A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Sexism In Fairy Tales Of The Primary Student Textbook Series Chinese Published By People’s Education Press

Fairy tales, as one of the most popular types of children’s literature, have played and continue to play a significant role in gender socialization of children(Zipes, 2012). As Weatherall(2002) claims that “language not only reflects and perpetuates gender but language constitutes gender and produces sexism as a social reality”, the sexism in fairy tales is not only harmful for cultivating healthy gender identity of children, but also obstructive to gender equality in education. With the special interest in social imparities, injustices, prejudices etc. in language, Critical Discourse Analysis provides a new perspective into the studies on hidden social problems(e.g. sexism). Few critical discourse studies have focused on sexism in Chinese fairy tales at home and abroad. Therefore, based on the Fairclough’s(1989) three-dimensional model in analyzing discourse, the study investigates the sexism in fairy tales of the primary student textbook series Chinese by way of content analysis, following the Weatherall’s(2002) framework which focuses on the sexism in language. The findings of the study are summarized as follows.First, females in fairy tales are underrepresented. The number of female characters and outstanding female characters is rather less than that of male characters and outstanding male characters, and thus females suffered a rather lower visibility than males. Second, masculine pronouns are frequently used to refer to the people in general, to refer to the person(s) whose gender(s) is/are unspecified or unknown, and to refer to the nonsexual subject(s). Third, the terms used to address females in fairy tales always name females in terms of their relationship with others, e.g. someone’s wife, daughter, mother etc. while males are more frequently addressed in terms of their personal names and occupational roles. Fourth, gender stereotypes on females prevail in the representation of occupational roles and personality traits of females. Specifically, females are confined to stay at home taking the nurturing role as mothers while males take plenty of occupational roles in more diverse and sophisticated fields. The personality traits words used for describing females focus on their physical appearances, kindness and emotionality; whereas the traits words for males pay more attention to their intelligence and strength. In short, sexism prevails in fairy tales of the primary student textbook series Chinese.The first step to challenge the sexism in language and to engender social change on women’s interior social status is to expose the sexism(Mills, 2014). The findings of the present study should arouse the awareness of prevalence of sexism in fairy tales of the Chinese textbooks. Several suggestions on how to eliminate sexism in language are offered to the writers, the publishers and the users of the fairy tales.