Gender representation through conversations in english textbooks 10, 11, 12

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ VÂN ANH GENDER REPRESENTATION THROUGH CONVERSATIONS IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS 10, 11, 12 (Biểu giới thông qua đoạn hội thoại sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 10, 11, 12) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 HÀ NỘI – 2021 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ VÂN ANH GENDER REPRESENTATION THROUGH CONVERSATIONS IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS 10, 11, 12 (Biểu giới thông qua đoạn hội thoại sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 10, 11, 12) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 Supervisor: Dr Lưu Thị Kim Nhung HÀ NỘI – 2021 DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare and confirm with my signature that the Master‟s thesis entitled “Gender representation through conversations in English textbooks 10, 11, 12” is my own original work for the degree of Master of English Linguistics under the guidance and supervision of Dr Lưu Thị Kim Nhung I have not used any sources other than those listed in the bibliography and identified as references I further declare that no part of the paper has been submitted in any other institutions for other degree or professional qualification Finally, I agree that my original paper should be kept and consulted in the library for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with conditions established by the library for the care, loan, or reproduction of the paper Hanoi, October 12th, 2020 Signature Nguyễn Thị Vân Anh i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my patient and dedicated supervisor, Doctor Luu Thi Kim Nhung, who convincingly guided and encouraged me to be professional and the right thing even the road got tough Her insightful feedback did push me to sharpen my thinking Without her invaluable support, the thesis might not have been completed Special appreciations are given to Professors, Associate Professors, and Doctors in Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of International and Languages Studies, who have delivered valuable lectures with useful knowledge of English Linguistics Their support and guidance during my studies are extremely valuable Last but not least, I would like to send my deepest gratitude to my friends and the members of my family, especially my dad and my husband, for their patience and sympathy Their encouragement when the times got rough is much appreciated It was a great comfort and relief to know that they are always there for me, believe in me and support me whenever I need My heartfelt thanks to all of you ii ABSTRACT The present study explores gender representation through conversations in English as Foreign language (EFL) textbooks used in Vietnamese high schools with an emphasis on the visibility and the speech acts performed by male and female speakers Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in the study Specifically, AntConc software was applied to investigate the frequency of turns, utterances, and speech acts produced by speakers in conversations John Searle‟s taxonomy (1975) was used in order to analyze the speech acts produced by the speakers The results revealed that males were more visible than females considering both single-gender and mixed-gender conversations while as regards mixed-gender conversations in particular, the number of turns of two genders are nearly equal, and slightly more utterances were even uttered by female speakers than male speakers In terms of speech acts produced by two genders, male speakers seem to be more knowledgeable and more powerful than females as making more assertions, commands, and advice while females were represented to be more dependent and more emotional than males when asking more questions for information and using stronger exclamative adjectives Key words: gender representation, EFL textbooks, conversations, visibility, speech acts iii LISTS OF TABLES Table 3.1 Number of conversations conducted by male and female speakers in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 ………………………………………………… .8 Table 4.1 Number of utterances uttered by male and female speakers in the singlegender and mixed-gender conversations in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 275 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1 Number of turns taken by male and female speakers in single-gender conversations .26 Figure 4.2 Number of turns taken by male and female speakers in mixed-gender conversations .26 Figure 4.3 Types of speech acts performed by male and female speakers in three levels of English textbooks .33 Figure 4.4 Assertive speech acts produced by male and female speakers in the mixed-gender conversations of English textbooks 10, 11, 12 .36 Figure 4.5 Directive speech acts produced by male and female speakers in the mixed-gender conversations of English textbooks 10, 11, 12 .36 Figure 4.6 Commisive speech acts produced by male and female speakers in the mixed-gender conversations of English textbooks 10, 11, 12 .37 Figure 4.7 Expressive speech acts produced by male and female speakers in the mixed-gender conversations of English textbooks 10, 11, 12 .37 v LIST OF PICTURES Picture 3.1 Frequency of the characters‟ name in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 20 Picture 3.2 Total number of turns taken by male and female characters in single-gender conversations and in mixed-gender conversations then were calculated manually 19 Picture 3.3 Illocutionary verbs used were noted down and then added next to the symbol SPM/SPF in the Search Term so that the occurrence of the speech acts would be calculated 22 Picture 3.4 Searching for the speech acts performed by male/female characters 22 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LISTS OF TABLES iv LIST OF FIGURES v LIST OF PICTURES vi CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale to the study 1.2 Purpose of the study .3 1.3 Research questions .3 1.4 Significance of the study 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Structure of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Discourse 2.2 Discourse analysis .7 2.3 Discourse and gender 2.3.1 Turns and Utterances 10 2.3.2 Speech acts 10 2.5 Previous research on gender in textbooks 12 CHAPTER METHODOLOGY 17 3.1 Corpus 17 3.2 Analytical framework .19 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 23 4.1 Number of turns and utterances produced by male and female speakers in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations 23 4.1.1 Number of turns