Monitor ISH (2005), VII/1, 69-92 1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek
Prejeto: 13. 5. 2005 Sprejeto: 25. 5. 2005
Ieva Lauraityte1
Problematic Value Judgements in History Textbooks
Abstract: In this article I argue that problematic value judgements in history textbooks are expressed implicitly because of the character of history discourse itself and also because of the discourse of a new ethical universalism. Problematic value judgements in the so-called new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe are quite dangerous because countries that were under regimes of communist dictatorship for years are a priori less sensitive to democratic values. I employ Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as one of the theories and also methodologies for the analysis of problematic value judgements in history textbooks. In this article I introduce examples of ethnocentric ideology from Lithuanian history textbooks on the basis of CDA, more specifically on the basis of Van Dijk’s scheme of ideological discourse structures. Key words: discourse, ideology, ideological discourse structures, textbooks
Problematične vrednostne sodbe v zgodovinskih učbenikih
Izvleček: V članku zagovarjam tezo, da se problematične vrednostne sodbe v zgodovinskih učbenikih pojavljajo implicitno zaradi narave samega zgodovinskega diskurza in tudi zaradi normativnega novega etičnega univerzalistične-ga diskurza. V t. i. novih demokracijah v srednji in vzhodni Evropi so problematične vrednostne sodbe zelo nevarne, ker so države, ki so živele pod komunističnimi diktaturami, a priori manj občutljive za demokratične vrednote. Kritično analizo diskurza (KAD) uporabljam kot eno od teorij in tudi metodologij za analizo problematičnih vrednostnih sodb v zgodovinskih učbenikih. V članku na podlagi KAD oz. na podlagi Van Dijkove sheme ideoloških diskurzivnih struktur navajam primere etnocentrične ideologije iz litovskih učbenikov. Ključne besede: diskurz, ideologija, ideološke diskurzivne strukture, učbeniki
UDK 372.893(075):316.7
1 Ieva Lauraityte is a Ph.D. candidate at Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities, at the programme of Historical Anthropology. E-mail: ieva.lauraityte@guest.arnes.si.
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The first attempts to analyze the content of history textbooks (as well as other textbooks) with the purpose to overcome negative stereotypes between nations, intolerance, etc., were made after the First World War. The same purposes are still relevant in contemporary world. Some scholars who analyze history textbooks stress the problematic issue of value judgements. History textbooks do not only describe, explain and interpret events of the past, but also mediate value judgments of these events.2 According to prof. J. Justin, the so-called discourse of a new ethical universalism became a norm for different value judgments in the past decades in European educational institutions. This discourse propagates the ideas of human rights, democracy, non-discrimination, solidarity, multicultura-lism, tolerance and culture of peace.3
However, prof. Justin4 points out that in spite of the normative discourse of new ethical universalism, problematic cultural representations (such as prejudices, manifestations of nationalistic ideologies, etc.) are still reported by European educational researchers and experts.
Scholars (such as Justin, Oteiza, Barnard) who focus on different kinds of problematic cultural representations in history textbooks usually stress their implicit character. In other words, because of the “objective” style of history discourse (history is presented as “discovered”, not “created”) and because of the normative new ethical discourse that does not allow explicit discrimination, these problematic cultural representations usually appear implicitly. The implicit character of these messages becomes even more dangerous because they are not easily identified, which is why they are sometimes understood as facts, or as common sense.
The analysis of problematic value judgements in history textbooks is very important in the new democracies of Central and East Europe. According to prof. J. Justin, in South-East European countries, where a number of changes took place in recent years (the wave of proclamations of independence, the period of transition, the EU accession), and where traditions of democracy do not very have deep roots, problematic cultural representations could also find response in different media. In such a way, they “can get an active role in legitimizing problematic political actions”.5
2 Justin, 2003, 123.
3 Justin, 1998, 1.
4 Justin, 1998, 1.
5 Justin, 1998, 1.
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CDA and Textbooks
As mentioned above, the problematic cultural representations have always been one of the most important targets of the analysis of history textbooks. Scholars of different fields have employed various approaches to conduct research on the value systems represented in these books.
The analysis of history textbooks in this article is based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theory and methodology. CDA scholars mainly focus on how different ideologies that manifest social inequality and dominance of some groups are (re)produced in various types of discourse. The CDA point of departure (defending democratic values, equal rights and opportunities, etc.) is thus appropriate and useful because it helps to uncover implicit ideology.
