Text Matters - A Study of Gender in a Contemporary Textbook for English A

Malmö högskola

Lärarutbildningen

Kultur Språk Medier

Examensarbete

Text Matters

A Study of Gender in a Contemporary Textbook for English A

En studie av genus i en nutida textbok för engelska A

Rikke Halberg

Lärarexamen 180 poäng

Moderna språk med inriktning mot undervisning och lärande i engelska

Examinator: Bo Lundahl Handledare: Sara Bjärstorp

Abstract

This dissertation is a feminist analysis of Blueprint A, a contemporary textbook for upper secondary English A. Relatively few studies on textbooks and gender have been carried out and those that have do not concern textbooks for the language subjects. In addition to the actual textbook analysis, I have studied the Swedish curriculum for the non-compulsory school system as well as the syllabus for English. Although the curriculum is explicit about the importance of increasing gender equality in education, there is no mentioning of how to implement a gender perspective in the syllabus for English. The textbook takes up various aspects of power, but it does not present any texts or discussions that challenge gender norms. The analysis reveals a rather conservative depiction of men and women.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

1.1 Background

1.2 Purpose and question

2 Methodology

2.1 Textual analysis

2.2 Selection

3 Theory

3.1 Feminism

3.2 Gendered Readings

3.3 Gender and Education

4 Analysis

5 Concluding discussion

1 Introduction

Gender equality is a complex concept, which concerns all aspects of life. One aspect of gender equality has to do with democracy. Robert W. Connell calls the discrepancy of men and women’s access to power, agenda and influence “the patriarchal dividend”. It means that men as a group benefit from the way society is arranged, not only in terms of economic benefits, but also with regard to authority, respect, safety and access to institutional power and the privilege of forming the normative practices. Any kind of dividend frequently, if not always, indicates a shortfall of democracy and should be explored and challenged. The school system is considered an important arena for democratic education, and Swedish schools have an official obligation to promote gender equality. Gender equality does not happen

automatically, however, but a “willingness to learn, gender theory and research can play a significant role in making a more democratic world.” (Connell 151). Thus, an increased gender awareness is a step on the way toward the goals set up for the Swedish school system which in turn can serve as a small piece in a larger puzzle.

1.1 Background

Throughout history, people have been divided into different categories. Ethnicity, class and gender are examples of such categories, and each category indicates a hierarchy and a power relationship. The fact that some groups dominate other groups within these categories has been given varying explanations over time. Divine intention and biology have been some of the central arguments for explaining and justifying subordination. Critics, however, have used the changing nature of such arguments to show that power relationships are constructed and liable to be transformed, rather than natural and static. Feminism explores and challenges the power relationship of gender, and claims that gender is actively and constantly being

constructed, a dynamic and negotiable creation in which we all actively partake. That does not mean that we have yet managed to negotiate a situation that gives equal power, privileges or value to men and women. On a structural level, societies, even those who claim to do so, do not value men and women equally. That is not the same thing as saying that on an individual basis, men do not like or respect women.

The study of gender from a critical, feminist point of view is both a subject of its own as well as a theory that is used in other areas of academia, from social sciences to humanities. Within the study of literature, feminist theory holds an important place. In her book Literature after

Feminism, Rita Felski states that not only is feminist criticism a widespread and well-known

field of study, but it has also had more impact on the teaching of literature than any other recent school of criticism. The claim is supported by a survey carried out by the Modern Language Association (Felski 5).

In Sweden, issues of class, ethnicity and gender are part of the educational policies from pre-school to university. The curriculum for the non-compulsory pre-school system (Lpf 94) states that “[t]he school shall actively and consciously further equal rights and opportunities for men and women. Pupils shall be encouraged to develop their interests without prejudice as to gender differences” (Lpf94 4). Equality is the ideal, at least on a rhetorical level. Furthermore, English is one of the “core subjects” of the Swedish upper secondary school system, which means that all students are required to study at least 100 upper secondary credits of English, the subject English A. It is thus a subject that all students will be in contact with. The main purpose of studying English, according to the syllabus, is to learn how to speak, read and write the language. But Lpf94 also states that the students should “reflect over ways of living, cultural traditions and social conditions in English-speaking countries, as well as develop greater understanding and tolerance of other people and cultures.” Thus, language is also considered a kind of cultural knowledge. A feminist claim is that all knowledge is gendered. Accordingly, an analysis of what kind of gendered knowledge can be extracted from the teaching material for English. Since textbooks are widely used in the English language classroom, this would be a reasonable place to begin such an investigation.

