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

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

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 hiện về giới thông qua các đoạn hội thoại trong 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 hiện về giới thông qua các đoạn hội thoại trong 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

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

Key words: gender representation, EFL textbooks, conversations, visibility, speech acts

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 single-gender and mixed-gender conversations in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 275

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

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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LISTS OF TABLES iv

LIST OF FIGURES v

LIST OF PICTURES vi

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale to the study 1

1.2 Purpose of the study 3

1.3 Research questions 3

1.4 Significance of the study 4

1.5 Scope of the study 5

1.6 Structure of the study 5

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Discourse 6

2.2 Discourse analysis 7

2.3 Discourse and gender 8

2.3.1 Turns and Utterances 10

2.3.2 Speech acts 10

2.5 Previous research on gender in textbooks 12

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 17

3.1 Corpus 17

3.2 Analytical framework 19

CHAPTER 4 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

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 5 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

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale to the study

The reforms in 1986 bridged Vietnam with foreign countries around the world despite the differences in political systems As a result, not only was the market-oriented economy adopted but the number of English-speaking visitors along with products and advertisements in English coming to Vietnam also increased, which was responsible for the expansion of English For more than 30 decades, English has become more popular in Vietnam After the first National Strategy for Foreign Language Teaching and Learning throughout All Levels of Education (MOET, 1994, cited in Do, 1999: 30), Vietnam has been through changes

in teaching and learning English in order to meet the need for wider international integration in modern society English was officially assigned as a separate subject taught for students from grade 6 and since 2002, several schools decided to include English as an optional subject in the curriculum for students at grade 3 (age 8), or even grade 1 while it remains compulsory for students from grade 6 to grade 12 A majority of Vietnamese students have accessed to English language from an early age in recent decades

Woodward (1997) claims that a textbook is a ubiquitous part of most classroom instruction Teachers and students definitely can use textbooks as a valuable resource in the classroom and also use them to self-study at home with the relatively sufficient knowledge provided In the EFL context, textbooks even play a more important part in teaching and learning as they are believed to be

“the visible heart of ELT program” (Sheldon, 1988, 237) The quality of textbooks, thus, is clearly responsible for students‟ effectively gaining the knowledge Furthermore, in countries where English is taught as a foreign language and approaching native English speakers or materials in English is not easy, English textbooks used in schools may become the major or even the only source of input with proper language use for students to learn and practice the language both inside and outside of class

ELT textbooks are designed with a variety of texts and genres including different types of discourse in both written and spoken form, which helps learners

be exposed to authentic communication and be able to obtain the appropriate uses of language in various contexts Besides, Jane Sunderland (2002) pointed out that foreign language textbooks are characteristically densely populated with people who are not only in social relationships with each other, but also those who continually interacts verbally with each other That is to say, language presented in textbooks can be widely used in various conversations of everyday life in reality Apart from the language, the knowledge of the outside world is also adopted by students through textbooks because this kind of material “represents the everyday for children” (Kereszty, 2009)

One of the issues presented in textbooks that has considerable influence on textbooks users is gender Gender does not only concern the physical difference between having two X chromosomes or having one X and one Y chromosomes but also something people “bring into being through their practices" (Kendall, 2007:126) It is undeniable that biological traits impose the differences in capabilities and dispositions of two genders For example, the higher level of testosterone is said to be responsible for males‟ aggressiveness while women‟s emotional inclination results from the lack of lateralization in their brains However, the gender identity cannot be freely determined by their initial biological endowment Yule (2006) pointed out that each individual learns how to become a boy or a girl and acquires characteristics which are considered masculine or feminine In other words, gender is culturally and socially constructed Masculinity and femininity are acquired by individuals not only through the socialization process (Tannen, 1994) but also through the expectations in certain contexts in which what a man or a woman should be like are emphasized (Mills & Mullany, 2011) Every society has its own norms and values, therefore, individuals may already have a view of gender from their society‟s perspective (Cameron, 1992:161) They differ in the way they behave and use language due to the

differential treatment they receive from socialization agents in which school plays a crucial part

