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20Placing children within pink and blue picket fences: Patriarchal gender tropes in U.S. children's English language development textbooks
Research Article
Amy Simpson Burden
Abstract
This article deals with the hidden curriculum or the instruction which lies below the surface of school texts, which instructs on social norms and ideologies, including gender roles. Language learners in the United States are particularly vulnerable to acquiescing to the gendered discourses and role allocations found within school textbooks because they are simultaneously acquiring literacy, language, and these social norms. Thus, this article employs corpus linguistics to examine the grammar and lexical means of representing male and female roles to the reader In the 12 texts of On Our Way to English: Texas and California Benchmark Advance: Texts for English Language Development, which are read by more than 2.4 million language learners in the USA, there is an intense bias towards male presentation, with a male to female pronoun ratio of 2.4:1. Adjectives were used to negatively describe females and focus on their physical attributes to a greater extent than male allocated adjectives. Beyond this description, critical discourse analysis was used to examine the opaque elements of language used to advance patriarchal gendered ideologies that continually herded young children through Eurocentric gender roles, equating femininity with cooperation, physical attractiveness, and domesticity while equating masculinity with aggressive speech, competition, and achievement. A critical image analysis found that images supported the text in the stereotypical renderings of males and females through eye gaze, adornments, and posture. Recommendations for the use of critical literacy and critical language study are provided to challenge these patriarchal gendered ideologies.
Received:
30 August 2020 Reviewed: 2 November 2020 Accepted: 1 December 2020 Published: 30 December 2020
UDC: 37.01:305
Keywords
gender linguistics; gender characteristics; gender roles; critical discourse analysis; textbook analysis; Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages; critical image analysis
Department of English, The University of Memphis, Memphis TN 38152, USA Corresponding author:
Amy Simpson Burden (Ms.), amy.k.burden@gmail.com
For citation:
Burden, Amy Simpson. 2020. "Placing children within pink and blue picket fences: Patriarchal gender tropes in U.S. children's English language development textbooks." Language. Text. Society 7 (2). https://ltsj.online/20 20-0 7-2 -burden.
Language. Text. Society
Vol. 7 No. 2, 2020 ISSN 2687-0487
Introduction
Children's schoolbooks contain facts for edification purposes but are also relied upon for the reinforcing of social norms and ideologies of the school and community (Harro 2000). What children read within the school building may carry greater weight in forming a child's perspective because of the trusting nature of the teacher-child relationship (Wharton 2005). This can be compounded by the vulnerable position of the child language learner who may well be acquiring language, literacy, and social norms simultaneously using school sponsored texts.
This study examines gender representations in language learning textbooks read by most English Language Learners in the United States, to determine what messaging language learners receive about gender roles and characteristics of gender within US society. The most widely read series were chosen, totaling 12 textbooks spanning kindergarten through fifth grade. Readings that contained instructions for language production before, during, or after reading were chosen for analysis, as they contain the greatest opportunity for student interaction, language acquisition, and internalization of themes. In addition, chosen readings contained one or more references to gender. Within those readings, images that contained gendered agents were pulled for a separate critical image analysis.
Background to the study
While many nations publish curriculum on a national level, often through the ministry of education, in the USA, it is up to states to decide on the textbooks used in the classroom. As Texas and California have the highest student populations, publishers often write curriculum in collaboration with these two boards of education. Books created with the Texas and California educational desires are then marketed and sold to other states. These two incredibly large educational governing bodies with their own political and ideological motivations tell publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, and Benchmark Education what they would like to see and read, and those books are published nationwide (Blumberg 2007). For this reason, I will examine a textbook series published by Rigby—a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt company, and a series by Benchmark Education Company examining gender characterizations and roles linguistically and pictorially in a systematic fashion.
In 1972, Title IX was passed which included prohibition of gender discrimination in any government funded educational institution. This included gender bias in materials used for career recruitment purposes but not educational materials in general (Title IX and Sex Discrimination 2018). In 1974, the Women's Educational Equity Act was passed. This included funding for research and training to help eliminate sexism in schools. This was the first large financial push to work on sex bias in education (Andrews and Garcia 1994). Through the passing of Title IX, discrimination in publicly funded education is no longer allowed to be overt in the United States within these institutions, but it persists often subversively through an educational system created by men for men (Easterly and Ricard 2011). Title IX compliance promoted the creation of educational equity initiatives like the Gender Expectations and Student Achievement (GESA) professional development program, which was created mainly to observe patterns of interaction, but also included observance of activities and the visuals and curriculum that supported them (MAEC 1993). As of the year 2000, some researchers in the USA claimed that gender issues in the classroom were diminishing due to Title IX in the USA (Sunderland). However, based on more recent readings, improvements in curricula regarding covert gender bias have seen only modest gains, as will be shown in the review of literature.
Objectives of this study
In this multimodal linguistic study of 12 ELL textbooks currently in use in two states with the highest populations of English Language Learners (ELL), I employed Critical Discourse Analysis using Fairclough's 2015 model in addition to Critical Image Analysis following the Framework of Giaschi (2000) to question the way language and images within the textbooks represent characteristics of gender and gender roles in home and society. I employed ANTCONC, a computational program to analyze linguistic phenomena related to gender, a technique of corpus study first used in textbook gender analysis in 2015 (Lee and Collins). I built my analysis and recommendations upon what is currently known about gender representations of gendered characters in language learning materials. I found that gender messaging within the hidden curriculum herded students into gendered categories of traditional femininity and masculinity from a Eurocentric perspective.
