Language, Culture and Curriculum

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(Re)Searching culture in foreign language

textbooks, or the politics of hide and seek

Germán Canale

To cite this article: Germán Canale (2016): (Re)Searching culture in foreign language
textbooks, or the politics of hide and seek, Language, Culture and Curriculum, DOI:
10.1080/07908318.2016.1144764

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 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2016.1144764

(Re)Searching culture in foreign language textbooks, or the

politics of hide and seek
Germán Canale
Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Baker Hall 160, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890,
USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

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Textbooks are curriculum artefacts that embody particular ideologies Received 9 October 2014
and legitimise specific types of knowledge [Apple, M. W. (1982). Accepted 13 January 2016
Education and power. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Apple,
KEYWORDS
M. W., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. In Culture; textbook;
M. W. Apple & L. K. Christian-Smith (Eds.), The politics of the textbook representation; foreign
(pp. 1–21). London, NY: Routledge]. As the general public tends to language instruction;
associate them with truth rather than opinion [Meyer, C. J., & qualitative synthesis
Rosenblatt, P. C. (1987). Feminist analysis of family textbooks.
Journal of Family Issues, 8(2), 247–252. Retrieved from: http://jfi.
sagepub.com/], textbooks can contribute to the circulation of
particular representations and stereotypes. In the past decades,
there has been an increasing interest in analysing the ways in
which textbooks (re)produce representations of history, ethnic
groups, minorities and gender differences, to name a few. Foreign
language research has focused on the representation of foreign
and native culture(s), given that this term has been central in
debates in the areas of second and foreign language theories
[Weninger, C., & Kiss, T. (2013). Culture in English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) textbooks: A semiotic approach. TESOL Quarterly, 47
(4), 694–716. Retrieved from http://www.tesol.org/read-and-
publish/journals/tesol-quarterly]. Using a qualitative synthesis
research approach, this paper analyses a pool of studies on the
representation of culture in foreign language textbooks to answer
a main question: How do language textbooks represent foreign
culture? Findings will contribute to understanding how textbook
discourse favours some representations of culture and why it does
so. In turn, they may also inform teaching and learning practices,
such as the actual use of language textbooks in the classroom, in
which teachers’ and students’ agency is undeniable.

The history of the idea of culture is a record of our meanings and our definitions, but these, in
turn, are only to be understood within the context of our actions. (Williams, 1960, p. 314)

Introduction
In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in the analysis of representations
in textbooks. Researchers have analysed the ways in which textbook discourse represents

CONTACT Germán Canale [email protected]

© 2016 Taylor & Francis
 2 G. CANALE

gender stereotypes (Guidice & Moyano, 2011; Taylor, 2003), history and recent past
(Achugar, Fernández, & Morales, 2011; Oteiza & Pinto, 2011; Zullo, 2014), racism and immi-
gration (van Dijk, 2005; van Dijk & Atienza, 2011), ideologies of science (Moss & Chamorro
Miranda, 2008), family practices (Meyer & Rosenblatt, 1987), culture in L1 textbooks (Liu,
2005) and culture in second, foreign and heritage language textbooks (which are, in
fact, the focus of this synthesis). The growing interest in exploring social representations
in textbooks is, of course, closely linked to the pivotal role the textbook has played –
and still plays – in formal education.
Textbooks play a fundamental role in legitimating some of the social practices pro-
moted by and through the schooling process, as well as in transmitting social ideologies
(Apple & Beyer, 1983). The hidden curriculum of schools (Apple, 1982) legitimises specific
types of knowledge, which are crystallised in textbook discourse, among other curriculum
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artefacts. Far from being repositories of historical facts and objective truths, textbooks are
the result of ‘political, economic and cultural activities, battles and compromises’ (Apple &
Christian-Smith, 1991, p. 2). Textbook readers, however, do not usually experience these
struggles as such or witness the process of textbook production and the selection of auth-
orised knowledge. Therefore they may be uncritical of the implicit viewpoints and ideol-
ogies these artefacts embody, for instance by assuming textbooks represent facts rather
than institutionalised opinions (Meyer & Rosenblatt, 1987, p. 247). To fully comprehend
the ideological and discursive complexities behind textbook discourse, we need to con-
sider it as the interplay of international publishers, authors, designers, reviewers, proof-
readers, editors, photographers, task designers, among others. The result is a highly poly-
phonic text that condenses various types of verbal, graphic and visual sub-texts, and which
aims at crystallising an authorized cosmogony or ‘legitimised version’ of the social world.
From the above discussion, however, it should not be concluded that textbook readers
are mere passive receptors. Representations require the negotiation of those who produce
and those who interpret them. Readers do not just decode pre-established meanings; they
may become agents in the process of reinforcing, appropriating or contesting the rep-
resentations textbooks (re)produce. In this respect, classroom practices also mediate
meaning-making processes (Achugar et al., 2011; Moss, 2009). But since curriculum arte-
facts such as textbooks tend to guide semiosis (Weninger & Kiss, 2013), it is not always
easy for readers to contest this type of discourse.
The qualitative synthesis presented here looks at a pool of nine research studies on the
representation of culture in textbooks of a range of second, foreign and heritage
languages. Representations analysed in these studies include both verbal and non-
verbal language (such as visuals) in which a cultural aspect is depicted. For the purpose
of this paper, ‘foreign culture’ refers to either the culture associated with the target
language of the textbook, or to other cultures addressed in the book (different from the
native culture of the imagined audience). Questions could be raised about the inclusion
of heritage language textbooks in the sample since heritage speakers certainly represent
a particular group of learners who may already perform many cultural practices associated
with the target language. However, textbooks generally position heritage learners as
speakers who have not appropriated their culture yet.1 Given this, for the purpose of
this study heritage language textbooks can be included in the foreign language textbook
sample. Synthesising the data and evidence found in these studies will allow me to explore
what the politics of representation of foreign culture are in textbooks of different target
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 3

