A Triangulated Accounting of Top Notch 2: Negotiating Ideologies in the Multimodal Discourse of an EFL Textbook in Korean University Classrooms

The Representation of Race in English Language Learning Textbooks: Inclusivity and Equality in Images

“…Indeed, this has been marketed in terms of “international editions”, where there is often an increased presence of local populations in imagery, but this just seems to promote oppression Olympics (the promotion of one minority race over another). Furthermore, as argued by Smith (2020), the marginalization of social realities can be reflexively transformed in situ by instructors. However, this would require a deep understanding of the narratives of cultural othering and the interactive meanings present in images, neither of which may be present in locally sourced teachers.…”

“…The teachers and students reported that Blacks were consistently represented as poor or powerless, and Whites as wealthy and powerful. Similarly, in his PhD thesis, Smith (2020) discusses racism in Top Notch 2 (a popular ELT textbook). He argues that Whiteness "manifests as an adaptive, cultural filter that diminishes dark skin, quite literally, in the visual characterizations of dialogue participants" (p. 158).…”

“…There has also been valuable research into inclusivity of race in terms of first language children's books (Caple & Tian, 2021), post‐secondary textbooks (Harper, 2012), and single ELT textbooks (Smith, 2020; Taylor‐Mendes, 2009). However, research into race and ELT textbook imagery often contains fundamental issues with regard to research designs (e.g., textbook selection), categorization schemes, or conclusions relying solely on frequency counts of faces.…”

“…Racial inclusivity, for example, is particularly problematic because of controversies surrounding the topic and the best way to approach it. For instance, many studies suffer from definitional issues (e.g., Hilliard, 2015), use simple frequency counts (e.g., Hilliard, 2015; Roohani & Molana, 2013), explore just one textbook or textbook series (e.g., Parsaiyan & Garshasbi, 2021; Smith, 2020; Taylor‐Mendes, 2009), or use a binary division of Whites versus non‐Whites (Parsaiyan & Garshasbi, 2021; Romney, 2019). Thus, despite race being an important issue in ELT for over twenty years (e.g., Kubota & Lin, 2006), and notwithstanding the fact that Whites are repeatedly shown as being over‐represented in ELT textbooks (Von Esch, Motha, & Kubota, 2020), there seems to have been a lack of cumulative knowledge‐building with regard to investigating the nuances of racial inclusivity in textbook imagery.…”