A Critical Discourse Analysis of Vision Textbooks: Representation of Social Relations and Ideology

Abstract

Considering the importance of the textbooks within the field of ELT, EFL textbooks should be subjected to for their suitability. Therefore, this article compared three dimensions of meaning (i.e., contents, subject positions, and social relations) in the conversations of the three volumes of the Vision textbook series developed by Iranian educational system. To this end, the theory and procedures of critical discourse analysis, as expounded by Fairclough (1989), were applied to the corpus of the study. The analysis into the dimension of contents revealed that the focus of material developers was more on the topics of everyday and school issues. The analysis into subject positions demonstrated that the material developers had focused more on the student character, with a tinge of gender inequality. The analysis into social relations disclosed their focus on the family and school life relationships for older students, tending to depict male supremacy. Besides, it was revealed that the ideology of Iran centrism had been underscored in the three textbooks thereby focusing on the issue of localization. Finally, two semi-structured interviews were conducted with two material developers of Vision series, which corroborated the CDA results. The findings of this study may have implications for language teachers and material developers.

Keywords

• critical discourse analysis
• ideology
• localization
• social relations
• subject positions
• textbook evaluation