Reflection of Cultural Aspects in Persian Language Textbooks: A case Study of Mina, Parfa and Farsi Biamoozim .

Abstract

Language and culture are inseparable concepts, and cultural implications are indispensable to the teaching of language as a system of signs. Today, the importance of teaching culture is recognized more than ever before. The goal of this paper is to determine the extent to which each of the three series of Persian Language textbooks has reflected different aspects of Iranian culture. In doing so, we have extracted parts of these books which contain cultural references by using the library method. All data was then transferred to Excel to compile a corpus of cultural references found in the books, later being categorized under eight cultural tags based on Byram’s Checklist (1989). Analysis of the data revealed that most frequently reflected aspects were stereotypes and cultural identity. In addition, Farsi Biamoozim showed the highest tendency to refer to aspects of Iranian culture among the three series, with Parfa and Mina following respectively. The presence of elements of “surface culture” was more notable than that of “deep culture”.

Keywords

• culture teaching
• culture awareness
• culture knowledge
• deep culture
• surface culture