The Socio-Cultural Aspects in EFL Textbooks in Egypt: A Multi-modal Analysis

Abstract

Abstract

Textbooks have a profound effect on society. They are a source of power through their influence on the students’ orientations and attitudes towards several aspects in life. This influence is due to the way these textbooks represent the world through the images and texts they encompass. Moreover, there is disagreement among education specialists about how culture should be integrated within textbooks. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the socio-cultural representations in a widely used EFL textbook series in Egypt, namely Hello. Five topics, which relate to socio-cultural aspects, are the basis for selecting the analyzed images and texts. The topics are: learning contexts, touristic sites in Egypt, gender roles, world-wide cities and celebrities. Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (2006) is the method adopted for visual analysis. The first two levels in Fairclough’s three-dimensional modal (2001) are applied for describing and interpreting the texts which accompany the images. The research follows the mixed research design in the data analysis. The findings of the present study reveal that Hello reflects some aspects of the Egyptian culture such as gender stereotyping and the conservative attitude towards learning contexts and gender roles. On the other hand, Hello reflects appreciation of the non-Egyptian culture as it is evident in the topics of celebrities, world-wide cities and learning contexts. Hence, there is an obvious relationship between the linguistic representation of the pedagogical material and the ideology carried to the learners. Finally, the meanings conveyed through the visual representations match the meanings conveyed through the textual representations in the majority of the topics.