In short, textbooks and gender have close connection to each other Textbooks have big influence on learners‟ gender Therefore, gender representation

in the textbooks need to be taken into consideration

1.2 Purpose of the study

The aim of this study is to analyze how genders are represented in the English textbooks 10, 11, 12 published by Vietnam Educational Publishing House (VEPH) in collaboration with one of the world leading publisher, Pearson Education in 2015 by examining the conversations in English textbooks Textbooks are the major source for teaching and learning in most of schools in Vietnam Therefore, the provision of language and the messages conveyed in textbooks, in which gender is involved, play important roles in influencing learners‟ language usage or even students‟ behaviors Identifying the gender representation in textbooks might make valuable contribution to appropriate adaptation while using the textbooks In this study, researcher wants to investigate the frequencies of turns and utterances produced by male and female speakers so that the visibility of two genders, which, according to Cambridge Dictionary, is the degree to which something is seen or known about in public, is identified The difference in number

of turns and utterances taken by males/females depicts the difference in these two genders‟ visibility while communicating The visibility of male and female speakers partly implies the opportunities the students have to practice English both inside and outside class Besides, investigation of speech acts produced by male and female speakers is also very important in analyzing gender representation in textbooks Some inferences about male and female speakers‟ characteristics can be drawn basing on differences in speech acts performed by these two genders

1.3 Research questions

As mentioned above, the purpose of this study is to detect the gender representation in terms of turns and speech acts employed by male and female

characters through the conversations inset of English textbook 10, 11, 12 In order

to achieve the aim of the study, the following questions were addressed:

1 How many turns and utterances are produced by male and female characters in conversations in English textbooks 10, 11, 12? Which gender possesses more turns and utterances overall?

2 What speech acts are frequently performed by male and female characters

in the conversations in English textbooks 10, 11, 12? What characteristics of male and female speakers may be inferred basing on identified speech acts?

1.4 Significance of the study

The present study may contribute to investigation of language and gender and the research of gender representation in textbooks In addition, the result of the study may help to draw some important implications for teachers, students and even the textbook writers in order to improve English language teaching and learning in Vietnam

A number of studies have been conducted to evaluate the quality of the resources for English language input in Vietnam but studies concerning gender representation in textbooks and stories are inappreciable With analysis of the turns taken by male and female characters and the illocutionary acts that males and females perform in both single-gender and mixed-gender conversations whereby the distribution of turn-taking and also the characteristics of males and females are represented, the study has made significant contribution to language and gender research field

The awareness of unbalanced representation of male and female speakers if any may prompt the textbook users including teachers, students or even parents to determine the appropriate use of the conversations such as assigning the roles and changing the name of the characters, etc Adaptation will make the learners possible to achieve the objectives of the unit and acquire the language items their best

Implications for textbooks writers and publishers are undeniable The result

of the study will show the representation of gender in textbooks regarding the

visibility and the speech acts produced by two genders, which helps textbooks writers and publishers reflect themselves in writing and publishing textbooks Changes in future textbooks may be needed if the gender is asymmetrically represented

1.5 Scope of the study

This study will focus on investigating representation of gender regarding the number of turns and utterances taken as well as the speech acts produced by male and female speakers through conversations in 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 The other types of text such as passages, narratives, stories, etc will be excluded from the study

In terms of turns and utterances taken by male and female speakers, the turns and utterances will be noted manually and then counted by software AntConc Besides, the speech acts are classified by Searle‟s Taxonomy of Illocutionary acts, then the speech acts are also counted using AntConc software

1.6 Structure of the study

This thesis consists of five chapters Chapter 1 provides the background to the study and introduces the needs for the research, the aims, research questions, scope to the study as well as the organization of the study Chapter 2 provides a review of basic concepts and relevant knowledge to the study In addition, previous studies are also listed In Chapter Three, an overview of the corpus and analytical framework used for the study are presented Chapter 4 represents the results of the study and the discussions of the findings are also included The last chapter, Chapter

5 summarizes the major findings, some implications for the professional practices

In this chapter, the limitations of the study and some recommendations for further studies are also presented

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the researcher will discuss some published information regarding discourse and discourse analysis In addition, previous studies on relationship between discourse and gender as well as gender in textbooks are taken into consideration The chapter also mention a review of writings on turns, utterances and speech acts taken by speakers in conversations

2.1 Discourse

Discourse originates from the word “discursus”, which means

“conversation” according to Dictionary of Medieval Latin Since the 20th century, the definition of discourse has witnessed important changes Stubbs (1983) viewed discourse as “language above the sentence or above the clause” In 1993, Nunan asserted that discourse meant “a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perceived as related in some way” Sharing quite similar ideas of discourse to Nunan and Stubbs, Fillingham (1993) defined discourse as anything written or said or communicated using signs Discourse, in these ways of defining,

is conceived purely a series of sentences or utterances connected together However, some other linguists offer different definitions of discourse Coulthard (1977:7) argues that discourse is not merely composed of “grammatically well-formed utterances or sentences” Moreover, it is seen as “chunks of language in actual use” People do not only produce discourse to just write or just talk but they also use discourse purposively This view is supported by Foucault who defines discourse as

