A critical discourse analysis of gender discrimination in using pictures in upper secondary school english textbooks ( tiếng anh 10, tiếng anh 11, tiếng anh 12)

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN THỊ BÍCH NGỌC A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN USING PICTURES IN UPPER

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

IN USING PICTURES IN UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS (TIENG ANH 10, TIENG ANH 11, TIENG ANH 12)

PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ SỰ KÌ THỊ GIỚI TÍNH TRONG CÁCH SỬ DỤNG HÌNH ẢNH TRONG CÁC SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH THPT (TIẾNG ANH 10, TIẾNG ANH 11, TIẾNG ANH 12)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

HANOI - 2017

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

IN USING PICTURES IN UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS (TIENG ANH 10, TIENG ANH 11, TIENG ANH 12)

PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ SỰ KÌ THỊ GIỚI TÍNH TRONG CÁCH SỬ DỤNG HÌNH ẢNH TRONG CÁC SÁCH GIÁO KHOA TIẾNG ANH THPT (TIẾNG ANH 10, TIẾNG ANH 11, TIẾNG ANH 12)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Dr Huỳnh Anh Tuấn

HANOI - 2017

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DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the thesis, entitled “A critical discourse analysis of gender discrimination in using pictures in upper-secondary school English textbooks (Tieng anh 10, Tieng anh 11, Ttieng anh 12) has been carried out in

partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art at the University of Languages and International Studies This work is original and all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means

of complete references

Hanoi - 2017

Trần Thị Bích Ngọc

I would also like to give my sincere gratitude to all of the lecturers at ULIS VNU, Hanoi for their scholarly knowledge and enthusiasm in their lectures

-My profound thanks are also to all my friends and classmates in the cohort

23, who have always stayed by my side, given me constructive comments and perked me up every time I need

Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to my family for their immeasurable support and continual encouragement

The Master thesis could not have been fulfilled without them

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ABSTRACT

The study is an attempt to investigate the manifestation of gender discrimination in the national English language teaching textbooks, namely, Tieng Anh 10, Tieng Anh 11, Tieng Anh 12 For this study, the researcher focuses on analyzing the non-linguistic features - visual images in terms of gender representation in an effort to extract the ideology behind their constructions The research approach is based on critical discourse analysis in combination with methods of quantitative and qualitative content analysis The results reveal that these textbooks present a gender discriminatory attitude mainly toward women, in which male characters are over-presented visually The proportion of females to males in illustrations is 1:2 Furthermore, regarding social plus domestic settings, men monopolize and dominate more social roles than women do In contrast, domestic roles are profoundly demonstrated by females In addition, males often take a center position in drawings, which is considered important It is suggested that gender equality is still a controversial issue in Viet Nam‟s society and Vietnamese culture mirrors the way gender represented in the textbooks

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1 Distribution of males and females in illustrations 29

Table 2 Males and females in occupational roles 31

Table 3 Males and females in family roles 35

Table 4 Activities performed by males and females 36

Table 5 Colors applied to males and females 42

Table 6 Blumberg‟s criteria of obstacles to gender equality and evidences in textbooks 47

Figure 1 Analytical framework of the study 27

Figure 2 Procedure of the analysis 28

Figure 3 Future jobs, english 12 (basic) 32

Figure 4 Future jobs, english 12 (advance) 33

Figure 5 Women in society, english 12 (basic) 38

Figure 7 Home life, english 12 (basic) 38

Figure 6 Home life, english 12 (advance) 38

Figure 8 Recreation, english 11 (basic) 39

Figure 9 Recreation, english 11 (basic) 40

Figure 10 Asian games, english 11 (basic) 40

Figure 11 Asian games, english 11 (basic) 41

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES iv

PART A 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Objectives of the study 2

3 Research questions: 2

4 Scope of the study: 3

5 Method of the study: 3

6 Structure of the study 3

PART B 5

DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1 Review of theoretical background 5

1.1 Critical discourse analysis 5

1.2 Fairclough‟s three-dimension model 6

1.3 Multimodal critical discourse analysis 6

1.4 Visual images 7

1.4.1 Definition 7

1.4.2 Roles of visual images 8

1.4.3 The three metafunctions of meaning 9

1.5 Grammar of visual images 11

1.5.1 Color 11

1.5.2 The meaning of composition 11

1.5.3 The information value of centre and margins 12

1.6 Gender discrimination 12

1.7 Gender issues in the school textbooks 15

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2 Review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis 17

2.1 Studies of gender discrimination in textbooks in the world 17

2.2 the studies of gender discrimination in textbooks in vietnam 20

3 Summary of the chapter 21

CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY 22

2.1 Research questions 22

2.2 Research setting 22

2.3 Research approach 23

2.4 Data collection 23

2.5 Research method 25

2.6 Analytical framework 26

2.7 Research procedure 28

2.8 Summary of the chapter: 28

CHAPTER III FINDINGDS AND DISCUSSIONS 29

3.1 Findings and discussions of research question 1 29

3.1.1 Distribution of different genders in pictorial representations 29

3.1.2 Gender representation in occupational roles 30

3.1.3 Gender representations in family roles 34

3.1.4 Gender representations in different activities 36

3.1.5 Gendered attributes in terms of colors 41

3.1.6 The placements of males and females in drawings 43

3.2 Findings and discussions of question 2 44

3.3 Summary of the chapter: 47

PART C 48

CONCLUSION 48

1 Recapitulation 48

2 Limitations of the study 51

3 Suggestions for further studies 51

REFERENCES 52 APPENDICE I

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PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Viet Nam‟s education in certain respects is not different from that of other countries around the world in such a way that there still exists problems within its own system no matter how well-constructed it used to be; as a result, there is an urge to reform the education system to meet the expectations of the society It is undeniable that the innovation should be comprehensive as each part of the educational system is of equal importance and they are mutually related Therefore, the change in the curriculum should go with the alteration in teaching methodologies as well as textbooks (Markee, 1997) In the process of innovation in

