Ageism (un)covered in locally produced ELT materials

Abstract Age, as a social marker likely to evoke stereotypical roles and identities, and the way it is reflected in/through textbooks has not received due attention in language teaching materials. To help redress such an underrepresentation, this investigation aimed at unpacking representational patterns in the rendition of the elderly in English textbooks. To this end, all clauses in the Iranian secondary school textbooks containing references to the elderly were examined using the tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Initially, the results attested to the underrepresentation in the data of the group. Further linguistic analysis showed that the elderly were mostly (mis)represented as an age group leading a life informed, inter alia, by frailty, disease, and a sedentary lifestyle, and that they were represented as recipients of love and care rather than as participating members of society. Suggestions for how educators and policymakers might deal with anti-ageing materials are finally made.