The conception of dominance is directly connected with the concept of power. As in M. Foucault’s conception of power, also in the CDA tradition power and dominance do not have the connotation of physical force. For Van Dijk this modern power is the kind of power that is “enacted by persuasion, dissimulation or manipulation, among other strategic ways to change the mind of others in one’s own interests”.6 The strategy of dominance is not always bluntly manipulative or direct, but more subtle. Van Dijk distinguishes two types of power - legitimate or acceptable forms of power, and abuse of power (breaches of laws, rules and principles of democracy, equality and justice by those who wield power), which he calls dominance.7
Along with the conception of dominance, the term hegemony appears. Van Dijk defines it as follows: “If the minds of the dominated can be influenced in such a way that they accept dominance, and act in the interest of the powerful out of their own free will, we use the term hegemony.”8
According to Van Dijk, power and dominance are usually organized and institutionalized.9 This dominance or reproduction of dominant elite ideologies is usually present in the so-called ideological institutions, among which the most influential are the media, then Churches, families, schools and universities.10
Schools and universities, according to Van Dijk, are ideological institutions, because of the scope of audience they involve (all members of society) and because
6 Van Dijk, 1993, 254.
7 Van Dijk, 1993, 255.
8 Van Dijk, 1993, 255.
9 Van Dijk, 1993, 255.
10 Van Dijk, 2000, 186.
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they have something to do with the (re)production of knowledge, which may be perceived “as major means for the reproduction of the dominant ideologies of society”11
Textbooks as a genre of education discourse can also be a very important source for identifying how different kinds of ideologies that are based on beliefs of social inequality are discursively (re)produced.12
CDA scholars primarily focus on public discourse (media, politics, education,13 etc.). According to Van Dijk, it is mainly leaders and other elites that have access to the means of communication and public discourse, which allows “propagation and the reproduction of ideologies”.14 Moreover, a “mass mediated or any other kind of public discourse will have more serious ideological consequences, if only because of the size of its audience, than mundane interpersonal dialogues”.15
CDA scholars mostly analyze media discourse because it has the biggest power of domination in the globalizing era. However, the discourse of education is also understood in CDA as a discourse where dominance is very much present. “The school textbooks are not to be blamed for everything that goes wrong in a society, but nonetheless, all too often they must take the burden of many hopes and expectations, be they even strikingly naive sometimes. A bad textbook can undoubtedly do a lot of harm but it is not the cure-all even when it is brilliant.”16
Ideology and Knowledge
For the analysis of the “problematic cultural representations”, it is important to examine the conception of knowledge and ideology in the CDA tradition. The CDA tradition is related to the so-called critical theory (Althuser, Barthes, Ben-veniste, etc.). The CDA conception of ideology has some common ground with, for example, L. Althuser’s conception of ideology. He does not use ideology as a pejorative term; for him, ideology is not a false conviction. Van Dijk has a similar view: “ideologies are the foundation of the social beliefs shared by a social
11 Van Dijk, 2000, 187.
12 Van Dijk, 2004.
13 Education discourse is understood in accordance with Van Dijk’s conception of discourse referring to a specific social domain that combines different genres, Van Dijk, 2000, 196.
14 Van Dijk, 2000, 174.
15 Van Dijk, 2000, 265.
16 Tzvetlanski, 1998, 7.
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group. In other words, a bit like axioms of a formal system, ideologies consist of those general and abstract social beliefs, shared by group, that control or organize the more specific knowledge and opinions (attitudes) of a group.”17
As far as knowledge is concerned, Van Dijk distinguishes three types of knowledge - personal, group and cultural. For the analysis of history textbooks, the conception of cultural knowledge is important. Van Dijk states that “Cultural knowledge is shared by all competent members of a society or culture, and forms the basis or common ground of all social practices and discourses. Indeed, in principle all culturally shared knowledge may therefore be presupposed in public discourse. Of course, such common ground knowledge constantly changes, and what is common ground yesterday, may be ideological group belief today (as is the case for Christian religion), or vice versa, as is the case for much scholarly knowledge.”18 On the basis of Van Dijk’s assumption, we can see that knowledge can easily obtain the status of ideology.
Methodology
All scholars of the CDA tradition agree that the CDA School does not have one approach or methodology, but it is more like a mode of interpretation of text and talk within the context. Even the main term discourse has no single, exact meaning. However, some basic points of departure are similar. R. Wodak, one of the well-known adherents of CDA, summarizes the basic concepts and history of CDA in her article. She points out that CDA regards language as social practice, and that the conception of the context of language is very important. One of the most important interests of CDA, according to R. Wodak, is the relation between language and power.19
In this analysis, I will use the following definition of the concept of discourse since it covers the most important of its various aspects: “CDA sees discourse - language in use in speech and writing - as a form of social practice. Describing discourse as social practice implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event and situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s) which frame it: the discursive event is shaped by them, but it also shapes them. That is, discourse is socially constituted, as well as socially conditioned - it constitutes
