Exploring the Relationships between Texts and Images In Persian Language Textbooks Based on Marsh and White’s Theory: The Case study Of a Persian Language Textbook Series

Today, in addition to the verbal text, the visual aspects of language teaching scripts, which are designed in a multi-modal way, are emphasized, because the two aspects are believed to be consistent. In this research, we analyzed a multi-modal book of Persian language compiled by Ahmad Saffar Moghaddam (2012), which has two visual and textual layers, and how the meaning is created through textual and visual components. This paper intends to examine eight images of Persian textbook collection based on Marsh and White (2003) descriptive and content analysis method. They created a taxonomy of image functions in text and based their function types on earlier studies. The findings of the research show that in the textbook studied, about 25% of the images were little relation to the text, 50% had a close relation to the text and 25% of the images express more information than the text express. After evaluating the images of these lessons in terms of the relation between text and image, it can be concluded that in the textbook studied, in general, images are consistent with the verbal text. In this regard, it is suggested that the authors of educational textbooks speed up the language learning process by choosing the image appropriate to the educational purpose of the texts, so that the educational goals of the image can be achieved.