‘Reading’ World Link: A Visual Social Semiotic Analysis of an EFL Textbook

Abstract

As Kress (1993: 174) states, “no sign is innocent” and therefore no text, no matter how innocuous, bland or mundane, should be free from critical reading. This paper sets out to do just this by examining World Link (2011), an EFL textbook used in a South Korean university context, by using a framework of ‘visual grammar’ established by Kress and van Leeuweun (2006). The paper begins by reviewing the grounding theories of semiotics on which the framework is based. It then uses the framework to perform an analysis of the representational and interactive patterns of two pages from the World Link textbook. The author concludes with a discussion of her findings by addressing the embedded ideologies discovered within the pages and considering how these meaning potentials relate to the purposes of the textbook and thereby the greater purposes of the publisher, Heinle Cengage Learning.