English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and students are often pressured to use generic, globally published textbooks featuring 'inner-circle' social realities. While some studies look at specific instances of content that socially marginalizes their intended audiences, few attempt comprehensive examinations of the multimodal ensembles on…

Ball argues that "policy authors do make concerted efforts to assert control [of readings] by the means at their disposal … [and that] we need to understand those efforts" (Ball, 1994, p. 16). Efforts by policy authors to control readings are influenced by their own assumptions about the nature of language, texts and communication. This…

Discourses of the universality of English and its role in individual mobility and social development abound in the literature; these discourses have contributed to the global spread of English and to the development of English Language Teaching as a profession. Despite the ubiquity of the discourses of the value and universality of English, there…