This book provides an overview and a practical guide to conducting critical discourse analysis on language textbooks. It aims to discuss the theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects of conducting CDA studies on language education textbooks. Education remains among the most potent instruments through which societies reproduce their values, distribute knowledge, and shape the consciousness of successive generations. At the center of this enterprise stands the textbook—a deceptively modest artifact that, upon closer scrutiny, reveals itself as a site of intense ideological labor. Far from being a neutral repository of facts, the textbook is a carefully constructed discourse that selects, organizes, and legitimizes particular ways of knowing while silencing others. It is, as Michael Apple (1993) famously argued, a form of “official knowledge” that embodies the cultural politics of its time. This book is dedicated to the systematic examination of that politics through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It offers a practical yet theoretically grounded introduction to the study of textbooks as discourse, equipping researchers, educators, and students with the conceptual and methodological tools necessary to uncover the ideological workings of educational texts.