17 Van Dijk, 2000, 49.
18 Van Dijk, 2001, 114.
19 Wodak, 2001, 1-2.
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situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people.”20
According to the CDA tradition, ideology is (re)produced discursively: “Ideologies - just like other social representations - can be expressed, enacted or produced not only by discourse, but also by other social practices, such as domination, empowerment, discrimination, oppression, exclusion, resistance, opposition, dissent, and so on.”21
All social institutions have their own particular ideological discursive formations. “A characteristic of dominant ideological discursive formation is the capacity to ‘naturalize’ ideologies, i.e. to win acceptance for them as non-ideological ‘common sense’. [… ] To ‘denaturalise’ them is the objective of a discourse analysis which adopts ‘critical’ goals.”22
In Van Dijk’s analysis of ideology, the discursive reproduction of ideologies is expressed through different dimensions and levels of discourse (different discourse structures), for example: context, graphics, intonation, syntax, local meanings and coherence, topics, style, rhetoric, speech acts and interactional features.23 These levels of discourse are usually analyzed in order to denaturalize ideology, to show how ‘common sense’ is ideologically constructed.
By employing the CDA theory and methodology, I will analyze the problematic value judgements in Lithuanian history textbooks published after 1991. The analysis will cover the problematic value judgements based on ethnocentric ideology (ethnocentrism is a belief that one’s own culture is superior to others, which is often accompanied by tendency to make invidious comparisons).24
Ideological Discourse Structures In History Textbooks
Context
As an ideological discourse structure, context is a very important category for
CDA. According to Van Dijk, “we not only need to account for ideological texts,
but also for ideological contexts.25 Van Dijk distinguishes two types of contexts:
20 Titscher, 2000, 26.
21 Van Dijk, 2004.
22 Fairclough, 1995, 27.
23 Van Dijk, 2000, 233.
24 Dictionary, 1999, 155.
25 Van Dijk, 2004.
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global and local. Global contexts are defined “by the social, political, cultural and historical structures in which communicative event takes place.”26 Local contexts are defined as properties “of the immediate, interactional situation in which a communicative event takes place.”27
The examples for the CDA analysis of history textbooks are taken from Lithuanian history textbooks published after the year 1991. In this case the global context (as described by Van Dijk) refers to the ideologies that arose in the Lithuanian society in the period of transition.
According to a number of scholars who analyze the post-socialist transition period in Eastern and Central Europe, the society was introduced not only with new possibilities, but also with new threats. One of them is the prevalence of ethnic nationalism (exaltation of traditions, glorification of past heroes, distrust towards the alien West values, etc.) over civic nationalism.28 Ethnic nationalism as an ideology may be traced in various types of discourse. History textbooks as part of public discourse may help sustain ethnic nationalism.
Some problems concerning the presentation of national history in history textbooks have already been discussed in Lithuania. In 2000, the Head of the Foundation for Educational Change, V. Toleikis, published an article, in which he distinguished two main approaches to the perception of Lithuanian national history:29
Table 1: (translated by the author of the article)
Ethnocentric Perception	Multicultural Perception
Nation	Civil society
Own = from the same nation Alien = from a different nation Blood = Lithuanian	Own = citizen Alien = foreigner Blood = does not matter
Lithuanian language	State official language
Lithuanian territory = ethnical, historical and political	Lithuanian territory = political, historical and ethnical
Lithuania’s history = Lithuanian history	Lithuania’s history = the history of Lithuania’s territory
Lithuania’s culture = the culture created by Lithuanians in Lithuania and abroad	Lithuania’s culture = the culture created in Lithuania and abroad by migrants
Van Dijk, 2001, 108. Van Dijk, 2001, 108. Tismaneau, 2003, 134-136. Toleikis, 2000, 3.
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The author of the article stressed that the ethnocentric model of national history could represent a threat to the civil society. With the help of the so-called post-socialism studies analysis of the processes that took place in Central and Eastern Europe in the transition period, we can better understand the global context of our present analysis: the ideologically based global context in which Lithuanian history textbooks were published after 1991 may have influenced the ethnocentric perception of national history.
