Some American Values from Ideological Perspectives

Abstract

Abstract: Values are part of a culture and they can be ideologically distinguished. In English Language Teaching, the study of culture, values and ideology is as much important as the study of language skills and linguistic rules as they make up major parts of the curricula of foreign language education. In this article, the ideas of culture, values and ideology prior to the introduction of my classification of some American values from an ideological approach will be reviewed. This is the first step of the author’s effort in a Critical Discourse Analysis of an American English course-book where American values are judged by culture, ideologies and power before they are transmitted to the learners. Despite a very short discussion, the argument will work as the key idea of  further studies in which such issues as what values people may teach in the English lessons of this course-book and why they are teaching them must be found.

Keywords: American values, American culture, American ideologies, values, culture, ideology.