Demystifying the cultural representations in international high school English textbooks: a social-semiotic approach and teachers’ views

Abstract

ABSTRACT Albeit cultural content in English textbooks have been much reported, little empirical evidence addresses global or international-distributed English textbooks. To fill this void, the present qualitative content analysis study aims to explore the representation of cultural content in international English textbooks used for Indonesian senior high school students. For another contribution, we also attempt to gain English teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in the textbooks examined through written interviews. Grounded in a social semiotic approach, the findings showcased that the textbooks’ content represents inner-circle countries in the aspect of perspectives, products, persons, and practices. Further, the imbalance in the cultural representation of the outer circle and expanding circle countries indicated that the authors do not sufficiently increase the global cultural awareness of English language learners because other cultural perspectives on varieties of English are not included. The interviews analysis revealed that the cultural contents were short and required improvement.