover if its language has traces of an us–them distinction. This is done with Transitivity.
Method: Transitivity
The chosen method of analysis is Transitivity. Transitivity is part of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL posits language as performing three metafunctions simultaneously: textual, interpersonal and ideational (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004). The textual metafunction organizes the interpersonal and ideational metafunctions as sequences of discourse (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 30). The interpersonal metafunction enacts personal and social relationships with people around us (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 30). The ideational metafunction consists of two components, experiential and logical, which respectively study meanings in clauses and relations between clauses (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004).
Transitivity is the experiential component of the ideational metafunction. It helps to explain the way language portrays experience using linguistic structures (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 178). Transitivity is useful as a method to analyze the history textbook because the history textbook portrays historical episodes using linguistic structures. These linguistic structures convey meaning about history to readers. This makes transitivity an important method in critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992: 89; 1995: 57).
Transitivity construes experience through the clause (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 170), making the clause the basic unit of analysis for Transitivity. For Transitivity, the clause consists of three major functional elements, namely Participant, Process and Circumstance, which are often realized by the syntactic elements of the nominal group, verbal group and adverbial group or prepositional phrase respectively (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 175–177). Table 2 shows this matching with a few translated textbook examples.
Connection between syntactic elements and functional elements.
Processes impose order on the variation of experience around us (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 170), in this case, for history. Table 3 provides the Processes, their central meanings and their crucial Participants. A clause must have a Process but it does not need to have all the Participants. Participants can be human or non-human. The Participant labeled ‘Behaver’ is responsible for a type of behavior. The Participant labeled ‘Actor’ is responsible for an action, which impacts a Goal or Scope (Example 1). The Participant labeled ‘Senser’ is responsible for a type of sensing. The content of sensing is labeled Phenomenon (Example 2). The Participant labeled ‘Sayer’ is responsible for a type of communication. The content of communication is labeled ‘Verbiage’ (Example 3). The Participant labeled ‘Carrier’ is the thing described while ‘Attribute’ is the description (Example 4). The Participant labeled ‘Token’ is a specific identification of a thing while Value is a general identification of a thing (Example 5).
Processes and Participants.
Transitivity is a paradigmatic system. For every Participant, Process and Circumstance chosen, other Participants, Processes and Circumstances are not chosen. So the presence of certain options indicates the absence of other options, which need to be considered during analysis.
It might be said that Transitivity is a complex way to study the textbook. SFL (which includes Transitivity) provides clear and rigorous linguistic categories for analysis (Blommaert, 2005: 23), answering van Dijk’s (2001: 96) demand for a systematic method in critical discourse analysis. A cursory reading might conclude that the textbook has an us–them distinction but Transitivity grounds our intuitions in a detailed and structured analysis. Moreover, Transitivity provides us with a common technical language to understand the linguistic strategies in the genre of the history textbook.
This article adapts Transitivity for Malay, as done for Spanish by Oteíza (2003) and Oteíza and Pinto (2008) because there is no Transitivity developed yet for Malay. It is not an imposition of English on Malay because Transitivity studies the meaning in the nominal group, verbal group, adverbial group and preposition phrase in a clause. These linguistic structures exist in Malay.
For analysis, a qualitative design was employed. First, the sentences for the chapters are typed. Then the sentences are divided into clauses. The clauses are coded by textbook, chapter, section and clause to enable retrieval. Next, a clause is labeled for its Process and available Participants and Circumstances. Some examples of labeling are shown in Example 1 to 5. This labeling provided data, which are presented during the discussion. Last, the clauses are translated from Malay to English, which a native user verified. For the discussion, brackets () are put to separate parts of the clause not under discussion. Examples marked with alphabets are continuous sentences (e.g. 6a, 6b).
Discussion
Identities of Power, Class and Ethnicity
The nominal group ascribes the role of Participant to the Malaysians and British. The nominal group has a noun as its semantic core (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 325). This noun can be modified by an adjective, determiner, noun or numeral (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 320). The choice of nouns and modifiers establishes an identity, indicating the Malaysians as us and the British as them.
In Table 4 the nominal group indicates the Malaysians as belonging to Malaysia, using modifiers such as ‘this’ and ‘local.’ These modifiers position the nouns ‘citizens’ and ‘people’ as part of Malaysia, us. Yet in Table 5 the nominal group indicates the British as not belonging to Malaysia, using modifiers such as ‘British’ and ‘Western.’ These geographical modifiers position them as coming from another country. Moreover, the nouns ‘colonization’ and ‘imperialists’ are conventionally negative. Taken together, geography and convention represent the British as undesirable foreigners who are not part of Malaysia: them.
Examples of nominal groups for the Malaysians.
Examples of nominal groups for the British.
