A Study On Cultural Representation In The Reading Texts In New Senior English For China

Because of the authoritative role of textbooks in China, cultural content in textbooks is regarded as reliable and indisputable, so it is easy to lead to blind obedience in teaching and learning. The cultural view conveyed by those textbooks has a great effect on textbook users’ own values. Therefore, it is urgent for us to analyze textbooks with a critical eye, so as to investigate whether there is bias in the cultural representation in examined textbooks and whether the cultural representation in those textbooks can help students develop their Intercultural Communicative Competence(hereafter ICC). New Senior English for China(hereafter NSEFC)(the 2nd ed., 2007) is a set of textbooks widely used in China. The current study chooses all of the reading texts in five compulsory textbooks of NSEFC(75 texts totally 45, 300 words) as the linguistic data, and they are analyzed from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis(hereafter CDA). Based on Liu’s(2013) framework of cultural classification, this study applies Content Analysis to analyze the cultural representation from two factors(the sources of culture and the themes of culture).The analysis shows that in NSEFC, in terms of sources of culture, the representation of Target Culture, International Culture and Source Culture is not balanced. Target Culture is in the dominated place. Although International Culture and Source Culture have been presented, they are not obviously sufficient; in terms of themes of culture, the representation is also selective. In Big “C” cultural category, the most frequently referenced themes in NSEFC are Geography and History, while the theme of Art is neglected; In Little “c” cultural category, “Food and Drinks” theme is emphasized, while the popular theme of Hobbies does not receive enough attention.The research findings above suggest that in NSEFC cultural bias does exist. It will cause distress in the formation of textbook users’ cultural cognition and affect the cultivation and development of students’ ICC.The current study not only offers a new perspective for analyzing the cultural content in English textbooks, but also helps raise textbook developers and compilers’ culturally sensitive awareness, and provides reference for English textbooks’ compilation.