M.A. Thesis:

A Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on Analyzing Gender Roles in Family and Friends Series

The present study was an attempt to explore gender representation in Family and Friend 2 and 5. That was on the genderism of these textbooks by critical discourse analysis methods, which are the social actor representation framework of Van Leeuwen (1996), and the transitivity theory of Halliday and Matthiessen (2004). The findings of this study are in line with Parham (2015) who examined the representation of gender in conversations, illustrations, and graphic design of the cover in nine packages used to teach English to young children. One of these books was the Family and Friends textbook. The findings of this study showed that females, however, appeared to be the initiator of conversations 30% more frequently than males. On the other hand, the findings of this study are in contrast with Esmaeili and Arabmofrad (2015). They used a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach to investigate the linguistic representation of male and female social actors in Family and Friends 4, 5 and 6 using van Leeuwen’s (1996) representational framework and Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004) Transitivity Theory Model. The finding of their study showed that in Family and Friends 4, 5 and 6, male social actors were represented more frequently than females and they were more activated and participated and in the material process had the upper hand.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Gender, Textbook, Representation, Social Actors, Transitivity