Is there a nicer way of getting my nodes language and text direction?
If $node is the variable containing the node object, you can use code similar to the following one:

$languages = language_list();
if (isset($languages[$node-&gt;language])) {
  $rtl = $languages[$node-&gt;language]-&gt;direction == LANGUAGE_RTL;
  // $direction = $languages[$node-&gt;language]-&gt;direction ? 'rtl' : 'ltr';
}


If you need to use the string "rtl" or "ltr" basing on the direction associated with the language, then you can use $direction, instead of $rtl.