Analysing the Construction of Gender Identities: A Critical Discourse Study of Pakistani Secondary English Textbooks

Abstract

This paper analyses the construction of gender identities in English textbooks at the secondary level in Pakistan using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This study provides textual and visual analysis of textbook and image presentation in four popular textbook series (Grades 9-10), published by the Punjab Textbook Board, and Sindh Textbook Board between 2016-2022 based on the three-dimensional system of Fairclough and the socio-semantic inventory provided by van Leeuwen. The results show some systemic tendencies in gender inequality: male characters are occupied by more jobs (73-27), daily activities in the public sphere and power positions, and female characters are shown as mostly confined to the domestic sphere, as passive objects of action, and mostly as depicted in connection with their relationships with men. The analysis establishes three prevailing discursive practices, namely nominalisation of male agency, and collectivisation of female experience and aestheticisation of domestic labour as a set of discursive practices that naturalise patriarchal gender ideologies. These images are not only the reflections of the social inequalities currently present in our society but are also actively involved in their reproduction by justifying certain gendered subject positions. The article states that textbooks in English language in Pakistan serve as technologies of governmentality and that they are creating learners as gendered subjects using an apparently neutral educational material. The implications of the findings have great impacts on the textbook policy, training of teachers and curriculum development in the postcolonial education systems.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, gender representation, English textbooks, Pakistan, secondary education, identity construction, curriculum studies