Deconstructing the Concept of Good Citizenship Embedded in Foreign Language Curricula in China and America

• In Event: Language, Identity, and Citizenship in International/Transnational Contexts

Abstract

In this study, I deconstructed the conceptions embedded in current foreign language curricula in China and the U.S. as to what good citizenship means. I conducted a comparative critical discourse analysis of three data sets, viz., EFL (English as a foreign language) and CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) curriculum materials for the first to third graders in an elementary school in Shanghai, China and Utah, America respectively, foreign language policies and/or curriculum standards delimited in the two contexts, and related media accounts. Two pairs of discourses, i.e., nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and neoliberalism and Confucianism, helped me identify and compare the country-specific sociopolitical meanings associated with being a good citizen in China and the U.S.

Author

• Juanjuan Zhu, Utah State University