For the British, people with economic or political power become Participants (Table 6). This presents the British as the dominant group. The British control the country’s economic and political order, through which they impose their authority. In contrast, for the Malaysians, they have little or no economic or political power, except the aristocracy and politicians. Even their power is curbed by and dependent on the British. This presents the Malaysians as the dominated group. So the choice of nominal group creates a binary of power between the Malaysians and British.
Examples of nominal groups for the British as the dominant group.
Yet certain nominal groups unite the Malaysians and British during independence, such as the Community Liaison Committee, Member System and National Conference in T2A and T3B. These organizations had Malaysian and British representatives. Through these organizations, the Malaysians and British communicate on equal terms. This reflects the reorientation of relations between the Malaysians and British because now they work together for independence.
For the Malaysians, people with class or ethnic identity are common Participants. Interestingly, class is prominent during colonization and ethnicity is prominent during independence. Class in the textbook is the division between the aristocracy and non-aristocracy during colonization and politicians and non-politicians during independence. Class is marked by titles with an individual’s name (Table 7), separating them from the nameless masses who are mostly absent in the textbook. This preference for aristocracy and politicians minimizes the contribution of non-elite Malaysians in the textbook, which makes history a narrative about the elites.
Examples of nominal groups for elite Malaysians.
Ethnicity in the textbook is the division between the Malays and non-Malays. The Malays are termed as locals while the non-Malays are termed as foreigners (Table 8). During colonization, the Malay and non-Malay divide is minimal since class division takes prominence because the problems of the aristocracy become an excuse for the British to intervene in Malaysia.
Examples of nominal groups for the Malays and non-Malays.
This is reversed during independence. Here, the division between Chinese, Indians and Malays, the major ethnicities in Malaysia, becomes prominent because their politicians try to settle their differences. Perhaps the textbook emphasizes ethnicity to show the contribution of the various ethnic political parties to independence (Table 9). The Malay and non-Malay division at the start of T2B and T3B become a Malay and non-Malay unity at the end of T2B and T3B, implying that the ethnic gap is narrowed with independence. The nominal group evidences this change, using the collective noun ‘audience’ and ‘citizens,’ devoid of class or ethnic modifiers, as if independence creates a united and homogenous people (Table 10).
Examples of nominal groups for interethnic cooperation.
Examples of nominal groups for independent Malaysians.
The choice of Participants discursively constructs identities using variables power, class and ethnicity for the Malaysians and British. These identities are visualized in Figure 1 and 2. From Figure 1 and 2, it is seen that the textbook expands identities about the Malaysians but not the British. As Anderson (2006: 24–26) writes, print media, such as the history textbook, provides the technical means for representing the imagined community. The textbook serves to link Malaysians in the past with Malaysians today. This could be an endeavor to narrow the distance between the Malaysian personalities and students since students learn more about the Malaysian personalities and their contribution to history while the British personalities are not developed. This is perhaps obvious because the textbook is about the history of Malaysia and more information is provided about us, the Malaysians, than them, the British.
Identities for the Malaysians and British during colonization.
Identities for the Malaysians and British during independence.
In Figure 1 and 2, the Malaysians and British as Participants belong to two distinct groups, although this is suspended a few times during independence. Moreover, the Malaysians as participants are fragmented mainly around class during colonization and mainly around ethnicity during independence. This is the textbook’s portrayal of the social order (Tann, 2010: 179) in Malaysia, where the identities of the Malaysians and British are almost always socially contrasted. These identities evoke distinct behavior for the Malaysians and British, which are explained using Processes and Circumstances (see the following four sections).
Portraying this social order negates other social orders which existed in Malaysia. These other social orders could be organized using other variables, such as gender, region, religion or sexuality. As Macherey (1978: 85) writes, in order to say anything, there are other things which must not be said. These alternative social orders are absent as Participants in the textbook, perhaps because they complicate a neat dichotomy among the Malaysians and between the Malaysians and British (Figure 1 and 2), leaving readers to presume these alternative social orders as unimportant.
Malaysians and British cause History
Material and Relational Attributive Processes dominate the textbook, where action and description are prominent. The British are in the role of Actor, which makes them responsible for colonizing Malaysia (Examples 6–7). The Malaysians are also in the role of Actor, whose actions become a pretext for the British to intervene (Examples 8–10). The Actor in Examples 6 to 9 is human, which indicate human intervention in history, unlike Moss (2010: 80–81). This explains the exact role of the Malaysians and British, identifying their contribution to the colonization of Malaysia.
