Representation of “Self” versus “Otherness” in EFL Textbooks Developed in the West: A Critical Comparative Study of Most Popular Institutional Language Textbooks

Drawing on the concept of linguistic imperialism and the perpetuation of “self” versus “Otherness”, the objectives of this study were related to three factors. Firstly, this study aimed at investigating the ELT textbooks based on Van Dijk’s (2000) Ideological Square regarding four aspects: Emphasizing positive things about “Us”; Emphasizing negative things about “Them”; De-emphasizing negative things about “Us”; De-emphasizing positive things about “Them”. This analysis would reveal traces of imperialism associated with “Self” versus “Otherness”. Secondly, the present study attempted to identify what geographical regions do the cultural representations aspects of “Self” versus “Otherness” manifested in Inner, Outer, and Expanding circles (Kachru, 1989) concerned with the pedagogical organization of the textbooks. Thirdly, this work focused on Horibe’s (2008) model of culture within the EIL paradigm that is based on three factors: Culture as social custom; Culture in the pragmatic sense; and Culture in the semantic sense. Six textbooks from three series of ELT textbooks were selected as the corpus of the study. The series were: American English File (2nd ed.); Interchange (4th ed.); and Touchstone (2nd Ed.). Van Dijk’s Ideological Square (2000), Horibe’s (2008) model, and Kachru’s (1989) concentric circles of English were used as frameworks for analysis of the data. The results showed that, among all the textbooks analyzed in this work, as for the Inner circle countries were concerned, most cases were directed towards the USA. Regarding Outer and Expanding circles, most cases were observed in favor of Japan. As related to van Dijk’s (2000) Ideological Square, there were more traces of words representing positive things about “Us”. Considering Horibe’s (2008) division of culture, cultural representations of each textbook were examined and ‘Culture as social custom’ dominated the cultural content of the textbooks. The implication of this study was related to researchers, teachers, material developers, and policy makers.