ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the cultural content of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks constructs the identities, global cultural consciousness, and intracultural/multicultural understanding of English language learners. It discusses possible ways in which EFL discourse shapes and constructs processes of meaning-making and identity formation among learners in actual learning situations. The chapter focuses on the discursive practices of learners while they interact with EFL texts in order to examine how their own practices foster notions of Self/Other, and how they represent and negotiate their identities and textual understanding through language. It also focuses on how EFL learners’ “storied selves” are discursively constituted, while relating to the cultural content of EFL texts used in the Israeli context. All in all, the role played by some young Jewish and Palestinian Arab EFL learners who critically read the questionable EFL texts presented to them definitely reveals an emerging process of agency.
