Representing societies in language teaching textbooks

Abstract This introductory article to the special issue on representing societies in language teaching textbooks lays out how to analytically approach the data using multimodal critical discourse analysis. Foremost, it explains that we must place the texts into the socio-political context of the societies where they are produced. Doing such critical multimodal analysis is not about the texts per se, but is concerned rather with their role in the social and political functioning of a particular society at a particular time. This is a form of text analysis which is deeply informed by knowledge of those societies and the political and economic situations where texts are being created and deployed. To illustrate this point, the introduction reviews the classic as well as the contemporary studies of textbooks. It ends by laying out how multimodal critical discourse analysis can be used to understand the operation of textbooks within socio-political processes.