Cultural Representation in Three English Language Teaching Pages on Instagram: A Content Analysis (Research Paper)

In today's world, language and culture are intertwined, and gaining knowledge about the language of a particular society is considered incomplete without understanding its customs, values, and beliefs. With this in mind, the current study was conducted to examine the representation of culture in three popular English Language Teaching (ELT) pages on Instagram, namely BBC Learning English, Learning English with Oxford, and Learning English with Cambridge, utilizing a well-known framework of cultural representation put forth by Yuen (۲۰۱۱). The framework comprises four categories, i.e., products, practices, perspectives, and persons, covering both objective and subjective cultural elements. Exploiting quantitative content analysis, the primary objectives of the study were to determine the frequency of Yuen’s (۲۰۱۱) categories of cultural representation in the three ELT Instagram pages and compare the pages in terms of their cultural load. The findings of the study indicated that the ELT pages under scrutiny were predominantly characterized by the Product and Person aspects of culture. Additionally, the results of the Chi-square tests demonstrated significant differences among the ELT pages under study since the cultural elements were not evenly distributed across all three pages, with BBC Learning English having the highest frequencies in all four categories. The study, therefore, underscores the significance of recognizing the cultural representation within ELT pages on Instagram and the way they can influence learners' understanding and perception of the English language.

کلیدواژه ها:

culture ، cultural representation ، English language teaching ، Instagram ، language