A Study On Sexism In College Spoken English Textbooks

Sexism in textbooks is one of the major research targets in the field of foreign language teaching. Western scholars have done much research and made great achievement in this field. However, few people in China have explored this field so far. Textbooks, as the main tool to convey knowledge to students, contents and forms have direct effect on them. If textbooks containing sexism are used, in the course of study, the sexism will be penetrated into the students' mind and further influence their behaviors. Therefore, to eliminate sexism from textbooks is one of the important issues that educators should pay attention to.This thesis attempts to examine the issue of sexism in spoken English textbooks compiled by Chinese: how sexism is manifested or implied in these textbooks. 7 textbooks from prestigious publishing presses in China have been selected for the study. These textbooks are being widely used by university students in China.There are 7 chapters in all in this thesis. Their organization is as follows:Chapter One introduces the general background and the basic definitions about sexism, as well as the purpose and the organization of the whole thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review. Firstly it presents the manifestations of sexism in English, including masculine generic construction, markedness of female-related words, word order, address form and semantic derogation of women. Then it gives a review of what has been done in the field of sexism in textbooks, which is the basis of this thesis.Chapter Three discusses the materials and the research methods adopted in the thesis. Both content analysis and linguistic analysis are employed in this thesis to identify sexism from different perspectives. Content analysis is conducted in 3 aspects: 1) the number of male and female characters in both the texts and illustrations; 2) the number of male and female characters portrayed as outstanding persons; 3) the number of occupational roles for female and male characters. Linguistic analysis mainly focuses on 4 aspects: 1) masculine generic construction; 2) the order of females and males; 3) honorific titles for women; 4) adjectives used with females or males.Chapter Four presents the research findings, which reveal that sexism is prevalent and widespread in the 7 textbooks examined. Women are still underrepresented in the texts and illustrations. There are few outstanding females in the texts, whereas the number of outstanding males amounts to 27. Employed females are also underrepresented and occupational roles for females are traditional and limited; on the other hand, those for men are quite varied. Masculine generic constructions appear rampantly and attempts of nonsexist usage are inconsistent. The majority of female/male noun pairs are ordered with the male counterpart first. Mrs. is used widely in the texts with few usages of Ms. The description of females are highly stereotyped. They are more likely to be described with attractiveness instead of intelligence and education.Chapter Five is a further discussion of the research findings. Firstly it discusses the sexism in the research findings from four aspects, i.e. number of characters in the texts and illustrations; occupational and social roles assigned to females and males; traits and qualities of characters; linguistic sexism. By doing so, it attempts to further analyze the degree of sexism in these textbooks. Then it makes a comparison among the textbooks under study in different levels, as well as between the current study and previous Porreca's study.In Chapter Six, negative effects of sexism in textbooks on learners are presented and some suggestions are proposed, including the publishing, choosing and using of textbooks.Chapter Seven is the conclusion, including the summary of the thesis, limitations of current study and possibilities of further research.This thesis reveals the sexism in textbooks by analyzing 7 Spoken English Textbooks with the purpose to bring these issues to attention of all foreign language teaching textbook compilers, editors, publishers and teachers who use textbooks to teach students in China, because dozens of studies have found the negative effects of sexism on learners, but more importantly because sexism should not have existed in the textbooks. Another purpose is to promote consciousness of sexist language, and to avoid or eliminate it in practice.At the same time, it is noticed that in the deep level, sexism in these textbooks is rooted in a particular culture—biased Chinese culture, which means that criticism of sexism is also criticism of culture. There is no doubt that studying sexism from the perspective of culture will become one of the main fields in the author's future exploring.