2001, the national textbooks for all the three levels including primary, lower and upper secondary especially the implementation of new English textbooks had received the great concern of the government and the public The English textbooks for upper secondary school students also had undergone significant reforms ranging from the syllabus to the topic

Textbooks belong to education and education is heavily involved in the ideological development of one person; therefore textbooks with the knowledge they contain could affect individuals‟ perception It is apparent that linguistic features are not the sole components of one textbook; there appears the contribution

of non-linguistic elements such as images or pictures The visual images utilized in

textbooks not only are meant to delight the lesson, to assist the reading passages or any kinds of activities but also affect the students‟ awareness of specific issues (Fang, 1996) Pictures and photographs present meanings of their own (Kress & Leeuwen, 1996); therefore the misapplication of them could lead to the negative effects such as showing the discrimination of race, sex, religion and so on Looking back at the book of “Sự kì thị giới tính trong ngôn ngữ” (Sexism in language) by Trần Xuân Điệp, the author discussed the phenomenon of sexism in teaching materials and exposed that the discrimination against women appeared in both

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linguistic and non-linguistic levels Nguyễn Thị Hương, 2014 also confirmed in her study that gender stereotypes existed in the verbal and non-verbal form in the Vietnamese language textbooks for primary level

It is also noticeable that textbooks play a key role in transmitting knowledge including gender role information to students at all levels Accordingly, evaluating English textbooks in terms of gender representation is a must in order to provide both teachers and learners with the critical outlook of gender discrimination The aforementioned issues are some incentives to study the series of domestic English textbooks designed to teach upper-secondary school students, namely Tieng Anh 10 (basic), Tieng Anh 11 (basic), Tieng Anh 12 (basic), Tieng Anh 10 (advanced), Tieng Anh 11 (advanced), Tieng Anh 12 (advanced)

2 Objectives of the study

The study aims at:

- Investigating gender representations via pictures utilized in the upper secondary school text books Tieng Anh 10 (basic), Tieng Anh 11 (basic), Tieng Anh 12 (basic), Tieng Anh 10 (advanced), Tieng Anh 11 (advanced), Tieng Anh 12 (advanced) in Viet Nam

- Scrutinizing whether these representations promote or challenge gender equality in education

3 Research questions:

The study will be addressed by the following questions:

(1) How are different genders demonstrated via pictorial representations in the series of national English textbooks Tieng Anh 10, Tieng Anh 11 and Tieng Anh 12?

(2) To what extent do these gender representations promote or challenge the gender equality in education?

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4 Scope of the study:

The Vietnamese upper secondary English language textbooks, entitled as Tieng Anh 10 (basic) , Tieng Anh 11 (basic), Tieng Anh 12 (basic), Tieng Anh 10 (advanced), Tieng Anh 11 (advanced), Tieng Anh 12 (advanced) are chosen as the data of this study In fact, linguistic features of these English textbooks will not be analyzed The researcher focuses on examining non-linguistic ones - visual presentations to extract the ideologies embedded in these productions The three national textbooks from basic set Tieng Anh 10, Tieng Anh 11, Tieng Anh 12 (basic) were written by Hoang Van Van et al and three others from the advanced set: Tieng Anh 10, Tieng Anh 11, Tieng Anh 12 (advanced) were written by Tu Anh et al Both of the two sets were published by MOET in 2006, 2007, 2008 respectively

5 Method of the study:

The methodological approach is built entirely on the foundation of discourse analysis The research method involves a quantitative and qualitative content analysis Within this area of investigation, the three dimension model given by Fairclough (2001) will be combined with the grammar of visual image by Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) and analysis technique employed by Esmaili, F & Amerian, M

(2014)

6 Structure of the study

The organization of this thesis is presented as follows

Part A: Introduction

This part presents an overview of the research in which the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the scope as well as the organization are shortly expressed

Part B: Development

Chapter I: Literature Review (This section provides basic concepts, theoretical framework and related research of the study)

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Chapter II: Research Methodology (This part presents a detailed description

of methodological choices for the study: data collection procedures and data analysis procedures.)

Chapter III: Findings and Discussion (This sector gives the findings and discussions of the study)

Part C: Conclusion

The last part summaries the study, gives some conclusion points to the study, and discusses the limitations of the study as well as suggestions for further research

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PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses linguistic theories consisting of critical discourse analysis (CDA), multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) The researcher also mentions the concept of visual images including pictures Furthermore, in this chapter is the discussion of gender as a concept as well as gender discrimination Additionally, it provides the previous related studies from research experts in the world as well as in Vietnam

1 Review of theoretical background

1.1 Critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) is “a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (Van Dijk, 2001:352) Another view of critical discourse analysis is “an approach to language analysis that considers texts as parts of specific social practices” (Gee, 2004:32) It studies how texts represent and construct reality with a specific ideological system via implicit message on the basis of what is said (Heroes, 2009) Critical discourse analysts are not only interested in social goals of language and discourse but also social maintenance and change (Bloor & Bloor, 2013) Critical discourse analysis for Fairclough is an approach that investigates the relationship between discursive practices and the social structures Fairclough‟s model of critical discourse analysis is the cornerstone of CDA field His model is based on the assumption that language is a part of social life The relation between language and social reality is recognized via social events, social practices and social structures (Fairclough, 2003) In general, CDA is probably the most comprehensive attempt to develop a theory of the inter-connectedness of discourse, power and ideology CDA research specifically analyses institutional, political,