languages (Russian, Spanish, Italian, English and Swahili), which also have different sta-
tuses (second, foreign or heritage language) in the target audiences for which they
were designed. It will also allow me to capture some of the conceptualisations of
foreign culture among textbook studies.
The agenda outlined in this paper deliberately seeks to avoid dependence on a particu-
lar definition of culture so as to include several of the implicit definitions available in text-
book discourse. In this respect, the analysis of ‘aspects of foreign culture’ in textbook
discourse refers to implicit or explicit conceptualisations of culture as: products, places
and perspectives, as the accumulation of historical facts, as a dynamic process shaping
identities or as imagined identities, among others. These underlying definitions become
instantiated in texts, exercises, tasks and visuals, and are generally underscored in text-
books with different resources: ‘culture boxes’ at the bottom of the page, ‘culture sections’
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at some point in the unit or other devices through which textbook discourse more or less
explicitly associates a particular text or set of activities with the teaching of culture.
Expanding the scope to several languages and to several conceptualisations of culture
has a twofold benefit. On the one hand, it allows me to provide a holistic and comprehen-
sive view of the ways in which foreign culture is represented in textbooks, focusing on
potential differences and similarities across languages rather than providing a highly frag-
mented and language-specific view, as has been the tendency in the literature. On the
other hand, the variety of definitions of culture underlying these textbooks allows me
to explore what the most frequent definitions of culture are and what the potential
reasons for this may be in terms of politics of representation.

Researching culture in foreign language textbooks

Most researchers in the field accept – either explicitly or implicitly – that textbook dis-
course is, by definition, normative and norm-setting (Kramsch, 1987, p. 98). As textbooks
mediate the native and the target culture in the classroom (Kramsch, 1987, p. 105), text-
book discourse presents students with legitimised knowledge, authorised voices and
pre-established values. Sometimes the underlying compromises that make up the result-
ing discourse may be more ideological (Dendrinos, 1992), while other times they may be
merely practical (Thompson, 2013), but the fact is that textbook discourse (im)poses the
social behaviour and attitudes students are expected to agree with, and at the same
time it creates a social reality for students to make sense of in a highly guided semiosis.
As Azimova and Johnston (2012, p. 337) suggest:
( … ) classroom representations of target language speakers and their cultures are a prime
source of information about who uses the target language and how. The primary source of
these representations, in turn, is usually the textbook used in the language class.

As discussed in previous works (Weninger & Kiss, 2013), studies on the representation of
culture in foreign language textbooks have employed quantitative and qualitative tech-
niques to analyse textbook discourse. The use of quantitative approaches as the main
analytical tool has raised a number of theoretical and methodological questions regarding
the very concept of culture and the adequacy of its quantification in research studies. Rep-
resentations are, by definition, complex phenomena which relate to the social mechan-
isms through which we comprehend and apprehend – in a summarised and highly
 4 G. CANALE

organised manner – the complex social world around us (Moscovici & Hewstone, 1993).
They are abstract phenomena that draw on previous texts and discourses, stereotypes
and other transformative strategies for processing knowledge. As discussed in a
broader sense in Bourdieu’s work (1999), representations may not be legitimately
subject to a quantitative analysis (only). Analysing the representation of culture in text-
books requires the employment of interpretive notions. Given that representations
operate in specific historical, social and ideological contexts, qualitative analyses may be
more revealing and explanatory.
Leaving these methodological differences aside, it is important to note that qualitative,
quantitative and mixed approaches to the representation of culture in foreign language
textbooks have mainly focused on the meanings associated with the textbook itself (dis-
course as text), without paying much attention to the interaction between learners and
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textbooks (Kramsch, 1987, p. 95)2 (discourse as practice). This problem was posed long
ago by van Dijk (1981) when addressing the potential contributions of discourse analysis
to education. Anecdotally, in the process of designing this synthesis, the search engine
results yielded by several databases indicated that there are not enough studies about
the interaction between students and textbooks in foreign language classroom ecologies
as to conduct a synthesis study about the textbook as practice, whereas there certainly is a
considerable number of studies addressing foreign language textbooks as text.
Given the pivotal role that the textbook plays in the language classroom ecology, and
the growing number of qualitative studies addressing textbook representations of target
culture in foreign language teaching, it is of interest to synthesise a sample of the existing
literature to: (i) evaluate the current knowledge on the topic, (ii) discover potential simi-
larities and differences in the representation of foreign culture in textbooks of different
languages, and (iii) reflect critically on the previous points to analyse the underlying defi-
nitions of foreign culture in textbooks and the purposes these definitions serve in the poli-
tics of representation.

Methodology and research question

The main question of the study is: How do (second, foreign, heritage) language textbooks
represent foreign culture? This is, of course, a broad question. However, a tentative
answer may provide us with a holistic view of the ways in which foreign culture is rep-
resented in language textbooks by exploring similarities and differences across languages
with different sociopolitical statuses in the target audiences of the textbooks. Exploring
these general trends may eventually help teachers and students become more active in
constructing a classroom environment of social responsibility and achieving critical citi-
zenship (Weninger & Kiss, 2013) by being able to identify and read critically implicit con-
ceptualisations of culture in textbook discourse, regardless of the target language in
question.
To answer the main question of this study, I adopted a research synthesis methodology,
which has proven to be effective in systematising and evaluating existing literature on a
given topic (Norris & Ortega, 2006) with the aim of informing theory, research and practice
(Paterson, 2012). In particular, the approach I adopt for this paper is that of qualitative syn-
thesis, which
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 5

( … ) is an approach that uses qualitative methods to analyse, synthesize and interpret the
results from qualitative studies. In practice, synthesists seek to answer a specific research ques-
tion – through combining qualitative studies that use thick description and that are located in
broadly the same tradition, in order to make sense of themes and issues across the particular
data set. (Howel Major & Savin-Baden, 2012, p. 10)