in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations 23 vii 4.1.2 Number of utterances in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations 27 4.2.3 Discussion .29 4.2 Speech acts performed by male and female speakers in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations 31 CHAPTER CONCLUSION .42 5.1 Summary of major findings .42 5.1.1 Number of turns taken by male and female speakers in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations 42 5.1.2 Number of utterances produced by male and female speakers in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations .42 5.1.4 Speech acts performed by male and female speakers in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations 43 5.2 Implications for professional practice .44 5.2.1 Pedagogical practice 44 5.2.2 Implications for material writers and publishers 45 5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 46 5.4 Concluding remarks 46 REFERENCES 49 viii and utterances respectively) Additionally, suggestions and advice seem to be also employed more by male and female speakers in the English textbooks series Considering these two speech acts, males continued to outweigh females If male participants provided 13 advice and 22 suggestions, and 17 are the number of advice and suggestions produced by female participants Having the same attempt to get the hearers to take an action course, females tend to politely make requests In short, from the findings in terms of Assertive and Directive speech acts represented in English textbook series, some characteristics describing male and female speakers can be drawn Males are depicted to be more powerful and tend to express their opinion in a hard and direct way Meanwhile, females have less power but seem to be more polite in comparison with male speakers because they usually choose the soft way to raise their voice in the conversations This result shared the similarity with a number of previous studies on textbooks Cameron (1992:44) concluded that women‟s language lack forcefulness Later in 1995, Montgomery (p151) also indicated the less directness of women in mixed-gender interactions Nevertheless, as regards the roles of male and female speakers in asking and giving information pattern, the results vary among studies Whilst Poulou (1997) discovered that in conversations with the participants being non-experts, just like the analyzed ones in the present study, females are apt to ask for information, the investigation by Equal Opportunities Commission in Hong Kong in 2000 identified that males were the information seekers and women were more likely to give information than men Although the contradiction among the studies recorded is unavoidable, one observable tendency in textbooks is that males are still represented to be educated and have a wider range of knowledge than females Commissive speech acts make up the smallest part with 2.5% and 3.1% of utterances by females and males The number of promises and plans drawn up by male and female speakers witnessed nearly no difference Both males and females committed themselves to two promises Similarly, female speakers came up with two utterances talking about plan more than male speakers The promises and 39 plans made are primarily involved in conversations when both males and females made a few verbal commitments to a particular future course or tell the hearers about their future intentions However, the number of these two speech acts is too small, thus they not clearly represent the two genders‟ characteristics One conceivable conclusion can be drawn is that females tend to be more open than male They are honest and not try to keep their plans secret A number of studies on textbooks undertaken since the twentieth century have shared a similar result that females are associated with feelings Hartman and Judd (1978) in the investigation of TESOL materials pointed out women‟s emotional instability They were identified to be easily terrified or angry about something In 1995, Sakita‟s research also indicated two other characteristics of women, which are crying and complaining Two years later, in 1997, Poulou investigated the discourse roles of two genders in textbooks and counted a large amount of expressive language employed by women Similarly, in one of the latest studies, the extensive use of expressive language, one more time, was asserted as one marked characteristics of female speakers When looking at the present study in relation to the representation of males and females through Expresstive speech acts, no difference was noticed in comparison with the previous studies Considering the mixed- gender conversations analyzed, female speakers produced the largest number of exclamations, followed by thanks They outnumbered males in both these two speech acts Females exclaimed three times as many as males (58 compared to 18) Besides, females thanked four times more than males (11 to 7) Exclamation, according to Cambridge Dictionary, is defined as something people say or shout suddenly because of surprise, fear, pleasure, etc Female characters‟ using many exclamations may be because they are assumed to frequently show or even exaggerate their strong emotions Another possible explanation may be the passiveness belonging to females In the male-female conversations, after male participants gave information, females‟ common reaction is exclaiming like “Really?”, “interesting!” “that‟s great!” Fantastic”, etc in order to preserve the 40 continuity of conversation and also to express their admiration to the other participants‟ knowledge while males exclaim less often and they tend to add some more information to continue the conversations They seem to hold the initiative in most of the mixed- gender conversations However, one exception when the number of compliments was counted is that males gave two compliments more than females did (5 compared to 3) The difference between males‟ and females‟ number of compliment is not significant and the total number of compliments is small, therefore, I will not draw any conclusion basing on complimenting speech act 41 CHAPTER CONCLUSION In the last chapter of this thesis, a summary of the major findings concerning representation of gender in terms of visibility and discourse in conversations of English textbooks 10, 11, 12 used in Vietnam high schools is presented Next, some implications for use of textbooks in schools are discussed After that, the limitations of the current study are shown and from which, suggestions for further studies are made Finally, a conclusion for the whole study is provided 5.1 Summary of major findings The present study‟s purpose is to examine