“systems of thoughts” that consist of “ideas, attitudes, and courses of action, beliefs, practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak” (Lessa, 2006: 285) In addition, vann Leeuwen (2008 : 6) sees discourse as social cognitions, socially specific ways of knowing social practices” To put it simply, discourse helps to bridge our personal worlds to the social worlds It provides readers and listeners ideas about the world they are living in, which in certain conditions can be turned into common truths and finally these truths may construct our perceptions about the world around us Discourse may be defined in

various ways but in this paper, the researcher will follow the definition of discourse that discourse is the language formulated for actual uses

2.2 Discourse analysis

The variety of discourse definitions leads to numerous views on analyzing discourse Harris (1952) observes that language “does not occur in stray words or sentences but in connected discourse” He also tries to discover the connection between sentences by applying the tools of sentence grammar such as segmentation and substitution Besides, he also indicates another approach to discourse analysis that is the correlation between culture and language Although such analysis is not taken into further consideration by Harris, the idea of correlating discourse of a person, social group, etc has been later developed by Halliday and Hasan They claim that the coherence of a discourse is created with the certain lexical and grammatical choices regard to situational contexts (1976) However, no specific apparatus has been built to clarify this coherence

Showing the differences in the approaches to discourse analysis, Labov (1970) points out that “there are some areas of linguistic analysis in which even the first steps towards the basic invariant rules cannot be taken unless the social context

of the speech event is considered” The analysis of discourse in Labov‟s viewpoint

is connected to social actions, which is quite similar to what Brown and Yule (1983)‟ conclusion that study of discourse is the study of language in use Simply talking, discourse analysis involves the analysis of language above the sentence, in situational and cultural context Basing on two functions of language, on the one hand, interactional and transactional, the discourse analysts may adopt different approaches to identify whether the language is used to convey factual or propositional information or to negotiate role-relationships, peer-solidarity, or saving-face of both speaker and hearer (Brown & Yule, 1983) On the other hand, the investigation of contents revealed through language is not only the focus of

discourse analysis regarding Jones‟ paper, “The Role of Discourse Analysis in Devising Undergraduate Reading Programme in EST (1976) He mentions four

units set up in discourse : plan, stages, moves, and acts A plan covering the whole text is composed of two or more stages like “Problem Identification” and “Solution Presentation” A stage comprises of two or more Moves such as “Problem Deduction” and “ Problem Amplification” A move is made up of Acts such as

“Ascription, Exemplification, Differentiation and Justification” Act, then is corresponding to a sentence In this study, the researcher concerns two different approaches to discourse analysis Both language itself and the function of language are taken into account The dialogues in which the turns taken by the male and female characters in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 will be analyzed and counted to find out males or females have more opportunities to practice English Besides, the speech acts employed by male and female characters are also interpreted to detect the different gender identities expressed

2.3 Discourse and gender

According to the perspective on natural language of Noah Chomsky (1959),

a language is a natural object, a component of the human mind However, it is not simply the physical representation of the entities in the brain but it also reflects the mind of human beings This means people will produce and understand different expressions basing on what they have had experiences of previously Therefore, language in use, which is understood as discourse; definitely partly originate from their social roles including gender as one of the determinative elements To put it simply, language users, and more specifically, individuals use discourse to portray themselves and conversely their identities are depicted

Since the 1970s, language and gender have become a research field that

attracted special attention from scholars around the world Lakoff in Language and the Woman’s Place (1975) indicated that woman‟s language has its foundation the

attitude that women are marginal to the serious concerns of life, which are preempted by men” He pointed out that women use a large set of words specific to their interests, ask more questions and use more tag questions as well as rising intonation in statement context Marry Haas (1994) investigated men‟s and

women‟s speech in Koasati identified the differences in the phonological and morphological features Considering the utterances produced by men and women, Holmes (1992) detected that women‟s talk is often associated with effective functions such as expressing emotions, maintaining social relations and men‟s talk conversely is associated with referential/ instrumental functions which are related to conveying information or establishing facts It can be inferred that gender has an influence on the language uses in almost all aspects such as phonology, lexical choice, syntax, etc