On the other hand, local context as another ideological discourse structure has properties such as: types of participants in communicative events, overall domain (politics, business), overall action (legislation, propaganda).30
In the case of textbook analysis, the participants’ roles cannot be reduced to author-reader relationship, because the relationships between the teacher and the author of textbook, and the teacher and the student also exist. According to M. Apple, “[w]e cannot assume that what is “in” the text is actually taught. Nor can we assume that what is taught is actually learned.”31 M. Apple distinguishes three ways in which people respond to the text: dominated, negotiated, and oppositional. According to him, in a dominated reading “one accepts the messages at face value. In a negotiated response, the reader may dispute a particular claim, but accept the overall tendencies or interpretations of a text. [….] an oppositional response rejects these dominant tendencies and interpretations.”32 M. Apple stresses that audience do not passively receive the texts, but they receive them based on their gender, class, race, religious experiences, etc.33
Semantic Macrostructures or Global Meanings Semantic macrostructures or global meanings are also ideological discourse structures. According to Van Dijk, “Language users are unable to memorize and manage all meaning details of a discourse, and hence mentally organize these meanings by global meanings or topics.”34 Titles, headlines, summaries, abstracts, thematic sentences or conclusions are examples of global meanings. They represent “the overall coherence of the discourse. At the same time, they
30 Van Dijk, 2001, 108.
31 Apple, 1991, 14.
32 Apple, 1991, 14.
33 Apple, 1991, 14.
34 Van Dijk, 2001, 102.
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activate relevant knowledge and help construct the top level of the models being used for the possibly biased interpretation of the rest of the discourse. Local meanings may thus be ignored or literally “down-graded” to the level of insignificant detail.”35
An introduction in a history textbook that covers an overall topic can be given as an example of a semantic macrostructure. The example I would like to give is an introduction to the topic of The Middle Ages, where pupils are introduced with a general view towards the medieval history, towards their nation, etc.
Example 1:
“In this textbook we will analyze mainly the history of Europe, the part of the world we live in. The role of Europe in the history of humankind was very important. Its superiority over other continents was observable already in the XII century, but mainly became evident after the Great Geographical Discoveries at the end of the XV century and the beginning of the XVI century.
We, Europeans, are connected by the traditions of Christianity. Europe became a Christian continent in the Middle Ages. At that time Christianity was divided into two branches: West (Catholic) and East (Orthodox). […] The organization of the Catholic Church was the consolidating force for Europe. […] A similar role was played by the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, Balkan countries and East Slav states.
The Middle Ages were the epoch when Europe was born. At the beginning of the Middle Ages the borders of civilization coincided with the borders of the Roman Empire. Within a thousand years everything changed: all over Europe states and cities were established, Christianity spread and with it also the script, architecture and all other cultural achievements. A lot of things that surround us today appeared in our land at that time.”36
In the above example, we can observe how the national identity is constructed through the European one. Firstly, the pronoun “we” that appears in this fragment (re)produces in-group and out-group polarization, which is typical for ideologies.37 The pronoun is used to create a sort of solidarity with some com-
35 Van Dijk, 2000, 267.
36 Jokimaitis, 2000, 8-9. All examples are translated by the author of the article. Accents added by the author of the article.
37 Van Dijk, 2004.
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munity. It does not have a stable meaning, and may be analyzed simply by investigating the content of the discursive act.38 In the above text, “we” could denote Europeans, Christians and Catholics. Taking into account that the Lithuanian nation consists not only of Lithuanians (which mostly identify themselves as Europeans, Christians and Catholics), we can assume that Russians, Jews, Tatars, and the Roma cannot identify themselves with the pronoun “we”. The observed pronoun thus introduces a perspective that can be described as ethno-nationalistic.
Secondly, we can also identify certain value judgements by observing lexical items which stress positive characteristics of the members of the in-group while humiliating the members of the out-group. Europe - and everybody identifying themselves with Europe - is described as superior over the rest of the human kind. Thus, the text on the overall conception of the Middle Ages contains ideological discourse, which implicitly produces a Eurocentric belief in the pre-eminence of Europe and Europeans and consequently contributes to the formation of ethnocentric ideology.
Thirdly, there is clear distinction between Europe and the East in this fragment: The organization of the Catholic Church was the consolidating force for Europe. […] A similar role was played by the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, Balkan countries and East Slav states. From these few sentences we can conclude that the Lithuanian identity as a European identity is opposed against the identification with the East. The same trend was also identified in the media. Vinogradnaitė stresses that in the 1990s one of the ways of constructing national identity was to point out the European identity in order to refer to the borders of the national community and thus indicate the enemy - the East.39
To my mind, the overall description of the topic introduces an ethnocentric and Eurocentric perception of the Lithuanian nation, which is based on the myth of common ancestry, religion and territory. As such it is exclusive towards other nationalities in the territory of Lithuania.
On the basis of the above assumptions, I find the topic presented in the example biased and based on an ethnocentric conception of nation. The value judgements (superiority of Europe, connection of Europe only with the Christian and
Vinogradnaitė, 2002, 182. Vinogradnaitė, 2002, 185.
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even more with the Catholic tradition) present in this introduction are very influential because they control the overall meaning of global discourse.
