Phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán: Kỳ thị giới qua hình ảnh trong sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh tiểu học Việt Nam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ NHUNG GENDER BIAS THROUGH PICTURES IN THE NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK SET FOR VIETNAMESE PRIMARY SCHOOLS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Sự kì thị giới qua hình ảnh trong bộ sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh mới dùng cho bậc tiểu học tại Việt Nam qua góc nhìn phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán M. MAJOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 HÀ NỘI - 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ NHUNG GENDER BIAS THROUGH PICTURES IN THE NEW ENGLISH TEXTBOOK SET FOR VIETNAMESE PRIMARY SCHOOLS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Sự kì thị giới qua hình ảnh trong bộ sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh mới dùng cho bậc tiểu học tại Việt Nam qua góc nhìn phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán M. MAJOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn HÀ NỘI - 2019 DECLARATION I hereby state that the thesis, entitled “Gender bias through pictures in the new English textbook set for Vietnamese primary schools: A critical discourse analysis” was carried out in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.

This work is original and all the sources that I used in the paper were documented by means of references. Hà Nội, 2019 Nguyễn Thị Nhung ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To complete this scientific research, I owe profound indebtedness to many people for their tremendous support during the conduct of my study. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards my devoted supervisor, Dr. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn for his intellectual consultancy and constant encouragement, which were the decisive factors in the completion of this paper.

Second, my sincere thanks go to all of the lecturers at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their invaluable lessons that have established a solid base for my research work. Last but not least, I would like to thank all of my beloved family members and friends for their tremendous love, care and support during the time of conducting this research paper.   ii ABSTRACT The attempt to combat gender inequality in textbooks has recently attracted a lot of researchers’ concern. However, it is worth noticing that research to date has tended to focus on gender bias in textbooks represented through linguistic rather than other non-linguistic features such as visual design.

Educationalists have become gradually aware of the increasing role of visual communication in learning materials of various kinds since they believe that pictures and photographs present meanings of their own. Among such attempts, this research investigates gender bias through pictures in the new English textbook set for Vietnamese primary schools, which aims to 1/ examine how different genders are represented via pictures in the new English textbook set for Vietnamese primary schools, 2/ find out whether gendered visual representations illustrate gender bias in this textbook set. In so doing, qualitative and quantitative content analyses were adopted, in light of multimodal critical discourse analysis to study images involving men and/or women from three English textbooks. By analyzing 1,534 images, the research showed that there was a clear females’ visibility in the workplace and social activities.

Nonetheless, there appeared hidden manifestations of gender bias, mainly towards women in their family roles as mothers, occupational roles, domestic tasks, contribution to the education of children, leisure activities, color representations, and positions of females in illustrations.   iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vi LIST OF TABLES .vii LIST OF FIGURES.

viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Statement of research problem and rationale for the study. Aims and objectives of the study. Scope of the study.

Method of the study. Significance of the study. Structure of the study. 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.

Review of theoretical backgrounds. Critical discourse analysis. Fairclough’s three-dimention model. Multimodal critical discourse analysis.

The grammar of visual images. Gender bias in school textbooks. Review of related studies. Review of related studies worldwide.

Review of related studies in Vietnam. Summary of the chapter. Data collection instrument. Data collection procedure.

Data analysis procedure. Summary of the chapter. 55 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Frequencies of different genders in illustrations.

Gender representations in social references. Level of employment. Gender representations in activities. Contribution to children education.

Summary of the chapter. For educational authority. For textbook writers and publishers. Limitations of the studies.

I   v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CDA : Critical Discourse Analysis EFL : English as a Foreign Language ESL : English as a Second Language MCDA : Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis MOET : Ministry of Education and Training RQ : Research Question US : The United States VG : Visual Grammar   vi   Page LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Visual social semiotics (Adapted from Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) 15 An analytical checklist for the identification of sexism (Adapted from Table 2 29 UNESCO, 1986) Table 3 Detailed information about English 3, 4, 5 textbooks 49 Table 4 Distribution of gender representations in illustrations 58 Table 5 Females and males’ family status 60 Table 6 Females and males in occupational roles 65 Table 7 Females and males in different activities 72 Table 8 Females and males’ outfit 82   vii Page LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Organization of the study 5 Figure 2 Fairclough’s three dimensional framework (1992) 9 Figure 3 The dimensions of visual space (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) 19 Figure 4 Sexist and non-sexist illustrations (UNESCO, 1986) 38 Figure 5 Data collection procedure 51 Data analysis procedure (Adapted from UNESCO, 1986 & Kress & Figure 6 52 van Leeuwen, 2006) Figure 7 Data analysis procedure 54 Figure 8 Distribution of gender representations in illustrations 56 Figure 9 Examples of pictures representing genders in English 3, 4, 5 58 Figure 10 Examples of pictures depicting family roles in English 3, 4, 5 61 Figure 11 Females and males’ level of employment 64 Figure 12 Women at work 68 Figure 13 Men at work 70 Figure 14 Females with domestic tasks 74 Figure 15 Males with domestic tasks 75 Figure 16 Females’ contribution to the education of children 77 Figure 17 Females’ participation in games, sports, travelling and exploration 79 Figure 18 Females’ games 81   viii Figure 19 Colors attached to females 84 Figure 20 Colors attached to males 84 Figure 21 Gender attributes in positioning 86   ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Statement of research problem and rationale for the study Sociologists assert that the perception of gender is gradually developed through observation and is predetermined by “gender agents” (Brym & Lie, 2007, p. 97), one of which is textbooks. Gender manifestation in textbooks mirrors the attitude of a particular society towards gender that is subconsciously acquired by learners and is likely to cause long-term negative effects on their performances and social behavior.