On the other side, gender is represented through language Stuart Hall (1997:15) defined representation as “using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people” It is the way that a person is shown or described by their language using; specifically, through their talking and writing about something (Montgomery, 1995) Representation of gender can be found in spoken, written texts and visual illustrations In the two first form of discourse, the researcher can consider the lexical choices; for example, nouns/pronouns, verbs, adjectives; clause and clause complex such as “transitivity”, which means the passive or active construction of the clause (Montgomery, 1995; Vann Leeuwen, 2008) To be more specific, in order to convey one message in which the boy is the actor, the girl is the goal and help is the material process, the clause can be “the girl was helped by the boy” In the sentence, the boy and the girl were assigned an agent and a patient respectively Additionally, the occurrences of male and female in the text or illocutionary acts performed by them in the discourse also describe their being

Most simply, Pearson et al (1991) indicated that the honorific titles addressing males and females are Mr and Ms respectively However, regarding the marital status of a woman, people may use Mss or Mrs while there is only one option to address men despite the fact that they are married or not In addition, another difference mentioned is men and women who have never got married are called distinctively (p94) While men are referred to as “bachelor”,

people use the term “old maid” Although the new term “bachelorette” is becoming more popular, it stems from the male version (p99) The similar word pairs can easily be found in language use to address male and female like governor- governess; master- mistress; hero-heroine, etc In broader research field where identities are characterized through discourse, there have been a large number of studies conducted Speakers and writers can choose the language to represent males and females differently In this study, conversations

in English textbooks 10, 11, 12 were interpreted to figure out the manifestation

of male and female character‟s identity

2.3.1 Turns and Utterances

Conversation analysis has been pioneered by Harvey Sacks, a sociologist, since the 1960s Conversation analysis studies the methods by which the speakers are oriented to employ when structuring the conversation- social action through the talks One of the domains of research within conversational analysis is turn-taking Sacks et al (1974) claimed that turn-taking for conversations can be built in various ways depending on the types of conversations It is ubiquitous and can be noticed in debates, interviews, speeches, conferences, talk shows, formal and informal mode

of conversation Sacks et al (1974) provided some rules for organizing the turns taken in a conversation by groups The turn taking is a process in which the turns are allocated for the participants The current participant talks then stops and has rights to select the next one to speak There is a time gap between turns but it is only

a few fractions of a second and one party speak or only one turn is taken at a time during the conversation One speaking turn is composed of one or more utterances that represent the contribution of speakers in a conversation (Laver, 1994: 116) An utterance is “any stretch of talk” constructed by one person, before and after which there is silence on part of that sentence It is the use of a piece of language such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase or even a single word

2.3.2 Speech acts

Speech act, the speaker‟s intended meaning in an utterance (Yule, 2006) has greatly developed from the work of linguistic philosophers (Brown & Yule, 1983)

since the twentieth century Austin (1962) mentioned the act of a speech that an utterance produced by a speaker must be a performance of an act in saying something as opposed to the performance of an act of saying something He focused

on the explicit performative utterances rather than constative utterances; basically statements describing the world and stating propositions; and suggested five classes

of speech acts according to the force of illocutions: verdictives (giving findings depending on available evidences or reasons to a fact, e.g estimate, accuse, charge); exercitives ( giving decision in favour of or against a certain course of action or advocacy of it, e.g order, command, direct); commissives (aiming at committing the speaker to a certain course of action,, e.g promise, vow); expositives (expounding of views, conducting of arguments, clarifying the usages and references, e.g affirm, deny, emphasize); and behabitives ( including the notion of attitudes, expressions, e.g apologize, thank, deplore)

Austin‟s classification has laid the foundation for further research on speech act; however, it showed some weaknesses, one of which is the use of inconsistent principles to construct the taxonomy (Searle, 1975) This causes some hindrance in deciding what is an act performed by a speaker Leech (1974, 47-48) classified the functions of language into five types: informational (conveying information), expressive (expressing one‟s feelings and attitudes), directive (influencing other‟s behaviours or attitudes), aesthetic (the use of language for the sake of itself; for example, aesthetic language in poems, literatures), and phatic (aiming at keeping good social relationships, e.g greetings, thanks) Although the classification was developed and appeared clearer for analysts it lacked the class for acts denoting the commitment of speakers to a future action such as promise, swear In this research, Searle‟s taxonomy of illocutionary acts was used to analyze the speech acts produced by male and female characters in the textbooks Searle (1975) named five illocutionary acts: assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative Assertive acts include the acts aiming at committing the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition; for example, stating, informing, predicting, notifying, acknowledging Directives refers to attempts by the speaker to get hearer to do