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gender and media discourses which „testify to more or less overt relations of struggle and conflict‟ (Wodak 2001:2)

1.2 Fairclough’s three-dimension model

Fairclough‟s framework consists of three sections of description, interpretation and explanation

Firstly, the descriptive dimension examines the basic formal properties of the discourse In other words, the description stage presents text analysis It is crucial that Fairclough‟s brainchild is applicable to any kinds of text The term text could refer to both verbal texts and visual texts The semiotic indications including images, signs, colors, sounds are also seen as text (Janks, 1997) However, within this research, the texts are special text - pictures therefore, the “Grammar of visual image” by Kress and Leeuwen (2006) and the analytical tool by Amerian & Esmaili (2014) are incorporated in this stage for this study

The following dimension is the processes by which the object is produced and received by human subject (Janks, 1997) At this stage, a text is seen not only as

a result of process of production and also as a resource in the act of interpretation The features of text and context serve as cues for being interpreted on the basis of a background of common-sense assumptions

Finally, the explanation dimension attempts to find the relationships between interaction and social context (Fairclough, 2001) As the third dimension involves the socio-historical conditions that govern the process of production, it can be illustrated as the power behind discourse At this stage, there is an effort to answer questions like how the discourse change or sustain certain social relationship in social structure or what kinds of social practices the object of investigation is interrelated

1.3 Multimodal critical discourse analysis

More recently there has been a new extension of critical discourse analysis - multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) It is seen as “one of the most

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influential and visible branches of discourse analysis” (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000) whose typical representatives are Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen While the traditional CDA has been focusing on verbal mode, the new extension has moved towards broader multimodal conceptions by incorporating visual images into concepts of discourse (Kress & Leeuwen, 1996)

So far after the new trend of critical discourse analysis - MCDA was introduced by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), more and more researchers have examined non-linguistic semiotic elements consisting of photographs and other graphic elements (e.g Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Jewitt, 2009) The importance

of considering the visual components such as facial expression and gesture in the analysis of conversations is highly recognized by Fairclough (1989) Furthermore, van Leeuwen highlighted the value of investigating visual elements of images, for instance color, frame and composition, showing that those non-linguistic elements convey meaning and it is worth to examine them Considering as one branch of critical discourse analysis, multimodal critical discourse analysis also aims at investigating how the visual components are used to construct and express social power plus ideologies Ideological views of one text can be expressed in the choice

of different vocabularies as well as different grammatical structures; visual structures in the form of images do convey ideological meanings too

1.4 Visual images

1.4.1 Definition

Visual images in this thesis are seen as pictures There are a variety of ways

in which pictures can be defined The definition of picture in the Merriam Webster English Dictionary is a design or representation made by various means such as drawing, painting and photography Also stated in The Oxford English Dictionary, a picture is a visual representation of a person or scene as in a photograph or painting From these definitions, it can be inferred that a picture is a reproduction of image including not only drawings and paintings but also photographs

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1.4.2 Roles of visual images

There is no doubt that images powerfully express a message and none of them are created without purposes Furthermore, we live in a time when most of us are surrounded by visual images, both static and moving, in different forms of the mass media; it means images exist in a wide range of language use including textbooks

Various researchers have discussed the roles of images as discussed below Kress & Leeween (2006: 30) share the following regarding pictures:

“…Pictures always have great impact on the reader In newspapers or magazines, where there are pictorials, people usually look at the pictures first before starting to read the content…”

Photographs are perfect illustrations of reality and obviously bring the messages itself Barthes wrote:

“…Certainly, the image is not the reality but at least it is its perfect analogon and it is exactly this analogical perfection which, to commonsense, defines the photograph Thus can be seen the special status of the photographic image: it is a message without a code ” ( Barthes, 1977:17)

He also extends his argument to other pictorial modes such as drawings and paintings These two analogical reproductions of reality develop the messages in their own style though they could be less naturalistic than photographs

The importance of visual images are also stated briefly in the saying “the image is no longer an illustration: the image carries the meaning, the words come second” (Kress & Leeuween, 2006: 26) By examining Dick Bruna‟s On My Walk -

a part of a series of Bruna‟s Books which use clear pictures and bold colours to help young learners to build their vocabulary, the authors indicate that distinguished parents could tell different stories of the same pictures to their children That is a turning point from the “one verbal text, many images” to “one image, many verbal

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texts” (Kress & Leeuween, 2006) The era of a new mode controlling over meaning

- visual image commences as the image becomes a more powerful and rigorously codified language rather than just a record of the world around Consequently, visual communication is seen as a transparent of information and it presents a direct, psychological impact on the emotions of the masses (Kress & van Leeuween, 2006)

1.4.3 The three metafunctions of meaning

The three metafunctions of meaning by Halliday, 1985

The visual modes like others semiotic modes must serve several representational and communicational requirements Halliday (1985) developed the framework for analyzing the fundamental functions of language to communicate meanings called “three metafunctions of representation of meaning” There are three metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions and they are clarified as following:

The ideational metafunction: It is the function of using language to describe our experience of the world including describing events, states and the entities involved In other words, it has to be able to express how people see the world and what they consciously know

