"How Many Do You Have?" Disney English (as a) Language (of) Acquisition

• In Event: Consuming Childhood: Disney as a Curriculum of Consumption

Abstract

Disney English is one of the five areas of revenue for Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW), the publishing group controlled by The Walt Disney Company that includes print books, magazines, and digital books, and is considered DPW’s language learning business (Disney Consumer Products, 2014). By 2015, Disney plans to have 148 English language training centers in China teaching 150,000 children (D’Altorio, 2010). The classrooms, called “Magic Theatres,” are movie themed and feature an interactive whiteboard, projection wall, and wireless technology (Disney English, 2014).

In examining the implications of Disney English, we accept Giroux’s (2004) charge to hold Disney accountable by “challeng[ing] and disrupt[ing] the images, representations, and values offered by Disney’s teaching machine” (p. 180). In this chapter, we use critical discourse analysis to examine the ways Disney English is teaching “Disney” as a paradigm of Westernism and to explore the implications of Disney English as a global cultural force. In the following sections we provide a brief overview of the program and explain the theoretical perspectives we bring to an examination of this relatively new approach Disney is taking to reach children around the world. Then, we explore two themes that emerged as we learned what Disney English is and what it does. The first theme shows how Disney constructs “Americanness” through English language instruction. The second theme depicts a cycle of commodified language and the vocabulary of consumption. Together, these themes illustrate the ways that Disney English operates to teach Chinese children into a particular understanding of Americanness centered on acquisition.

Our examination only scratches the surface of issues surrounding Disney’s language teaching practices. A critical analysis of the materials we were able to examine revealed the two themes presented here: first, that Disney’s English schools seek to “Americanize” its Chinese learners, and second, that language in the Disney English schools is a commodified form of English and seems to teach language for consumption. We are concerned about an English language program that seems to rely on overwriting more natural ways of coming to know oneself as a cultural and linguistic participant in his or her community. This concern is especially valid given the company’s plans to expand to other countries, such as Brazil. We also find problematic a language that seems to primarily teach children to label items they would like to have, and compare quantities of things they have with each other because of the potential implications for children who come to understand the world through a language of consumption. To this end, we acknowledge that such consumption-oriented language is likely present in American classrooms too, when teachers and students engage in language and literacy activities. Any time our focus drifts to noticing types and quantities of things children in stories have, or want, and we make this the emphasis of our discussions, then the troubling outcomes described here apply to our own students as well. Perhaps this look at teaching practices in a foreign country can help shed light on our own practices, too.

Authors

• Laura Rychly, Augusta University

• Stacie Kae Pettit, Augusta University