Discourse Representation in the Images of English Textbooks "Prospects" and "Visions": A semiotic Analysis :The Case Study of Ethnicity and Place

The relation between culture and language, features the need to examine the effectiveness of language textbooks. Considering the goal that foreign language teaching is mainly associated with the entry of cultural issues into the learnerchr('39') knowledge, this need increases especially during learning a foreign language. Due to the todaychr('39')s growing importance of visual communication, this article offers a new perspective on images of English language textbooks in our system of education, based on the semiotic model of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), which emphasizes the importance of constituent elements of culture and society in analyzing linguistic signs; such as clothing, traditions or customs of cultures and subcultures. Paying attention to limitations of this case study, "ethnicity and location" are analyzed in the images of "Visions" and "Prospects". The present study explains how discourse is represented in these images, based on a scientific background and descriptive-analytical method with the aim of examining the social and cultural functions of language. The results show that the studied textbooks donchr('39')t have a specific "ethnic-racial" approach and selection of "place" was without bias of the source language or the target language; In this way, the illustrator didnchr('39')t pay special attention to his or her own language in choosing the images.