EFL textbooks carry instructional content as well as principles for instruction. In this paper I present a modified version of Bernstein's model of pedagogic discourse used to interpret the underlying power and control relations during the enactment of an EFL listening textbook in a university context.
In this paper I present a sociological model for interpreting the underlying conditions of the classroom enactment of an EFL listening textbook in a university context. I suggest a modified version of Basil Bernstein's concept of pedagogic discourse that draws from previous work on genre/literacy pedagogy and language classroom discourses. This model conceptualises a regulating moral discourse projecting an instructional discourse of language skills via what can be various languages of instruction. In language classrooms, where the discourse of skills can also perform pedagogic communicative functions, distinctions between the language subject and discourses around that subject are often blurred. This model makes available for analysis relations between language texts and discourses, and the distribution of power and principles of control. Classification (power) and framing (control) indicators were developed to provide parameters to evaluate relations between subjects and discourses and to identify particular pedagogic code modalities. When applied to observations of classroom enactment of the EFL textbook, waves of strong and weak classification and framing values are evident throughout the lessons. Interviews with teachers and students indicate that much of the teacher's work involves weakening power and control relations carried by the coursebook, and revealing certain beliefs that act as principles for the relay of particular modes of pedagogic communication. This is useful for implicating materials in the relay of pedagogic discourse.