As mentioned above, gender is closely related to class and ethnicity. It follows that a gender analysis often has to take into consideration these aspects and that gender analysis can hardly be conducted in isolation.

1.2 Purpose and question

The purpose of this study is to investigate how gender is represented in one of the most recent textbooks for the Swedish Upper Secondary obligatory course English A, using a gender perspective. Since the selected textbook is anthological, most of the texts are “authentic” and not created specifically for the textbook. In addition to the literary texts, the textbook contains a number of images. I am interested in discussing what kinds of masculinities and femininities these texts (literary and pictorial) portray, as well as how equally men and women are

represented.

2 Methodology

2.1 Textual analysis

This study is based on texts and the method used is textual analysis. The theoretical

framework of the analysis is feminism. My stance is thus openly ideological. J. Amos Hatch explains that a common criticism of ideological analysis is that the result of the analysis is predictable. He also states, however, that “all research is political” (Hatch 191), in the sense that anyone carrying out research is not just a researcher, but also a person with different kinds of qualities and cultural experiences. Seemingly objective research also belongs to a system of values, making research political regardless of its supposed neutrality. Feminist research questions the norm and points to the fact that there may be other truths or realities than the one of the ruling norm. The political nature of a feminist study often stands out more clearly than studies that are based on other theories. My project is thus political in the sense that all research is, but also literally since I have chosen to use an openly ideological theory for analyzing my material.

Caroline Ramanazoglu and Janet Holland have defined some of the challenges to and within feminist methodology. Besides the alleged lack of objectivity, which is mainly an external criticism or challenge, there are also internal challenges within feminism itself. Western feminism is sometimes criticized for its tendency of forgetting aspects such as racism, heterosexism and nationalism. Another challenge is poststructuralist theory. Whereas the “traditional” feminist view of gender relations take the existence of women for granted, poststructural theories “take apart the grounds of feminist claims to knowledge, and treat ‘women’ and ‘gender’ as products of ideas rather than embodiment, patriarchy or social construction” (Ramanazoglu and Holland 4). The challenges of objectivity and ethnocentrism are debated on many levels, whereas the poststructuralist challenge is mainly debated in academic discourses.

I will consider these challenges when writing my paper. Felski states that critics who “read through a feminist lens […] are not projecting trendy but irrelevant ideas onto a hapless work of art. Rather, they are illuminating important things that were there all along” (12). Although I do not claim objectivity, I aim at avoiding such projections onto the texts and instead try to

“listen” to what the texts are saying using the tools mentioned above. I am aware that my gender (woman), my nationality and ethnic background (Danish and Caucasian), my social position (middle class) as well as my own attitudes to feminism all mean something in writing this text. I am not aiming at telling the last truth about textbooks or how they depict gender, but to present some aspects of the textbook that may not be obvious on the surface.

I am using textual analysis as a qualitative method, which makes it difficult to generate typologies beforehand. However, I am going to present quantitative facts about the frequency of the occurrence of men and women in the texts as well as the frequency of male and female perspectives. The strategies that I have used have been to examine the roles of gender in the texts, whether gender stereotypes are present and whether or not these are challenged or undisputed. The qualitative part of the analysis will be divided according to the analytical results.

2.1.1 Semiotics

What is known as “the textual turn in the humanities” refers to the idea of text in a wider sense than just written words. In this sense, text could be anything that meaning can be derived from: a book, a film, clothes, a building – all these can be treated as text. There is a resonance of this broad interpretation of text in the syllabus for English, in which it is stated that the students should “improve their ability to understand the contents communicated by different media” under the heading “goals to aim for”. Since Blueprint contains many images and encourages the reader to gain an awareness of them, I will approach the images as well as the texts as signifying systems. In order to do so, however, certain tools are needed.

