Foreign language textbook as semiotic phenomenon

Abstract

The aim of this paper is the semiotic analysis of a foreign language textbook as a semiotic phenomenon reflecting the cognitive attitudes of its authors and aimed at forming not only external but also deep layers of the learner's linguistic personality, responsible for motivation, intents and attitudes. The material to be analysed is a popular line of EFL textbooks “English file” by British authors Ch. Latham-Koenig and C. Oxenden. The scientific novelty of the work is that for the first time a foreign language textbook is considered not as an educational and methodological text, but as an alternative reality, a dynamic complex sign, similar to the discursive space of a fiction book. The study is conducted by applying the method of contextual analysis, the method of cognitive-pragmatic analysis, and the interpretive method to the polycoded texts of EF-textbooks. The authors conclude that the semiotic complex of EF-textbooks exhibits the characteristics of an educational novel of fiction, where the learner assumes the function of a fairy-tale hero, acting in the space of English-language cultural mythologems, reference-metric elements, topoi and narratives. As a result of active realisation of the happy end narrative, supported by the system of topoi and precedent names characteristic of the English-language conceptosphere, the textbook uses the suggestive potential of the so-called soft power to form changes at the motivational-pragmatic level of the linguistic personality.

Keywords

• cultural mythologemes
• foreign language textbook
• narrative
• pedagogical discourse
• precedent phenomenon
• semiology