future actions Some examples of illocutionary verbs in this class are advising, suggesting, commanding, questioning, inquiring, etc The third act is commissive, the purpose of which is to commit the speaker to some future action such as promising, volunteering, guaranteeing Next, expressives aims at expressing the psychological state; for instance, thanking, complimenting, apologizing, congratulating, welcoming The last class in the taxonomy is declarative The declarative utterances bring about some alternations in the status of the referred objects like naming, appointing, resigning, pronouncing

2.4 Textbook evaluation

As discussed in the first chapter, textbooks play significant role in teaching and learning, especially in English Language Teaching Curriculum Browns (1995) highlighted that textbooks provide “a source of language, a learning support, motivation, stimulation, and reference” to teachers and students Considering four reasons for using textbooks listed by O‟Neill (1982), it is can be inferred that textbooks is not only useful for students‟ needs but they also provides students with

a program for their future learning with valuable and reasonable materials For these reasons, it is important to find out whether a textbook is suitable for an English class or not In other words, evaluating textbooks is definitely necessary and vital According to Rea-Dickens and Germaine, evaluation is a process that

“investigates the suitability and appropriateness of an existing practice” Evaluating textbooks brings the educators, materials developers as well as learners opportunities to make appropriate adjustment to the materials during learning and teaching process Sheldon (1988) suggested that ELT textbooks are essential to be evaluated and analyzed so that advantages and disadvantages are figured out, which helps educators to adapt suitable textbooks for different programs

2.5 Previous research on gender in textbooks

Since the 1970s, gender representation in foreign language textbooks has attracted a great number of linguists Some studies have been conducted to investigate the occurrence of male and female characters as well as occupational

roles in the textbooks The number of male characters was commonly found to

outnumber that of female ones This was illustrated in the study of Primary English Programme and Reading 360 by Gupta and Lee (1990) Likewise, Lee and Collins

(2009) concluded that females were underrepresented as the number of characters in ten English Language textbooks was analyzed in Australia According to Hellinger (1980, 268), males were preferred in the German secondary English textbooks and conversely, females were excluded regarding the proportion of these two genders in the textbooks While male participants occur in over 93% of the stories‟ events, only approximately 30 percent of the texts have female participants In 1978, Hartman & Judd noted in the TESOL Quarterly on the topic of “sexism and TESOL Materials” that women were mainly depicted to be responsible for housework or childcare The research taken by Gupta and Lee (1990) also shared the similar findings that females were mostly associated in the nurturing professions while males were described to be in charge of a wider range of roles in society as evaluating two basal series in Singapore Lee & Collins (2008) examined gender voices though English textbooks in Hong Kong and pointed out women in secondary textbooks were portrayed in “feminine” roles such as secretary, receptionist, and typist during the past two decades Not only were males differentiated from females concerning social roles but they were also represented differently in relations to characteristics For example, women were described to be emotionally unstable (Hartman & Judd, 1978), whereas, men were remarkably more aggressive, argumentative and more competitive than women (Evans & Davies, 2000) Moreover, male characters in the textbooks evaluated previously were represented with more positive traits compared to female characters Investigating

four textbooks of Let’s learn English series in 2009, Kobia pointed out that males

and females were depicted with 47 and 37 positive traits respectively On the

contrary, a study on Spotlight on Literacy and Literature Works in Malaysia carried

out by Mukundan & Nimehchisalem in 2008 has shown that negative qualities were assigned for male characters more than for females Although the above research

was undertaken by various scholars from different countries, there is a similarity in the finding indicated that gender is represented unequally as the number of characters, occupational words and adjectives are concerned

A number of studies have been made to detect gender representation in textbooks at the discourse level including conversation Regarding the turn -taking system of a conversation, female characters in Headway and Look Ahead initiated conversation slightly more often than males in mixed- gender conversations Accordingly, the number of turns taken by females was higher than that by males ( Jones et al, 1997) In 2006, D Ashley Stockdale analyzed the taking turns of male and female characters in the dialogues in Impact Values The study found that males initiated more (59%) than females (50%) and females respond more and follow-up more than males Besides, men were also represented to speak more and longer than women in mixed gender conversations (Maltz and Boker, 1982; cited in Sunderland, 1994)