Literature review
Acronyms for language learning
Within this study, I will refer to the textbooks language learners use. In US public school classrooms, these books are called English Language Development or ELD textbooks. Language Learners are often referred to as ELLs — English Language Learners. As there are few existing studies of gender representation in American-made ELD textbooks, I will use international studies for comparison as warranted. These textbooks are considered English as a Foreign Language texts, or EFL texts. As more studies exist for examining texts created for adult language learners within English dominant nations, or English as a Second Language, I will also refer to ESL textbooks and learners.
Textbooks and Language Learning
In addition to classroom interaction and interaction with teachers, textbooks play an incredible role in the formation of society's youth. In the EFL context, some teachers consider textbooks as the foundation for their teaching, and learners are given contact with the second language through these texts (Ahmad and Shah 2014). Early constructivists like Gershuny argued that while textbooks were supposed to instruct the disciplines, they also conveyed norms and presuppositions about 'gender roles and social values' (1977, 150). Although the official curriculum publicizes the accepted educational roles, what Dr. Bobbie Harro and others claim the double or hidden curriculum stays around the unconscious level. She describes hidden curriculum as the silent messages children receive in school while teachers and textbooks instruct the same general message to all children (2000). On institutional socialization, she says it contains "...most of the messages we receive about how to be, whom to 'look up to', and 'look down on', what rules to follow, what roles to play, what assumptions to make, what to believe, and what to think.." (48). Giroux is the theorist who first described the hidden curriculum. He displayed three crucial aspects of the hidden curriculum: the organization of schools, communication inside and outside of the classroom, and the curricular content (1988).
Few studies have been conducted using systematic linguistic analysis of American-Made ELD textbooks. The first study of this kind was conducted by Hartman and Judd in 1978. Their focus was not solely on ELD texts, but also on adult ESL texts. They found overt sexism, including gendered slurs in American and British ESL textbooks. Their contribution is incredibly important for its consciousness raising efforts and the analysis of "firstness" which had not been examined at that point in educational materials. They defined "firstness" as:
A subtler convention of language is the ordering of sex pairs like male and female, Mr. and Mrs., brother and sister, husband and wife, which are usually ordered with the male first, with the single exception of ladies and gentlemen. While this may be a minor point, such automatic ordering reinforces the second-place status of women and could, with only a little effort, be avoided by mixing the order (390).
Their content analysis followed no critical image or discourse framework and failed to mention the breadth of the textbooks analyzed. The time is particularly relevant however, as this was just a few years after second-wave feminism spread across the USA, making deliberate efforts at changing the policies regarding gender in education (Blumberg 2007).
Dr. Karen Porreca conducted what has been considered the seminal work on language learning text analysis within the United States. In 1984, this study addressed gaps from Hartman and Judd's study, such as the number and names of all textbooks explored. In addition to including all the elements of Hartman and Judd's 1978 study, Porreca used a systematic quantitative content analysis approach to examine 15 purposefully selected ESL textbooks. However, in this study, images were given a cursory nod, receiving little attention. She did simple image counts and noted a ratio of 1.97:1 male to female presence in images. She was interested in the gender roles espoused of male and female agents, and her findings demonstrated that men were overwhelmingly seen in a variety of occupations, with president being the most often referred to occupation for men. In contrast, women were most often shown to be maternal caregivers, or in subservient positions such as receptionist. Men were displayed at work five times as often as women. She found that men were three times as active as females linguistically.
Since 1984, only one study that I am aware of has examined gender representation in English language learning textbooks made in the USA for US consumption. Dr. Fatimah Parham examined textbooks used within her region or Iran, which included one text mass produced in the United States in 2013. For this reason, throughout my discussion, I will refer not only to these two studies, but also to how these findings compare to research conducted internationally using EFL materials, providing relevant details where needed.
Material and methods
As previously noted, I chose required textbooks from the largest markets for ELD textbooks — Texas and California. Thus, I analyzed readings from On Our Way to English: Texas — six textbooks, (further known as OOWTE) and California Benchmark Advance: Texts for English Language Development — six textbooks (further known as Benchmark). I chose readings that reference gender linguistically and that contained explicit instructions for language production before, during, or after the reading. I then collected all images from these readings that had any visual reference to gender. For comparative critical image analysis, I counted, but did not analyze male only or female only images. Instead, I focused my critical image analysis on mixed gender images of people. Giaschi's framework for Critical Image Analysis was not appropriate for analysis of non-human characters, so those images were excluded as well.
Corpus Linguistics
I began analyzing the readings through creating a corpus for each textbook and then series using ANTCONC, a downloaded corpus tool (Anthony 2019). OOWTE contained a corpus of 18,039 words and Benchmark — 44,757 words. The difference in corpus size between the texts is a result of increased page area and word density in Benchmark compared to OOWTE's reduced lexical area per
page due to the increased reliance on images. This work builds on previous corpus studies in language learning material research through a larger corpus and wider range of gender concerned features (Yang 2011; Lee and Collins 2015; Lee 2018). Through ANTCONC's KWIC format, Word List and Collocate Tools, I determined type and token of gendered words and agents (nouns), verbs, pronouns, and adjectives associated with males and females, and frequencies of individual words and phrases such as address titles.
