In world language learning contexts, where learners may have infrequent contact with the target language speakers, learners are primarily exposed to these speakers and their cultures through textbooks. Therefore, the representation of the target language communities and their cultures in textbooks greatly influences language learners’ understanding of these communities. Drawing upon the concepts of imagined communities and identities (Kanno & Norton, 2003) and conducting a multimodal critical discourse analysis (Machin & Mayr, 2012), we analyzed three introductory level world language textbooks (Arabic, French, and German) used at a U.S. university. We examined how the texts imagine language learners and target language communities. Our findings indicate that nation-state ideologies and tourism discourse prevail in how the textbooks imagine language learners and communities, and they fail to represent the complex identities and cultures of language users and learners. We found that these textbooks construct language learners as uncritical and apolitical, and represent language communities as homogeneous and essentialized in which minoritized groups are tokenized or erased. This study contributes to the scholarship in textbook analysis with the critical examination of three collegiate world language textbooks through a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences amongst these textbooks. Based on the findings, our paper presents implications for teaching, including class activities that the authors use to counter the problematic discursive construction in these textbooks.

在世界语言学习环境中，学习者可能很少与目标语言使用者接触，因此学习者主要通过教科书接触这些说话者及其文化。因此，目标语言社区及其文化在教科书中的代表极大地影响了语言学习者对这些社区的理解。借鉴想象中的社区和身份的概念（Kanno＆Norton，2003）并进行多模式批评话语分析（Machin＆Mayr，2012），我们分析了三种入门级的世界语言教科书（阿拉伯语，法语和德语）。美国大学。我们检查了文本如何想象语言学习者和目标语言社区。我们的研究结果表明，民族国家意识形态和旅游业话语在教科书中如何想象语言学习者和社区的思想中占主导地位，并且它们不能代表语言用户和学习者的复杂身份和文化。我们发现，这些教科书将语言学习者视为非批判性和非政治性的人，并将语言社区表示为同质化和本质化的语言，其中对少数群体进行了标记或删除。本研究通过对三本大学英语语言教科书之间的异同进行比较分析，对教科书分析领域的研究作出了批判性的研究，从而为该学科的研究做出了贡献。基于这些发现，我们的论文提出了对教学的启示，