This approach requires the researcher to combine qualitative data and evidence in
order to reach a higher level of analysis so that the result is a new whole (Howel Major
& Savin-Baden, 2012). Given the nature of qualitative research, my analysis is based on
a relatively small sample of research studies that look into the representation of foreign
culture in textbooks. This will allow me to focus on the thick descriptions qualitative
studies provide and also to be able to retain some of the original interpretations while
at the same time reflection and criticality are pursued (Howel Major & Savin-Baden,
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2012, p. 32).
To find and select the studies, the database search included several keywords:
CULTURE; FOREIGN SECOND/HERITAGE LANGUAGE; TEXTBOOK/COURSEBOOK/ANALYSIS.
This search was conducted in three database engines: LLBA, ERIC and ACADEMIC ONE
FILE. A manual search in specialised journals was also conducted in English and in
Spanish: ELT Journal, Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, The
Modern Language Journal, Multilingual Education, TESOL Quarterly, Discourse and Society,
Discurso y Sociedad and Signos. The engine and the manual searches yielded a total of
153 studies. Once duplicates were discarded, there were 129 studies in the preliminary
pool.
The selection and appraisal of the final pool of studies (out of the preliminary pool) con-
sisted in getting to a reasonably small and manageable number of high-quality studies. For
such purpose, a list of inclusion and exclusion criteria was designed. For a study to be
included in the final pool, it needed to meet all of the inclusion criteria and none of the
exclusion criteria. As detailed in Table 1, these criteria refer to the following aspects: the
author’s explicit definition of culture in the paper, the empirical nature of the study and
the quality of the analysis and claims, the year of publication, the type of analysis con-
ducted by the author, the amount of textbook contextualisation/data provided through-
out the analysis, etc. After applying these criteria, the final pool contained only nine

Table 1. Inclusion/exclusion criteria.

INCLUDE STUDY EXCLUDE STUDY
a. AUTHOR’S The author uses the term ‘culture’ as a category in
OWN VIEW their analysis and clearly states why the textbook
is addressing a specific topic as being culture-
related
b. NATURE OF Analyses empirical qualitative data regarding the (i) Provides a theoretical reflection on how FL
THE STUDY strategies used in the representation of culture in textbooks should be analysed or (ii) analyses data
FL textbook quantitatively, but (iii) the focus of the study is
not qualitative
c. CORPUS Analyses written texts, exercises, visuals, etc.
d. EVIDENCE The study includes sufficient evidence to support The study does not include sufficient evidence to
the author’s claims support the author’s claims
e. TEXTBOOK There’s a thick description of the textbook or the No thick description of the textbook is provided
textbook is at hand and the textbook is not at hand
f. PUBLICATION The study was published (peer-review journal, The study was not published, or was published
YEAR book or book chapter, conference presentation) before 2000
after 2000
 6 G. CANALE

studies since – as Table 1 suggests – (solely) quantitative studies, studies published before
2000, studies without enough contextualisation or data and purely theoretical studies
(such as recommendations for teachers, argumentative papers about the use of textbooks
in foreign language classrooms and other studies without empirical data) were discarded,
just to name a few.
Since the notion of culture is by no means easy to define and I did not intend to impose
my own definition to the study, I decided to make sure that the final pool of studies: (i)
Made their own definition of culture explicit/available (see Table 2), and (ii) Provided evi-
dence that the textbook(s) under study highlighted in some ways the teaching of foreign
culture in the passages, exercises or visuals (see Table 1).
The final sample is then composed of nine studies, each of which addresses either:
Russian, Spanish, Italian, English or Swahili as a second, foreign or heritage language. To
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contextualise the studies and thus the textbooks, some background information is sum-
marised in Table 2. In the bibliography section, each study included in the final pool is pre-
ceded by (*).
To analyse the data of the final pool of studies, I used two complementary approaches. I
first used qualitative coding (Baralt, 2012) in order to find recurrent patterns as well as
exceptions to these patterns. This included two stages: an open coding (in which I used
broad labels3 to code data) and then a second pass at the data to check these labels
and re-organise them once I had a clearer picture of the data at hand. Once the coding
stage was completed, I needed to analyse the data in a systematic way so that valid com-
parisons could be made. Given that the data include verbal and visual language, I decided
to focus the analysis on semiotic choices. In its simplest form, semiotic choices (e.g. choos-
ing specific lexical and grammatical items or images) allow texts to ‘highlight some mean-
ings and to background others’ (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 30), creating lexical or visual fields
by repeatedly using (or avoiding the use of) lexico-grammatical items and images that
refer to shared values, identities, activities, ideologies, etc. These, in turn, help texts to
achieve cohesion (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). It is through the analysis of these semiotic
choices that I discuss politics of inclusion and exclusion of foreign language culture,
based on the lexico-grammatical and visual choices evidenced in textbook discourse.
In the next section, I will present and discuss findings by providing illustrative examples
of the data and evidence found in the pool of studies. It is worth noting that the data pro-
vided by these articles were obviously re-analysed for my own purposes and so evidence
and analyses by authors were not accepted at face value.

Analysis: how language textbooks represent foreign culture, or the politics

of hide and seek
The study of representations requires us to consider not only what textbook discourse
chooses to represent and how it chooses to represent it, but also what it chooses to
leave out. Both inclusion and exclusion are equally meaningful from the point of view
of the ways in which resources and choices are used (van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999). For
the purpose of this study, politics of representation (Watney, 1999) will be defined as
the discursive strategies through which groups, objects, events and social processes are
included or excluded in the production of particular representations. These strategies
 Table 2. Final sample studies.
ABOUT THE TEXTBOOK(S) ABOUT THE ANALYSIS
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Target Number of Text selection within Main tool for Conceptualisation/definition of

language textbooks Level(s) the corpus analysis culture adopted Themes/key words
Azimova and Russian 9 Beginning, intermediate Written texts Critical (discourse) Cultural settings as the spaces in Language ownership
Johnston (2012) and advanced, college (readings and analysis which the language is used. (p. 337)
and university level dialogs), images,
graphs and maps
Elissondo (2001) Spanish 3 Elementary and Visuals Critical analysis Complex space of practices and Authenticity
intermediate, university significations (p. 72).
level
Leeman and Spanish 12 University-level Titles and prefaces Critical (discourse) Linked to language ideologies, a Historical changes in ideologies.
Martínez (2007) analysis shift from cultural and linguistic Spanish as a heritage language
essentialisation to commodification
Musumeci and Italian 4 Beginners Texts, visuals, tasks Content analysis PPP Cultural content in the
Aski (2010) curriculum, cultural competence,
ACTFL standards, content-based
instruction
Nomnian (2013) English 6 Beginning and Written texts Content analysis PPP Cultural diversity
intermediate, secondary

LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM

school
Shardakova and Russian 2 Beginners Written texts Critical (discourse) Imagined culture. Mediation of Identity options. Imagined
Pavlenko (2004) (storylines, analysis (foreign) experience in the identities. Homogenisation of
dialogues) classroom Russian society
Thompson Swahili 5 Beginners, Written texts Critical (discourse) Culture and language are linked in Neoliberal and multicultural
(2013) undergraduate and (dialogues, analysis and complex ways in the process of approach to culture
graduate students narratives) content analysis defining a speaker’s identity.
(p. 948)
Weninger and English 2 Beginner, secondary Written texts, images Semiotic Resists monolithic Global cultural consciousness.
Kiss (2013) school and tasks approach conceptualisations of culture Intercultural citizenship

Xu (2013) English 5 Secondary school Written texts and Content analysis Culture as a dynamic process, Concentric circles of English
Chinese speakers passages culture. Globalisation. Hybridisation
and blending

7
 8 G. CANALE

serve specific textual and discursive purposes in making meanings and therefore they are
a key element in our analysis.
In particular, exploring the politics of representation of foreign culture in textbooks – by
drawing on a qualitative synthesis research that seeks to present a second-order interpret-
ation of textbook data and analysis – allows us to reflect on the following questions: What
definitions of culture underlie textbook discourse? What aspects of the foreign culture are
foregrounded/backgrounded by these representations? Are there similar trends in the poli-
tics of representation of textbooks designed for different target languages and different
audiences (second, foreign and heritage language speakers)? By looking at the politics of
representation and interpreting what purposes these politics serve in textbook discourse,
the analysis will also capture two interrelated phenomena: (i) the strategies textbooks
employ to represent or avoid representing aspects of foreign culture and (ii) what these
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strategies tell us about the underlying conceptualisation of culture in textbook discourse.

Politics of exclusion: a homogeneous foreign culture

Pedagogical discourse is generally associated with simplification strategies, which are cer-
tainly present in textbook discourse. Simplification refers to homogenisation processes
through which social phenomena are represented in a more domesticated manner (Mos-
covici & Hewstone, 1993) and often times these simplifications serve a didactic purpose. In
the data and evidence provided by the pool of studies, it is clear that simplification strat-
egies can also be associated with broader discursive processes such as politics of exclu-
sion. There may be many reasons for textbooks to exclude certain aspects of the
foreign culture, and not all of them may be necessarily ideologically-driven. One could
think that a textbook may exclude some aspects of diversity in the foreign culture (for
instance by not representing all the ethnic groups) in order to reduce the information
load. However, this is still problematic since this type of exclusion may mis- or underrepre-
sent the foreign culture and may also fail to favour students’ critical awareness by not
showing the complexities underlying any cultural group.
In the data and evidence analysed, homogenisation of foreign culture is often achieved
through the exclusion of groups, perspectives or non-hegemonic practices within the
culture, therefore avoiding any type of cultural diversity whatsoever. At first sight, one
could think that this type of process of exclusion would serve the purpose of silencing
voices that would enter into conflict with hegemonic ideologies in highly debatable
topics; however, it is interesting to note that exclusion does happen when discussing
heated topics, but it also happens when discussing everyday topics as well.
Nomnian (2013, p. 21), for instance, cites an extract from the English book World
Wonders 1 in which daily Thai life and preferences are presented in a stereotyped
manner, erasing other cultural behaviours within the community. This example is interest-
ing since the target audience of the textbook is EFL students across the world, while the
culture represented in the passage is Thai culture, which is then a foreign – but not the
target – culture:
In Thailand, everyone loves Thai boxing.4 Thai boxing is different from boxing in other
countries. You can use your hands and arms, but you can also kick. You must be strong
too. (World Wonders 1, p. 68)
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 9

In general terms, this textbook adopts a cross-cultural approach, mainly by comparing

‘national cultures’, geography and some other material aspects of culture as performance.
This approach to culture may be – in part – because the textbook is affiliated with National
Geographic and so it makes use of many visuals and content that orient to culture from
this ‘material’ perspective. As the extract shows, oversimplification and overgeneralisation
are frequent and can be easily spotted by lexico-grammatical choices. It could be stated
that oversimplification and overgeneralisation may occur because Thai culture is not
associated with the target language of the textbook. However, the representation is still
problematic, and there are two intimately linked processes of representation at stake:
homogenisation and exclusion, as will be explained next.
The example takes for granted the textbook audience will agree that culture and place
(in this case Thailand and Thai culture) are closely (or even naturally) linked. By presenting
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a particular cultural practice (boxing) as shared by all members of a group in a specific