Significant findings from this first step included an analysis of feminine and masculine pronouns which showed an intense bias towards male representation. Within each series, male to female ratio was as high as 2.4:1 within Benchmark and 1.6:1 in OOWTE. Additionally, more than one in three adjectives allocated to females were physical descriptors, compared to one in five for males. Females were also more likely to be described negatively (35.5%) than males (28%). Far more verbs collocated with "he" — 250, 109 than "she" — 130,81 in both series.
Critical Discourse Analysis
Following data collection through ANTCONC, I chose Fairclough's framework for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA is a derivative of critical theory which is any theory concerned with the critique of ideology and domination. Fairclough's approach to CDA reflects an examination of the power behind discourse, not just the power in discourse. There are two main assumptions of CDA: language is a social event that is related to the speaker's selections of vocabulary and grammar that is 'principled and systematic' (Fowler and Kress 1979), and the purpose of CDA is to make clear the opaque linguistic elements that lead to or protect unequal distributions of power (Wodak and Meyer 2001) to ultimately change the existing social reality (Fairclough 2015). As patterns emerged through corpus study, I quickly moved from the descriptive stage of Fairclough's Framework to the Interpretation Stage, focusing on themes of gender representation, especially notions of masculinity and femininity and gender roles within home and society.
Critical Image Analysis
As most language learning textbooks for children worldwide increasingly rely on images to assist text in language acquisition, a multimodal study of these texts was necessary to produce a thicker description of the characterizations of gender and gender roles. Therefore, I employed Giaschi's Framework for Critical Image Analysis, as it is a derivative of Fairclough's CDA. Giaschi's framework contains seven areas of an image to analyze: Activity, Protagonist, Receiver, Status, Body Language, Clothing, Eye gaze (2000). There were 654 images of humans in the On Our Way to English: Texas readings selected for linguistic analysis. There were 557 images of humans in California Benchmark Advance: Texts for English Language Development readings selected for linguistic analysis. As previously noted, CIA is best employed to analyze mixed gender images of human subjects.
I did record non-human images as well as male and female only images separately. In total, I employed CIA to examine 234 images in the OOWTE texts, and 101 images in the Benchmark texts. In Texas, the rate of male only to female only images are 2.2:1 (M:F). In California, the rate is 2.1:1 (M:F). Both series feature male only images at double the rate of female only images, but at almost precisely the same rate as one another. This is almost identical to Porreca's findings after examining ESL texts in 1984 where she noted a ratio of 1.97:1. This is somewhat better than EFL studies that have shown male only images at rates as high as 6 times more often, but it is still not representative of American demographics (Ahmad and Shah 2014). This disparity between male and female only images further demonstrates the preference for male representation in both texts and the suppression of females
pictorially. As the population of the United States is slightly more female than male, this is quite unrepresentative of reality (US Census Bureau 2015).
Results
Through examination of the text through Corpus study and Fairclough's description and interpretation stages of CDA, I found several repeated tropes regarding gender characteristics and roles. The repetition throughout multiple genres and across levels of instruction and series effectively thrust these gendered ideologies upon young learners, pushing females and males into separate and arguably unequal boxes for gender normative performance.
Females are Cooperative / Males are Competitive
Both series contain multiple readings about the cooperative nature of females. This is sometimes contrasted with the competitive nature of males in the same text, but not always. There are also many texts outlining the competitive nature of male characters. And, while there are a few examples of females who are competitive, there are no examples of males who are cooperative in either series.
Lessons about male and female socialization rules appear early in the Benchmark series. In the first unit of the kindergarten text, a female child befriends a lonely looking male child, suggesting a discourse of cooperativeness that is encouraged for females in American society. This is a positive story and shows the reader that both genders can get along well together. In Unit 4, there is a clearer picture of a female's cooperative role. "A Pot of Gold" is a fairy tale about a "little girl" named Cora. She is best known in this story for "her kindnesses" to the male frog by giving her food away to him. He then decides to give her gold.
1 "I am very hungry"said the Toad. "I will repay your kindness" he said.
Here, despite the insinuation that Cora has done something for which the toad is grateful, her actions are absent from the text. The male toad is the only character that speaks in the story. This story contains female cooperation while muting her accomplishments and her voice. The assumed charity of Cora is absent linguistically in favor of reading the Toad's complaints and promises.
Additionally, we see cooperation between two female children in unit 5, when one female shows another how to draw and the other female helps her with her math homework. These examples of cooperation are quite positive and helpful for kindergarteners to see exemplified, but it is rare to see a male child cooperating. It appears to be a female initiated and maintained activity.
2 Jen and Rita were friends. Rita helped Jen with her math. Jen showed Rita how to draw. That made both friends very happy!
Deborah Tannen has written at length about the social conditioning of females to engage in cooperative talk and play while males are socially conditioned to engage in information giving and one-upmanship (1991). This social conditioning into gender roles in the school environment appears to be firmly perpetuated in both series of texts and at almost every level.
