This article addresses how Spanish and Japanese Social Science textbooks represent Europe and Asia discursively, and in what way the national viewpoint from each country is manifested in that representation. We analysed 15 textbooks used in secondary schools, and we focused on Geography and Civic Education subjects. Our analysis was developed mainly at semantic levels, and we examined the terms 'Europe' and 'Asia' answering four interrelated questions. We found that in both countries' textbooks, Europe is in general described in a positive or even idealized way as a developed and rich region, whereas Asia has a reverse negative image. Underlying this opposition, we can observe a Western ethnocentric view which takes Western development as the implicit standard to rank all societies hierarchically and builds discursively the dichotomy between developed and underdeveloped countries. 'Our' country's position in the world is also conditioned by this Western-centred perspective.
El presente trabajo trata de un estudio comparativo entre libros de texto de España y Japón. Se examina, a través del análisis del discurso, cómo los libros de texto de Ciencias Sociales construyen estereotipos en la representación de Europa y Asia, así como sus posibles influencias en las imágenes del propio país, España y Japón. Hemos analizado los términos “Europa” y “Asia” desde cuatro perspectivas diferentes. Los resultados demuestran que, además de algunas estrategias discursivas, la idea subyacente del etnocentrismo occidental desempeña un papel importante en la construcción de imágenes estereotípicas de Europa y de Asia y de nuestro país.
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