Stuart Hall explains that “people who belong to the same culture must share a broadly similar conceptual map, so they must also share the same way of interpreting the signs of language” (Hall 19). The signs of language consist of two parts: signifier, which is the form signifying an object, for example the word chair or the image of a chair, and signified, which is the idea associated with the object. In order to produce meaning in a text, both the signifier and the signified are needed. In the “space” between the signifier and the signified, meaning is

produced, but within the limits of “our cultural and linguistic codes” (Hall 31). The combination of signifier and signified is a sign.

Signs, in their turn, can be linked to broader meanings. The terms used in semiotics are denotation and connotation. Denotation works on the descriptive level “stating the obvious”, whereas connotation is about deriving more complex meaning from the sign, drawing on “general beliefs, conceptual frameworks and value systems of society” (Hall 39). Hall refers to this part of the process as myth or meta-language, and explains how the denotation and connotation of an image forms a second-order language that “speaks” on a conceptual level and of other things than what the image actually contains. Thus, images – like text - can draw on the myth of nationality, gender and so on.

My analysis of Blueprint A is based on the book as a representation of signifiying systems, not as a collection of messages created by authors or editors. Stuart Hall explains that “neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems – concepts and signs […]. It is not the material world which conveys meaning” (Hall 25).

2.2 Selection

As stated earlier, I have chosen to use the textbook Blueprint A for my analysis. I have chosen to look at contemporary material, so a good starting point when selecting material was the curriculum from the latest major school reform in 1994, Lpf94. I have exclusively looked for textbooks published later than that. To get a representative selection, I did a mini-survey among the other students in my class, and found that the textbooks most commonly used at this level were Blueprint (2004), Project X (1997) and Short Cuts to English (2001). Although it would be interesting to investigate all three textbooks, I have chosen to limit the selection to one textbook in order to make a fulfilling analysis within the boundaries of this paper. Since

Blueprint is the most recent publication, it represents the “state of the art” of English

textbooks. Besides a selection of contemporary text, fictitious as well as factual, it also has a great deal selection of images of which I have included some in my analysis.

3 Theory

3.1 Feminism

The single form feminism is a somewhat misleading term. There is not just one feminism, but a multitude of feminisms. Thus, the term feminism, although it appears to be singular, does not represent a monolithic entity, but is rather a compound of for instance postcolonial feminism, Black feminism, Islamic feminism and Western feminism. Within these broad labels, there are additional subdivisions and numerous theories that differ, sometimes significantly, from each other. What these feminisms share, though, is the idea that power, wealth and knowledge are distributed unfairly along the gender division of men (as a whole) and women (as a whole). In the anthology Feminisms, Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Warhol state that “[f]eminist critics generally agree that the oppression of women is a fact of life, that gender leaves its traces in literary texts and on literary history, and that feminist literary criticism plays a worthwhile part in the struggle to end oppression in the world outside the texts” (Warhol and Herndl x), thus illustrating and rationalizing the political nature of feminist criticism.

One of the central points in feminism is the notion of a dichotomized worldview. A

dichotomy is a “conceptual separation or a division of a category into two sub-categories. The dichotomy can then be seen as a dualism that organizes the thoughts into separate classes. […] Normality and deviancy are such conceptual categories that define one another by intern exclusion. The normality defines what the deviancy is not, and vice versa.” (Miegel and Schoug 14, my translation). Dichotomized ideas about men and women, the attributes that connote the two, and the different value of those attributes have existed throughout history. The male and the female are perceived as opposites, mutually excluding each other in

dichotomies of for example Culture/Nature, Rational/Emotional and Intellect/Body, each pair connoting the male and the female respectively. What makes this interesting from a gender perspective is that although dichotomies often exist as something natural and common-sense, they seem to be dependent on the historical context. Thus, some of the attributes that connote masculinity and femininity change over time. Historian David Tjeder claims that in the 18th and 19th centuries, philosophies of how the “male passions” should be controlled in order for

“[t]rue masculinity was to fight and overcome the passions and sufferings.” (Tjeder 9, my translation). In other words, drinkers and gamblers were considered unmanly. Although society today still find drinking and gambling problematic, neither connotes unmanliness. Such changes can be seen as illustrations that dichotomies are constructions rather than static truths that merely reflect natural differences. If dichotomies can be seen as constructions, they can also be deconstructed. Deconstructing the ideas that are considered the norm is not merely a formal exercise, but a critical activity with political implications that can be valuable when looking at the dichotomy of gender, because it challenges the hegemony of the norm.