Females in the OOWTE series were sometimes in a narrator position, giving them a voice to give their perspectives on a variety of topics, from moving, what it is like to be a migrant farmer, the Oregon
Trail, and other stories of overcoming hardships as a family. In grade 3 for example, there is a friendly letter from Miki to her friend James. She narrates the storm that came through and her feelings. Her actions include, "We helped clean up. We put sandbags along the river". She uses inclusive language "we" common in female narration. In the same chapter, a dialogue between two females, Yee and Elena also uses primarily inclusive cooperative language. They have a simple conversation on different modes of transportation where each girl listens to the other's ideas without overt challenges but do not actually go anywhere. The reader must assume they eventually chose a mode and went to school. These are ways in which language constructs a position for females as cooperative, supportive, but on the periphery of life within the stories. In Janks' Synthesis Model of Critical Literacy, she explains that domination without access maintains the exclusionary force of dominant discourses (2010). These females are narrating what others do and giving their sometimes-unspoken thoughts and feelings. This shows how the characters see the world, as bystanders watching other's stories unfold through their narrative presentation of other's behaviors. This also constructs the female as less powerful than the males in her life. This cooperative discourse then maintains the exclusionary force of the dominant aggressive/competitive discourse of males.
L.atalma was worried aoout mieves as their caravan began to cross the Jornada del Muert0 Instead of being robbed by thieves, the caravan got stuck in the middle of a choking dust storm The wagons had to stop until the storm passed through, but the storm was not the only hardship they faced that day.
Dead Man's Canyon is a part of the Royal Road that went through a dry and empty area
mim
Tiiowisa got loose and wandered off. The tjjiyas depended on Tomasa for milk. Catalina ^(W chat if Papá couldn't find the cow, they ^hjIJ have to leave her behind.
"Isn't this your cow?" asked Señor Romero. He os holding Tomasas rope. "We found her with our cattle.
Figure 1. OOWTE Grade 5 Unit 5 "Journey on the Royal Road"
In the story above, Carlota writes about her family's journey along the Camino Royal from San Juan, Mexico, into New Mexico, USA. She describes the actions of others in the story, and the images support her inaction, her place on the periphery as less powerful and influential than the male characters. While Carlota talks about her father and brother, she never addresses them. This is another way that she is constructed as peripheral to her family's narrative. Here, it is taken for granted that as a young female, Carlota will not be much help physically or mentally to her family on their journey, unlike her brother who sits up front with her father and is seen toiling with the family's milk cow when it gets loose.
Even in stories where females go out with their families and have adventures, their active voices are not present or are muted through inclusive language. They are not given full autonomy for their actions. For example, in Grade 4 Unit 1, a powerful story of immigration to the USA from Germany in the 1800s is told from the son's perspective. His mother and sister are part of this story, but only with the inclusive 'we' (x 5), 'our' (x 3), and 'us' (x 1). This essentially removes the female immigrant voice from the story in favor of the male's perspective on how his mother and sister are dealing with immigration.
3 We were happy when spring came. But our troubles weren't over.
The cold had killed the crops and the grapevines. To make things worse, the rulers raised our taxes. Mama and Papa worried a lot. One day Papa and Mama gathered us together. "Anna, Richard, and Willi"; Papa said.
"We have made a decision. In three months, we will sail for America. We will settle there." "Where is America?" we asked. That night Anna, Richard, and I whispered in our beds. "What would America be like? Would there be other children? Would there be cheese, grapes, and honey? Would there be wild animals?"
Additionally, there is evidence of the competitive nature of males. In OOWTE, this begins quite early, with two stories about baseball that are male only linguistically and pictorially, promoting competition as a boys activity ("Sam's Bad Day", and "Baseball"). The continuation of competitive sports as a male activity happens again in Grade 1 of OOWTE with "Ivan Finds His Place" where his sister plays violin, and he finds a place on the ballfield.
But it is not just competitive activities that are male only. Additionally, aggressive behavior and language are purported as male. A notable example is from "Mean Dean" in Grade 2. He says,
4 "As a rule, I never hit back."
The dependent clause in first position insinuates that the decision to NOT use fists in play is a principled decision this child has made, which encapsulates that a precedent exists for boys to use fists in play. It insinuates that withholding physical violence is not the norm. The negative word "never" also insinuates that he has been in this situation several times, again playing into the idea of precedent for this behavior. This story gives a nod to the ideology "boys will be boys" which provides increased freedom for boys to act aggressively socially.
This double standard for male and female behavior is continued in Grade 2 and Grade 3 texts. Grade 3 contains an odd story about a boy who seems to be a braggart. The language used to describe how ill-liked he is was oddly strong for a young children's reader. The child being vilified was described as a "sneak", a "spy" with "a big slick smile" who "boasts a lot". The descriptions from the writer on his behavior are also oddly strong. "He stuck out his chest", "He smacked his lips", "Scott's stuck up speeches..." "Scott snuck up", "he boasted". This type of aggressive language was only read in this series from male characters. While, in the end, the boys realized they were wrong about Scott, the frequency of aggressive language use still stood out. This type of discourse between males happened again in Grade 3 with 2 boys discussing dogs in the park.