The interpersonal metafunction: The function that language serves as a medium between people Individuals utilize language to interact, establish and maintain relations with one and another

The textual metafunction: The function that explores how language is employed to relate the speech acts When language is in use, playing the above two functions, it naturally forms a text (Kress and Leeuwen, 2006)

These metafunctions defined above can apply to not only written text but also images because of semiotic change and there is an emergence of new type of text to mediate communication - multimodal text which is moving from textual to more displaying, visual representations (Kress & Leewen, 2006) Hence, the

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theorists realize the need for extending the work of Halliday (Halliday, 1985) to create the new and suitable theories of representations Furthermore, Halliday emphasized in his work the importance of metafunctions that they could be applicable across semiotic modes (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006) Many linguists including Iedema (2000b), van Leeuwen (2005), Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) share the consensus that meaning making appears simultaneously via all three metafunctions

The three metafunctions of meaning by Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006

Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) expanded Halliday‟s metafunctions to multimodal text, specifically; the meaning represented through three metafunctions

is extended

The ideational metafunction is about the world around and inside us across several semiotic modes; in other words any semiotic mode is able to represent aspects of the world as humans experience it

The interpersonal metafunction is the function that projects the social relation between the producer, the viewer and the object represented

The textual metafunction represents the way in which semiotic modes cohere into the kind of meaningful whole called “text”

So far, written language has been the most highly valued mode of communication and knowledge transmission; however as mentioned above there has been changing

in favour of other multiple means of representation (Kress & Leeuween, 2006) Visual image is of concern and it is time for educationalists to have a think on what should be included in the curricula of literacy along with “what should be taught under its heading in school” (Kress & Leeuween, 2006: 34)

Like sentences and words, images also express meanings as discussed in the foregoing part In this thesis, pictures including photographs and drawings are

Color can also express the ideas, for example white color is representing for purity, red is for brave and black is referring to death Furthermore, color is used to convey „interpersonal‟ meaning While the language has speech acts, colour has its own „colour acts‟ It can be and is used to do things to or for each other, for example to impress or intimidate through „power dressing‟, to warn against obstructions and other hazards by painting them orange, or even to subdue people

1.5.2 The meaning of composition

When it comes to the grammar of visual image, it is worth mentioning the composition of visual texts The composition presents the representational and interactive meanings of the image through three interrelated systems: information value, salience and framing

Information value: It is the placement of elements or participants that relate them to each other and to the viewer Their placement endows them with the specific informational values attached to the various “zones” of the image: left - right, top - bottom, centre - margin (Kress & Leeuwen, 2006) It means that different positions of the participants in one image refer different meanings

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Salience: The elements or participants are made to draw the attention of the viewer to different degrees, as recognized by factors such as placements in the foreground or background, relative size, contrasts in tone value, differences in sharpness (Kress & Leeuwen, 2006)

Framing: The presence or absence of framing devices, for example diving lines or actual frame lines They disconnect or connect elements of the image, indicating that they belong or do not belong together in some sense (Kress & Leeuwen, 2006)

1.5.3 The information value of centre and margins

Visual composition may also be constructed along the dimensions of centre and margin (Kress & Leeuwen, 2006) The most typical example of this type can be found in children‟s drawings In the centre - margins composition, one element is in the middle and the other elements are around The central element is called “centre” and others are “margins” While the “centre” is the nucleus of the information to which all the other elements are subservient, the “margins” are dependent elements The composition of centre - margin is not popular in contemporary Western visualization; however it is relatively common in the visualization of Eastern artist, specifically Asian designers (Kress & Leeuwen, 2006) The reason for this trend is the great impact of Confucian thinking in eastern countries that makes centering a fundamental organizational principle in the visual semiotic of their culture

1.6 Gender discrimination

For the past decades, the topic of gender and gender discrimination has been

of great interest to researchers in a wide range of fields such as psychology, sociology, economy, especially in recent years, gender discrimination has gained its attention to many linguists

According to Carole Brugeilles and Sylvie Cromer - authors of “Promoting Gender Equality through Textbooks”, while sex is a universal concept referring to

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the biological characteristics between men and women which differentiate humans

as males and females, gender refers to social attributes which are time-specific and changeable The term gender, rather than being biological related, concerns the characteristic which are socially expected Therefore it relates to socially given attributes, roles, activities and responsibilities connected to being men and women Gender determines what is expected, allowed and valued in a female or a male in a given context In most societies there are inequalities between women and men in responsibilities assigned, activities undertaken as well as decision-making opportunities

Discrimination occurs in various forms in everyday life It is defined as any distinction or preference made on the basis of race, sex, religion or national extraction which has the effect of impairing inequality of opportunity (UNESCO, 1960) Discrimination psychologically implies the unfair treatment toward one subject It is generally understood as biased behavior that can directly disadvantage one group

One of the most prevalent fields of critical research on discourse is gender discrimination in other words sexism Gender discrimination or sexism refers to both males and females; however the discrimination is more toward women UNESCO, 1960 explained that sexism entailed the practice of various forms of discrimination based on sex Gender discrimination is an attitude which under-represents and stereotypes people on the basis of gender

Gender discrimination is defined in the dictionary for gender of World Food Program, 2000 as the act against women or men based on the recognition that one type of gender does not have equal rights as the opposite one This definition emphasizes that the act of discrimination results from the misleading consciousness

In other words, the deceptive truth about the differences between two genders is the foundation of the long-term discrimination However, discrimination against one thing does not always mean the visible action