The textbook ascribes the role of Actor to the Malaysians, as in Example 8 and 9, while Example 10 is a nominalization where the Actor and Process are condensed into a noun. So ‘Dato’ Kelana and Dato’ Bandar struggle to control the Linggi River’ becomes ‘this struggle.’ As Actor, the Malaysians share the responsibility for their colonization. The British are not entirely to be blamed because frailty among the Malaysians made them vulnerable. Their vulnerability becomes a lesson which the textbook reminds readers to not repeat. Perhaps not having blame avoidance, unlike Barnard (2003), enables the moral of national unity to be inserted in the textbook.
However, the textbook does not only use Material Process. Instead, it construes colonization and independence as the combination of various experiences through various Processes. The textbook is not solely concerned about action but it tries to explain the reasons for action through Mental or Verbal Process. The textbook also describes the cause or result of an action through Relational Attributive Process. A combination of these processes forms a coherent narrative to explain historical episodes, as in the following extract:
The extract is about the Member System, an important step to self-rule. The textbook begins by describing it using Relational Attributive Process. Then Verbal Processes are employed to explain its origin. This process does not have any impact in the real world, since it is not yet implemented using Material Process, which comes in later parts of the page. The extract has Material Processes but their implementation is a result of communication through the Verbal Process ‘suggested’ and ‘opined.’ Verbal Processes permit the textbook to ‘speak for’ the Malaysians and British although its fidelity to an original speech is doubtful. The extract shows history as not merely about action in the past. Instead, the textbook tries to provide the context which motivated action. This requires the use of other processes.
Colonization as Undesirable
During colonization, the British are also in the role of Sayer for Verbal Process. Verbal Process presents the British opinions about colonization as opinions (Examples 11–12). This voices one side of the argument about colonization. However, this argument is the Sayer’s opinion. Opinions are subjective, which makes them open to debate.
The experience of colonization is portrayed as exploitation or subordination through Material and Relational Attributive Processes (Examples 13–16). These Processes do not seem be opinions, as there is no source for these processes, unlike Sayer for Verbal Process. The clauses using these Processes acquire the status of facts, which cannot be argued because the clauses are merely presenting an action or description.
However, Material and Relational Attributive Processes are opinions. These Processes are the opinions of the writers. The absence of a conspicuous source, such as Senser or Sayer, gives a pretension of objectivity to the description of colonization. The writers use these processes to create an omniscient voice (VanSledright, 2008: 115) or recorder voice (Coffin, 2006: 151) about colonization, detached from personal interest. So the description of colonization as a negative experience can claim to be facts (Examples 13–16).
The claim is also strengthened by the lack of modality in the verbal group, making Examples 13 to 16 instances of a categorical statement (Fairclough, 1992, 1995) where the textbook is absolutely sure of its claims. For example, the verbal group in Example 13 and Example 15 with modality could be ‘may have expanded’ and ‘might not have given’ respectively. Using modality questions the validity of the clause and enables alternative interpretations of the past to be considered. Instead, the textbook excludes modality, negating other interpretations to convey its version of colonization.
The textbook can claim to be balanced by describing two sides of the argument about colonization. However, the argument for colonization (Examples 11–12) is marked as opinion through Verbal Process, which is debatable and hence refutable for readers, but the argument against colonization (Examples 13–16) is marked as facts through Material and Relational Attributive Processes. Through the choice of Processes, the textbook covertly provides inarguable facts about the undesirable experience of colonization.
Independence as Negotiation
The textbook portrays independence as the result of dialogue, using Verbal Process, where the Malaysians and British are in the role of Sayer (Examples 17–19). So the various ethnicities had a role to play in achieving independence. The British are not antagonistic, as during colonization. In fact, they help independence to happen (Example 19). The cooperation among the Malaysians and between the Malaysians and British portray independence as the result of negotiation. Thus independence was gained peacefully. This portrays us, the Malaysians, positively. The textbook reflects and perhaps helps to shape a common belief among Malaysians, who claim that independence for Malaysia was peaceful, compared to other countries in southeast Asia, which resorted to violence.
Yet the textbook simplifies the path to independence because the Verbal Process in Example 17–19 shows agreement and the Sayer are elite Malaysians and British. These choices indicate that independence was unproblematic and the elites won independence. Absent as Process are the problems to independence and as Participant are the non-elites who fought for independence. Kua (2011) mentions these absences in his alternative narrative of independence, articulating the Processes and Participants which complicate the explanation of independence.
Evaluating the Malaysians and British
In the preceding two sections colonization is negative and independence is positive but the evaluation is covert because readers cannot isolate a Participant, Process or Circumstance performing the evaluation. In this section, the evaluation is overt because certain words clearly indicate the value of colonization and independence, resembling Coffin’s (2006: 152) appraiser voice. Evaluation is normally analyzed using Appraisal (Martin and Rose, 2003).
