| For English learners in China,English textbooks are the major source for them to acquire linguistic knowledge,cultivate language skills,and accept social norms values.Thus its impacts on students are palpable and influential.The issue of gender discrimination in English textbooks is one of the most significant topics in foreign language teaching and research.This thesis selects a set of the latest,the most widely used teaching materials in Shanghai as the object for textual analysis.They are eight volumes of Oxford English Textbooks for junior middle students.Study of sexism in textbooks begins to gain its attention by overseas and domestic scholars in the 1950 s and 1980 s respectively.Although many scholars in China have paid close attention to sexism in textbooks,sex equity still has not been brought into the compiling and selecting principles of textbooks.The significance of my research lies not only in the unique but important textbooks that haven’t been studied by any scholars in China,but also in the systematicness of my research framework and methodology.Based on the theoretical framework of critical linguistics,this thesis aims to study this set of Oxford English Textbooks(Shanghai edition)through content analysis,language analysis and microscopic analytical tools from the perspective different genders.And statistical results show that sexism indeed exists in this set of textbooks:(1)the frequency of occurrence of two genders,especially concerning more prominent figures;(2)men outnumber women in both the number and quality of social positions,and in many fields men are authoritative speakers whose words are often quoted by authors,while women’s voices are rarely heard;(3)females are recipients in most cases and the passive ones in the dialogue;(4)the use of the masculine general structure(5)most of the pair words are male-first;(6)the terms and titles referring to both sexes emphasize the social relations of men and the family relations of women;(7)classification,the modal analysis of the direct speech and indirect speech,and the transformation of nominalization and passivization reveals the gender discrimination implied by textbooks.This study also explores the negative influence of gender discrimination on both teachers and student,and puts forward some suggestions on how to reduce and eliminate such discrimination in such four aspects as publication,compilation,selection and use of textbooks.The significance of this thesis lies in revealing the hidden sexism in this set of English teaching materials and today’s social ideology.This study is of great help in arousing people’s critical awareness of the content of teaching materials,with view to compiling truly “gender-healthy” materials,thereby helping people realize the genuine equality between male and female in the present male-dominated society. |