place (In Thailand, everybody loves boxing), the text makes an important assumption (as
defined by Fairclough, 1989) about culture and place, namely that cultural behaviour is
homogeneous within the group associated with a well-defined geo-political space (a
nation). This is reinforced linguistically by the use of bare declarative forms (such as In Thai-
land everybody loves boxing), which do not allow for any kind of heteroglossic mechanisms
to introduce alternative voices, lower the intensity of the truth value of the statement or
even contest it (Martin & White, 2005; Halliday, 2014). Homogeneity, then, becomes a pre-
supposed norm of culture, and cultural groups can be defined by means of their shared
practices, which are left unproblematised not only in the text itself but also in the sur-
rounding exercises and activities. If the context of textbook production is considered,
homogeneity can be achieved more easily here given that the culture depicted in the text-
book extract (Thai culture) does not correspond to that of the target language (English)
and therefore less attention will probably be paid to the explanation of Thai culture as
to reject or contest it.
The conceptualisation of culture in this example is also present in many of the text-
books analysed by the pool of studies selected for this synthesis. This conceptualisation
is aligned with a shared conception of culture in foreign language instruction known as
the PPP model (perspectives, practices and products), also present in educational docu-
ments such as American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) (2012)
proficiency guidelines. As earlier works have noted (cfr. Kubota, 2003), the PPP model con-
ceptualises culture in a highly homogeneous manner. It represents products, practices and
perspectives as a set of material and abstract elements which are shared, distributed and
experienced equally by all members of a given group. This type of conceptualisation
assumes all participants would have the same access to cultural practices, and that
culture is the cohesive element that makes users behave in similar – if not identical –
ways. Such a characterisation has been widely debated by post-structuralist researchers
(Duranti, 1997, p. 44) for whom the definition of culture should be considered in terms
of dynamic tensions in wider social, political and economic scales. This implies acknowled-
ging that all human actions have a participatory goal whether it is carried out through
language or through any other communication tool, and that participation requires
sharing several systems (environment, values, communication code, etc.), but that this
‘sharing’ does not necessarily mean all participants will have the same power in
 10 G. CANALE

participating, that they will share equal knowledge of those systems, or that such knowl-
edge is static.
Other types of exclusion do not refer specifically to a set of material practices, but to the
acknowledgement of ethnic and other sociopolitical groups within a community. The
underlying mechanism of representation is basically the same as the former example
on Thai culture. However, in this case the exclusion is more problematic since what is at
stake is not just the association of a practice with a particular culture, but the very ‘own-
ership’ of that culture. While the strategy is the same as that of the example from Nomnian
(2013), what is at stake in the next examples of exclusion is the representation or misre-
presentation of whole groups and their link to such culture. This difference may be due
to the fact that while Nomnian (2013) adopts the PPP approach to culture, other
authors’ conceptualisation of culture is aligned with critical and post-structuralist perspec-
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tives, which allows them to look closer and more deeply into various types of exclusions in
textbook discourse other than that which relates to material manifestations of culture (see
Table 2 for the conceptualisations of culture by Azimova & Johnston, 2012; Elissondo, 2001;
Shardakova & Pavlenko, 2004; Thompson, 2013).
Let us not look into this second type of exclusion in more detail. Azimova and Johnston
(2012, p. 344) find that when referring to its speakers, Russian textbooks tend to avoid
making the distinction – or explaining the difference – between ‘political’ (rossiiski) and
‘ethnic’ (ruskii) denominations for ‘being Russian’. Textbooks also exclude groups by
linking ownership of the language and culture to the white Christian heterosexual
Russian, erasing other groups with different gender, religious, linguistic or ethnic subjec-
tivities (Azimova & Johnston, 2012; Shardakova & Pavlenko, 2004). These trends are not
exclusive to languages of wider international scope such as English or Russian. Swahili
textbooks follow a similar trend (Thompson, 2013) in that the exclusion of certain
groups helps to achieve an idealised and homogeneous representation of culture and
of those who ‘own’ the language and culture. This type of exclusion brings back the
issue of culturism and high-culture (Holliday, 2005) and native-speakerism (Jenkins,
2000) in foreign language instruction as high-culture and educated speakers of a particular
place generally become the only visible norm. Those groups which are not represented as
‘carriers’ or ‘owners’ of the culture are then delegitimised by being recurrently excluded
from the representation.
To better exemplify this second type of exclusion, I will focus on visual choices. In her
analysis of introductory Spanish textbooks, Elissondo (2001, p. 76) found that most of the
photographs depicting people in ¿Qué tal? represented Latin American people as light
skinned middle class of European ancestry. This homogenisation overgeneralises social
and ethnic experiences of Latin American peoples, erasing other ethnic roots which are
not part of the historically and politically dominant ‘white culture’. A look at many of
the visuals provided in that textbook indicates that there is a sense of culture as ‘authen-
ticity’ since the places depicted typically illustrate historic/native sites across the region.
However, the depiction of people does not correspond to the same notion of authenticity
since the trend is to depict the middle class of white ancestry. Considering the imagined
audience (the textbook being used in American colleges), the book visually explores the
‘exotic’ meanings of Latin America as place, but represents Latin American people in a
less ‘exotic’ way (based on what is assumed the imagined audience would consider to
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 11

be ‘exotic’). In a broader sense, this type of representation of the culture reproduces a colo-
nialist agenda in foreign language teaching (Saville-Troike, 1978).
Given that these politics of exclusion are quite recurrent in the data, it becomes clear
that similar strategies may be employed to exclude diversity in the depiction of foreign
culture (associated with specific cultural practices and group ownership). This does not
only happen with languages of global scope (such as Russian, English and Spanish) but
also with languages of a more narrow scope (as Swahili). Neither does the exclusion strat-
egies happen within the one nation-one language framework only (such as happened in
the Thailand textbook example); it also happens with bigger geo-political spaces, as shown
by the example of Spanish and Latin American culture.
Based on the background information of the textbooks, it is interesting to note that
these politics of exclusion do not necessarily pertain to the age of the imagined audience
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(since the Spanish textbook and some of the Russian textbooks mentioned are used in
college education while others target a younger audience). However, it is also worth
noting that on most of the occasions in which these politics of exclusion take place, the
level of proficiency of the imagined audience is either basic or intermediate. Potentially,
this could mean that based on the (imagined) abilities and level of proficiency of the audi-
ence, the textbook may favour such politics of exclusion.

