چکیده

Considering the current status of English as a lingua franca that transcends the boundaries of a particular culture and society, policymakers’ attempt is to foster critical and cultural awareness in language learning curricula. Textbooks, as the primary classroom materials, play an essential role in how this goal is realized. In the current study, Strategic Reading, a series commonly used to help students develop their reading skill, was examined to see how culture is presented and how two semiotic frameworks were used to direct the learners’ attention to the commentaries within the text, exercises, and pictures. To this end, a semiotic analysis of the text, based on Pierce typology of the sign, was carried out to investigate the processes involved in cultural representations in the series. To further inspect this matter in the textbooks’ visuals, a modified version of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar was employed. Two interviews with an English teacher were also conducted to illustrate a real example of how an English teacher might utilize the textbooks and present the cultural matters in the classroom. The findings demonstrated that the series would make use of multiple semiotic processes (symbolic, iconic, and deictic) to represent covert and overt cultural content. Also, the teacher allowed her students to engage in unguided semiotics and reach a personal interpretation of the text and the visuals in the classroom; however, she did not discuss hidden hints and cultural points that were not easily perceptible and needed further exploration. Implications of the findings are finally provided.

کليدواژه ها

Culture, Semiotics, Pierce Typology, Systemic-Functional Linguistics, Textbook

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Ali Roohani , 1398 , Investigation of Culture in an English Reading Textbook: A Semiotic Approach , اولين کنفرانس بين المللي مطالعات زبان انگليسي