The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

The concern about images in textbooks is crucial, for we are now in a multimodal world, facing various modalities every day (Kress, Jewitt, & Tsatsarelis, 2000). In addition, researching on gender-related elements in these textbooks contributes to uncovering power relations in these two sets of textbooks and even in the society, exploring possible prevalent ideas on gender in different contexts, better understanding and utilizing the textbooks. This study aims to investigate what and how gender is presented in two widely used series of EFL textbooks published at home and abroad (Go for it, GFI and Side by Side, SBS), and unearth merits and demerits of these two serials. Grounded on multimodal discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis framework (Leeuwen, 2005), the present study conducts a comparative analysis on examining gender-related elements in images and answers the following questions: 1) what is the ratio of men and women appearances depicted in the textbooks, and 2) what are male and female roles in workplace and how are they depicted in the relationships between them.

EFL,gender,multimodal discourse analysis,textbook