Considering the number of 264,000,000 children still having no access to schooling (UNESCO, 2017), it seems that sexism in textbooks is not a critical educational issue. However, the topic has grown in significance in light of recent studies, which have proven the existence of gender inequality in numerous investigated ELT textbooks all over the world (e. Sleeter & Grant, 1991; Sunderlan, 1992; Jones, Kitetu & Sunderland, 1997; Ma, 1998; Cook, 2005; Paivandi, 2008; or Nguyễn Thị Hương, 2004). 346) puts it, “this is an important, nearly universal, remarkably uniform, quite persistent but virtually invisible obstacle camouflaged by taken-for-granted stereotypes about gender roles”.

Indeed, students devote about 80 to 95% of their classroom time using textbooks and a majority of teachers’ instructional decisions are based on textbooks (Sadker & Zittleman, 2007). One’s perception and ideological development is heavily affected by education, with textbooks as its integral instructional medium. Even if largely unnoticed, needless to say, the influence of sexism in textbooks can be a profound hindrance on the road to gender equality in education. More importantly, exposure to ESL/EFL textbooks that fail to correctly portray the movement toward gender equality in the society students are part of and which contain elements that re-enforce sexism would be greatly unfair to students.

  1 American activists and educators during the 1970s were the pioneers to systematically document gender bias beneath the camouflage in textbooks by means of content analysis and other more qualitative methodologies. Their attempt to combat gender inequality in textbooks soon attracted other researchers’ interest, including Alrabaa (1985); Kalia (1986); Baldwin & Baldwin (1992); Ross & Shi (2003); Clark & Mahoney (2004); Ahmed (2006); or Blumberg (2007). Nonetheless, it is worth noticing that research to date has tended to focus on gender bias in textbooks represented through linguistic rather than other non-linguistic features such as visual design. Educationalists have become gradually aware of the increasing role of visual communication in learning materials of various kinds.

Kress and van Leeuwen’s book entitled Reading images: The grammar of visual design builds on its reputation as the first systematic and comprehensive account of the grammar of visual design, examining the ways in which images communicate meaning. The authors assert that they see images of whatever kind as entirely within the realm of the realization and instantiations of ideology, as a means for the articulation of ideological positions of complex and potent kind. To put it differently, pictures and photographs present meanings of their own. This view is supported by Fang (1996) who believes visual images utilized in textbooks not only are meant to delight a lesson, to assist a passage or any kinds of activities but also hold the transformative power to shape children’s attitudes, beliefs and values.

Therefore, misapplication of images in textbooks may result in negative impacts on the ideological development of both teachers and students, especially students at primary level whose cognitive development is largely influenced by input data and critical thinking mindset has started to be shaped. Despite Viet Nam’s progress to eliminate gender disparities and achieve gender equality in education, gender discrimination   2 still remains prevalent in certain different forms, one of which is through textbooks. Authors Trần Xuân Điệp (2005) and Nguyễn Thị Hương (2006) were among the Vietnamese pioneers to confirm gender disparity in both verbal and non-verbal forms. The most recent study focusing on the non- linguistic features in English the national English teaching textbooks for upper-secondary schools was carried out by Trần Thị Bích Ngọc (2017).

Following the critical discourse approach, the study also reveals that these textbooks present a gender discriminatory attitude towards women. However, one of the limitations with this study is that it has been not carried out in the new set of English textbook, under the National Foreign Languages 2020 Project where marked renovation in curriculum design and textbook development is claimed to be made in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning foreign languages in general and teaching and learning English in Vietnamese schools in particular. This motivates me to conduct a research paper entitled “Gender bias through pictures in the new English textbook set for Vietnamese primary schools: A critical discourse analysis” to fill in the identified gaps in the local literature. This study focuses on primary school level because according to Kohlberg’s stages of gender development (1966), at the age around six and seven, which is approximately the start of school age for Vietnamese children, children reach the stage of gender consistency.

This phase can be seen as a chance to introduce non-stereotyped female and male images as well as unconventional behaviors. Early intervention in the development of gender bias can save effort in reducing their negative impacts later in life of children (Zemore, Fiske & Kim, 2000).