Local Meanings
Local meanings are also one of ideological discourse structures. As such, they include the meaning of words, the structures of propositions, coherence, etc. Here “we deal with actual content of discourse”.40 According to Van Dijk, the analysis of isolated places in the text does not reflect the meaning of the text as a whole. While analyzing local meanings, we have to work with the text,41 and CDA proposes to analyze not only what is in the text, but also what is absent from the text.42
For the analysis of local meanings Van Dijk offers three principles of ideological reproduction of discourse, namely, the presence or absence of information in semantic representation derived from event models, the function of expression or suppression of information in the interests of the speaker/writer, and also discourse must have implications for groups or social issues, because ideologies are social and group-based. He presents the so-called ideological square:
1.  Express/emphasize information that is positive about US;
2.  Express/emphasize information that is negative about Them;
3.  Suppress/de-emphasize information that is positive about Them;
4.  Suppress/de-emphasize information that is negative about US.43 Concretely these moves are manifested in the text by the following strategies.
Detail and Level of Description
According to Van Dijk, discourse could be incomplete or overcomplete. Over-completeness, according to Van Dijk, occurs when some irrelevant information for comprehension is included; incompleteness is when some information is left out.44 When analyzing these features of discourse, the ideological square can be
40 Van Dijk, 2000, 267.
41 Here the conception of the text is based on N. Fairclough’s definition which describes it as a primarily linguistic cultural artefact, by taking into consideration its multisemiotic dimension as well, Fairclough, 1995, 4.
42 Fairclough, 1995, 5.
43 Van Dijk, 2000, 267.
44 Van Dijk, 2000, 268.
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applied: if discourse is ideological, this principle will be used in order to express/suppress positive/negative information about US/THEM.
The analysis of the type (level) of propositions is important for the identification of ideological discourse. Propositions can be very general and abstract, but also very detailed. According to Van Dijk, “biased discourses will tend to be very detailed about THEIR bad acts and OUR good acts, and quite abstract and general about THEIR good acts and OUR bad ones.”45
To my mind, the principles of incompleteness or overcompleteness and general versus detailed description can be relevant for the analysis of history textbooks, because they always provide selective information. To illustrate, I would like to present a fragment from a history textbook on the XIX century Lithuania. The title of the chapter is “Lithuanian Economy and Society at the End of the XIX Century”. The chapter is divided into subsections; the one from which the quotation is taken is entitled “Development of Towns and Its Particularities”.
Example 2:
“The majority of Lithuania’s industrialists were Jews. The prohibition to engage in agricultural activities drove Jews into handicraft and trade. The Poles were burghers and some of them were owners of industrial companies. Lithuanian industrialists appeared only at the end of the XIX century and at the beginning of the XX century. One of the significant Lithuanian industrialists was Petras Vileišis.”46 This fragment could be described as incoherent, because different kinds of information are stressed in the description of the theme of industrialism. In the case of Jews, the author of describes the reason why the majority of Lithuania’s industrialists were Jews. In the case of Poles, the author simply states that they were also owners of industrial companies and burghers, without providing the reason for it (as he does in the previous sentence). In the case of Lithuanians, the author describes the time when Lithuanian industrialists appeared and mentions Petras Vileišis, who was one of the most significant Lithuanian industrialists (he was also a very well-known figure in the Lithuanian national movement and the publisher of the first Lithuanian legal newspaper). The information about Petras Vileišis can be defined as contextually irrelevant for the comprehension of the
Van Dijk, 2000, 268. Brazauskas, 2000, 182.
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event. In the case of Jews and Poles, no information about eminent Jewish or Polish industrialists is given, however in the case of Lithuanians, one of the most known figures of national revival is mentioned. In this example we can identify the principle of overcompleteness: the overcomplete information positively depicts our group (the group of Lithuanians). Even though the ethnocentric beliefs are not explicitly expressed, the element of positive self-presentation is evident, especially when contrasted with the author keeping quiet about the positive characteristics of the other groups, which may have implications for the biased construction of attitudes47 and therefore for the overall ethnocentric perception of national history.
Implicitness versus Explicitness
The principle of implicitness versus explicitness is important for the (reproduction of ideologies in discourse: “information that is explicitly asserted may emphasize negative properties of out-group or positive one about in-groups, whereas the reverse is true for implied or presupposed meanings.”48 Implicitness, according to Van Dijk, is when some information is not expressed in discourse but implied by other propositions.49 There is a difference between semantic incompleteness and implicitness. Semantic incompleteness signalizes that additional meaning should be inferred. The implicit utterance meaning would not contradict the sentence meaning but supply completive meaning for the sentence.50
To exemplify the phenomenon of implicitness and its threats, I have chosen a fragment from the XX century Lithuanian history, in particular, a fragment describing the June 1940 occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union. The fragment contains some connotations of ethnocentric ideology which amplify the exceptional status of the Lithuanian nation.