Politics of inclusion (i): diversity in products and practices (between cultures)

Foreign cultural diversity and heterogeneity are not always backgrounded. Sometimes
textbook discourse includes foreign culture in such a way that diversity and heterogeneity
regarding groups and their practices become apparent. This is generally the case when
cultural comparisons can be drawn or inferred, and so diversity is not discussed within a
culture but between cultures. These politics of inclusion can reinforce the politics of exclu-
sion previously analysed, since discussing differences among cultures does not necessarily
problematise heterogeneity and diversity within a culture.
The analysis of the data and evidence from the pool of studies indicates that the
representation of cultural diversity boils down to comparisons between cultures.
More specifically, the elements compared are stereotyped products, practices and
persons (historical facts, famous people, rituals, etc.) which implicitly draw on the
PPP approach. These stereotypes allow for naive comparisons between the cultures
of the students and the culture associated with the target language learned, or even
other foreign cultures without problematising them as dynamic and heterogeneous
phenomena.
In the same line, cultural diversity is excluded when it comes to perspectives and ideol-
ogies. In other words, diversity tends to be shown in texts which ‘do[es] not require any
emotional or cultural investment from readers’ (Elissondo, 2001, p. 74), and it tends to
be invisible in texts which require greater emotional and cultural investment or which
could favour eventual contestation. A textbook may, for instance, emphasise cultural diver-
sity in practices such as ‘festivals around the world’ (Xu, 2013, p. 12), but cultural diversity
may be hidden when it comes to cosmogonies and ideologies. Musumeci and Aski (2010,
p. 29), for instance, cite an Italian textbook (Avanti!) that favours reflection on cultural
differences in everyday practices, such as food habits:
 12 G. CANALE

Decidi si questi usi e costumi somo topici di dove abiti tu, dell’ Italia, o di tutti e due. Poi, sot-
tolinea i verbi in ogni affirmazione. Perché si precede tutti i verbi
[Decide if these costums are typical of where you live, typical of Italy or both. Then, underline
all the verbs in each affirmative sentence. Why does ‘si’ preceed all verbs?]
Si fa la dieta mediterranea [have Mediterranean meals]
Si considera il Pranzo il plato principale [consider lunch as the main meal]
Si regalano le mimose per la Festa della donna [give ‘le mimose’ as a gift for the ‘Festa de la
Donna’]
(p. 381)

As noted previously, in this example culture is also implicitly defined as something

factual and empirical that is and that a group of individuals has rather than something
that does (i.e. culture as a verb, Brice Heath & Street, 2008, p. 7). This notion of culture
allows for an unproblematic comparison between what ‘we’ do and what ‘they’ do, pos-
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tulating a rather static view. This gives way to the reification of culture into objects, arte-
facts or behaviours we either own or we do not. In addition to this, there seems to be no
great emotional investment in discussing food habits with the sole aim of comparing
these practices across cultures. Given that the ultimate goal of this exercise is to focus
on grammar (the use of si in Italian), the task itself does not favour greater engagement
in cultural issues regarding perspectives either. At the same time, it provides a homogen-
ised representation of us/them, which is clearly reflected in pronoun selection and by the
association of cultural practices to geo-political spaces: ‘Decide if these costums are typical
of where you live, typical of Italy or both’. Choices such as ‘where you live’ and ‘Italy’ serve
at least two purposes. First, they serve to reinforce, by the use of pronouns and names (of
sociopolitical spaces), the distance between the native and the foreign culture, and at the
same time to homogenise each of them. Second, they serve to associate culture with place
within the scheme of a nationalist ideology.
In short, there seems to be a tendency among language textbooks to represent cultures
to be different from one another but as each of them being homogeneous. Also, cultural
diversity is included in the representation whenever perspectives, cosmogonies and ideol-
ogies are not at stake, so that they cannot be contested. Cultural diversity and heterogen-
eity thus become associated with material objects, historical facts and static artefacts.
When textbooks include cultural diversity they tend to do so by making mono-dimen-
sional connections between cultural and place, which promote an essentialisation of
native and foreign cultural identities. These representation strategies do not favour stu-
dents’ understanding of culture from a more modern or post-structuralist viewpoint: as
the complex co-existence of conflicting ideologies, discourses and identities which
operate in time and space, and which are embedded in wider historical processes.

Politics of inclusion (ii): from local diversity to globalised meta-culture

Politics of inclusion can also be used in less obvious manners. Diversity within a culture can
be included as a pre-text to reaching a higher level of homogeneity in a new global
context. Superdiversity (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011) as an everyday reality may question
static and nationalist views of culture and groups and so it may be hard to hide it when
textbooks address languages of a global scope. In particular, the data and evidence
from the pool of studies suggest that the notion of superdiversity as a reality is implicitly
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 13

present in textbooks of languages of global status, mostly English and Spanish. However,
in each case the implicit notion of superdiversity may be present for particular reasons,
which seem to depend on the characteristics of the imagined audience of the textbook.
In the case of English textbooks, the implicit notion of superdiversity serves to make
foreign language students connect with English as a global language, eradicating poten-
tial colonialist and imperialist meanings. As for Spanish, heritage textbooks can implicitly
draw on the notion of superdiversity to explore the heterogeneity of different manifes-
tations of Spanish culture to create bonds with, for instance, speakers of other varieties
of Spanish, as will be discussed in more detail later.
While the notion of superdiversity may be implicitly in such textbooks, the actual
acknowledgement of superdiversity and accelerated mobility as everyday facts does not
necessarily mean that textbook discourse will present superdiversity and mobility as the
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‘norm’. As an example, by looking into the data and evidence in Leeman and Martínez’s
study (2007), we find that the inclusion of cultural and ethnic diversity in Spanish heritage
textbooks can serve the purpose of homogenisation, as diverse groups within the Spanish
culture are represented as belonging to a meta-culture that unites them as part of a bigger
whole. Textbook discourse may address – to some extent – the complex reality of these
languages and cultures, which cannot be mono-dimensionally linked to place because
of how they have spread all over the world. However, the authors find that a way out
of this complexity is the association of the target language to global scale practices and
identities, backgrounding local scales. An extract of the preface to Jauja, Método Integral
de Español para Bilingües (p. 43) illustrates this:
[Q]ueremos añadir que cuando hablamos de integración, nos referimos al binomio cultural y
lingüístico chicano. Sin embargo, creemos que esto incluye también las realidades culturales y
lingüísticas de otros sectores hispanos de los Estados Unidos como variantes de una
metacultura
[we would add that when we say integration, we are referring to the cultural and linguistic
binomial of the Chicano. However, we believe that this also includes the cultural and linguistic
realities of other Hispanic groups in the US as a variant of a meta-culture]. (1987, p. xvi)5