(5) Narrator: Jack and Ben were walking through the park. A dog was swimming in the lake nearby.
Jack: Look at that dog, Ben! He doesn't seem to be scared of the water at all! Ben: Dogs love water. Loving water is one of their traits.
Jack: They all love water? Every single dog in the world? Have you checked out every single dog, Ben? Are you sure you didn't miss one, hiding behind a tree up on a mountain somewhere?
Ben: One, two, three, four. I get four questions, all for one little statement about dogs.
Jack: Is that right? Are you positive? Absolutely sure? What if you counted wrong?
Ben: Yes, I'm sure. And that's another four questions.
Jack: So? Is there something wrong with that? Does it annoy you? Huh?
Narrator: Ben and Jack fell down on the grass, shaking with laughter. The dog jumped
up onto the shore of the lake. It started shaking, too.
This is another example of combative and competitive language used by male characters in this series that plays into the theme of male aggressive behavior. In our society, females are discouraged from this type of language, as it makes females less 'likeable' (Menendez 2019). The fact that it is only seen in male to male dialogue subtly suggests that it is a discourse only available to males, leaving females without access to this assertive method of communication. Janks explains in her critical literacy toolkit for educators that differences in identity and power affect "who has the right to speak and act in different situations as well as who gets heard when they do speak or noticed when they take action" (2014, 5). This aggressive discourse gives power to males. The reaction in the above story where the boys can laugh and tussle after an aggressive and challenging dialogue shapes the decisions about whose language is appropriate and inappropriate and demonstrates that this aggressive talk is appropriate between boys.
There are two stories in the OOWTE series where these contrasting themes are fully realized in the same story — as in females show cooperativeness while males show competitiveness. In OOWTE First Grade, "Bake Sale" contains a boy who demeans a girl for a cake she has made.
(6) Mack: What is in the tin, Meg?
Meg: I made a cake. It is for the bake sale.
Mack: That is a sad cake.
Meg: Take that back! It is not a sad cake.
Mack: It is too. It is sad, sad, sad.
Meg: Can YOU bake a cake?
Mack: You bet! I made a big cake. It is fit for a king!
This is a subtle example of competitive nature. In the end, his cake looks awful and the female shares her cake with him.
(7) Meg: Don't be sad, Mack. It is OK.
Mack: What can I sell?
Meg: We can share. Let's set up a table together.
This is the cooperative nature of females. A second theme within this is that females are dominant only in domestic endeavors such as baking. This is a theme found in Mustapha's study in the Nigerian EFL context (2015). In another story in Grade 2, an indigenous folktale, warring tribes cannot work out who will get water rights — competitive nature — and so the chief brings in his daughter to help make peace. She encourages them all to share — cooperative nature ("Let the Water Flow" Unit 5).
16 of the 70 stories analyzed contain this theme in OOWTE. 36 articles of the 160 readings in Benchmark contain this theme, showing that it is prevalent at the same rate as OOWTE (22%).
These findings are supported through a critical image analysis of the 12 textbooks. I took notes on the expressions, hand placement, and posture of each character within the images. Afterwards, I wrote down physical and emotional adjectives and used them to locate patterns. I also examined Mustapha and Giaschi's studies of EFL textbooks for ideas on patterns of body language. In the Benchmark series, males are most often seen as either relaxed (20.8%) or protective/in charge (18.3%) non-verbally. Females were most often seen as either curious/supportive (26.2%) or anxious/worried (18.9%). In the OOWTE textbook series, males are most often seen as either relaxed (23.2%) or anxious/worried (13.8%). Females were most often seen as supportive and curious (23.1%) or relaxed (22.7%).
Caregivers were common roles to find females and males working together. Mothers and sons, or caregivers such as teachers and male children were seen in both series quite often, with the mother
worrying over the child, often times while the father either showed relaxed disinterest or busied himself with labor, as in the "Snow White" tale in Benchmark Grade 3 Unit 2 text shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Benchmark Grade 3 Unit 2 "Snow White"
Here, Snow White's mother is watching her play with icicles, unaffected by the cold. Meanwhile, her father is concentrating on chopping wood. This could also be interpreted as curiosity on the mother's part, which was a frequent observation through body language. It follows Tannen's assertions on childhood socialization in US classrooms showing that females are socialized to be cooperative, supportive, and curious about the thoughts of others. Males are socialized to be independent and competitive, always vying to be in charge (2019). Males in anxious or worried postures are incongruent with past studies that show males in more confident poses (Mustapha 2015; Giaschi 2000; Morris 1977; Porreca 1984). This is probably due to the audience for these series being kindergarten through fifth grade. Males and females both deal with fears from animals, adults, weather, insects, and a whole host of other things. It would be reasonable then, that concern, anxiety, or worry would surface for male characters within a series where there are stories focused on families with young characters.
Eye gaze was another area of analysis in Giaschi's CIA. In OOWTE, family stories were more frequent than workplace stories, so it was common to see a male child looking up at an older sibling or a parent of either gender. Equally as common was to see a male at work or leisure, focused on what he is reading, writing, or physically doing. Females in these same images were more frequently looking down at someone (45) or looking up at someone (35) than they were to be focused on a task (32). This suggests that females in these images were in conversation with others more often than they were at work or leisure activities, which is supported with clothing choices and observed activities. This appears congruent with the Tannen's observations as well (2019).