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According to The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 1979, “Discrimination against women shall mean distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the purpose

of impairing of nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field” The bottom lines is this definition highlighting one truth that is direct or indirect discriminatory acts with or without purposes make great harm to women and equal gender development

Furthermore, The Law on Gender Equality issued in 2006 stated gender discrimination is the act of restricting, excluding, not recognizing or not appreciating the role and the position of man and woman leading to inequality between man and woman in all fields of social and family life It marks the broader scope for viewing gender discrimination; as a result sexism could be seen as negative perceptions, negative attitudes or bias appreciation toward males or females

Regarding this issue, Vũ Hồng Anh - the author of “Hiện tr ng B t b nh Đ ng Giới trong c ng ồng ngư i dân t c thi u s ” - The 2010 report on sexism among ethnic minorities - stated her view on gender discrimination, which is the inequality in comparing the role, the position and the voices between men and women It is the value attached to the roles of males and females, which is socially recognized that decides how their voices will be heard

It is worth to note that the concept of gender discrimination is controversial

to many researchers Sexism, however, is defined whether as the discriminatory acts

or misperceptions toward the object, shares one thing in common - it is the foreseen consequences of gender discrimination Eventually, from the above definitions it can be referred that gender discrimination is the negatively imposed viewing toward one gender group that possibly cause the threat to gender equality

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1.7 Gender issues in the school textbooks

The study relating to gender remains worth the effort as it can provide with countless accounts about power in discourse “Gender remains highly salient, not only in terms of the public identities women and men construct for themselves, but also in terms of how they are perceived and judged by others” (Walsh, 2016:208)

It is undeniable that concept of gender is embedded in every aspects of life, in the family and in the school It is a crucial component in the way people perceive the world and it exists in every discourse, in the texts we write and in what we say What is of interest for the researchers is that discourse might be loaded with ideologies, especially if discourse has been established within powerful institutions (Widdowson, 2007), for example educational institutions like schools

In schooling, textbooks play an important role in influencing people‟s values and attitudes, “what the students learn from other contexts will be reinforced and/or transformed with what is conveyed in textbooks” (Luk, 2004:3) The involvement

of textbooks in the construction of students‟ gender identities is obvious As Mc Cabe et al (2011:200) argues, “the consistently unequal pattern of males and females in children‟s books thus contributes to and reinforces children‟s gender schemas and identities” What mentioned here focuses on young learners only as many people believe that early education is of importance in shaping ideologies However, “the gendered portrayal of the sexes does not stop at childhood” (Luk, 2004:4); when they grow up, their ideologies, specifically understandings of gender identities continue to grow

Gender development from social learning standpoint involves the interactions of many social factors consisting of individuals and social encounters According to a sociologist - Erving Goffman, gender role is a socially-shared concept which is constructed within individuals resulting from socialization and correlated with biological sex The representation of gendered roles and gender preferences are both consciously and unconsciously built and reinforced by

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language as well as images via a variety of media including learning and teaching Textbooks have a major socialization role in the development of children (Zinec-Aninma, 2002) as they convey messages to the young on how relations in society are to be organized and which value system they should adopt (Mutekwe & Modiba, 2012) Once the ideologies are constructed, it takes the consistent effort to change dominant cultural messages (Bem, 1983) Hence, it is of importance that textbooks should be reviewed with the gender perspective in an effort to provide a balance and gender-sensitive education (Mutekwe & Modiba, 2012) This also means that the issue of gender discrimination and how to minimalize its manifestation in the textbooks has been concerned by numerous educationalists

In the paper “Education for All by 2015: will we make it” by UNESCO

(UNESCO, 2008), it pointed out the reason why textbooks cannot be ignored in the process of striving for gender equality in education by mentioning the following statistics First of all, the students spend 80 to 95 percent of classroom time in using textbooks and the teachers also use the textbooks for 70 to 90 percent of their time

in class Moreover, the teachers make a majority of their instructions based on the textbooks (Sadker and Zittleman, 2002: 144) Consequently, stereotypes that persist

in learning materials and teachers‟ expectations of girls and boys are two issues that negatively affect gender equality Maintaining gender discrimination in textbooks causes the invisible obstacle in the road to gender equality in education as proclaimed in Blumberg, 2007 The full gender equality in education would not only imply that girls and boys are offered the same chances to go to school but also enjoy teaching methods, teaching materials, curricula and academic orientation unaffected by any gender discrimination

The issue is not only regional but also international as Jassey, 1998 stated “it seems gender biased images remain strongly present in school textbooks throughout the world” (Jassey, 1998:88) so that it is time to strip the camouflage off the hidden obstacle of gender discrimination in learning materials including textbooks The textbooks consist of not only linguistic features (words, paragraphs, dialogues…)

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but also non-linguistic features (pictures and photographs) They are utilized to delight the lesson and have an influence on the students‟ awareness of specific issues (Fang, 1996) such as gender issue Images have their own meanings therefore inappropriate application of them could result in a consequence of gender discrimination A great number of researchers have investigated the issue of gender discrimination via pictorial representations in teaching materials containing textbooks It will be discussed further in the next part

2 Review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis

The issue of gender discrimination in textbooks has been of a great deal of interest to researchers in the world however not many researchers in Vietnam have studied the phenomenon In this part, a review of previous studies regarding gender discrimination in textbooks will be discussed globally and locally

2.1 Studies of gender discrimination in textbooks in the world

As indicated earlier, textbooks play a key role in educating younger generations Textbooks provide not only ideological but also cultural function so that gender ideologies constructed in textbooks by language and visual pictures present a great impact on learners