This meta-culture is associated with mobility and immigration, and at the same time
with identities which do not reflect the one language-one nation scheme. A meta-
culture, then, discursively unites heritage Spanish speakers to other Spanish speakers by
presenting a higher-order homogeneity (‘integración’ or integration), which ultimately
attempts to background cultural differences at the local level. A point could be made
that this type of representation could be specific to heritage language textbooks as a
means to unite groups in diaspora or to make more sentimental connections with a
shared heritage past. However, while this factor may play an important role in the rep-
resentation of culture, there is evidence that similar representations appear in foreign
language textbooks as well.
As an example, Xu (2013) finds that the inclusion of cultural diversity in textbook dis-
course may help to construct a notion of English as an international or even global
language as an attempt to connect learners with the target language. This type of rep-
resentation underscores (local and regional) diversity with the ultimate goal of pointing
to an emerging homogeneous (global) meta-culture that unites all English users, back-
grounding or even revisiting the concept of ‘ownership’. This meta-culture serves the
 14 G. CANALE

purpose of wiping off potential tensions or conflicts in perspectives among communities

of English users around the world. These strategies are also aligned with global ideologies
which acknowledge diversity as an everyday reality with a view to administering such
diversity (Heller, 2003) and turning it into a new homogeneous reality at a wider scale.
The acknowledgement of cultural diversity at a local scale becomes a necessary discursive
move prior to the meta-homogenisation of such diversity at a global scale. By focusing on
the meta-aspects of the foreign culture, textbooks do not favour students’ reflection upon
diversity as intrinsic to human nature and social life, drawing their attention towards the
so-called global phenomena. Also, by postulating this new homogeneous meta-culture,
colonialist, imperialist and neoliberal ideologies can be re-actualised: a shared common
language and culture to which all users have equal access is presented as a social
reality for all language users, wiping off asymmetries of access and ecological and geo-pol-
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itical mechanisms of language spread and expansion.

To better illustrate this, let us take a look at a fictitious dialogue between a Chinese
graduate student and his new boss at the Daily China (English newspaper based in
Beijing) on his first day at work. The extract was taken from the textbook New Senior
English for China, which belongs to a larger sample analysed by Xu (2013):

HX: Welcome. We are so glad you are coming to work with us.
ZY: Can I go out on _____ a story i_____?
HX: (laughing) Not on your own. Not t_____ you are more experienced! The first time we
will send you with an e_____ reporter. Only when you have seen what he or she does,
can you c___ a story by yourself
ZY: Wonderful! I’m so e_____. What do I need to take with me? I also brought my camera
with me.
HX: No need for a camera! You will have a p_______ with you to take photographs. You
will find your colleagues very e____ to assist you and if you are interested in photogra-
phy, it may be for you to c____ on that later on ‘New Senior English for China’ (unit 4,
exercise 5).

What is interesting about this fill-in-the-gap exercise is the role English plays in such
fictitious situation. Both the boss (HX) and the new reporter (ZY) are Chinese speakers
who are using English in an international – and at the same time local – institutional
setting (the English newspaper based in China) even though no other non-Chinese speak-
ers or even English monolinguals are brought into the picture. The dialogue is constructed
in such a way that a socialisation event is taking place: the boss is providing guidelines as
for how to work and what to do and not to do. The greetings, the question–answer struc-
tures and the way the boss provides information the new reporter lacks points to the event
as a socialising act which is taking place in English among Chinese speakers in Beijing.
Superdiversity is somewhat implicit but it is also used as an excuse to naturalise English
as the language of global communication. Other examples from this book and the text-
book series suggest that English is often times presented as a means of global communi-
cation within foreign local spaces as well, pointing to the establishment of a meta-culture
united by the language (even when other languages or varieties are potentially shared by
the speakers). The fact that this textbook was produced in China may as well indicate that
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 15

these choices in representation are not random and that, in fact, they respond to the inter-
ests and views of (local) mainstream EFL discourses.