Value comes from male achievement and female appearance
I contrast these two tropes of masculinity and femininity because of their frequent appearances together in texts involving males and females together. Female value in this series was most often linked to physical appearance, a cooperative nature, or domestic abilities, often while simultaneously diminishing her achievements. These readings also tend to promote traditional patriarchal gender roles within home and society of male achievement and strength, wherein females are provided for by males and are materialistic by nature.
One glaring example is of Yeh-Shen in Benchmark's Book 2 Unit 2. This story is a Cinderella story, though the author fails to note from which culture this story is retold though a quick Google search told me it is a Chinese folktale. Yeh-Shen is given magic by an unknown male deity, which she chooses to use to make herself a new outfit for a banquet. It was through her physical beauty that she attracted the prince's attention at said banquet and "Naturally, they lived happily ever after."
Interestingly, the more traditional retelling of the Chinese fairy-tale shows not a man appearing and granting her magic, but a golden fish she had once kept as a pet. The introduction of another male character who is given status over the female protagonist is divergent from traditional retellings.
The author's choice to begin the last sentence in the retelling with 'naturally' is also notable partly because it assumes that it is natural for any female to want to marry male royalty and it assumes that this female will of course be better off than before, i.e. "happily ever after". Hillary Janks says, "There is a great deal at stake in how we decide what is and is not part of nature" (2014, 154). Naturalization is one of Thompson's modes of operations of ideology. If a society names something as natural, then we think it is unchangeable, absolute, and there is no need for further action. This leads us to draw conclusions based on societal beliefs, not facts.
In this story, traditional patriarchal gender roles are perpetuated. First, a female should be 'provided for'. Second, she is materialistic (i.e. using a wish on an outfit) and will live happily ever after in the arms of royalty. In this case though, how natural is it for a woman to be happy marrying a man she has not met who only desired her for her physical appearance? And why is his title enough to prove his worth, but Yeh-Shen must use magic to make a matching shoe and dress combination and head out in secret to a banquet to prove her value? The king does not have to do anything to prove himself, or to prove he will be kind to her, or that he is even a good king. The assumption that because he is king, he is good and worthy of any female he chooses is in direct contrast to the complicated tasks Yeh-Shen had to go through to prove the same level of worth. In this story, it is her physical appearance and her relationship to a man that gives her value. It is his title, which is a promotion of his status or achievement, with no mention of his physical attractiveness that gives him value. These fairy-tales used for language learning are problematic on several levels, some beyond the scope of this project. But their herding of young readers into acceptance of these patriarchal ideologies of family, happiness, masculinity and femininity are troubling in their inaccuracy and poor reflection on the realities of life within the host society.
In Benchmark's Grade 2 Unit 2, the folktale called "Rough-Faced Girl", the main character is devalued for her appearance, insinuating the link for females between appearance and value. However, she can see things others cannot. Through a hasty promise from an invisible yet still somehow handsome warrior that whoever can see him he will marry, a man's rough-faced daughter makes an unlikely match. Not only does her value come from her appearance and her male match, but this story also removes the female character's agency by excluding her voice in the marriage arrangement. It is assumed yet again that the female character will be better off married to the warrior, and that she needs no say in the matter. Meanwhile, the man is valued for what he does. He is a warrior—someone who skillfully uses a bow and arrow (see Figure 5). These stories reflect a sexist and male supremacist ideology yet again, through the hidden curriculum which links achievement to masculinity and physical appearance to femininity. While both these stories are illustrated and contain stylistic elements of minority culture folktales, the rhetoric within perpetuates sexist ideologies common within white upper-class males in the United States and Europe. Additionally, neither of these retellings gave credit to the cultures from which they were drawn. In both stories, this generalizes cultures, insinuating that all tribal peoples are the same, and that all Asian peoples are the same. Ironically, the Snow White retelling in Figure 2 did name the host nation—Russia, furthering the idea that it is Caucasians who are diverse, while indigenous peoples and Asian peoples are homogenous.
Secondly, I discovered the origins of "Rough-Faced Girl" and realized the depth at which this tale was altered by the writers of this textbook. I had originally assumed that the patriarchal ideologies promoted may have been held by the culture from which the story came, and so the publishers should have only considered a more egalitarian folktale. Rafe Martin, an award-winning storyteller who has been a keynote speaker at myth, folklore, and storytelling conferences internationally wrote Rough-Faced Girl from his studies of the Algonquin peoples and their story of the female mystic on the shores
of Lake Ontario (Martin 2011). In his retelling, the focus is on her inner character, not her appearance. Characters in his retelling who chose to focus on her appearance are described derogatorily. It was she who sought the marriage alliance with the Warrior, not her father, showing agency for the female protagonist that breaks somewhat from patriarchy. She is a female mystic, which is how she can see Invisible One, the warrior she eventually marries. It was also the Invisible One's sister who negotiated the marriage, not the Invisible One himself. In fact, Sister and Rough-Faced Girl have far more to say than do either Invisible One or Father. These two women dominate Martin's retelling. The images of the Father are quite different as well. In the Benchmark series, Father is seen wearing tribal headdress, a trope common in caricatures of Native Americans. The Algonquin story illustrates the father as poor in his tribe as seen in Figure 3 (Martin 1992).
