Narratives and critical literacy

Abstract

It is clear from the foregoing discussion that in the textbooks under review the communicative/text-based approach is followed superficially rather than systematically with regard to narrative and humor. The phenomena in question are presented through relevant texts or genres, but complementary activities aimed at creating a communicative setting suitable for the production of texts with the students’ active involvement and creative participation are very limited. Moreover, the selection of texts is problematic, since the discourse produced in students’ everyday interactions, and in particular spontaneous discourse, is not exploited at all. Instead, a variety of narrative genres with literary or sometimes historical orientation are explored. Thus, the social characteristics of the student population are not taken into account, while concurrently the proposed analytical tools come mainly from literary theory rather than from discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.