What’s (Un)Critical About Critical Discourse Analysis? A Reflexive Re-reading of Taiwanese EFL Textbooks Through Positionality and Situated Knowledges

Author Information

Ping-Hsuan Wang, Independent Scholar, Taiwan
Sean Jung-Hau Chen, University of Maryland, College Park, United States

Abstract

This paper examines how positionality and reflexivity shape the practice of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in research on Taiwanese EFL textbooks. While CDA is widely used to uncover ideological patterns in curricular materials, its interpretive power depends on acknowledging the social, political, and epistemic locations from which analysts read and evaluate discourse. In Taiwan’s postcolonial and cross-strait context, positionality plays a decisive role in how textbook texts are understood and critiqued.
Our dataset consists of materials of Taiwanese senior high school EFL textbooks from three major publishers, covering the three-year secondary curriculum. These textbooks were examined for how they represent Taiwan’s layered colonial past and the island’s contemporary geopolitical standing amid ongoing cross-strait tensions. We illustrate how divergent positional alignments can lead to profoundly different interpretations. A PRC-leaning perspective may frame certain representations as misaligned with broader notions of “Chineseness,” whereas an ROC-sovereigntist stance may emphasize constitutional legitimacy and multicultural coexistence. A Taiwan-independence orientation, in contrast, may foreground colonial histories, Indigenous presence, or local identity formation. These interpretive differences are not analytical flaws but reflections of the contested ideological terrain in which textbooks circulate.
Rather than striving for a singular “correct” reading, we argue for a reflexive stance that makes visible the interpretive negotiations shaped by researchers’ own trajectories through Taiwan’s educational, ethnic, and political landscapes. Recognizing Taiwan as a distinct site of epistemic production, we contend that methodological transparency about positionality enhances CDA by illuminating how meaning is co-constructed at the intersection of text, analyst, and sociopolitical context.

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