(Luận văn thạc sĩ) gender representation in solutions textbooks a multimodal analysis

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY HỒ NỮ NHƯ Ý GENDER REPRESENTATION IN SOLUTIONS ELEMENTARY TEXTBOOKS: A MULTIMODAL h ANALYSIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Thi Thu Hien BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN HỒ NỮ NHƯ Ý SỰ THỂ HIỆN GIỚI TÍNH TRONG GIÁO TRÌNH SOLUTIONS ELEMENTARY: PHÂN TÍCH ĐA h PHƯƠNG THỨC Chun ngành: Ngơn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8220201 Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS Nguyễn Thị Thu Hiền i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby certify that this thesis ‘Gender representation in Solutions Elementary textbooks: A multimodal analysis’ has not been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution, and that it does not contain material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text h ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study could not have been accomplished without the invaluable assistance of individuals and organizations to whom I feel profoundly indebted First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and sincere appreciation for my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Thi Thu Hien, who has supported me throughout my thesis with her endless patience, gentle encouragement, constructive comments and valuable materials Without her, this thesis would not have been completed Secondly, I am also grateful to all the lecturers of the relevant courses for their valuable lectures and discussions, which provide essential insights for this thesis Thirdly, I would like to express my special thanks for the Department of Foreign h Languages for giving us the permission to carry out this project Last but not least, this would be a golden opportunity for me to exhibit my endless love and indebtedness to my family who are the tower of hope and strength for during the time I carried out this study iii ABSTRACT The growing popularity of English teaching has been paralleled by the growing investigation of gender representation and gender stereotyping in ESL/EFL textbooks The aim of this study is to uncover how males and females are represented in in the Solutions Elementary students’ books To achieve this aim, the Systemic Functional Grammar by Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) and Grammar of Visual Design by Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) were employed to explore the experiential meaning of the written texts and representational meaning of the images This study was conducted with both quantitative and qualitative methods On the one hand, the text analysis reveals that males are more visible than females in the important roles of h Actor, Carrier/Identified, Senser, Sayer and Behaver Males are generally portrayed as being more competent, creative, and dominant than females, and many other gender stereotypes are perpetuated On the other hand, the image analysis shows that males enjoy higher visibility than females yet with small differences Many stereotypes perpetuated in the 2nd edition are subject to rejection in the 3rd edition, which might indicate the textbook authors’ growing recognition of the gender stereotyping issue These results highlight a need for teachers and learners to pay more attention to gender stereotyping conveyed in the ESL textbooks iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS VI LIST OF TABLES VII LIST OF FIGURES IX CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY h 1.2.1 Aims 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS 2.1.1 Multimodal Discourse Analysis 2.1.2 Systemic Functional Grammar 2.1.3 Grammar of Visual Design 14 2.2 PREVIOUS STUDIES 23 2.2.1 Gender and textbooks 23 2.2.2 Gender representation in EFL/ESL textbooks 25 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .29 3.1 RESEARCH METHODS 29 3.2 DATA COLLECTION 30 v 3.2.1 Data source 30 3.2.2 Collection of written texts 30 3.2.3 Collection of images 32 3.3 DATA ANALYSIS 33 3.4 PROCEDURE 34 3.5 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY 35 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 36 4.1 REPRESENTATION OF MALES AND FEMALES IN WRITTEN TEXTS 36 4.1.1 Linguistic-gendered clauses 36 4.1.2 Distribution of process types in linguistic-gendered clauses 37 4.1.3 Representation of males and females in material processes 39 4.1.4 Representation of males and females in relational clauses 41 4.1.5 Representation of males and females in mental clauses 44 4.1.6 Representation of males and females in verbal clauses 48 4.1.7 Representation of males and females in behavioral clauses 50 4.1.8 Representation of males and females in different social contexts 51 4.1.9 Discussion on the findings of gender representation in the written texts 55 h 4.2 VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF MALES AND FEMALES 65 4.2.1 Distribution of narrative processes in images 65 4.2.2 Representation of males and females in actional processes 65 4.2.3 Representation of males and females in reactional processes 71 4.2.4 Representation of males and females in verbal processes 75 4.2.5 Representation of males and females in mental processes 76 4.2.6 Representation of males and females in different social contexts 77 4.2.7 Discussion on the findings of gender representation in the images 80 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 89 5.1 CONCLUSIONS 89 5.2 IMPLICATIONS 91 5.3 LIMITATIONS 92 5.4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 93 REFERENCES 94 vi ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS [a] Abbreviations READ Reading comprehension texts GRAM Grammar examples and exercises DIA Dialogues [b] Conventions - Boldface is used to mark the first use of technical terms or to highlight the focus point - Italics is used for examples - Underline is used to mark the words or phrases that are being discussed h For example: [E3-626] She likes Leonard and Sheldon [M] The phrase Leonard and Sheldon is underlined to show the positioning of males as Goal vii LIST OF TABLES Table Name Table Page 2.1 Terminology for the three metafunctions 14 4.1 Distribution of linguistic-gendered clauses 36 4.2 Distribution of process types 38 4.3 Distribution of male/female Actor in the 2nd edition 39 4.4 Distribution of male/female Actor in the 3rd edition 40 4.5 Distribution of male/female Carrier/Token in the 2nd edition 42 4.6 Male/female Carrier/Token in subtypes of relational processes in 42 the 2nd edition 4.7 Distribution of male/female Carrier/Token in the 3rd edition 43 4.8 Male/female Carrier/Token in subtypes of relational processes in 44 h the 3rd edition 4.9 Distribution of male/female Senser sections of 2nd edition 45 4.10 Distribution of subtypes of mental processes in the 2nd edition 45 4.11 Distribution of male/female Senser in the 3rd edition 46 4.12 Distribution of subtypes of mental processes in the 3rd edition 47 4.13 Distribution of male/female Sayer 48 4.14 Distribution of male/female Behavers 50 4.15 Distribution of male and female participant roles in the 2nd 55 edition 4.16 Distribution of male and female participant roles in the 3rd 60 edition 4.17 The distribution of male and female participants in the three 63 sections 4.18 The proportion of males and females in important participant 63 viii Table Name Table Page roles 4.19 Distribution of narrative processes 65 4.20 Frequency of males and females as participants in actional 66 process 4.21 Frequency of males and females as participants in reactional 71 process 4.22 Distribution of males and females in the participant roles in the 81 2nd edition 4.23 Distribution of males and females in the participant roles in the 3rd edition 84 h