Another important feminist claim is that the ideas associated with the male have higher value than the ideas connoted to the female. This tendency is reflected in the way male identity and experience is seen as the standard of what it is to be a person. In other words, there is a male norm, a standard from which the female (and some forms of maleness) deviate. There are

authors and there are female authors, professors and female professors, doctors and female doctors. A quick search on google for “male author” gave 63.300 hits. When searching for

“female author”, the number of hits was 111.000. It is commonly known that there are fewer published female than male authors, so the extra hits for “female author” do not represent statistics. They represent female authors in the context of a male norm. Felski explains that

[feminist researchers] point to a very long history of equating the male with the universal and seeing the female as the special case. This history can be seen in the most sublime contexts – religion, philosophy, art – as well as the most banal ones – the male in the anatomy textbook, the use of “man” to include everyone. Images of the male can, it seems, embrace both men and women, while the female can only represent herself. (14)

Both the idea of dichotomy and the idea of male universalism are relevant to use in a gendered reading.

3.2 Gendered readings

As mentioned above, one of the challenges to feminism is the question of objectivity. Literary analysis has a long tradition of bringing in different perspectives, whether historical, social and philosophical. Gender perspectives on literature, however, have often been considered too

political or biased. An argument against “gendering the text” is that literature has the ability to transcend different boundaries in society, whether social, political or gender boundaries. It is true that some texts seem to have the ability to speak to people across these boundaries. One of the skills readers are taught, is to analogize and to connect with the text even if it is old, foreign or otherwise remote from the reader’s own situation. Feminist critics often find that there is a problem with this, however, which points back to the notion of male universalism. Felski claims that

[t]here is a lack of symmetry in the way we learn to analogize […]. [W]e are accustomed to finding broader resonances in male bodies, to glimpsing the sublime in stories of heroic struggle and drawing existential metaphors out of images of male solitude. We are less used to endowing female bodies with this kind of authority and reading female lives as rich in general resonance. I suspect this is true of men and women, who both learn to think of woman as the

embodiment of her sex rather than as a symbol of the human. (17)

The values that are put into texts are never universal, but are always a product of a value system.

3.3 Gender and education

There are numerous texts and theories about the role of gender in schools and how education systems affect, or are affected by, gender. Much of the research concerns how teachers

actively, but very often without consciously intending to do so, aid the reproduction of certain gender structures. Teacher and researcher Britt-Marie Berge describes how she felt when entering a class during one of the first (of many) observations carried out in a class that was rumored to be almost entirely without “boy dominance”:

It was as if there were no boys in the classroom. I felt uncomfortable and wrote in my notes that ‘the girls behave like dominant boys’. [Later] I understood how my experiences of almost total girl-dominance had been exaggerated. Instead of seeing the events as moments of equality, where “normal” gender discourses in this school had been transcended, I immediately felt sorry for the boys. (Berge 19, my translation)

I find this example beneficial, because Berge, an experienced gender researcher,

acknowledges that she intuitively perceived this situation as if something were “wrong” or out of focus. Although this example concerns the physical space of the classroom and not

textbooks, it exemplifies how it may often be easier to follow a norm than to resist it.

