Discourse Analysis of Interpersonal Features in ESL and JSL Textbooks

Textbooks play an important role in language classrooms. They serve as models for language use in a target community and significantly influence language learners in their development of language use and perceptions of the target community. In traditional grammar teaching, teachers seldom look into linguistic choices at the discourse level and mainly use language textbooks to focus on grammatical accuracy at the sentence level. Language cannot be divorced from the context and culture of its use; contextual and cultural aspects of language are inherent in discourse. Language textbooks provide not only the needed linguistic resources, but also reflect the interpersonal aspects of language in communities. Those aspects of language use are often ignored in language classrooms, yet they provide important resources for learners on how to convey complex meanings in interactions. Through the analysis of Mood and subject personal pronouns in the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework, this study investigates how context, mode, and proficiency in English and Japanese contribute to create different interpersonal relationships between interlocutors in presented materials in upper level ESL and JSL textbooks. The findings demonstrate that linguistic choices are influenced by contexts, modes, proficiencies of target languages throughout interaction, and that those differences construct different interpersonal relationships. This study suggests explicit instructions on appropriate choices of language in particular situations in language classrooms