Verbal–Visual Representations of Environmental Issues in an EFL Textbook: A Multimodal Analysis

Abstract

Textbooks play a crucial role in EFL learning process, not only as pedagogical tools but also as semiotic sources that shape students' perspectives and identities, including students understanding and interpreting of environmental issues. Therefore, environmental issues must be explored critically, especially in relation to how meaning is conveyed through verbal and visual modes. However, previous multimodal researches on EFL textbooks have largely focused on visual elements or multimodal features in general, with limited attention to the relationship between verbal and visual modes. This study aims to analyze the ideational verbal-visual relations in representing environmental issues in an Indonesian textbook entitled Bahasa Inggris Tingkat Lanjut: Let’s Elevate Our English, Revised Edition. This study uses a descriptive qualitative approach with a Multimodal Discourse Analysis analytical framework based on Systemic Functional Linguistics, focusing on the verbal-visual Logico-semantic Relations. The data sources in this study consist of 19 units of verbal-visual ensembles with an environmental theme that present ideational meaning. The ideational relationship between verbal and visual modes is analyzed from multimodality perspective, with analysis procedures referring to contemporary multimodal studies. The finding shows that verbal and visual modes interact through various ideational relations in constructing representations of environmental issues, predominantly concurrent – equivalent meaning through expansion – elaborating. These interactions show how the overall meaning in the representation of environmental issues is influenced by the relationship between modes, rather than by a single semiotic resource.