The curriculum states that all teachers “shall make sure that education in terms of its contents and its structure reflect both male and female perspectives” (Lpf94 13). Since it would be very hard to gain access to teachers’ collected teaching material, the most common source for evaluating teaching material is textbooks. According to the report Flickors och pojkars olika

förutsättningar och villkor from The Swedish National Agency for Education, only a few

gender studies on textbooks have been carried out. A closer look at the titles of those studies reveals that they have mainly been concerned with girls and science subjects. It is worth pointing out that textbooks for certain areas of education, like physics and math, have been objects for gender analysis, while other areas, like language subjects, have hardly been subjected to gender analysis at all. Furthermore, the areas that coincide with the researched textbooks are generally considered “problem areas” for girls. The textbooks for those subjects where girls tend do better (sometimes even better than the boys), such as English (Språkboken 262) have been left out of the gender discussion in general. It seems that since gender

questions often focus on girls/women (and more rarely on boys/men) and their disadvantages in society, whereas the areas where girls are not disadvantaged are often left unexamined.

A recent report from The Swedish National Agency for Education, I enlighet med skolans

värdegrund, has investigated how ethnicity, disabilities, gender, religion and sexual

orientation are presented in a selection of textbooks for secondary and upper secondary school. The subjects selected for the research are biology, history, religion and civics.

Although Swedish and English are two core subjects in both secondary and upper secondary, these subjects have been left out of the analysis.

Britt-Marie Berge and Göran Widding have carried out the analyses concerning gender. They found that “all the investigated textbooks have a chapter where gender, gender relations and power are commented specifically” (I enlighet med skolans värdegrund 31).

Other studies of girls and science subjects often seem to conclude that the textbooks for these subjects are too “masculine” to catch the attention of the girls. “The message of the contents

in [textbooks for science subjects] speaks first and foremost to the boys. The human connection is small in the books for chemistry and even smaller in the books for physics” (Flickors och pojkars olika förutsättningar 24, my translation). Thus, it is suggested that the content of textbooks is important for the students’ ability or willingness to learn a subject. Since this idea is presented in a report from the Swedish National Agency for Education, it may be something that is taken into consideration when textbook authors and publishers design new learning material.

Although the focus is mainly on girls and science, it is possible to find a few discussions about boys and language subjects. A common suggestion is that the boys act out against the school in general because school has become increasingly feminized. The idea is that female teachers cannot act as role models for the boys and that the boys are frustrated with the feminine values that their female teachers represent. The Swedish Department of Education states that “a problem is the near total dominance of female employees in the secondary school means that boys lack male teachers to identify with” (Utbildningsdepartementet 34, my translation). Although there is no discussion of whether or not the content of language textbooks appeals to boys, the quotation above shows a concern with the “feminization” of the school.

It is interesting that the discussion about how girls manage in the science subjects take up the majority of the gender discussion for textbooks and that the discussion differs from the one that concerns boys and language. In analyses that involve power relationships, there is a tendency to study the group that is outside the norm. In studies that concern ethnicity this means that “whiteness” has been studied and problematized more rarely than “blackness” or “coloredness”. Similarly, the focus of gender studies has been almost entirely on women. The fact that it is a fairly recent thing to problematize masculinity could be one reason that the focus is almost entirely on the girls. Nevertheless, the discussions found in literature concerning gender and education indicate that the contents of textbooks matter.

4 Analysis

Blueprint A is a relevant choice for several reasons. First of all, it is the most recent of the

textbooks in my selection, since it was published in 2004. Secondly, it only includes material from the 20th _{and 21}st _{centuries, which means that it does not focus on the “traditional canon”}

for English. Furthermore, the textbook has a wide selection of images. The book is divided into nine thematic chapters, with text and images followed by exercises. The layout is modern and each chapter is introduced with an image, headline and some explanatory text. The following pages in that chapter have a small frame above the page number with a fragment of the opening image. The typeset and outline of the texts vary according to the genre and theme.

There is a total of thirty-four printed texts, as well as listening comprehension exercises and tasks on writing and speaking. Six of these texts are narrated from a female perspective. Since images are included in the analysis, it is relevant to mention that there are eighty-five images in Blueprint A, of which twenty-four show females and fifty-two show men. Fifteen of the images show some sort of male force (police, soldiers, extremism or organized crime) while there are no images of women in such positions.