Figure 3. Benchmark Grade 2 Unit 2, Father vs Martin 1992 Father
Interestingly, the Algonquin tale describes a family of three sisters, but Benchmark's version eliminates one sister. So, through eliminating one female character, silencing the autonomous voice of Rough-Faced Girl and Sister and giving greater voice to Father and the Invisible One, purposeful steps were taken by the author to diminish and suppress female voice from this text about a female mystic. The resulting tale is not the work of a patriarchal indigenous folktale, but of the author of a textbook reading.
These patriarchal gender roles were supported within the images in each series. It did not take long for me to notice how oddly dressed females in the OOWTE series were. It did not seem to matter the ethnicity of the female—in the kindergarten and first grade texts, she was frequently dressed in 1940's Caucasian middle-class housewife apparel. Her hair was styled similarly, with buns or beehives, and she was adorned with pearls. I created a category to record these occurrences called "traditional dress". This also included period clothing that depicted females in frilly dresses, bustles, and corsets. These images not only support the patriarchal gender roles, but also suppose a Eurocentric ideology regarding gender roles.
I noticed early on that females most often wore pink and purple, and males wore every color under the rainbow. Males not only wore pink and purple, but also blues, greens, yellows, and reds. It appeared that females were limited to stereotypical colors, while males were not. There were only a few noticeable examples of female characters breaking with these traditional and stereotypically feminine dresses and colors within the series. In OOWTE, there were 42 images of females in pink or purple and 41 images of females in traditional dresses. I made a distinction between traditional feminine dress and white-collar work-wear. There were six females dressed in white-collar work-wear and five females dressed in blue-collar work-wear. This second set of females (blue collar or domestic) were most often seen in aprons covering their clothing, insinuating domestic work. There were 33 females dressed in more contemporary clothing such as pants or shorts and shirts. For males, I noticed
a similar traditional style of dress that was Caucasian middle class 1940's style. Males often wore ties and button up dress shirts, belts, and pleated khakis no matter the setting and no matter their ethnicity. Males wore often either white-collar work (23) or blue-collar work clothes (12). This is congruent with Dr. Jack Richard's assertion that to market to a wider audience, publishers place characters in a white middle class environment most often, demonstrating an idealized form of reality (2005).
In Benchmark, males were seen in a wider variety of clothing styles. Traditional stereotypical male clothing was seen most often (20), but wealthy/royal adornment and casual contemporary clothing were next at 10 males each. Blue-collar work-wear was worn by 12 males and white-collar work-wear by 9. Females were most often seen in traditionally feminine dresses and skirts (33) and 13 females wore blue-collar/domestic work clothing, which again was predominantly aprons covering dresses as in the Figure 4 from Grade 5 unit 4.
17 females wore stereotypical pink and purple colors, while males wore a much wider variety of colors. Only 4 males were seen in stereotypical blues. In both series, males were seen in three basic modes, casual, professional, and power dressed. This conforms to what Porreca noticed in 1984 and in Giaschi's 2000 study. Females were dressed in stereotypically feminine dresses and pinks and purples predominantly placing them into more narrow categories than males. The use of aprons for females constructs a traditional gender role inside the home which is not accurately portraying family life in the United States as male and female presence in the workforce is nearing equal participation.
A Note About Clothing and Body Language
While Giaschi's Framework does take stature and adornment into account when determining status, another area that is closely related to these two is size and shape of characters. Upon analysis of drawn images, it became painfully obvious that all the females drawn were thin. This coupled with shorter stature for females compared to their male companions and the use of frilly dress communicates a certain level of female consumerism like that of popular magazines whose powerful influence from business interests limits the range of voices permitted. Talbot describes how censoring of magazines goes into the processing of visual images through airbrushing and computer enhancement of female bodies but pushing these bodies as 'real' (2010). Beauty is assumed in popular magazines, and this notion of female beauty is perpetuated in both textbook series, with thin, small female characters. Males again are shown in a wider variety of body shapes and sizes, but were still somewhat limited to thin and childlike or supremely masculine, such as the warrior in the tale of "Rough-Faced Girl" (Benchmark Grade 2 Unit 2) who shoots rainbows from his bow and arrow and is drawn shirtless and rippling with muscles. There is a marked contrast between the openness and
Figure 4. Benchmark Grade 5 Unit 4, Esperanza Rising
masculinity of the warrior and his soon to be bride who is thin, small, and wrapped around herself, demonstrating vulnerability in posturing.
Figure 5. Benchmark Grade 2 Unit 2 "Rough-Faced Girl"
What is apparent also is the larger-than-life body type for males in stories like John Henry, Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, and King Midas in Benchmark. Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill had no female presence in their stories (despite there being some very adventurous tales about Bunyan's wife and sister in existence) so these were excluded from critical image analysis. However, John Henry is featured twice with his family, and each time he is huge, and his mother is small and thin. Below in Figure 6 is a picture of King Midas with his daughter (Benchmark Grade 2 Unit 6). Midas is drawn with huge lumberlike arms and back, and his daughter is petite in comparison.
