S ING 0902336 Chapter1

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Wina Anggraeni Lestari, 2014

GENDER REPRESENTATION IN STUDENTS’ CONVERSATIONS IN A TEXTBOOK FOR UNIVERSITY

STUDENTS

Univeristas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This introductory chapter presents the background of the study, the

research questions, the aims of the study, the scope of the study, the methodology

of the study and the organization of the paper.

1.1Background

People with the same language are able to communicate one another

meaningfully. They communicate and share the world with other through

language. In this sense, language is functioned as sign to encode and interpret the

world (Hall, 1997). Beside as a tool to communicate, there are many other

functions that language has. One of them is the function as a representation

(Halliday, 1994). Representation determines how people see the world.

Representation is understood as “the production of meaning through language”

(Hall, 1997, p.16). Representation is regarded as a part of critical aspect in

studying literature and the social issue like gender.

Gender is often classified based on people sexuality but actually it is not

only the matter of being male and female biologically. It is a term that define male

and female to have certain attribute of social expectation, norms and rules, then

finally classifies them into feminine and masculine (Holmes, 2008 as cited in

Healy, 2009). Gender is “a social expectations associated to men and women”

(Sunderland, 1994). Traditional view of gender generally tend to have unequal

rules and expectations toward women and men. Men tend to have more

expectations than women. Women cannot be like a man. Such ideas or values still

adhere in public media and become main concern in studying gender

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studies are conducted to probe gender discrimination representation in current

public medias. One of public media is textbook.

As an important tool of education, textbooks are to provide a model of

social behaviour through the representation they contain (UNESCO, 2009). Some

studies of gender representation in textbooks have been conducted. Bias

representation are still found in the texts and illustration of the textbooks

(Otlowski, 2003; Harashima, 2005; Damayanti, 2006; Stockdale, 2006; Kemp,

2011; Mousavi & Garbavy, 2012). Bias representation in textbook is reported to

have negative effect in shaping students’ achievement and career choices

(Mutekwe & Modiba, 2012, p.365). This bias representation case is often found in

eastern country. But then, since the publications of some textbooks promoting

gender equality, there have been some significant progression on gender

representation in the eastern textbooks. Some studies result in less traditional roles

finding. Men and women are depicted having rather equal range of activity and

social status as men and no men dominance occured in the dialogues (Healy,

2009; Mineshima, 2008; Nagamoto, 2010; Yang, 2010).

As one of the eastern country, Indonesia seems to have little progression

regarding gender equality in textbook. In 2006, Damayanti still found gender bias

representation in some textbooks. She found that women are represented less

prestigious than men in terms of job and activities they did. And so does some

subsequent studies yield the same result (Rahmani, 2009; Sari, 2009; Maharani,

2013). Bias representation still become issue perpetuated in Indonesian textbooks.

However, those studies mainly focused on examining gender

representation in textbooks for primary school. It has best extend its area of

investigation to higher level textbooks. In that case, the present study is aimed to

investigate gender representation in a textbook for university students. The

present study focused on distribution of gender representation and speculate

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1.2 Research Questions

The study is aimed at investigating the following questions:

1. How are female and male discursively represented in the textbook?

2. What are the factors that potentially affect the representation of female and

male characters in the textbook?

1.3 Aims of the study

The present study is aimed at investigating:

1. How male and female are represented discursively in the textbook,

2. The factors that potentially affect the representations of male and female in

the textbook.

1.4 Scope of the study

The study was limited to investigate the distribution of gender representation and

speculate potential factor that influence the representation in the textbook. The

gender representation is drawn based on the framework of Van Leeuwen’s (2008)

sociosemantic inventory and Halliday’s (1994) model of transitivity in presenting

social actors in the texts. The texts in this sense are limited to the dialogues and

narative texts. The dialogues and the naratives are choosen because they contain

social action and female and male participants. An interview was conducted to

confirm the speculation on the finding of the analysis.

1.5 Methodology of the study

The present study is a descriptive study because the aims are to find out the

depictions of female and male participants and the factor of the representational

choices. Descriptive qualitative design was utilized to gathering the data.

The data were taken from the sentences of the dialogues and the narratives.

The dialogues consist of six mixed gender conversations and one female pair

conversation. The sentences in the dialogues and the naratives were separated per

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To answer the first question, The clauses of the dialogues and the

narratives were analyzed using the transitivity and sociosemantic inventory

framework. The result were presented in table for each analysis. To answer

question number two, speculation on factor that potentially influence the

representation were drawn from the analysis result semi formal interview to the

author of the textbook was conducted. The interview protocol was prepared to

keep it on track but the protocol was made open ended so that the answers were

not directed. The interview is intended to confirm the factors that speculate from

the finding.

1.6 Clarification of the terms

To avoid misunderstanding, here are some significant terms to be clarified:

Representation : using language to say something meningful about or to

represent, the world meaningfully, to other people (Hall, 1997)

Gender : a culturally-shaped group of attributes and behaviours

given to the female or to the male (Maggie Humm, 1989 as cited in

Sunderland, 1994).

Sex : terms that determine aspects of our anatomy, physiology

and neurology and may also have a role in shaping our behavioural,

cognitive and affective characteristics (Sunderland, 1994).

Sexism : a system of beliefs and practices which affirm the

dominance of men over women (Sunderland, 1994).

Transitivity : a system that construes the world of experiences into a

manageable of process type (Halliday, 1994)

1.7 Significance of the study

The study is intended to investigate the representation of gender in the textbook

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representation study in Critical Discourse Analysis, as well as to study on

language, gender and discourse in general.

1.8 Organization of the paper

The paper is organized into five chapters. Chapter 1 consisted of a glance of

background of the study, research formula, the overview of research design and

the organization of the paper. Chapter 2 presents the theoretical foundation of the

study which contain common understanding of representation, discursive

approach to representation, the understanding of Van Leeuwen concept of

discourse as recontextualization of social practice, the explanation about

sociosemantic inventory, the work of transitivity, gender and gender role and

gender role in Indonesian, and previous research on gender representation in

textbooks. Chapter 3 contain the research problems and research design, including

the subjects and sources of the study. Chapter 4 presents the finding and