Analysis of Cultural Content and Cultural Elements in EGP and ESP Textbooks

Culture is an inseparable part of education in all respects. One of the fields in which culture plays an important role is second language acquisition. English language has become the language of science and technology and that of disseminating knowledge. Hence, English for Specific and General Purposes (ESP and EGP, respectively) is now a subfield in applied linguistics, helping English learners communicate their knowledge through English. The issue of communication leads the field to have a special connection with culture. That said, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the cultural content and cultural elements of the EGP and ESP textbooks used to teach ESP in economic and management, accounting, and psychology in Iranian universities. Using Cortazzi and Jin’s (1999) framework for cultural content, and Adaskou, Britten, and Fahsi’s (1990) framework for their cultural elements, the ESP and EGP textbooks were exqamined. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the cultural content and elements included in the EGP and ESP textbooks; the EGP textbooks contain more cultural content and elements. Thus, it can be concluded that the ESP textbook designers need to pay more attention to the inclusion of cultural content and elements in the ESP textbooks if they want to improve the disciplinary abilities of the ESP students in communicating about the disciplinary notions of their majors.