The book includes different issues that connect to the curriculum and syllabus. There are two chapters of the book that are dedicated to images: “Tainted Truth” is about commercial advertisement and “For Your Eyes Only – From Stills to Motion Pictures” is about images in general. This is in agreement with the statement in the goals for English mentioned earlier. Under the heading “Goals to aim for” the syllabus also states that the students should “reflect over ways of living, cultural traditions and social conditions in English-speaking countries, as well as develop greater understanding and tolerance of other people and cultures”. This is clearly connected to the statement in the Curriculum that “xenophobia and intolerance must be actively confronted with knowledge” (Lpf94 3). The book includes a chapter on ethnicity, “Wages of Hate”. But although the importance of gender equality is declared in the

Curriculum as well, there is no mention of gender in the syllabus for English. Interestingly, the lack of an explicit gender discussion is paralleled in the textbook.

Contrasts in gender and power

In “For Your Eyes Only”, there are some examples of abstract art, some of examples of optical illusions, and two still-photos: one depicting Marlon Brando as the mafia boss in

Godfather and one depicting Jennifer Love Hewitt in the teen horror movie I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The former shows a man, dressed in a suit, a hat and a bowtie. He

looks stern, and his upper lip is curled a bit, not in a smile, but displaying a severe expression. The photo taken from an angle slightly below the man and connotes machismo, power and self-confidence. In contrast, the still picture from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer denotes a young woman, photographed from above, trapped in some sort of eerie-looking hole. She is dressed in a tight, short tank top. She has a terrified and desperate look on her face and both her hair and top are damp. There is nothing self-confident about the woman in the picture, only vulnerability. The text, which is an excerpt from the manuscript, underlines this vulnerability: “A steel hook smashes through the screen right in Julie’s face! She

screams!” (Blueprint 209). The contrast is striking: the strong, untouchable man versus the

vulnerable, prey-like woman. Since these images are taken from blockbuster-movies, they will connote more than just the still picture. Godfather has been around for decades, and is considered a classic. The movie celebrates and romanticizes an extreme form of masculinity that includes violence, brotherhood, male honor codes, and a system that implies sharp division between the male and the female.

If there is an extreme form of masculinity, what then is an extreme form of femininity? There are certain attributes commonly connected to a mafia leader, but a female pendant to the mafia leader, would, at best, be a radical form of femininity, rather than an extreme

femininity. It is hard to think of a “direct translation” in this case, but example of women with agency and courage in movies could be the protagonist of Kill Bill or the women in Thelma &

Louise. Nevertheless, the image connotes another extreme form of femininity, namely this

frightened, trapped woman, a modern variety of the “damsel in distress”. It draws on the myth of the woman as a vulnerable, helpless without agency and in a subordinate position. In the midst of this distress and need for rescue, the director of the photo has ensured that there is something “for the (male?) eye” too – the skimpy, clingy clothes that accentuate the female proportions, emphasizing the vulnerability of the woman in this situation and stand in severe

It would be possible to assume that these images were chosen to consciously emphasize the gender differences. This does not seem to be the case, though. The texts are separate entities with separate work tasks. The picture of the mafia leader accompanies a “fill in the gaps” text about the movie, while the picture of the trapped woman illustrates an excerpt of the script from the movie. There are no cross-references between the texts, and although the whole section is about image consciousness, there are no tasks directly linked to these two images. There is a task linked to the script, however, which asks “what is the nature of the

relationships between characters in the film – equal? Is anyone superior? Inferior? Is anyone in love? Shameful? Angry? Happy? Lucky? Etc.” (Blueprint 213). This could be turned into a gender discussion, but it is not an explicit suggestion in the textbook itself.

Different dangers in cyberspace for boys and girls

The section “Virtual Reality for Real” begins with a story about a boy who enters a violent cyber world. The content of the text is underlined with a picture of a teenage boy playing a computer game: he holds an authentic-looking “weapon” and fires away at the screen. The next picture shows four still pictures from the computer game Max Payne, each one denoting a man either holding or firing a weapon. Although the point in the story is that computer games are bad for you, the pictures connote different aspects of machismo in computer games that are very popular and “cool” among teenagers – probably boys in particular. The layout and fonts are stringent and there are no excessive ornaments. The layout and images connote masculinity, violence and machismo, and the text seem to be aimed at a male audience.