Speech acts performed by two genders have been some linguists‟ concerns for centuries According to Sofia Poulou (1997), dialogues of textbooks for teaching Greek as a foreign language, if the experts do not participate in the dialogues, it is women that mainly asked for information and make requests while men were the information givers and produced various directives Women in this study were supposed to be dependent on men Male participants in 20 English language textbooks used in Hong Kong published between 1997-2004 and 1986-1994 were found to share the similar speech acts as the previous study by Poulou (1997) that they mainly used more directives such as ordering, commanding and instructing, whereas females used more expressive language (Lehiste, 2013:62) Lakoff (1998) found that males used the majority of tag questions and questions functioning as declaratives while females mainly used hedging, which was considered as a sign of insecurity

Some research recently; however, has shown the improvement in the equal gender representation in textbooks Carolyn Gascoigne (2002-2003) examined 24

dialogues in five first-year post-secondary French textbooks published between 1999-2002 and noticed that instead of dominating the conversations concerning both the number of turns and initiation, males in the study spoke slightly more words and specifically, females took more turns Females represented slightly more visible than males was the finding by Sakita (2008) in the research of Introductory EFL textbooks in Japan The number of male and female characters was also equal

as considering Planet Blue textbook in Japan (Pihlaja, 2008) According to Yang (2014), gender representation in the whole series of Step Up can be found fairly equal in terms of social actions taken by two genders Plus, the social actions for male characters were described as “effective and cognitive reaction” and “material and semiotic actions” but the two latter cannot be found in the manifestation of female characters

Evaluating English textbooks, especially gender representation through textbooks is gradually attracting more attention from linguists Vu (2008) conducted

a research on gender stereotypes in story textbooks for Primary school students in Vietnam in which theme of the stories, number of character, occupation, status, and traits of the characters were taken into consideration She revealed that males were depicted to be brave and optimistic while females were scared and pessimistic Additionally, males were supposed to do important tasks and have more responsibilities at the national level while domestic roles are females‟ duties

In order to implement the national project entitled “Teaching and learning a foreign language in the national education system, Period 2008-2020”, a new set of English textbooks have been piloted since 2015 Some evaluation of textbooks has been undertaken by scholars Language aspects in the textbooks of all three levels received positive feedbacks from English teachers in which 34.7% rated as excellent, 43.9% rated as very good, 19.7% rated as good; only 1.0% rated as not very good, 0% rated as not good (Hoang, 2015) Besides, “skills” section, physical features of the textbooks, and components accompanying textbooks were also investigated The teachers participating in the survey mostly agreed that the

textbooks all have high quality and meet the needs of learners Another study on English textbooks used in Vietnam‟s upper secondary schools by Nguyen (2007) indicated that the new set of textbooks managed to be more communicative in regard to functions and notions of the language contents In addition, the books are also more attractive with vivid illustrations and more learner-friendly thanks to clear organizations On the other hand, she also identified some drawbacks of the textbooks For instance, many of speaking activities were found to present unrealistic and unnatural discourse; the forms are found to be taught without tasks and consciousness-raising activities, which makes students hard to internalize the rules Although lots of language aspects and the illustrations accompanying the language contents have been examined, gender representation in English textbooks for upper secondary schools has not been considered in the previous studies

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Corpus

English textbooks 10, 11, 12, published in 2015, were the most updated set

of textbooks It was the first time VEPH (Vietnam Educational Publishing House) has collaborated with one of the leading publishers in the world, Pearson publisher,

to design and write the English language textbooks for Vietnamese schools Up to now the new set of textbooks have received lots of positive comments from educators about the contents, language, illustration, and format (Hoang, 2015) On the other hand, as explained in the previous chapter, the purpose of the present study is to detect the representation of gender through conversations in the English textbooks in Vietnam; therefore, choosing this set of textbooks, which include a variety of conversations, will have special significance The gender difference depicted in the textbooks possibly affect students‟ ways of thinking

English textbook for each grade follows the same format and includes two volumes Each volume contains five topic-based units, each of which has five sections: Getting started, Language, Skills, Communication, and Culture, Looking Back and Project; two reviews, and a glossary providing a phonetic transcription of the new words in the units and their Vietnamese translations

