مصطفی جانبی عنایت

Gender-biased representations in course books have the potential to affect learners and teacher in terms of their attitudes, mindsets, and values. Also ,The treatment of culture in ELT textbooks has a considerable impact on students’ understanding of cultures. So, this thesis investigates the representation of cultural dimensions and gender in two series of locally published English textbooks taught in Iran and Turkey. The examination of cultural dimensions was done on the conversations of these books with the same topics by employing Cortazzi and Jin’s (1999) Framework. Then, the portrayal of male and female characters was assessed by employing semiotic categories of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s reading Images (2006) framework. Results of the study indicated that the ELT textbooks in Turkey and more in Iran appear too weak to provide new information or broaden students’ worldview or cultural understanding. The results related to positioning of gender in these books revealed that in Prospect series males were presented more than females as active, looking at the viewer, and framed in a close–up format which signified their prominence and power in relation to females. Also, both men and women were represented as fully clothed, no female character in the images were depicted in sparsely and lightly clothed. The results mentioned above were a bit different in Turkish books. The obtained results have some implications for syllabus designers and material developers to provide textbooks which foster cultural understanding without any sign of gender bias.