Example 3:
“Around 300 000 Red Army soldiers crossed the border and occupied Lithuania on the
-        th                                                               -
morning of 15 June 1940. Shortly afterwards, special commissar V. Dekanozov arri-
Van Dijk, 2000, 268. Van Dijk, 2000, 207. Van Dijk, 2000, 269. Justin, 2002, 102.
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ved from Kremlin and practically took over the leadership of further political processes in Lithuania. The Wehrmacht occupied Paris on 14th June. For Europe, the Lithuanian tragedy was left in the shadow of this fact.”51
The coherence between the last two sentences is based on background knowledge, which can be briefly defined as the “inferential completion of the missing part of the context”52 or, according to Justin, “the presumption of relevance that guides the reader’s selection of background assumptions he/she is going to use in the inferential phase of interpretation process”.53
The basic conclusion from the last two sentences in the fragment would be that Europe did not pay enough attention to the occupation of Lithuania, because the occupation of Paris occurred earlier and was more important for Europe. The words “tragedy” and “shadow” implicate the emotional meaning of grievance, which characterizes Lithuania as a victim of Russian aggression and at the same time as a victim of European indifference. This contraposition between Lithuania and Europe is one of the components of ethnocentric ideology. According to the Lithuanian historian A. Nikžentaitis, “It was not only Russians or Poles who could not escape the artificial contraposition with Lithuania, but Europe as well. Europeans were accused of doing nothing while Hitler and Stalin were composing the 1939 pact, or when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1940. […] it is clear that the Lithuanian perception of the “mean” Europe, Poland and Russia and also the perception of Lithuania as the martyr among all martyred, are a common production of the Lithuanian society [… ].”54 Taking into account that Lithuanian politicians also use the type of discourse where the contraposition between Lithuania and Europe is stressed,55 these ideas could be influential for the (re)production of ethnocentric ideology.
Local Coherence
According to Van Dijk, the principle of local coherence is very important for the (re)production of ideology in discourse. Coherence is the semantic connection between the propositions. “Two propositions are coherently related if they express
51 Kasperavičius, 1998, 144. Accents added by the author of the article.
52 Justin, 2002, 102.
53 Justin, 2002, 102.
54 Nikžentaitis, 2002, 205.
55 Nikžentaitis, 2002, 204.
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facts in mental model that are (causally, conditionally) related.”56 He stresses that coherence is important because it “depends on our ideologically controlled interpretation of the world.”57 Van Dijk points out two main types of coherence: conditional and functional. They are important for the implication of ideological coherence: “Whether language users see a social event as a cause or not of another social event may thus have an effect on the coherence of their discourse.”58
Here I would like to introduce a fragment describing the beginning of the XX century (the period after the First World War), when new states were established in Central and South-Eastern Europe.
Example 4:
“National states were established, but a lot of foreigners lived within their borders. In Romania lived Hungarians, Germans and Bulgarians, in Czechoslovakia lived Germans and Hungarians, in Yugoslavia lived Hungarians. Most of them were not loyal to the new homelands, in which they appeared against their will. […] National, economic and social contradictions made democratic governance hardly possible.”59 In this fragment, the problems of multicultural societies are emphasized while the positive aspects of diversity are ignored. In the first sentence, the oppositional conjunction “but” connects the two clauses of the sentence and creates an effect of contrast between them (national state vs. foreigners). In the last sentence, national contradictions are stressed as the cause for the impossibility to practice democratic governance. The conclusion of this fragment is that multicultu-ralism is an obstacle for democracy.
The same ideological message is also (re)produced (as part of the discourse schemata) in the question at the end of this chapter, where, in the section for source presentation, the data for the national composition of Czechoslovakia (which was very multicultural) between the wars is presented. The question that follows the data is: “What kind of problems did such national composition cause for Czechoslovakia?”60 There is only one answer to this question based on the previous story, i.e. that it caused problems.
56 Van Dijk, 2000, 269.
57 Van Dijk, 2000, 206.
58 Van Dijk, 2000, 206.
59 Kasperavičius, 1998, 88. Accents added by the author of the article.
60 Kasperavičius, 1998, 93.
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In this fragment, national minorities are treated as the cause of the problems. The conditional construction of this particular fragment contributes to the positive picture of a homogeneous monocultural society, which is characteristic of ethnocentric ideology.
