Gender Representation in ELT Materials: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Top Notch

Subject Areas : Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation

Saeed Taki ¹ , Atefeh Shahbazi ²

1 - English Department,Shahreza Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran
2 - English Department,Shahreza Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Received: 2014-04-16 Accepted : 2014-04-16 Published : 2012-05-01

Keywords: Ideology, critical discourse analysis, ELT materials, gender representation,

Abstract :

This study was carried out to investigate aspects of gender as represented in one of the currently used English language series in Iran, namely, Top Notch. In effect, the study analyzed the series in terms of nine major aspects of gender: female and male’s characters, female and male’s pictorial representations, female and male’s titles, activities, firstness of female and male in the mixed gender dialogues. To this end, Fairclough’s (2001) three dimensional model was adopted in order to extract the ideology behind these textbooks. The results revealed that the series tends to favor a certain gender.