Analysis of “gender relations”, “gender stereotypes” or “sexism” in textbooks has begun since 1970s when educators mainly in the US started to document them After their pioneering effort to expose the gender discrimination in textbooks, the movement has spread rapidly around the world

Sterns (1976) investigated twenty-five foreign language teaching textbooks published after 1970 and utilized in America at the moment then she found out that there were few pictures of women attaching to each unit Moreover, if it happened

to have women‟s images, their outstanding roles portrayed were mainly the care giver or the domestic housewife and most of them were physically described This

is an evidence of discrimination toward women

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Porreca‟s review in 1984 of 15 ESL textbooks examined the manifestation of sexism in both texts and illustrations The author found the evidence that these materials reflect the sexist attitudes by presenting outnumbered pictures of males to those of females Her study was inspirable that in 2005, Harashima, H.D succeeded Porreca‟s framework to investigate sexual bias in an EFL textbook One of his findings was although the difference between the frequency of males‟ images and that of female was not significant, the way men and women depicted in the picture mattered The illustration of women appeared more stereotypical plus inappropriate

In 1985, a total of 28 Indian textbooks used ranging from grade 8 to 12 were analyzed by Alrabaa and the result was controversial (Alrabaa, 1985) It concluded that men were more biased and women were minimized Regarding the division of labor, there were 463 occupations in which 84 percent (391) were occupied by males and 16 percent (72) by females Specifically, the jobs engaged in by men were soldiers, employees, teachers, scientists and political leaders The professions assigned to females consisted of housewives (predominantly), teachers and nurses Furthermore, women were illustrated as economically dependent on men Concerning the characteristics, men were described as “brave, popular, strong, achiever, innovative, adventurous, hard - working, generous, educated and kind” Meanwhile, women were as “beautiful, kind, loving, faithful, motherly, compassionate, generous, loyal, educated and dependent”

The magnitude of gender bias Jon Ellis encountered in school textbooks of the state of West Bengal in India appeared to be strong as Blumberg mentioned Jon‟s findings in his writing He pointed out that the bias shown largely in History and Geographic texts Two book parts were examined including Part 1 and Part 2, published in 1992 and 1996 respectively Part 1 presented 71 pictures of males compared to 22 those of females Part 2 showed far more sexism gender bias as it presented 50 images of males but only two female images were depicted The bottom line is within those visual representation women were described mainly in subservient roles In addition, in the chapter called “Main ways of Earning a Living”

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not a single woman was depicted which mattered the author the most that he claimed “it is a false view of reality in West Bengal” and “gender bias against women found in the text and pictures of these books makes them unacceptable for use”

According to Mihaela Miroiu (2004), she stated that textbooks revealed gender problems The data presented in her article were striking First of all, out of

106 textbooks analyzed, the pictures of women/girls accounted for only 12.8 percent Secondly, within the first and second grade textbooks, the percentage of images depicting women/girls was 24 percent; however the proportion dropped to

10 percent by the grade of 12

Recently, a group of researchers from Virtual University and University of the Punjab, Lahore has investigated the national language textbooks at primary level

to sort out the area of gender disparity Their study concluded that the representation of female images was lower than that of males with the ratio of 41%

of the total pictures in English textbooks from grade 1 to grade 5 In addition, in Urdu textbooks, male visual appearance constituted 71.3 % compared to only 26.63% of female images which illustrated remarkable unequal representation of genders in textbooks

Amerian & Esmaili, 2014 studied gender representation in Iranian high school English textbooks and the result revealed that these textbooks showed a discriminatory attitude toward women regarding gender roles With the pictorial representation of genders, the findings indicated that the main duty of males is breadwinners while females‟ role is defined as the caregiver It is also worth mentioning that 68% of gender-related pictures in these books were exclusively contributed to males and no image presented equal sharing between genders

The aforementioned studies show that in many teaching and learning materials across the world, there is a discrimination against women They are under-represented and depicted with stereotypical images

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2.2 The studies of gender discrimination in textbooks in Vietnam

In Vietnam, few linguists have paid their attention to the issue of gender discrimination in language in general and in textbooks in particular

The pioneer linguist devoting his effort to study sexism in language is Trần Xuân Điệp In his work “Sự kì thị giới tính trong ngôn ngữ” (Sexism in language) published in 2004, he discussed the manifestation of sexism in language Trần Xuân Điệp, 2004 argued that gender discrimination may be found in the use of he/his/him

to refer both sexes in some cases Furthermore, numerous of vocabulary showing women‟s jobs are derived from the men‟s jobs such as actress and waitress The book marks a turning point in considering genders factors in materials; however it just examines the linguistic part of materials

The compositions of one textbook include linguistic part (texts) and linguistic element (illustrations) Being aware of the importance of gender factors contributed in textbooks that could affect the cognitive process of students, Nguyễn Thị Hương (2014) examines the national Vietnamese language textbooks for the primary schools to find out the gender stereotypes - one of the manifestations of gender discrimination both in the verbal and non-verbal form The results showed that there existed the stereotypical images of women/girls and men/boys affected by the traditional social ideologies In terms of illustration, gender stereotypes are seen

non-in the follownon-ing categories

Genders with their appearance: women/girl continuously appeared in dress or flowery clothes with light colors such as pink, orange, red, yellow and purple; meanwhile men/boy often wear blue or brown clothes Women/girls are also womanized by their accessories such as flowery hairbands as well as knot-tie hair clips Statistically reporting, 95 out of 101 images in which males and females co-appear that women/girl have flowery hairbands

