The Sounds of Conflict: Lexical Representation of Anger in Listening Activities from Modern ELT Coursebooks

Modern coursebooks serve a fundamental function in contemporary ELT practice. This paper discusses the problem of representation of anger in listening activities from selected ELT coursebooks issued by leading publishing companies. Thirteen coursebooks form three internationally-recognized ELT series for adult learners of English were analysed for the conflictive dialogues presented in their audio materials, as well as for the ways in which the anger of the Speaker(s) was expressed. The result of the analysis shows that interpersonal exchanges portrayed in the database coursebooks were largely oriented towards the expression of polite interpersonal beliefs, the culture of positivity and attitude of agreement and cooperation. In situations where conflict was presented in the recordings, anger was expressed primarily through prosodic features of speech, followed by the presence of exclamations and certain non-verbal vocalisations. No instances of swearing and expletive interjections, a common way of expressing negative emotions in everyday informal communication, were found in the database. The analysis confirms some of the observations and criticisms concerning the global ELT coursebooks. While understanding publishers’ caution and decidedly refraining from advocating unrestricted use of taboo language in recorded ELT materials, this paper points to the importance of realistic representation of conflictive and argumentative interpersonal communication, not just for the aim of presenting different contexts of English use, but also for the practical applications outside the realm of foreign language learning.