CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY THROUGH METAPHOR IN INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS ACROSS PAKISTAN’S PROVINCES

Abstract

Metaphor is considered to be one of the major cognitive devices that allow for translating abstract ideological meanings in texts pertaining to teaching. While a number of studies have looked at different aspects of ideology in Pakistani English textbooks, little attention has been paid to how ideologies are created cognitively through metaphor based on various English textbooks in Pakistan’s four provinces. This paper analyzes the ways in which primary and complex metaphors construct and convey ideology in four different English textbooks designed for intermediate level students, from Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh. For this purpose, qualitative, interpretive, and comparative design has been selected. The analysis is based on four clusters of ideologies, namely Nationalism and Patriotism, Humanism, Gender Ideology, and Environmentalism. The cognitive framework used for studying the metaphorical construction of meaning is based on the ideas of LCCM, while Ideological Deixis and the Perspectival System have been used to analyze the ideological positioning. The analysis reveals that primary metaphors provide more direct access to ideological meaning, whereas complex metaphors develop more layered meanings through extended cognitive-model access. However, the presence of cognitive mechanisms is similar across different provinces. But this data has to be differentiated from the instances of repeated educational materials, which creates an impression of similarities in cognitive processes. The findings of the research indicate that the metaphorical meaning is highly essential for the cognitive construction of ideological meaning in educational discourse.