‘Should textbook images be merely decorative?’: Cultural representations in the Iranian EFL national textbook from the semiotic approach perspective

Abstract

Studies examining culture representation in language textbooks have rarely adopted the semiotic approach, despite its potential for presenting and (re)creating cultural meanings at their various levels (i.e. cultural, intercultural, multicultural, and transcultural) in the co-instantiations of texts, tasks, and images. To address this issue, a qualitative analysis, embarking on the Peircean semiotic theory, was applied on the text-image-task semiotic relationship. It explored its potential for constructing and reconstructing cultural meanings relative to the Iranian national English as a foreign language (EFL) textbook, Vision 1, from the perspectives of Iranian EFL students, teachers, and teacher educators. Content and thematic analyses of the interview records revealed three themes: first, the co-instantiation of the image and text was indexical, cultural awareness and connotations were almost untouched; second, the textual and visual components driving intercultural meanings and interpretations were not in accordance with the tasks; and, third, some alternative more culturally engaging images were provided by the interviewees. On the whole, the findings confirmed the previous findings that the discourse of this brand-new Iranian localized EFL textbook leaves little space to raise cultural awareness for its users. Based on the findings, a dynamic model for evaluating cultural representations in textbooks is suggested, hoping to show how EFL textbooks can be developed, implemented, and received more effectively in instructional settings.