Discourse and Commodified Identities Construction: Case Studies of Iranian EFL Learners and Teachers at Private Language Schools

Abstract

The purpose of this cultural study was the analysis of commodified identities construction in an EFL context. Our
site of struggle for the analysis was a private institution and the related variables were English textbooks, six teachers
and six learners as our cases. Our whole data collection took from 23 September 2010 to 30 September 2011. Our
theoretical framework was inspired by constructivism and in particular Bakhtin's dialogism and we followed an
ethnographic methodology in our data collection. The results of the content analysis of the textbooks, teachers and
learners' data showed the existence and construction of commodified identities, though there were intra and inter
variations among the teachers' responses regarding commodified identities. The results were discussed in connection
with the context of language teaching and some pedagogical implications were also suggested.