Conclusions and implications

By looking at how politics of inclusion/exclusion operate in foreign language textbook dis-
course, we have been able to identify recurrent strategies that pertain to the ways in which
foreign culture is represented. Our qualitative synthesis has covered nine studies which
address language textbooks of different scopes and different statuses in the imagined
target audiences. Regardless of what specific politics of representation is pursued (and
how each study from the pool operationalises culture), the underlying definition of
culture in textbook discourse is generally that of PPP. This operationalisation, only
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adopted by few studies from our synthesis pool, allows textbooks to favour cultural hom-
ogeneity. At the same time, it does not favour readers’ criticality (Thompson, 2013) since
the politics of representation open no space for reflection on the potential ‘effects of cul-
tural difference and languages ideologies in interaction’ (p. 961). This is in part because
culture is assumed to be the accumulation of historical facts or the crystallised and homo-
geneous behaviours of a group, often times associated with national boundaries.
There are philosophical, political, pedagogical and practical aspects to language teach-
ing and culture (Kramsch, 1987, 1993, 1998, 2013). Textbooks as curriculum artefacts are
just one of the many domains of discourse implicated in the representation of culture
in teaching and learning practices. However, given that textbooks still play a pivotal
role in education and language instruction, the analysis of the representation of culture
in textbooks is of great interest for critical scholars and educators. Almost three decades
ago, Kramsch (1987, p. 115) noted that ‘it is doubtful that current textbooks could be
able to bring about appreciation of differences and critical understanding of one’s own
and other cultures’. Findings from this synthesis indicate that the situation may not
have changed much since then.
Findings from the present study indicate that foreign culture is seen as something static
(whether facts, artefacts or homogeneous behaviours) that groups either have or do not
have. This implicit view of culture allows for the presentation of cultural ‘facts’ which do
not require much investment from the learner and also allows for apolitical comparisons
between ‘our’ culture and ‘their’ culture. In the same line, post-structuralist and critical
views of culture in which subjective, historical and ideological factors are at stake – and
which are common among the authors of the pool of studies selected for this synthesis
– are not favoured by textbook discourse.
Regardless of the target language (Russian, Spanish, Italian, English, Swahili, etc.) and its
status in the communities for which the textbook is designed (second, foreign or heritage
speakers), the representation of culture in textbooks generally follows a common pattern
of homogenisation which – almost paradoxically – can be achieved by means of adopting
politics of exclusion or inclusion of cultural diversity and heterogeneity. This homogenis-
ation manifests itself both in verbal and non-verbal language, and also in the activities and
exercises surrounding the text itself.
Despite these general trends there are, of course, some particular aspects of represen-
tation. The scale at which homogenisation of culture will take place may depend on the
status of the foreign language. For instance, languages of wide scope – such as English
 16 G. CANALE

and Spanish – may be presented as locally heterogeneous but then homogenised at the
global scale. The reasons for this homogenisation seem to be specific to the imagined
audience. For languages of a narrower scope, homogenisation may be presented at the
local and regional level without the need to acknowledge any type of heterogeneity. In
both cases, homogenisation serves the purpose of simplifying or even hiding complex
sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of the culture in question. It can also serve the
purpose of implicitly promoting the conceptualisation of culture as an accumulation of
homogeneous and uncontestable ‘facts’ to be learned in order to have access to particular
practices in the foreign language community or to just make quick comparisons between
cultures. Along the same lines, comparisons between ‘our’ homogeneous culture and
‘their’ homogeneous culture tend to reinforce mono-dimensional and stereotypical com-
parisons of everyday practices. The focus on this type of comparison positions students as
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‘foreigners’ or ‘strangers’. This naturalises the idea that only certain facts and practices are
legitimate within the culture, and that these need to be known and mastered in order to
have full access to the target language and community. However, it must be pointed out
that this trend is more recurrent among textbooks designed for beginners and intermedi-
ate learners. This could point to oversimplification and homogenisation as discursive pro-
cesses which respond to the (imagined) language proficiency and abilities of the audience.
These findings have pedagogical implications. As was stated in the beginning of the
paper, the textbook as discourse entails both text and practice. The politics of represen-
tation of foreign culture in textbooks (as texts) makes it difficult to think of raising students’
awareness of perspectives, ideologies, identities and their effect on our social practices.
Textbooks do not seem to favour criticality and reflection; in fact they tend to guide semio-
sis so that a particular and unproblematic understanding of culture becomes naturalised.
However, there is still hope that ideological spaces be opened in actual classroom prac-
tices in which teachers and students negotiate their identities and orientations to text-
books (as practice). A key question for debate and reflection is, then, how to design
classroom environments in which learners can understand textbook discourse as a
genre which operates socially, historically and ideologically, and not as the accumulation
of uncontestable factual (verbal and visual) evidence about language and culture.
In a broader sense, findings can also contribute to the field of discourse analysis as they
shed light on what may be genre-specific processes of representation. However, a main
question still remains: To what extent are these phenomena of representation specific
to the textbook genre? (Kramsch, 1987, p. 117). Is this ‘excessive’ simplification and hom-
ogenisation of culture a pedagogic device that aims at simplification or are there other
factors at stake? Does homogenisation in foreign language textbooks serve other pur-
poses in the hidden curriculum of schools and in the foreign language teaching agenda?
Following Azimova and Johnston (2012, p. 347), it seems fair to point out that ‘though,
as mentioned, no textbook can fully convey the richness and diversity of those groups and
individuals who are users of the language, it is nevertheless important to try’. It is not feas-
ible to incorporate all the dynamic complexities underlying the notion of culture and to
represent all these complexities in textbook discourse. However, the politics of represen-
tation in language textbooks suggest that whether critical reflections on culture (as per-
spectives, cosmogonies, ideologies) are incorporated into the classroom will mostly
depend on other curriculum artefacts and on actual classroom practices. In the same
line, there is still a literature gap to fill: even when textbooks may not fully represent
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 17

and problematise the foreign culture, there is not enough research on how teachers, stu-
dents and other stakeholders appropriate textbook discourse in actual school and class-
room practices (Guerrettatz & Johnston, 2013). This would help us better understand
how textbook readers may accept, negotiate, contest or reject such representations.

Notes
1. As an example of this ‘appropriation’ view, I present the following extract from the preface of a
textbook for Spanish as a Heritage Language Speakers (Español, lo esencial para el Bilingüe)
quoted in Leeman and Martínez (2007, p. 47): ‘[Spanish is] one of the most beautiful and
musical languages of the world, which will soon be even more yours’ (translation into English
in the original text by Leeman and Martínez, 2007).
2. One of the few exceptions to this trend is perhaps the work of Canagarajah (1993).
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3. For this first pass, I used broad labels such as ‘culture as historical information’, ‘culture as pro-
ducts’, ‘culture as practices’ and ‘culture as world view’. For the second pass, these categories
were revised and further detailed with information such as the type of exercise in which the refer-
ence to culture was found, the culture being represented, the linguistic or non-linguistic
resources used to represent the culture, the target language of the textbook and the imagined
audience, among others. These categories were used as a first attempt to organise and classify
the data at hand.
4. In all book extracts highlights are mine.
5. English translation in Leeman and Martínez (2007).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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