Male and Female Social Actor Representation in Four Corners 4: A Critical Discourse Perspective

This study aims at investigating the linguistic representation of male andfemale social actors in the Four Corners 4 textbook, drawing on CDA. Morespecifically, van Leeuwen’s (1996) framework, which highlights theconnection of linguistic and social practices, is used as the analyticalframework to examine gendered social actors in this English languageteaching (ELT) textbook. To this end, content analysis was done to explorethe frequency and proportion of each social actor. Quantitative andqualitative data analysis showed that there were some differences, thoughnot statistically significant, between males and females regardingsubstitution, individualization, and activation. Males, in contrast withfemales, were included more as active and famous actors in socialcircumstances and they were more individualized. In addition, they weremore activated through circumstantialization and participation. On theother hand, the case of formalization was mostly observed for males.Moreover, males and females were distributed equally in the textbook interms of classification, genericization, and collectivization. The results revealthat the gender bias still exists, though to a small degree, in this ELTtextbook, which is taught as a substitution for the previous ELT textbooks inmany language schools in Iran.

Keywords:

Critical Discourse Analysis , Social Actors , Gender , Textbook Evaluation , Four Corners