A critical discourse analysis of texts in teaching Turkish as a foreign language textbooks

This study was done to make a critical discourse analysis of textbooks that are used in teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language. For this purpose, three textbooks were scrutinized: İstanbul Turkish for Foreigners C1 Textbook (compiled by İstanbul University), Yedi İklim Turkish C1 Textbook (prepared by Yunus Emre Institute), İzmir Turkish for Foreigners C1 Textbook (put together by Dokuz Eylul University Language Education and Research Center) were examined using Fairclough's (1989) Dialectical-Relational Approach. In these 3 books, the most used classification scheme was the informative/explanatory classification scheme. 13 out of 26 texts belong to the informative/explanatory classification scheme. When examining the rewording in texts, it was understood that most of the rewordings were for men. When synonym words were analyzed, it was established that most of the synonyms used in Turkish culture had no use of gender or nation-related words. When antonym words used in texts were analyzed, no ideological use of gender, nation, or culture was found. When words were examined, a total of 77 hyponymy-related words were found. It was established that those words had 656 hyponyms. It was then determined that those words mostly belonged to Turkish culture. They had 67 meanings and 3 out of 656 words were for women and 22 out of 656 were for men. When hyponym words in texts were examined, it was found that there were nation expressions originating from Greek, Turkish, Iranian, Hebrew, and Arabic. The questions which had been chosen from Fairclough's approach were implemented in the reading texts from each unit in these books. The expressions in reading texts were analyzed in terms of gender, nation, and culture. As a result of the study, it was concluded that expressions, examples, and affirmations related to men are more prevalent than those used for women. It was also established that expressions about Turkish culture were more frequently seen in the texts. Other cultures were seen in these texts too, but expressions about Turkish culture were positive; whereas, expressions about other cultures appeared as positive, negative, or neutral. As per expressions about the Turkish nation, it was determined that they were abundantly present in the texts. Expressions about other nations were spotted too, but they didn't have any negative connotations. Keywords: Turkish as a foreign language, critical discourse analysis, textbooks.