The next article is called “Will Computers Become Human”. The title page shows a picture of a magazine cover with a man who has computer parts integrated in his body, a cyborg. Again, the layout is stringent and connotes masculinity. The text has a scientific flavor and includes quotations like “when we build intelligent computers, they will most certainly be able to share their wisdom with billions of other machines” (Blueprint 145). The text draws on the myth of the male genius and the male scientist. The “we” in the text is thus a “we” as in mankind, but also a very limited “we” that connotes a white male and thus excludes women as well as men of other ethnicity than Caucasian (or possibly Asian). Again, the text seems to provide something for the boys. Science and computers have male connotations, and although many girls play computer games, surf the internet and take an interest in the digital world, the main part of the section has a male perspective.

The last text in the section, however, is arguably something for the girls, and is an article adapted from the girl-magazine Cosmopolitan. Unlike the stringent layout of the previous texts, the article “A Match Made in Cyberspace” is garnished with a romantic, old-fashioned font and three small pictures: a cute little cupid, a heart-shaped chocolate box and a red rose. It is adapted from the magazine Cosmopolitan and the design of a magazine is kept intact with two columns instead of a “book-like” text. The article is about romance on the internet, and the images that accompany the text are clichés of romance. They are not presented as clichés in the context, though, but appear to be there to simply underline the text and draw on the myth of classic romance which includes flowers and chocolate (offered to the woman by a man), and a cupid striking people with love which blinds them and makes them unable to make rational decisions – or perhaps rather enhances woman’s inability to make rational decisions.

The introduction is a thorough guide on how to date safely on the internet. Although the text never says so explicitly, the layout described above clearly indicates that this guide is directed at girls. This reinforces the connotation of computers being a male field. One advice is to “[b]e honest. Make your intentions clear. If you’re just flirting, make sure the other person isn’t taking you too seriously. You may end up meeting face-to-face one day – so don’t create a false impression” (Blueprint 150). This piece of advice suggests a lurking danger that is greater for females. It is difficult to imagine this advice being given to a young male.

The article tells a story about June who is going to meet Elias, a man she has come in contact with through a dating site on the internet. The article follows June during her first meeting and follows up on what happens afterwards. After June and Elias meet in real life – he gives her flowers and has booked a table at a restaurant − Elias gets upset with June because she declines to follow him home. She breaks off the contact, but is glad she had the experience.

The article says something about the relationship between men and women in general. June declines to travel to Thailand with an unknown man because she knows that women should not go with strangers. Secondly, which is not directly stated in the article though, there is the question of bought love. If a man buys an unfamiliar woman ticket to Thailand, what might he be respecting in return? The same problem occurs after their first meeting. When June

still June who has to worry about the hidden agenda behind the different gifts and offers, and she is the one who has to stand up to the pressure of an upset date.

The selected texts suggest that whereas using the computers are potentially “dangerous” for boys on a psychological level, especially when used for playing games, boys can also partake in the wondrous, intelligent world of computers. Computers, however, imply a real, physical danger to girls. If a female is being a tease online and meets the male in the real world, that could be dangerous. The message to girls is to beware, and that although everything seems very carefree and romantic there are potential dangers underneath.

Gender and ethnicity

The chapters “Taken Hostage” is about terrorism and terrorists. Here, male universalism is very clear, since the term solely denotes male terrorists in the texts. The section’s main story is an excerpt from the book After the First Death by Robert Cormier. The title of the excerpt is Lollipops and Guns and is about two male terrorists in the USA. One of the terrorists is only sixteen years old, and the mission – hijacking a school bus full of kindergarten children – seems to be somewhat of a rite of passage for him. It is stated in the text that the men are not American. A reference to veiled women implies that they are Muslim. This entails different dilemmas during the hijacking. The hijackers attitude to female sexuality is stated when the youngest of them sees

a young girl walking on the pavement, her arms swinging at her sides, black hair sparkling, her full white blouse bright in the sun. American girls: he could not get accustomed to their blunt sexuality, the clinging jeans, the tight sweaters, the frankness of their faces holding few secrets. In his homeland, sexuality was implied, hinted at, not exactly concealed, but delicately veiled (Blueprint 88).

