目前，文化在语言教育和跨文化交际中的重要性越来越得到重视，《普通高中英语课程标准（2017年版2020年修订）》也强调文化意识为英语学科核心素养之一。教材作为文化教学的一个关键载体，是促进学生增进文化理解、坚定文化自信的重要材料，因此，教材中文化呈现的内容与方式对文化教学至关重要。然而现有研究大多存在缺乏系统性框架指导、量化方式不够科学等问题，且对于国内外不同出版社、不同版本教材的对比研究较少。

基于英语教材文化呈现分析框架和图像-文本符号学关系分类，本研究对两套分别由中国、英国出版并得到广泛使用的英语教材进行比较分析，研究其作为英语目标语教材呈现了何种文化内容，以及如何呈现文化内容。

研究发现，在文化呈现内容的特点方面，（1）从文化地域的视角来看，两套教材中目标语国家文化与其余文化比例相对均衡，中华文化比重差异明显，且英美国家文化在目标语国家文化中的主导地位一定程度上限制了其他目标语国家文化的呈现；（2）从文化类型的视角来看，两套教材中文化产品的占比最大，文化观念的比重以及文化实践的侧重点存在较大差异，而文化人物与文化社群在比重和内容上基本相似。在文化呈现方式的特点方面，两套教材中活动与练习、文化语篇的比重占据优势地位，但活动与练习的特征以及不同类型语篇的比重存在差异，其余呈现方式的强度均较低，主要起到辅助理解文化的作用；在图像-文本符号学关系的特点方面，两套教材中存在教学或语言关系的图像文本组合为学习者的文化理解、语言输入提供了重要铺垫，但其比重显著小于仅存在指称关系的图像文本组合。

The importance of culture in language education and cross-cultural communication is getting more and more attention, and General Senior High School Curriculum Standards: English (2017 Edition Revised in 2020) also emphasizes cultural awareness as one of English subject core competencies. As a key instrument for cultural teaching, textbooks are important materials for students to promote cultural understanding and strengthen cultural confidence. Therefore, the content and forms of cultural representation in textbooks are crucial to cultural teaching. However, most of the existing studies suffer from the lack of a systematic framework for guidance, the lack of a scientific approach to quantification, and the lack of comparative studies on textbooks from different publishers and versions at home and abroad.

Based on the framework for analyzing the representation of cultures in English textbooks and classification of image-text semiotic relations, this study presents a comparative analysis investigating what kinds of cultural content are presented and how they are presented in two sets of widely used English language teaching (ELT) textbooks published in China and the UK respectively.

This study found that, in terms of the characteristics of content of cultural representation, (1) from the perspective of different categories of countries: the proportion of target language cultures to the rest of cultures in the two sets of textbooks is relatively balanced, with salient differences in Chinese culture, and the dominance of Anglo-American cultures restricts the cultural representation of other target language countries to a certain extent; (2) from the perspective of different cultural categories: the two sets of textbooks have the largest share of cultural products. There are major differences between the two textbooks in the weight of cultural perspectives and the focus of cultural practices, with cultural persons and communities being largely similar in weight and content. In reference to the characteristics of forms of cultural representation, activities and exercises, and discourses dominate in both sets of textbooks, but there are differences in the features of activities and exercises as well as the proportion of different discourse types. The rest of the forms have a lower intensity, which mainly play an auxiliary role in cultural understanding. As for the characteristics of the classification of image-text semiotic relations, the combinations of image and text with pedagogical or linguistic relations in both sets of textbooks pave the way for students’ cultural comprehension and language input. However, they are significantly less weighted than those with only denotational relations.