ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses two semiotic practices entailed in textbook development and production: representation and communication. While representation has been widely examined in textbook (discourse) studies, it is usually conceived as a static phenomenon, and not as constitutive of the semiotic negotiations through which textbooks communicate to teachers and learners. The chapter draws on a study of the development of an English as a foreign language textbook series in Uruguay and the visual creation of the main textbook characters to demonstrate how the situated analysis of textbook representation/communication can shed light on the ideological and practical negotiation processes that shape how textbook discourse comes to be.