The choice of Participants, Processes and Circumstances can be evaluative. The textbook overtly evaluates the Malaysians and British, as seen in Barnard (2003), Coffin (2003, 2006), Oteíza (2003), Oteíza and Pinto (2008), Peled-Elhanan (2010) and Tann (2010).
The textbook evaluates the British negatively during colonization, as in Coffin (2003, 2006). The choice of words positions the British as cheating and imposing themselves on the Malaysians. The words showing the negative evaluation can be a Process, Participant or Circumstance, bolded in Examples 20–22.
However, during independence, the British are not evaluated. This is probably because, for colonization, the Malaysians and British oppose one another but for independence, the Malaysians and British work together, as in the ‘Identities of Power, Class and Ethnicity’ and ‘Independence as Negotiation’ sections earlier. For independence, the textbook shifts its evaluation to the Malaysians. The textbook evaluates the Malaysians positively in terms of ethnic harmony. Once this is achieved, independence followed. The textbook evaluates independence positively. This proposes causality that independence is the result of ethnic harmony. The words showing the positive evaluation can be a Process, Participant or Circumstance, bolded in Examples 23–25.
The textbook establishes a binary moral order (Tann, 2010: 180) where the British and colonization are undesirable (Examples 20–22) but the Malaysians and independence are desirable (Examples 23–25). These groups and periods are contrasted, as if the Malaysians did not contribute to their colonization and the British did not contribute to independence. This binary moral order reflects the perspective of Malaysia because the evaluation disdains colonization and celebrates independence. It indirectly informs readers to relate to the Malaysians – us – and not the British – them.
A more accurate version of history would avoid the evaluative Process, Participant or Circumstance. These could be changed or removed to provide a neutral narrative. This is possible for sociology (van Dijk, 1993: 165) but not yet for history, where a neutral narrative is absent in the textbook in Chile (Oteíza, 2003; Oteíza and Pinto, 2008), Colombia (Moss, 2010), Israel (Peled-Elhanan, 2010), Japan (Barnard, 2003), Singapore (Tann, 2010) and Spain (Oteíza and Pinto, 2008). This is an indication of the textbook’s perspective, favoring a nationalist version of the past through its choice of functional elements.
Conclusion
This article has studied the portrayal of the Malaysians and British during colonization and independence in the history textbook from Malaysia in Malay, using Transitivity as a method of analysis. The portrayal of the Malaysians and British changes from colonization to independence and the language of the textbook reflects this change.
To recapitulate, the Malaysians and British are separated during colonization and independence. The Malaysians are divided along class or ethnicity although these divisions are erased with independence. Colonization and the British are portrayed negatively in the chapters about colonization. Independence and the Malaysians are portrayed positively in the chapters about independence. The choices for Participants and Processes exclude other Participants and Processes which, if included, could provide a different narrative. However, the chapters for colonization and independence did not contain any of the supposed bias claimed in the media. Perhaps studying other chapters would confirm or disconfirm such claims.
Thus there is linguistic evidence of van Dijk’s (1998) us–them distinction in the textbook, with negative them during colonization and positive us during independence. This confirms the notion of historical truth as rhetorical (Coffin, 1997) because linguistic structures provide a selective reading of the past. The study of Participants and Processes seems to evidence a grand narrative (Lyotard, 1984) in the textbook, where the moral order and social order improve as time passes, from bad to good, from colonization to independence.
Transitivity is a useful method of analysis to make explicit the linguistic structures which contribute to us–them distinction. It provides the linguistic evidence for Burke’s (1991: 239) proposal of history being portrayed from a particular perspective. The textbook adopts a perspective which encourages national liberation, typical for a postcolonial country. Indeed, the introduction to the textbook states that history education is meant to inculcate patriotism in students. The context of producing and consuming the textbook has influenced the content of the textbook.
Note that a common portrayal of colonization and independence exists in the history textbook for secondary years two, three and five. Students are faced with a continuative and repetitive narrative about these periods as they progress through secondary education. The textbook serves to socialize students to a particular version of the past. However, students might not always imbibe the information because a critical reader would be able to decipher (Coffin, 2003: 237) the textbook’s perspective. Teachers should not merely transmit the compliant reading position (Coffin, 2003: 233) of colonization as bad and independence as good. One way to inculcate critical thinking about history is through a close analysis of language, as done in this article using Transitivity.
For the future, research could consider the image in the history textbook because SFL was adapted to study image (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006). Being a multisemiotic text, image and language contribute to meaning in the history textbook, as in Baranovitch (2010), Cruz (2002) and Peled-Elhanan (2010). It would also be interesting, as in Moss (2010), to incorporate ethnography, where the process of teaching and learning history is studied. It provides a means to explore the way teachers and students relate to the language in the textbook.