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As you come in…
• Read and highlight the article ‘Language and Gender : Boys and girls
• At the end of the article, make a note of two observations you agreed with and three ideas you found interesting.
• "Everything we read...constructs us, makes us who we are, by presenting our image of ourselves as girls and women, as boys and men" (Mem Fox, 1993).
• Besides being an important resource for developing children's language skills, children's books play a significant part in transmitting a society's culture to children. Gender roles are an important part of this culture. How genders are portrayed in children's books thus contributes to the image children develop of their own role and that of their gender in society.
Contextual factors
• Purpose of the text (how might this link to gender?)
• Genre of the text – it’s an adventure story
• Time of composition
Lexis
• Naming conventions
• Semantic fields - the storm vs Tom’s actions
• Word choices attached to male and female characters
Grammar
• Sentence types – declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative
• Pre-modification
• Verb choices – active or passive?
Graphology
• Use of images
• How the images support the text
Discourse
What the characters say. Who speaks most?
What sentence functions do they use? (statement, exclamation, question, command)
What do they say?
What speech tags are used? For example ‘said’ , ‘exclaimed’.
Write your paragraph …..
• How does this children’s story represent gender?
Fill the card with your ideas. Remember to:
1. Use subject specific vocabulary
2. Quote examples from the text
3. Explore what your findings suggest about gender representations
How Is Gender Portrayed in Children's Literature?
• Numerous studies analyzing children's literature find the majority of books dominated by male figures. For example, Ernst (1995) did an analysis of titles of children's books and found male names represented nearly twice as often as female names. She also found that even books with female or gender-neutral names in their titles in fact, frequently revolve around a male character. Many classics and popular stories where girls are portrayed usually reflect stereotypes of masculine and feminine roles. Such gender stereotypes are prevalent not only in mainstream children's books but also in Newbery and Caldecott medal winners. Children's books frequently portray girls as acted upon rather than active (Fox, 1993). Girls are represented as sweet, naive, conforming, and dependent, while boys are typically described as strong, adventurous, independent, and capable (Ernst, 1995; Jett-Simpson & Masland, 1993). Boys tend to have roles as fighters, adventurers and rescuers, while girls in their passive role tend to be caretakers, mothers, princesses in need of rescuing, and characters that support the male figure (Temple, 1993). Often, girl characters achieve their goals because others help them, whereas boys do so because they demonstrate ingenuity and/or perseverance. If females are initially represented as active and assertive, they are often portrayed in a passive light toward the end of the story. Girl characters who retain their active qualities are clearly the exception (Rudman, 1995). Thus, studies indicate that not only are girls portrayed less often than boys in children's books, but both genders are frequently presented in stereotypical terms as well.
Your own story
• Rewrite the text for one of these pictures making it politically correct.
Adventure at the LighthouseTake 2
• Consider the following aspects of the text1. The words and phrases used to describe the
characters. How many references are there? What order do they occur in? What adjectives are used to describe them?
2. The actions the characters perform. What verbs are used? Can these be grouped in any way? What adverbs are used to describe these actions?
3. What the characters say. Who speaks most? What sentence functions do they use? (statement, exclamation, question, command) What do they say? What speech tags are used? For example ‘said’ , ‘exclaimed’.
