Legacies of Militarized Literacy Discourses in Afghanistan From 1978 to 2022: A Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of the People's Literacy, Jihad Literacy, Daesh Literacy, and the New Literacy

• In Event: Research In Progress Roundtable Session 5
  In Invited Roundtable: Literacy and Language Education: Understanding Discourse and Practice (Table 4)

Abstract

By using Fairclough's (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this article provides a comparative review of the People’s Literacy (1978), Jihad Literacy (1990), Daesh Literacy (2015), and the New Literacy (2022) in Afghanistan. The research explores how, under each literacy, militarized discourses were produced to create a sociocultural change through the acquisition of alphabets and numeracy. The article investigates the production of militarized discourses through schooling and consumption by children and its broader sociohistorical consequences for Afghan society. I use Mary Hamilton’s (2005) Basic Elements of Literacy Events and Practices theoretical tool for analyzing multimodal literacy. Once literacy textbooks become an ‘accomplice’ to violence, regardless of ideology, it results in the reproduction of violence as a normal social reality.

Author

• Nangyalai Attal, University of Massachusetts - Amherst