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This book presents a new and comprehensive framework for the analysis of representations of culture, society and the world in textbooks for foreign and second language learning. The framework is transferable to other kinds of learning materials and to other subjects. The framework distinguishes between five approaches: national studies, citizenship education studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies and transnational studies. In a series of concrete analyses, the book illustrates how one can describe and uncover representations of the world in textbooks for English, German, French, Spanish, Danish and Esperanto. Each analysis is accompanied by suggestions of possible supplements and changes. The book points to the need for language learning materials to deal seriously with knowledge about the world, including its diversities and problems.

The book presents a new theory of the relationship between language and culture in a transnational and global perspective. The view is that languages spread across cultures, and cultures spread across languages, or in other words, that linguistic and cultural practices flow through social networks in the world along partially different paths.

This article discusses how language textbooks may be fruitful for the study of popular geopolitics. It contains a comparative analysis of two textbooks used in lower secondary education in Denmark: A Piece of Cake and Français Formidable. Their representations of the world and their narratives of colonial history are very different in many respects (apart from the obvious differences related to the different geographical areas affected by British and French colonialism). In particular, their treatment of Africa is very different. The analysis draws on my book from 2018: Representations of the World in Language Textbooks. That book presents and implements a number of different theoretical approaches to the analysis of representations of the world (the entire planet) in language textbooks. Among them are the following, which are also used in this article: national studies (which countries are represented in the textbook?), transnational studies (which transnational connections are represented?) and postcolonial studies (is history, particularly (post)colonial history, represented?). In addition to the comparison itself, the article discusses the possible reasons behind the two different narratives of the world and world history. Generally, the analysis shows that it is important to be aware of the differences among the various languages in which popular geopolitics is modelled. Languages are differently positioned in the global linguistic landscape that has developed as a result of world history, and there are also different political perspectives on that.