Genders with their characteristics: Boys are often described as strong, bravery and mostly join out-door activities On the other hand, girls are weak,

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gentle and take part in in-door activities It is worth to note that boys are always illustrated for images of impolite students while girls are constantly describes as well-behaved and good students

Genders with their professions and roles: In terms of professions, women are often teachers; farmers and nurses meanwhile men are doing jobs such as soldiers, workers, doctors and athletes Regarding gender roles, females are typically illustrated with family roles: being a housewife, a mother, a caregiver for the whole family; on the contrary, males attach to social roles: being a breadwinner

Inspired by these studies, the researcher decided to examine the set of national English textbooks for upper-secondary students, about which the researcher concerned the manifestation of gender discrimination throughout the visual elements

3 Summary of the chapter

This chapter has discussed the concept of gender discrimination and linked this concept to educational setting The gender discrimination is defined as any discriminatory act toward one gender, mostly women Many linguists and educationalists have raised their voice about the manifestation of sexism in students‟ textbooks All of them have agreed upon that gender factors should be more carefully conveyed in the textbooks as once the ideologies are formed, it takes time

to change individuals‟ mindset Methodologically, the gender discrimination via visual images used in the textbooks has been studied with critical and multimodal critical discourse analysis based approach The related studies on the same subject are also reviewed in an effort to recognize the significance of the research

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CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY

This chapter is devoted to presenting the data for analysis and the methods that will be deployed The data sub-section describes the steps for collecting data from the set of upper-secondary school English textbooks that have been chosen for analysis The methodology sub-section outlines the analytical framework, specifically analytical tools that will be used in the analysis

(2) To what extent do these gender representations promote or challenge the gender equality in education?

2.2 Research setting

In the context of enhancing gender equality, Vietnamese Government has joined the program on promoting gender equality with the United Nations They targeted education as a crucial domain in which gender equality can be achieved Furthermore, there are still signs that males and females are portrayed unbalanced and in a bias way in learning materials in educational system in Vietnam As a result, the National Strategy on Gender Equality 2011 - 2020 emphasized the mission of reviewing the current national textbooks in an effort to eliminate any traces of gender stereotype, prejudice or bias

It is obvious that the national textbooks are the main resource in teaching and learning in Vietnam Moreover, the textbooks have a great impact on shaping the values, attitudes, ideologies toward gender issue The message textbooks delivering could powerfully affect learners and the society more broadly Textbooks could

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influence learners via not only language but also their visual elements which are pictures and photographs It is worth mentioning that visual images are important parts of one textbook therefore a gender analysis of textbooks should also take into account the visual elements So far, there are significant researches relating to gender issues in textbooks have been done such as Nguyễn Thị Hương, 2014 and

Vu, 2008

2.3 Research approach

As the title of study suggests, the study adopts the critical discourse analysis approach Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is defined as a special approach to study the text, emerging from critical linguistics It is fundamentally interested in analyzing relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language (Wodak and Meyer, 2001) CDA offers not only a description and interpretation of discourses in social context but also offers an explanation of why and how discourses work Furthermore, CDA has a concern with representations of societal issues, hidden agendas that impact on people‟s lives therefore it claims to take an ethical stance in addressing power imbalances, inequities, discriminations, biases and social justice agenda to spur readers into resistant and „corrective‟ social action (Huckin, 1997) The discourse analysis is suited for this research as it is the method for analyzing texts (verbal and non-verbal) which convey a power relationship The critical discourse analysts also treat the text not merely as a piece of information but a social action; as a result, the text

is seen to be the product of the dominant ideology and to fortify this dominant ideology within itself In this study, the gender visual representations are scrutinized thoroughly with a native understanding into Vietnamese culture to discovery any hints of gender discrimination

2.4 Data collection

There are six English textbooks for upper secondary students Three of them

are from the basic set, entitled as Tieng Anh 10 (basic), Tieng Anh 11 (basic), Tieng

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Anh 12 (basic) The other three are from the advance set, namely Tieng Anh 10 (advance), Tieng Anh 11 (advance), Tieng Anh 12 (advance).They are chosen as the

data of this study because firstly, they have been officially utilized at school since

2006 and have been exposed to millions of learners across the country Moreover, they were composed by a group of ELT specialist headed by Prof Dr Hoang Van Van and Dr Tu Anh as well as published by a leading publisher, Vietnam Education Publishing House

Data collection procedure

To collect the data for the study, the following steps are implemented in order First, the set of textbooks was chosen - six national upper secondary English textbooks were chosen Then the researcher observed the books focusing on non-linguistic elements that are all the images in the textbooks As the study analyses the gender discrimination (if any) displayed via pictures and photographs in these selected textbooks, the chosen visual representations are ones in which either the women and/or the men appear After that, all the pictures and photographs were carefully noted and were transformed into collection data sheets for investigation

Specifically, the data includes 377 images presenting males and/or females extracting from the national set of upper secondary English textbooks

 From the basic set:

Tieng Anh 10 - English 10: 61 pictures

Tieng Anh 11 - English 11: 79 pictures

Tieng Anh 12 - English 12: 45 pictures

 From the advance set:

Tieng Anh 10 - English 10: 59 pictures

Tieng Anh 11 - English 11: 70 pictures

Tieng Anh 12 - English 12: 63 pictures

on the Internet Moreover, content analysis can be quantitative or qualitative or both Weber, 1990 suggests that quantitative content analysis is used to count textual elements while qualitative content analysis goes beyond counting words or extracting objective content from texts to examine meanings, themes, and patterns that are manifest in a particular text It allows the researcher to understand social reality in a subjective but scientific manner

