GENDER NEUTRALITY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: TEACHER TALK AND COURSEBOOKS

Abstract

State of the problem. The article explores the phenomenon of gender neutrality in language education and presents the results of classroom discourse analysis and coursebook content analysis. The purpose of the study is to reveal to what extent teachers of English as a foreign language (L2 teachers) in Russia use gender-neutral language and gender-neutral behaviour strategies in the classroom and how gender neutrality is presented in the English coursebooks (created both by Russian and international authors). The novelty is determined by the fact that this is the first attempt to analyse teacher talk and English coursebook contents in terms of their gender neutrality in the Russian socio-cultural context. Results. Results show that many lessons and coursebooks analysed use some gender-neutral vocabulary and grammar strategies, but contain gender-stereotyping and unequal representation of personalia and case names. The proposed hypothesis that English teachers in Russia use gendered lexical and grammatical means, as well as gender stereotypes in the classroom was validated to a certain extent. The overall result demonstrates that more than 60% of teachers are not gender-neutral. As for the coursebooks, most of them seem to be gender-neutral in terms of grammar, and half of them seem to be gender-neutral in terms of vocabulary. At the same time, 60% of coursebooks contain gender stereotypes and 90% do not represent males and females equally (with male superiority in number). Conclusion. Special guidelines on gender-neutral English in the classroom for English teachers in Russia should be created to provide some recommendations on the use of gender-neutral language and the use of coursebooks. These guidelines should refer to the Russian socio-cultural context and contain all the necessary footnotes for teachers to explain to them the importance of gender neutrality in the English language and to help them to explain the phenomenon to the students, who might experience certain challenges while acquiring the concept of gender neutrality that is only minimally represented in the Russian language.