Abstract
•There is an urgent need for the integration of moral values into language textbooks.•Language teaching cannot be divorced from instilling values in learners.•Any language textbooks are never value-laden.•Language textbooks serve as an agent of inculcating moral values into learners.•Language teachers act as moral agents.
In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the integration of moral values into language textbooks. This study aims to examine the inclusion of moral values in primary school language textbooks used in a multicultural country, specifically Indonesia. We conducted a critical discourse analysis adopting Martin and White’s (2005) language appraisal theory, Kress and van Leuween’s (2006) visual grammar theory, and Smetana’s (2006) social domain theory (social constructivism) to elucidate the verbal and visual representations of moral values in Indonesian primary school English language (EL) textbooks. The findings show that helping others, being friendly and polite, and tolerance are the most dominant moral values discursively depicted in three primary school EL textbooks in the present study. This suggests that those three values are socioculturally ingrained in Indonesian culture.