---

In this study, we attempt to investigate the representation of sexuality in the images of English language teaching books (Four Corners (2) – American English File (2) – Interchange (2)) based on visual - social semiotics according to Halliday’s Functional linguistics and clearly followed by Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006 (1996).  Creating text, as an example image, is a discoursal and as a result a social action. This social action on textbooks which have been written for non-English language learners works at higher level. It works in intercultural level. As a result, there is always a constant problem: Is it possible that the central culture (English language society) creates discourse via the texts of the textbooks in which non-English speakers are considered strangers and they themselves are considered natural and familiar? This research via investigating images, texts , verbal titles and the margin of those images searches how English language teaching books portray English culture as evident, natural and inevitable and others as foreigners who only lose their alterity if they are attracted by this culture. The main goal of this research is to analyze English language teaching books and investigate their different discoursal, social and cultural outputs .Also this research tries to investigate the role of images in intercultural discoursal context. Cultural differences and their reflection in English language teaching textbooks with ideological outputs of images and modality in the images of textbooks are other marginal goals of this research.  

---

This research explores power relations in Touba and the Meaning of Night, focusing on the gender issue and gender representation in the novel. Studying modal structures and modality is one of the tools provided by Halliday’s social linguistics for examining texts and revealing their ideological functions. Focusing on the role of modality in the production of texts and reproduction of power and gender relations, we study modality in this novel with an analytic-descriptive method. The novel offers a seventy-year-old historical perspective on Iranian women. However, in the course of this seemingly progressive historical movement, Touba, the heroine of the novel, not only does not achieve her ends but also, quite on the contrary, shows signs of regression. In the beginning of the novel, Touba is a self-assured woman who talks and acts decisively, but toward the ending of the novel she turns into someone without certainty or any kind of conviction. Indeed, Touba’s modal structures evolve from external certitude and determination to internal doubt and hesitation. In the end, Touba’s internal evolution and spiritual barrenness are closely related to more general social discursive relations and functions during the Qajar and First Pahlavi dynasties, especially those convictions that prevent women from thinking, speaking, and participating in external practices in the social scene.  
[1] Touba and the Meaning of Night