Disciplinary Acculturation: A Comparative Study of Intradiscourse Cycles of English and Persian Introductory Textbooks of Sociology and Linguistics

The present study aimed at investigating the specific discourse cycles of some introductory textbooks across disciplines and languages to see to what extent they acculturate students into the new subjects. To this end, 2 well-established and mostlyused English and Persian introductory textbooks in sociology and 2 other wellestablishedEnglish and Persian introductory textbooks in linguistics were examined. The study was conducted with reference to Love’s (as cited in Hewings, 2006) suggested framework for the analysis of introductory textbooks. The texts were analyzed in terms of the intradiscourse cycles. Then, the introductory textbooks from the 2 disciplines were compared and contrasted in order to determine their similarities and differences in acculturating students into the discipline. Results showed that though in the English introductory textbooks, the cycles either started with theory, data, or culminated in cutting-edge, real time problematization, in the Persian texts, the cycles less frequently culminated in problematization of the interpretive process. The study suggests that this kind of analysis enhances both teachers’ and students’ knowledge concerning the process of acculturation into their disciplines.