An Investigation Into the Culture and Social Actors Representation in Summit Series ELT Textbooks Within van Leeuwen’s 1996 Framework

The current study aims at identifying particular ways through whichsocial actors are represented in Summit Series ELT textbooks. It examines cultural loadin the textbooks within critical discourse analysis framework, in this case vanLeeuwen’s framework. Particularly, the study attempts to explore if values, norms, androles are culture/context-bound. Results of the analyses showed that among discursivefeatures, Inclusion, Genericization, and Indetermination were used more than Exclusion,Specification, and Determination. Activation was more observed than Passivation, andCategorization had an important function in the representation of some of the socialactors along with Assimilation and Impersonalization. The analysis also indicated theimpartiality toward the representation of social actors. Moral, social, and personalvalues were the most disseminated values, while social morality and traditions had thehighest occurrence. However, a few discriminative cases were found regarding genderroles. The researchers proposed that Summit Series were less grounded in culturalassumptions/biases. This impartiality eases language learning by keeping learners awayfrom misunderstanding and incomprehensibility