Then Marigold ran to him.
Figure 6. Benchmark Grade 2 Unit 6 "King Midas"
While it is safe to say that overt objectification of females and males is non-existent in these two series, more subtle strategies that promote consumer femininity and masculinity as assumed and desirable norms is present in both series. While it is possible that illustrators considered healthier frames to be thinner frames, the use of over-sized males seems incongruent with this theory.
Discussion
These themes work together to create a link between strength, aggressiveness, and achievement to masculinity, and physical appearance, cooperativeness, and domesticity to femininity. The hidden curriculum of this linkage between achievement and maleness perpetuates sexist and male supremacist ideologies in the sense that men are portrayed as having contributed more to society that is of value by their sheer presence around topics describing accomplishments. By contrast, women were rarely given the same space for their own contributions and were marginalized and underrepresented within their own stories, through linguistic suppression. Linguistic suppression occurs when there is no reference to the social actor in the text, but traces of the person are still present through the actions they commit. With backgrounding, the social actor is not mentioned with the actions they commit, but inferences can be made because the social actor is named in other places in the text (Tranchese and Zollo 2013). So, the discourse of exceptionalism is used alongside the marginalization of women and their contributions to society.
The themes of male supremacy and female value linked to vanity, cooperativeness, and domesticity may be familiar to some learners who come from cultures with similar expressed values. However, this text does nothing to challenge these ideologies or to allow for critical thinking about gender and language learning. The texts continuously move children into their own gendered picket fences of performance that promote traditional patriarchal gender roles as norm within the home and society. At an institutional level, the themes of male competitiveness and female cooperation mirror what is seen in mainstream classrooms which place female language learners at a disadvantage in terms of opportunities for interaction with the teacher and holding the floor in the second language, as these are constituted as rewards for competitive actions. This discourse for males only legitimizes the double standard in the treatment of males and females regarding competitive play—namely that it is encouraged and normalized in males and is discouraged and othered in females in favor of cooperative play (Robbins 2004). This also places greater weight and stress on male learners and assumes all males will fit into the aggressive masculinity portrayed in this series which may serve to other non-normative males. These texts place values onto the teacher as the trusted source of knowledge regarding female and male interaction and behavior in the classroom—a separate, unequal, and double standard. Finally, females are placed at a disadvantage in language learning as there is more space given to language describing and being used by males which male students will be more apt to imitate. As there are more active verbs and richer descriptions of male characters, male students may be able to pick up these descriptions and play with these actions through role-play and other communicative or cooperative learning activities which would advantage them further in language learning by engaging kinesthetic intelligence in a way that language surrounding female actions does not.
Conclusion
I designed this study to ascertain the way readings represented gender roles and characteristics discursively in two series of textbooks published for the largest ELD markets in the United States— California and Texas. To examine the discursive elements of the texts, I employed Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis. To assist with rich description of the discourse, I employed a computational survey through ANTCONC, examining gendered nouns, gendered pronouns, adjective collocations, and verb collocations for each series. I found that both series contained a large disparity between males and females in terms of noun and pronoun use with bias towards male representation that does not match the US Census data as a baseline for defining reality.
Next, I took the results from the computational survey and the patterns I found in my close readings of the series and interpreted them, finding very traditional Eurocentric Caucasian middle class gender roles for males and females in the home and society. I found strong evidence of socialization of females to be cooperative and males to be competitive. Women are valued for their appearance, domestic skills, and cooperation. Males are valued for their achievements. In these 12 books, the images quite often supported the language of the texts. Through Critical Image Analysis, I found that eye gaze, adornment, and posture supported the text to perpetuate traditional gender stereotypes and consumeristic masculinity and femininity.
While these series have areas that demonstrate attempts at equality greater than similar studies from current international contexts and historical works in the USA, such as increased variety of roles for males and females and imagery demonstrating a wider variety of emotional states for males, there is still much work that needs to be done to promote a more realistic picture of what American society and homes are really like. Critical Literacy as a teaching method can be used to challenge the texts in the areas where they fall short. Dr. Hillary Janks published a critical literacy toolkit for educators that provides strategies for addressing the power struggles, lack of appropriate diversity and critical design, as well as unequal access to discourses. Through critical consciousness raising efforts, trusted teachers can challenge this idealized reality that gives power and status to males in these texts, which in its current state is not beneficial to all learners. Without critical pedagogical challenges, these gender tropes and ideologies will likely become ingrained and normalized by young learners, subtly herding them into the pink and blue picket fences of stereotypical male and female performances.
Finally, I recommend further study into teacher training methods to promote critical literacy for gender equitable education, the use of critical literacy and critical language study in the ESL classroom, and collaborative redesign efforts involving educators and linguists trained in gender bias detection. Future research endeavors should examine other texts outside these 12 most popular to determine the extent of these issues beyond these two publishers. Additional work should also be considered in Classroom Critical Discourse Analysis to evaluate uptake of gendered messaging through dialogue in ELL courses to allow children to perform gender in more unique and equitable manners.
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Acknowledgments
Portions of this publication are based on my PhD dissertation (Burden 2020). Copyrights
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