A subliminal power indicator: course books used in teaching Turkish as a foreign language

All those sources from communication tools to educational materials, that have been used in the current century; contain implicit or explicit messages directed to the recipients. Those messages, which constitute the main body of written or oral texts, find a wide coverage in the education process through various materials. Textbooks, whose internal and external structure is generally shaped by official authorities, are among the main sources of these messages. During the last decade, Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language have been gained momentum and textbook diversity in this area has increased. CEFR, the dominant element of the international standard in terms of foreign language education, is the framework text governing the criteria of the process. The General Qualification categories in the CEFR focus on different skills areas of foreign language education. The consideration level of General Qualification categories in the textbooks, used for teaching Turkish as a foreign language, was researched with qualitative form developed by using CEFR; and it was determined that textbooks are far from supporting learner autonomy; and also Notification Based Knowledge Category and its subcategories dominate all textbooks. The second part of the research has been shaped in consideration of the textbooks are not the actors equipped only with mechanical grammar knowledge. Texts in the textbooks, were digitized at this dimension of the study and frequency and collocation analysis are made with Wordsmith 7.0 software. Following this stage, the contents at the surface structure and deep structure of the texts, in the textbooks that are used in the department of Turcology, Yunus Emre Institute and Maarif Foundation, are interpreted by revealing the sub texts via Fairclough's (1992) critical discourse analysis method. Around the discourse of textbooks and Nye's (2005) "Soft Power" theory, it has been determined that it is tried to shape the attitudes and behaviors of foreigners who learn Turkish; and capitalism, consumption culture, popular culture, modernity; which are true to Western Civilization, are criticized intensely in the discourse of textbooks.