A Tentative Study On The Sexism In EFL College Textbooks

Sexism embedded in EFL textbooks is considered as one of the major research targets in the field of foreign language teaching. Researchers in the west have carried out lots of studies and achieved a lot in this field. However, there's still a long distance for Chinese scholars to accomplish, not so many researchers get involved in the study on sexism in EFL textbooks. Since textbooks are the fundamental tools to transfer knowledge and social values to students, it has potential influence on its learners. Textbooks with sexism may distort students'perception of the world, decrease their motivation to learn, influence their choice about future occupations, and the like. Therefore, it's necessary and worthwhile to analyze whether sexism exists in the textbooks under examined.This thesis attempts to systematically study the gender issue in the New Horizon College English textbooks, compiled by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, a prestigious publishing house in China. This set of EFL textbooks is widely used by university students in China.This research examines the representation of females and males in these textbooks through content analysis, linguistic analysis and critical discourse analysis. Content analysis focuses on the number of female and male characters portrayed in texts, the importance of the female and male images, and the number of occupations and occupational varieties distributed to females and males. Linguistic analysis is concerned with masculine generic constructions, the firstness of females or males, and the use of honorific title "Ms". Only two perspectives are performed under the angle of CDA: underlexicalization and overlexicalization.The research findings indicate that sexism is prevalent in the whole set of NHCE textbooks. The proportion of females to males is imbalanced, with females being underrepresented throughout the whole textbook. There's only one outstanding female among the 120 texts, while 45 males are portrayed as outstanding figures. Occupational fields are limited for females. Many masculine generic constructions are used in every textbook, which are considered as offensive and exclusive to females. Although there are some attempts to avoid the use of sexist language, they are inconsistent, which indicates that such sex-biased usages have been permeated in people's mind and spread without consciousness. Results of the research should arouse people's attention to realize the existence of sexism in textbooks. Certain suggestions are offered on how to eradicate discrimination in textbooks from the perspectives of the officials, the compilers and publishers of textbooks and teachers.