Each type of text serves a different communicative purpose and shows the representation of gender differently It is necessary to select the text type that can display clearly the characteristics of male and female characters Taking all the text types contained in the textbooks, I decided to choose conversations within the textbook for analysis in this study In the conversations, males and females are engaged in, interacted and produced speech acts Dialogues are “conversations of the characters in a story, such as in a book or movie” (Cambridge dictionary) That means the roles of dialogues are the same as that of conversations Martha Jones (1997, 471) claimed that students can use the dialogues as conversation models to read, listen to and act out in the classroom To be more specific, the students may

use the vocabulary, the structures occur in the models and even the pronunciation, spontaneous conversational speech, speed, intonation and the use of pragmatics (Jones et al, 1997: 471) for practicing because dialogues create social context and reflect the language usages and instruct students when, where and how to use them Besides, all the units in the textbooks begin with one conversation contained in the Getting started section, which serves as the introduction to the overall topic of the unit and prepares students with topic-based vocabulary and the main grammar points that will occur in the whole unit It can be predicted that teachers will put the major focus on the conversation so that the students start the new unit with core vocabulary and structures memorized Thus, this part is also paid great attention by the students

The conversations in English textbook 10, 11, 12 used to analyzed are categorized into single-gender (male-male, female-female), and mixed gender conversations, which are listed in the table below

Mai: The young pop star looks shy, right?

Anna: Yeah He's the teen idol who is exciting female fans around the world

Nam: He also looks passionate on stage

Anna: Looks can be deceiving, ha, ha! I bought his platinum album My World a few years ago

Nam: Do you know a lot about him?

Anna: Of course, I'm one of his biggest fans I read his biography on the Internet and found out that he won second place in the Idol contest in his home country, Canada

Mai: Really? So he's very talented Did he graduate from a famous music school?

Anna: No He says he learnt by"just singing around the house"

Mai: Every country's got talent!

Nam: You're right, Mai How did he become popular, Anna?

Anna: His mother began to post homemade videos on the Internet in

2007 He became a superstar within two years

Mai: Incredible!

Anna: I agree with you His video got over 10,000,000 views, so he became well-known He was also the first solo artist to have four singles enter the Top 40 before his debut album release

(Unit 3 Music, English textbook 10)

3.2 Analytical framework

In order to uncover the gender representation in English textbooks 10, 11, 12, the researcher needs to answer two questions:

1 How many turns and utterances are taken by male and female characters

in conversations in English textbooks 10, 11, 12? Which gender possesses more turns and utterances overall?

2 What speech acts are frequently performed by male and female characters in the conversations in English textbooks 10, 11, 12? What characteristics of male and female speakers may be inferred basing on identified speech acts?

The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods The visibility

of male and female characters were figured out through the difference in the number

of turns and utterances uttered by speakers from two genders The turns were sorted manually and then concordanced by AntConc software Regarding speech acts, qualitative method was adopted first The acts performed by men and women were decided basing on Searle‟s taxonomy and then continued to be concordanced via AntConc The number of speech acts belonging to each gender was counted and compared so as to detect the characteristics of two genders represented The detailed steps of analyzing the data are described as the following

In order to answer the first research question, both qualitative and quantitative method were employed AntConc software developed by Laurence Anthony, a free and researcher-friendly software was utilized to analyze the corpus Single-gender conversations were examined first All the words in the corpus were listed by using Word List tool with their frequencies ranked descendingly as below:

Picture 3.1 Frequency of the characters’ name in English textbooks

All the words used to address people in Word column we recorded The

name were concordanced after a colon had been added to mark the turn taken by Nam For example, in the following picture, Nam was picked and continued to be

concordanced with a colon The number illustrated in Hit column is the number of

turns that Nam took in the selected conversations

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

The number of turns taken by each speakers was recorded and categorized into male and female speakers The total number of turns that each gender produced were listed according to different levels (grade 10, 11, 12) so that the changes could

be noticed more easily

The number of utterances uttered is equal to the total number of speech acts produced in the conversations Therefore, the speech acts were counted in advance and as a sequent result, the number of utterances were resolved Speech acts performed by male and female characters were manually analyzed basing on Searle‟s taxonomy (1975), then encoded as SPM and SPF respectively Illocutionary verbs were written next to the utterance and after the symbol SPM/SPF Next, AntConc was used to concordance the frequency of speech acts that were associated with males and female speakers The following pictures represent how speech acts performed by males and females are sorted out