Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to find out whether Iranian high school English textbooks are sexist textbooks which discriminate between male and female students based on their sex. Halliday's systemic-functional linguistic theory was used as an innovative framework to language gender bias studies. To this end, four English textbooks currently taught in the Iranian high schools were chosen as a sample of this study. The linguistics analysis revealed that there were more males in the Theme and Rheme position. In other word, males had dominated the communicative positions of the clauses in the textbooks. Also the outcome of the participant role analysis showed that the frequencies of males for different participant’s roles were more than that of females. Thirty males played the role of actors where as only twenty females were in the position of actor throughout the text of these textbooks. Eleven males were found in the role of senser in all clauses of the textbooks. The finding may be attributable to the writer `s attitude, culture, and traditional patriarchal system of Iranian society. Yet another reason why men are more visible than women may be related to the power of the influential policy makers (mostly men) who make curriculum decisions that favor boys and men.
Highlights
Educationalists are concerned about sexism and writers' attitude in textbooks because some textbooks may have destructive effects on students' personality
Since lexical and linguistics choice of the writer contributes to sexist language (Cameron1990, pp. 17-18), the methodology chosen for this study focuses on both vocabulary and agreement of grammatical items in sentences
Hallidays linguistics framework seemed most suitable to our linguistics analysis
Summary
Educationalists are concerned about sexism and writers' attitude in textbooks because some textbooks may have destructive effects on students' personality. Preponderance of males in the math textbooks may suggest to female students that mathematics is not really for them. A biased representation of female and male can lead to students' sense of what is normal for women and men in our society. The content of the textbooks helps reinforce gender as social division and perpetuate inequalities between men and women. The content of the books contains the most essential executive policy for achieving the targets of every educational system. Textbooks play important roles in determining the educational content and policy. They have been the focus of education authorities, textbook designers, researchers and teachers' attention
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