An Investigation Into the Culture and Social Actors Representation in Summit Series ELT Textbooks Within van Leeuwen’s 1996 Framework

The current study aims at identifying particular ways through which social actors are represented in Summit Series ELT textbooks. It examines cultural load in the textbooks within critical discourse analysis framework, in this case van Leeuwen’s framework. Particularly, the study attempts to explore if values, norms, and roles are culture/context-bound. Results of the analyses showed that among discursive features, Inclusion, Genericization, and Indetermination were used more than Exclusion, Specification, and Determination. Activation was more observed than Passivation, and Categorization had an important function in the representation of some of the social actors along with Assimilation and Impersonalization. The analysis also indicated the impartiality toward the representation of social actors. Moral, social, and personal values were the most disseminated values, while social morality and traditions had the highest occurrence. However, a few discriminative cases were found regarding gender roles. The researchers proposed that Summit Series were less grounded in cultural assumptions/biases. This impartiality eases language learning by keeping learners away from misunderstanding and incomprehensibility.