The choice of this method provides an insight into pictures presenting different genders in the data The quantitative content analysis provides a statistical and comparative evaluation of the number of male and female characters featuring

in illustrations It is qualitative in the sense that it requires an exhaustive description

of the gender roles or characteristic attributed of the female and male images in the textbooks To do that, the researcher needs to analyze those pictures in categories that will be described in details later on

With the purpose of revealing the hints of gender discrimination (if any) via gendered pictorial representation in the chosen data, three stages proposed by Fairclough (2001), namely description, interpretation and explanation are intertwined in the analysis To be detailed, each category scrutinized is in direct relation with the gender ideologies based on the back ground of Vietnamese culture and history

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2.6 Analytical framework

The researchers will analyze the gender representations in illustrations basing

on criteria as following:

- Distribution of different genders in pictorial representations

- Gender representations in occupational roles

- Gender representations in family roles

- Gender representations in different activities

- Gendered attributes in terms of colors of clothes

- Different genders with their placements in pictures

For each category investigated, the researcher applies two main analytical techniques adopted from Amerian & Esmaili, 2014 as well as Kress & van Leeuween, 2016 that will be described in details in discussion part

Afterward, within each criterion there will be an effort to interpret and explain deeply the utilization of pictures and photographs to find out the hidden messages conveyed via non-linguistic representations in the six books selected

The analytical framework is presented below:

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Figure 1 Analytical framework of the study

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2.7 Research procedure

In order to carry out the study, the following steps are implemented:

2.8 Summary of the chapter:

In this chapter, the research-governing orientations are presented Particularly, research setting, research approach, research method, data collection, analytical framework and research procedure are discussed The next chapter, Chapter 3 will present research findings and discussions

Step 1

• 377 visual images portraying males and/or females are collected from the national English textbooks for upper-secondary school

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CHAPTER III FINDINGDS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter presents the gathered findings of the present study involving the set of the six upper secondary English textbooks The frequencies of non-linguistic sexism at picture and photograph levels that appear in the textbooks are discussed Furthermore, the chapter analyses the messages on gender discrimination conveyed through the use of these visual demonstrations

3.1 Findings and discussions of research question 1

Research question 1: How are different genders demonstrated via pictorial representations in the series of national English textbooks Tieng Anh 10, Tieng Anh

11 and Tieng Anh 12?

3.1.1 Distribution of different genders in pictorial representations

The researcher coded the pictures for the number of male and female characters depicted in each and grouped them in five categories as following “Males only”, “More males”, “Females only”, “More females”, “Equal share” and

“Unclear” The table below presents the data after coding and counting

Female

s only

More females

Equal share Unclear Tieng Anh 10

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The whole data contains 377 illustrations relating to gender, out of which,

158, 19, 88, 33 and 37 cases manifest “males only”, “males and females with the supremacy of males”, “females only”, “males and females with the supremacy of females” and “equal sharing between females and males” respectively There are 42 pictures accounting for 11.2% belonged to the category of “unclear” and are excluded from analysis

It is remarkable that about 42% of the total pictures are exclusively related to males meanwhile 23.3 % presented females This distribution pronounces the unfair drift between two genders since men appeared 18.7 percent more times than women

In effect, only one tenth of the pictures examined (9.8 %) an equal number of males and females were illustrated This trivial figure also accentuates the inequality between the two genders However, in 8.8 % of pictures depicting both males and females, there is a bigger number of females and in 5% of the same category, male characters are depicted in a larger number Females therefore appear 3.3 % more times than males

The above findings show that in one-character picture, males visually surpass females in number with the ratio of female to male characters is 1:2 Strikingly, in Tieng Anh 10 (basic), there are 33 visual images representing solely male characters

in comparison with 9 pictures portraying female characters The results agreed with Amerian & Esmaili, 2014 that the majority of gender-related pictures in Iranian high school English textbooks were exclusively contributed to males (68%) However, regarding to multi-characters pictures, females slightly surpass males as 8.8% of the pictures are “more-female” group and 5% of the total pictures are

“more male” category The figures above initially shows the signs of gender discrimination as females are less numeral depicted in illustrations than males

3.1.2 Gender representation in occupational roles

Regarding occupational roles served by women and men, the researcher applied the analytical technique by Amerian & Esmaili, 2014 The researcher

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classified five major occupational roles including “males - monopolized”, “males - dominated”, “females - monopolized, “females - dominated” and “gender - shared roles” If any occupational roles were performed by men only, they were categorized as males - monopolized Likewise, if occuatiopnal roles were served by women only, they were classified under females - monopolized While males - dominated roles indicated that the jobs were mostly occupied by men rather than women, females - dominated roles refer to those in which women were portrayed largely Gender - shared roles were performed by both equally

Males-monopolized social roles

(driver, fisher, fire fighter, sculptor, M.C,

musician, mechanic)

Males-dominated social roles

(farmer, athlete, football player, business

person, astronaut, politician, writer, actor)

Females-monopolized social roles

(secretary, waitress, receptionist)

Females-dominated social roles

(teacher)

Gender-shared social roles

(student, singer, doctor and scientist)

Table 2 Males and females in occupational roles

The above table indicates the occupational roles that men and women occupy

in the six chosen textbooks It is apparent that males monopolize seven types of professional roles including driver, fisher, fire fighter, sculptor, M.C, musician and