A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF (NON-) ESSENTIALIST CULTURAL DISCOURSES EMBEDDED IN THE TEXTBOOK SERIES “ENGLISH FILE”

Year 2021, Issue: 87, 599 - 616, 21.09.2021

Zeynep Gülşah Kani Gizem Arslan

Abstract

In today’s various language learning contexts in which the reflection of English
language uses for intercultural communication becomes prominent, the core resources
of the language classrooms, be they virtual or face-to-face, are still textbooks. Therefore,
the stance taken while constructing the multimodal components in the textbooks would
influence whether language learners will develop an understanding of the target language
community in line with an international perspective or not. In this vein, our study is a
critical examination of (non)-essentialist cultural discourses in cultural representations
in the visuals and the texts of English File Fourth Edition Elementary, Pre-Intermediate
and Intermediate Student’s Books. Taking account of multimodality in both semiotic and
social-historical rhetorical senses and acknowledging the pedagogic-didactic nature of
the textbooks, we focused on different meaning-making tools like images and texts and
the interaction between them within the scope of this article. Findings showed that the
textbooks mostly perpetuate an essentialist perspective of culture, favouring “Western”,
especially British, and American cultural representations, besides some texts addressing
neo-essentialist perspectives. The elementary book has the highest number of essentialist
texts in which “the West” is described and emphasised constantly, while the pre-
intermediate book, albeit with a few texts from a critical perspective, is mostly composed
of neo-essentialist elements. Lastly, the intermediate book can be viewed as the most non-
essentialist one among others, since it consists of the highest proportion of interpersonal
and intercultural exchanges without a specific reference to a cultural arena that is both
predefined and defining in the series, though half of the texts still make a reference to the
“Western” countries in the intermediate book as well.

Keywords

EFL Textbook Analysis, Cultural Discourses, (Non) Essentialism, Neo- Essentialism, Intercultural Communication.

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