the representation of gender through conversations in English textbook series used in Vietnamese high schools The major findings are given as follows: 5.1.1 Number of turns taken by male and female speakers in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations In general, as all the turns taken by male and female speakers in the analyzed conversations are counted, males definitely outweighed females Whilst males have 392 turns to take, females have 360 turns When comparing the turns taken by male and female speakers in English textbooks in single-gender conversations and mixed- gender conversations, the reason for the gap can be found The substantial number of between-male conversations in English 10 plays a significant role in increasing the number of turns taken by males (89 turns) This leads to the overall number of turns taken by males is much higher than that by females in singlegender conversations In contrast, in the conversations in which both males and females participate in, females are given more turns to take in all three levels The difference is 12, 24 and turns respectively in accordance with the three levels E10, E11, E12 Males‟ degree of visibility in the textbook series is higher than that of females 5.1.2 Number of utterances produced by male and female speakers in singlegender and mixed-gender conversations The number of utterances produced by males and females varies according to the level of textbook and type of conversations In the investigation of single-gender 42 conversations, it can be identified that male speakers uttered 8.7 and 10.5 utterances more than females in English 10 and 12 on average whilst females gave more utterances than males in English 11 Male participants took more turns than females but females still uttered more than males did, thus, females were likely to utter longer than males did This case does not only occur in English 11 but also in the other two levels considering mixed- gender conversations Each female on average uttered more utterances than each female did To exemplify, the differences are 5.3, 3.8, 1.1 utterances in English 10, 11, 12 respectively The findings relating to the number of speakers, turns, and utterances assigned to male and female participants in the conversations of English textbooks emphasize males‟ greater visibility over females but in the other side they show a move a more egalitarian gender representation when the difference in the number of characters, turns and utterances taken by males and females is narrowed gradually in the later levels of English textbook series, especially in English 12 5.1.4 Speech acts performed by male and female speakers in single-gender and mixed-gender conversations There is a similarity in the range of speech acts in the analyzed mixed-gender conversations in the English textbooks For both male and female speakers, the most common speech acts employed is Assertives, followed by Directives Expressive and Commissive speech acts rank third and fourth accordingly No declarations were made in all the conversations The number of Assertive and Directive speech acts are much higher than the others due to the dominant use of question-answer adjacency pair As each single speech act in the four mentioned types is taken into consideration, some particular characteristics of the two genders are revealed Males are represented to prefer facts in discussion to opinion Moreover, they were more confident than females with using assertions when giving information Correspondingly, females asked more questions including both open-ended and close-ended ones, in which the former was applied more than the later, to get the information from their partners This means females tend to let males express their 43 opinion without control while they regularly receive the controlled questions from males In terms of other directive speech acts, males produced more recommendations, commands, advice and even suggestions more than females Females mainly make requests politely if they want the hearers to something The analysis of the mixed-gender conversations also depicts female characters to be associated with emotions They have a tendency to be more open and they used the exclamations more than males did Regarding Commissive speech acts, they make up the smallest segment of the speech acts in the conversations examined One acceptable conclusion can be drawn from the result with regard to commissive speech act is that female participants are more open and less likely to keep secrets in communicating 5.2 Implications for professional practice 5.2.1 Pedagogical practice The hidden curriculum, which includes “a set of influences that function at the level of organizational structure and culture” (Hafferty and Franks, 1994), is implicit and normally conveyed indirectly through language use in textbooks The issues involved, then, may be overlooked by lots of students because they tend to receive the beliefs, values, and ideologies in the hidden curriculum unconsciously (Kuurme, 2011) Gender stereotype is one of the issues that are clearly manifested in the hidden curriculum in general and in the textbooks in particular To exemplify, if all the conversations are used as a model and practiced by students in the classroom, definitely males will have more opportunity to access to varied topics as well as language items for practicing than females The possible consequence on students‟ ideology about gender cannot be denied Therefore, in order to avoid maintaining the traditional gender roles that have been depicted through the English textbook series, some implications as regards pedagogy have been made First, the awareness of gender imbalance needs to be raised among teachers and students Teachers may ask students the questions related to gender representation in the English textbooks for them to discuss explicitly since the 44 starting of a semester so that the problem is identified among students Thanks to instruction and knowledge of the difference in gender representation provided, students may make adaption themselves so that they will not be affected by the gender representation in the textbooks They then will tend to become who they really are instead of the ones they are supposed to be and willing to take the role of the other gender in the conversations despite not always agreeing to swapped roles (Sunderland, 2000) From this point, the second implication can be applied The teacher can reverse the roles in the conversations in order for every student to have the equal opportunity to practice the turns Boys will not always play the male part and inversely girls will not only play the