This thesis is a two-pronged analysis of the cultural content in two instructional materials series presently meant for use in the English language instruction in Swedish secondary education, and it integrates an examination of surface and deep cultural content with an ideology analysis focused on the representation of nations and the international world. The driving impetus of this thesis is an interest in the representation of culture meeting the students in their instruction. A theoretical framework has been used with perspectives on surface and deep culture, intercultural communicative competence, and theories of nationalism as an ideology. The study shows that the Swedish materials promote the development of communication skills across cultural boundaries to a greater extent than some international research would suggest, but confirms results from other related studies. The majority of the cultural content was found to be surface-level and is best understood as objective or static topics of culture which do little to prepare the readers to be critical, intercultural citizens. The materials were found to be strongly structured around the nation-state, and the argument is made that the materials feature international content with a national-perspective. The materials were also found to reproduce ethno- national sentiment when representing specifically the United States and Britain, where a great deal of the content is focused. This study shows that a combination of these two approaches provides a more complete consideration of the materials and produces important results, not only for the scholarly community, but for teachers and instructional material design.

Aprender un idioma no sólo significa aprender nuevas palabras, gramática y hablar y entender el lenguaje, sino también obtener un entendimiento de la cultura en que el idioma tiene su base. Los estudiantes y sus estudios –de cultura y sociedad– dependen de los materiales didácticos y los países y los temas encontrados en ellos; por eso es importante no sólo confiar en que los autores han tomado en cuenta estos aspectos, sino también analizar y estudiar los libros en forma crítica. Esta monografía, en la que se investiga libros didácticos desde un ángulo cultural, así como la distribución entre los países y los temas presentados, comparándolos con los objetivos de los planes de enseñanza. El resultado muestra, por una parte, una sobrerrepresentación de España en los materiales analizados, con variedad en los temas elegidos; y por otra parte, poca variedad en los temas de los países hispanoamericanos, con pocos países representados. / Learning a language is not only about vocabulary, grammar, speaking and understanding the language, but also about apprehending the culture which the language is built on. The cultural aspect of the students’ education is governed by the different themes and countries presented in the text books, and also by other material that the teacher might offer. This study suggests that one cannot blindly trust that the text books fully live up to these criteria, regarding a diverse representation of the Spanish speaking countries and their respective cultures, and that a critical analysis of the text books is important when presenting a non-stereotypical image to the students. In this essay three didactic books are analyzed from a cultural perspective related to the themes and countries represented in the texts. The result shows, on one hand, an overrepresentation of Spain, with more varying themes; and on the other hand, less variation when dealing with the few Hispanic countries that are mentioned.