Representation of (In)equality in English for Today (Class-VIII)

Abstract

A textbook has immense importance in students‘ academic life. It not only contains lessons, activities or tasks, but also contains ideology of a country through its language, content or discourse. Therefore, during designing or developing a textbook it requires a balance in the content and the context and needs to be equal in terms of gender, class, religion and profession. However, there are inequalities, biases, stereotyping, under-representation or misrepresentation of social classes, ages, races, religions, gender and professions in ELT books of different contexts. This research reveals the unequal representation of social classes in the textbook English for Today (EFT). The content of EFT is predominantly upper and middle class centric. The textbook excludes lower classes from the content. The EFT provides discriminatory depiction as well and thus reinforces social hegemony. Using Fairclough‘s (1995) three dimensional model of analysis— description, interpretation and explanation— this study critically analyzes the contexts and images of EFT, for class VIII, and unfolds the unequal representation of social classes in EFT.