Multimodal Discourse as Colonial Control: An Analysis of Japanese Language Textbooks for Chinese Students in 1935-1936

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Discourse Analysis Across Language Education Contexts: Examining Textbooks, Policy, and Colonial Narratives

Abstract

This multimodal discourse study examines the construction of colonial ideologies in Puppet Manchukuo (1932–1945) through Japanese language textbooks for Chinese students. Using critical and multimodal critical discourse analysis, I analyze texts and their corresponding images to understand how these ideologies were constructed through the representation of Chinese people and culture. My analysis reveals that these textbooks perpetuated racial hierarchies, cultivated submissive subjectivities, and fabricated the colonial statehood of “Manchukuo” to disseminate colonial ideologies to Chinese students. This study underscores the role of language textbooks in constructing colonial ideologies through integrated textual and visual discourses and their legacy in the present.

Author

• Yuqing Sun, New York University