236 © 2021 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved. A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE VALUE OF MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS REPRESENTED IN AN EFL TEXTBOOK Ali Alsaawi Department of English, College of Humanities & Sciences in Alghat, Majmaah University, KSA. ABSTRACT Article History Received: 15 March 2021 Revised: 11 June 2021 Accepted: 2 August 2021 Published: 9 September 2021 Keywords Critical discourse analysis EFL textbooks Linguistic diversity Multicultural awareness. Learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in contexts with limited multinational and transcultural backgrounds, such as Saudi Arabia, should be able to communicate with people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Students’ awareness should be enriched with an understanding of the diversity among people around the world. EFL textbooks are one of the platforms for raising students’ awareness of cultural and linguistic differences. This study aimed to explore the cultural content of an EFL textbook taught at an international primary school in Saudi Arabia via the adoption of critical discourse analysis as a methodological approach. It focused on the multicultural values represented in the EFL textbook geared toward teaching senior primary school students. The study identified a number of values, including fostering positive perspectives concerning old tribes and people, appreciating the lives of other people, respecting the hard efforts made by some nations and understanding different cultural values in different parts of the world. There is found a lack of consideration of the cultural values of some countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. Therefore, this study implicates stakeholders in Saudi Arabia to demand their cultural values be depicted in teaching and educational material. Contribution/ Originality: This study is among the very few studies examining the cultural values in an EFL textbook taught in Saudi Arabia. It highlights the imbalance in the way textbooks raise awareness of Western cultural values rather than Eastern ones. 1. INTRODUCTION English is increasingly becoming an international language that is not exclusively confined only to the inner circle countries (i.e., North America, the United Kingdom and Australia). Many outer countries around the world include English in their educational systems as a matter of necessity. This need, according to Jenkins (2006) arises from the claim that learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) are expected to communicate with non-native speakers of English more than with native speakers of English. Therefore, there is an urgent need for multiculturalism to be included in EFL textbooks. The study of EFL textbooks has mainly focused on cultural aspects related to the use of these textbooks in their context. This focus reflects awareness among researchers of the importance of acknowledging multicultural backgrounds in EFL textbooks (see (Dinh & Sharifian, 2017; McConachy, 2018; Su, 2016; Tajeddin & Teimournezhad, 2015; Weninger & Kiss, 2013; Wu & Pei, 2018)). The International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies ISSN(e): 2306-0646 ISSN(p): 2306-9910 DOI: 10.18488/journal.23.2021.103.236.246 Vol. 10, No. 3, 236-246. © 2021 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved. URL: www.aessweb.com