Cultural Linguistics and ELT Curriculum: The Case of English Textbooks in Vietnam

Abstract

This chapter employed Cultural Linguistics to examine the representations of cultural conceptualisations in texts and visuals and meta-cultural competence in tasks. Through an example of tea drinking event schema analysis, it is shown that the locally developed English 10 and internationally marketed New Headway—intermediate entrench the Vietnamese and Anglo-English cultural conceptualisations to a large extent. The cultural conceptualisations of tea drinking across the two cultures teased out from the ethnographic survey in the available literature and the semiotic analysis are correspondent. The investigation of reading questions across the two textbooks indicates a failure in bringing the cultural conceptualisations into students’ attention and in facilitating the employment of meta-cultural competence strategies. The study aims to emphasise the importance of examining the representation of cultural conceptualisations and meta-cultural competence in ELT textbooks in the era of English as an international language. It proposes the analytical frameworks and criteria for ELT curriculum developers, researchers and researchers of English in Vietnam and elsewhere.