Representation of the Orient through the Lens of the Occident in Commercial English Textbook

The presented qualitative case study seeks to explore how ‘the Orient’ and its culture are characterized in pedagogical commercial English Language textbooks, which are internationally distributed. The study analyzes language used in reading, listening, and texts of two series of books; Interchange and English Results. The language used in the textbooks is analyzed using an adapted framework of Fairclough’s (1989) approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The study establishes, among other things, that the role of the textbooks is not only to support educational processes, but also to systematically convey or even construct implicitly and explicitly the dominant ideology or a desired one. The analysis indicates a substantial degree of cultural betrayal and structures of the Orient . The language structures indicate a positive depiction of the Self , while ‘the Orient’ and its cultures, as the Other , are presented in a rather negative manner in many instances. Overall, the study argues that altering the existing misrepresentations and pre-assumed and pre-conditioned reality, whether linguistically, visually, or auditory is the key means for elimination of misconceptions and categorizations of ‘the Orient

Keywords:

the Orient , the Occident , commercial English textbooks , Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)