role of females To specify, in Unit of English 12, the conversation involves two male participants, Hung and Quang Normally, only boys will role-play the conversations; nevertheless, by changing the roles, females also can practice the language use in the conversations 5.2.2 Implications for material writers and publishers It is important for the textbook writers and publishers to be aware of the gender stereotyping and its impact on learners Boys and girls are biologically different but they may have the same interests in technology, science, and other fields However, there are conversations concerning a certain topic that only occur between boys or between girls in textbooks, which may shape the belief that only boys are indulged in science or only girls are responsible for domestic chores Thus, single-gender conversations should be avoided and both of the two genders should be involved in all the conversations instead This may help learners to refrain from losing the initiative to pursue what they are passionate about due to gender stereotypes For instance, instead of having a father discuss the topic of technology with his son, the conversations could additionally feature a father and a daughter In addition, males and females taking part in the conversations also balances the frequency of occurrences and assures the equal visibility of males and females characters in the textbooks Another implication with regard to material writers and publishers is that the number of speech act types also needs to be even between two genders For example, in terms of giving 45 information, male and female speakers can take turn to be the information giver in different conversations Considering Directive speech acts such as commanding, recommending, advising, etc., males should not be the ones who dominate and the number of these speech acts can be reduced 5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies The present study certainly makes a contribution to the language and gender research and English language learning However, a few limitations can still be detected First, although English textbooks for high school students have considerable influence on their gender orientation, the findings of the study cannot be generalized to the whole series of English textbooks because Vietnamese students nowadays start learning English since grade In my point of view, examining the textbooks for primary students regarding gender and language may provide a significant contribution to this field as well as English learning and teaching in Vietnam Second, the statistics of roles and topics associated to male and female characters in the conversations have not been provided If the occupational roles and the topics are listed, the results of the study would have been more specific to readers and the reliability would have been enhanced Third, the question of why gender is depicted in a certain way should be explored instead of simply investigating how gender is represented The textbook writers can be interviewed to find out the reasons why they decided to feature grandma and granddaughter but not a father and a daughter in the conversation about relationship Last but not least, as far as the influence of textbooks is concerned, some interview with students and observation also can be conducted in classrooms Perhaps in the modern society, after lots of effort has been made by feminist, the awareness of gender equality has been raised among students and then they may interpret the gender representation in textbooks differently in comparison with the previous studies 5.4 Concluding remarks Schools are social institutions that teach the students to see the world through their curriculum with textbooks used as the “visible heart” (Sheldon, 46 1988) The students, then, exhibit their behaviors in a particular way, which is influenced considerably by the general beliefs and values conveyed in the textbooks These beliefs and values concern the rules of community and culture in which gender is involved Gender, as mentioned before, is one‟s identity It is represented through the ways that person performs, which may change as time passed by depending on his or her observing and imitating the others who may be human in real life or the constructed characters in textbooks Textbooks investigation for the sake of discovering gender representation has drawn the great attention of linguists For example, the studies conducted by Poulou (1997), Gupta and Lee (1990), Lee and Collins (2008), Kenya (Kobia, 2009), Lehiste (2013), Yang (2014), Sulaimani (2017), etc The results obtained so far have shared similarity that female characters in textbooks have been represented less frequently than males However, the latest studies have shown new finding regarding a move toward more equal representation between male and female characters The current study, by using both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the depiction of gender in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 through the visibility and the speech acts produced by participants in the conversations, has intensified the above statement As regards both single-gender and mixed-gender conversations, males were more visible than females Nevertheless, if only mixedgender conversations are analyzed, the balance in representation is nearly achieved Females even produced more utterances than males on average Next, the characteristics of the two genders were also portrayed via speech acts performed by the speakers Whilst males were assumed to be more strong, powerful and more knowledgeable, females were depicted to be associated to emotional and less knowledgeable Obviously, textbooks not reflect fully the realities in life and they possibly reflect the ideologies of the writers, illustrators, editors, and publishers Hence, how gender should be represented considering the occupational roles, the clothing, and 47 the speech acts performed need to be taken into account Besides, learners should not accept the information provided unconsciously They should follow the language items contained in the textbooks but should not receive the beliefs and values conveyed without 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English textbooks 10, 11, 12 The scope to the study is limited to 59 conversations, including 14 single -gender and 45 mixed -gender conversations in three levels of English textbooks used in high schools... female speakers in the mixed -gender conversations of English textbooks 10, 11, 12 .37 v LIST OF PICTURES Picture 3.1 Frequency of the characters‟ name in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 20 Picture