Abstract:
Adopting the critical discourse analysis framework, in general, andFairclough’s (1989) critical text analysis, in particular, the current study aims atexamining 3 aspects of meaning, namely social relations, subject positions, andcontents in the conversation as well as vocabulary and grammar parts of Passages 1(an American textbook) and First Certificate (a British textbook) to find out whetherthere would be any discernable differences between these 2 instructional textbooks.To evaluate the textbooks, content analysis was employed. The results revealed thatthe primary emphasis of both ELT textbooks was on the cooperative learning.Additionally, in both textbooks, social relations were mostly equal, andconversations often took place between a male and a female with equal social statusand power. Regarding subject positions, the data analysis showed that Passages 1favored friends social relation, whereas TV reporting was the dominant socialrelation in First Certificate. Besides, Passages 1 mostly focused on uncontroversialissues, whereas First Certificate concentrated on controversial and market-orientedtopics more than Passages 1. After all, both these textbooks tended to represent thediscourse and culture of Western countries, which can exert specific ideologies onlanguage learners.
Machine summary:
com Abstract Adopting the critical discourse analysis framework, in general, and Fairclough’s (1989) critical text analysis, in particular, the current study aims at examining 3 aspects of meaning, namely social relations, subject positions, and contents in the conversation as well as vocabulary and grammar parts of Passages 1 (an American textbook) and First Certificate (a British textbook) to find out whether there would be any discernable differences between these 2 instructional textbooks.
However, as Taki (2004) states, among the various pieces of research in the literature, not much evidence of textbook evaluation can be traced from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA), which has recently become one of the most dominant approaches to discourse and culture (Keshavarz & Akbari Malek, 2009).
Considering the vital role that the ELT textbooks play in EFL learning, the present study aimed at examining two ELT textbooks—Passages 1 (Richards & Sandy, 2008) and First Certificate (Haines & Stewart, 2008)—with regard to three dimensions of meaning: social relations, subject positions, and contents, following Fairclough’s (1989) text analysis model.
Recently, Sahragard and Davatgarzadeh (2010) examined the linguistic representation of male and female social actors and construction of gender identities in the texts of New Interchange (Richards, Hull, & Proctor, 2005) from the CDA viewpoint.
3. Methodology Using Fairclough’s (1989) model of CDA, the current study aimed to present an analysis of Passages 1 (Richards & Sandy, 2008) and First Certificate (Haines & Stewart, 2008) to see how the dimensions of meaning were reflected in the linguistic features of texts in these textbooks.