Lexicalization
Lexical analysis is important as one of the major means of identifying ideological expression in discourse, because positive and negative meanings expressed in words can give us clues about ideological semantics of the text. Van Dijk illustrates this with the paradigmatic example of the pair freedom fighter versus terrorist, where the former has a positive meaning and the latter a negative one. According to Van Dijk, “following ideological square […] we may expect that, depending on context, out-groups will be described in neutral or negative words, and in-groups in neutral or positive words. And conversely, we may also expect that in order to describe groups and their practices, various forms of mitigation and euphemisms may be selected.”61
If we consider the lexical items used in the first example, where the authors of the text choose to use the word superiority to describe Europe in the Middle Ages, we can conclude that this choice of words clearly exemplifies an ideologically based lexicalization. Following the ideological square, we could state that this kind of lexical choice describes the in-group members (Europeans and, in this case, also Lithuanians) with positive terms, and the out-group members (in this case other continents) with negative terms.
Formal Structures of Discourse
Despite the fact that formal discourse structures (intonation, syntactic structures, propositional structures, rhetorical figures, etc.) are less consciously controlled or controllable by speakers or writers, they also belong to ideological discourse structures.
Van Dijk distinguishes two types of discourse forms: local and global. The former consists of typical genre categories, while the latter consists of the syntax of sentences and formal relations between clauses or sentences in sequences: ordering, primacy, pronominal relations, active-passive voice, nominalizations, etc.62
61 Van Dijk, 2000, 270.
62 Van Dijk, 2001, 107.
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Problematic Value Judgements in History Textbooks
Discourse Schemata
A discourse schema presents the global structure of a specific discourse genre. It belongs to the global discourse form and “consists of a number of characteristic categories appearing in a specific order.”63 The schemata may signal importance, relevance or prominence.64 It is important what information is emphasized in the headline or conclusion, because, according to Van Dijk, it “depends on the ways events are interpreted, and hence on ideologically variable positions.”65
Different genres are usually organized by conventional schemata, which define the order and hierarchical position of such schemata.66 Most history textbooks have a table of content, titles of chapters, some illustrations, also some quotations of the sources from specific periods, explanations of new words, questions about a specific paragraph. All these structures could be described as discourse schemata of history textbooks.
The questions at the end of the chapter can be defined as a form of discourse schemata typical of history textbooks. They show the type of information expected to be soaked up by the pupils and their formulation may reveal some problematic ideological points that are perhaps only implicitly expressed in the chapter. To illustrate, I would like to refer to the example used in the Local Coherence section. The question that followed the presentation of Czechoslovakia’s national composition (“What kind of problems did such national composition cause for Czechoslovakia?”67) implies that there were problems in Czechoslovakia because of its multicultural society. As mentioned before, such a presentation of multiculturalness is an example of the (re)production of ethnocentric ideology. The question at the end of the chapter stresses the (re)production of this ideology even more.
Style
Style is the so-called local form of formal structures of discourse. Depending on the nature of the communicative event, the genre and the setting or participants, the surface structures (lexical items, syntactic structures, pronunciation and
63 Van Dijk, 2000, 271.
64 Van Dijk, 2000, 207.
65 Van Dijk, 2000, 207.
66 Van Dijk, 2000, 207.
67 Kasperavičius, 1998, 93.
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graphics) may vary in order to intentionally or unintentionally signal their contextual boundness.68 According to Van Dijk, style defines “a position of participants […] Social discrimination is thus implemented directly by those who control the style of text and talk.”69
Scholars that analyze discursive patterns in history textbooks stress that it is characteristic of their style to contain “nominalization and abstraction, the low frequency of individual social actors, the typical chronological textual organization besides others more or less descriptive or explanatory ways of organizing the information.”70 Other characteristic features of history textbooks include a high frequency of parataxis, main clauses without internal relations, etc.71
Here I would like to present a fragment from a Lithuanian history textbook about the period of the Second World War, in which the Lithuanian position towards the Nazi occupation is presented, and where the use of parataxis causes ambiguity and problematic value judgements.
Example 5:
“There were few Lithuanian organizations that acted against the Nazis, among which was also the military LLA (Lithuanian Freedom Army). Lithuanian organizations did not participate in armed resistance. They saw the Nazis as a force hostile to Lithuania, but also as a force fighting against the biggest Lithuanian enemy: the communist Soviet Union. Passive resistance, according to the majority of national-minded politicians, was the only way of resistance, because the people feared to provoke Nazi terror and in this way quicken the return of communists. It was not possible to accept Germans because of their anti-Lithuanian attitude. Most Lithuanians, except a few thousand men, which with or against their will joined Germans or even got in their front, did not support the Nazis.”72
From this fragment it can be seen that there are no explicit conjunctions between the six sentences. However, implicitly all statements are connected seman-tically. From this fragment the main conclusion would be that Lithuanians did not support the Nazis because they had an anti-Lithuanian attitude. This state-
