This study attempted to explore the representation of gender in an international ELT series, i.e., American Headway Student Textbooks. Fairclough's ( 2001) three-dimensional model was selected and adopted as the model of study. Effectively, different parts of American Headway Student Textbooks were investigated systematically vis-à-vis eight factors, i.e. female and male's characters, female and male's social roles, female and male's domestic roles, female and male's semantic roles, female and male's titles, order of appearance, masculine generic construction, activities females and males engaged in, and finally the pictorial representation of both genders. The findings of the study revealed that the series are suffering from two types of sexism-overt and covert ones-the overt one discriminates against females in a vivid way and the covert one exploits the women as an instrument for advertising in order to promote selling. This study suggests that the series are instilling capitalism economy as ideology.

Abstract-This I. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: THEORETICAL DEFINITIONSCritical discourse analysis (CDA) is an academic research paradigm aiming to investigate "the power relations, ideological manipulations, and hegemony" (Rahimi & Sahragard, 2007, p.1). CDA indicates what has been formerly known as critical linguistics (CL) (Wodak, 2002) which emerged in the late 1970s (Fowler and Kress, 1979). Critical theory provides a critical perspective or attitude towards society (Rahimi & Sahragard, 2007). Fairclough (1995a) defines critical theory as "any theory concerned with critique of ideology and the effects of domination" (p.20).CDA embarks on deciphering and demystifying both "opaque and transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control" (Wodak, 2007, pp.208-209). Wodak (2001) points out that "CDA sees language as 'social practice' (p. 1), and considers the context of language use to be crucial (Weiss and Wodak, 2003). She assumes three concepts of critique, power, history and ideology as indispensable elements in all CDA.Widdowson (2007) argues that CDA is "particularly concerned (and concerned about) the use (abuse) of language for exercise of socio-political power" (p.70). In other words, critical discourse analysis (CDA) investigates socio-political values and norms. It means that this school scrutinizes not only ideational assumptions but also ideological aspects (Widdowson, 2007). Hence, he assumes CDA as an analytical research method discovering traces of ideological bias in written or spoken texts and campaigning against the ideology as well as beliefs of the ruling system that tries to legitimize their control, power and domination. Accordingly, CDA critically scrutinizes the ideas and assumptions taken for granted trying to keep the status quo. To state the matter differently, CDA investigates the ideas, assumptions or ideologies trying to sustain the inequality and bias between the elites and non-elites and campaigns against these ideas and assumptions (Widdowson, 2007).Halliday's systemic functional linguistics that views language as a social phenomenon is central in practicing any CDA (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999;Fairclough, 2001a;Fairclough, 1995a;Fairclough, 1995b;Hodge & Kress, 1993). Accordingly, viewing language as a social event is the first assumption of CDA. The second main assumption of CDA is related to the speaker's selections of vocabulary as well as grammar that based on Fowler and Kress (1979) is "principled and systematic" (p.188). Fowler and Kress (1979) state that "relation between form and content is not arbitrary or conventional, but… form signifies content" (p.88). It means that the kinds of selections-whether grammatical or lexical-are ideologically-based. In other words, language is a social phenomenon that is laden by ideologies.Wodak (2001) elaborates that the main purpose of CDA is revealing "the opacities in discourse which contribute to the exercise, maintenance, or reproduction of unequal relations of power" (p.258). It means that the a...

This study was an attempt to investigate the nature of inter-subjective and intra-subjective phenomena in terms of the interface between language, thought, feelings as well as the relationships between teachers and students. In effect, this study discusses the mentioned issues by focusing on the argument that a sensitive attention should be given to the embodied language experiences brought by students into the class in order to demystify the discourse experiences which enhance or impede students' language progress. To this end, an eclectic model has been designed and developed based on some particular principles suggested by different approaches in CDA along with emphatic intelligence. Hence, a number of advanced Iranian students learning English as a foreign language were selected as the participants of the study who went under a 120hour instruction. The study revealed that in teaching speaking skill, a kaleidoscopic view needs to be adopted in terms of the relation between and among the interlocutors in which the social relations seem to be crucial.