68 Van Dijk, 2000, 272.
69 Van Dijk, 2000, 272.
70 Oteiza, 2003, 654.
71 Oteiza, 2003, 644.
72 Kasperavičius, 1998, 164. Accents added by the author of the article.
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ment sounds very ethnocentric and has a connotation of a problematic value judgement (there were many other reasons not to support the Nazis, not just their anti-Lithuanian attitude). With the addition of some other phrases, the sentence in boldtype would not have the kind of connotation it has now: “In addition to all other ideological considerations, it was not possible to accept Germans because of their anti-Lithuanian attitude” or “Among other reasons, it was not possible to accept Germans because of their anti-Lithuanian attitude”.
Here, an analysis of direct and indirect discourse is also possible. While analyzing the media, N. Fairclough stresses that transformations of secondary discourse (where the demarcation between the voice of the reporter or the newspaper and the voice of the person whose discourse is being represented is not clear) could lead to the legitimization and reproduction of “existing power relationships by putting across the voices of the powerful as if they were the voices of common sense.”73 The discourse of history textbooks is usually indirect. From the sentence “It was not possible to accept Germans because of their anti-Lithuanian attitude”, it is not possible to understand clearly whether this statement is the position of the author of this textbook, or whether this is the position of Lithuanian organizations from the Second World War. This statement is more likely to be understood as the position of the author, because in the previous sentences the author presents the actor of the sentence, while in this sentence the passive voice is used, without any reference to the actor. Because it sounds as the author’s position, and because of power relations (the position of the author in history textbooks is considered as the position of power), this statement obtains the status of knowledge and at the same time (re)produces ethnocentric ideology.
Rhetoric
According to Van Dijk, the persuasive functions of special rhetorical structures have an important role for the discursive reproduction of ideology. He argues that rhetorical structures such as metaphors, parallelisms, substitutions, etc., could be used as a “means to emphasize or deemphasize meanings as function of ideological opinions. Metaphors may be chosen that highlight the negative character of our enemies, comparisons in order to mitigate the blame of our own people, and irony to challenge the negative models of our own opponents.”74
73 Fairclough, 1995, 63.
74 Van Dijk, 2000, 208.
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The metaphor of national rebirth75 that is applied to the Lithuanian national movement in the XIX century has triggered some discussions even between historians themselves, because this metaphor does not reflect a correct and clear content.76 It expresses one of explanations of the modern nation development, i.e. how an ethnical nation becomes a political nation. To put it in very simple way, at one time an ethnic nation had a state, but later on this nation lost its state and became the target of exploitation by the Others, and in the end this nation becomes an ethnopolitical community with a territory, and seeks its own sovereignty or at least autonomy in its own historical land.77 This type of explanation, which looks for continuities between primordial ethnic identities and modern national identities (A. Smith), is called perennialism or primordialism in academic discourse.78 However, the type of explanation which emphasises the continuities from ancient ethnic to modern nation could be dangerous or could contribute to the (re)production of ethnocentric ideology.
The metaphor of national rebirth implies a connection between Lithuanians in the XIII century (and even before) and contemporary Lithuanians. This sort of connotation justifies the myths of ethnogenesis (that Balts were our ancestors and lived in this territory, the others were immigrants79) and “can be used to justify the primacy of one group over another in a given polity or to exclude those thereby deemed not to belong.”80
Conclusions
Problematic value judgements that appear in history textbooks are expressions of ideologies. They are called problematic because they reflect some social beliefs that are opposite to the normative discourse of new ethic universalism. In this article I employed the CDA theory and methodology to analyze problematic value judgements. Not all presented examples from the Lithuanian history textbooks were explicitly ethnocentric. However, their implicit character or perhaps
Brazauskas, 2000, 130. Subačius, 1999, 173-176. Aleksandravičius, 1996, 308. Spencer, 2002, 28. Jokimatis, 2000, 58. 'Spencer, 2002, 83.
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a completely “innocent” meaning within the overall context of the Lithuanian society revealed their ethnocentric side through the application of the CDA theory and methodology.
CDA scholars perceive history textbooks as a type of discourse which does not simply represent or pass information, but also acts, i.e. (re)produces control and power. The CDA theory is based on the assumption that texts and language do not exist without context. Institutions and people shape these texts. Even the form and the language of the texts are not innocent; there is a connection between the form and content, which is determined culturally, politically and socially by the power of institutional/discursive formations.
The complex perception of discourse within CDA allows us to analyze history textbooks in a broader perspective, as a part of public discourse.
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