The hijackers have made plans to shoot the driver of the school bus, but this plan is obstructed when they discover that the driver is a young woman. (It is important to note that the story is narrated from a male, Muslim, terrorist perspective, but that the author of the text is white, Christian and American). The role of the female is still worth exploring. First of all, she does not get shot because she is a woman, but is told by the hijackers to look after the captured children instead. The story ends with the men pulling masks over their heads, something which intensifies the woman’s fear; the hijackers become “grotesque, monstrous figures

escaped from [the woman’s] worst nightmares. And she saw her own doom in the masks. She wet her pants so badly that the trickles down her thighs were like the caress of moist and obscene fingers” (Blueprint 95). The woman’s fear thus materializes in her wetting her pants, which in turn is described in sexualized metaphors of “obscene fingers” touching her lower body.

There is a strange code of honoir surrounding the dilemma of the driver being a girl and the hijacker’s sudden hesitation to kill. This draws on the myth that soldiers, whether appointed by government or forced by other circumstances, do not kill women (or children). Although this is not true in the real world, it is a myth that surrounds the form of masculinity lived out in “warriorship”. Soldiers may attack women in other ways, though. The reader has already been made aware of the hijacker’s attitude toward the “blunt sexuality” of American women. The young woman’s fear of the situation in general and fear of sexual assault merges. The metaphor of the urine being caressing fingers in the context of a hostage situation is repulsive and leaves no room for the female to take action, strike back or even keep her dignity.

There is a task following the text is headlined “The imagery game – migraine is a dagger”. The first line says that “a picture means more than a thousand words” (Blueprint 97), and explains metaphors. The task exemplifies with two metaphors, one being a migraine – dagger and the other being a gun – tumor, but the metaphor analyzed above is left out. The students are not encouraged to work with these metaphors or to look for additional in the text, instead the task goes on: “Try the following experiment: half the class writes what is love? or what is

real happiness like? And keeps them secret. The other half makes up answers […] resulting in

imagery like Love is a red sun rising or happiness is like a hot bath on a cold day. You may find the most remarkable metaphors!” (Blueprint 97). The sudden turn from the gloomy imagery to the very lighthearted is surprising and the love/happiness theme seems out of place and puzzling in this context.

Dignity is a central theme in the next text, an adapted newspaper article with the title “Former hostage Terry Waite Tells about 1,760-day Survival Locked in Beirut Prison Cell.” There is a picture of Terry Waite, shaking hands with what appears to be a Catholic priest, laughing and looking relieved and strong at the same time. The article is full of examples of how Waite kept up his spirit and his dignity during his long captivity. Statements like “I would say to my

102) and “because [Waite] refused to give in to feelings of sadness and self-pity, the painful memories did not have the opportunity to plague him later on and therefore not destroy him” (Blueprint 103) implies that although something traumatic has happened, Waite still had the “strength of mind” (Blueprint 103) to come out on top.

It could be argued that the two texts are not directly comparable since the first is fictitious and the second is based on actual events. It goes without saying that Waite, like anyone taken hostage, has suffered and that it is very positive that he has found inner strength to overcome his trauma. However, the interesting point here is not to measure these texts on a scale of truth, but to look at the striking differences in the choices of words, moods and phrases and visual images that are used to describe the situations. In other words, the texts, words and image, are representations and interpreted as signifying practices.

In the text about Waite, text as well as image connote of a universally humane and righteous person, and reproduce the myth that humanism and righteousness will prevail. At the same time, there are connotations of masculinity and whiteness, the kidnappers being faceless middle-eastern terrorists and the prevailing victim being a white male. This is not up for discussion in the work tasks, though. Instead questions like “[w]hat was and is Terry Waite’s personal philosophy, a philosophy that grew even stronger during his captivity?” (Blueprint 104). It is interesting why the case of Waite is chosen, since he was released from captivity in 1991, considering the man men and women who have been victims in hostage situations – of which Middle Eastern people are the majority – in events following 9/11.

In the section “Wages of Hate” ethnicity is at the center of discussion. The focus is entirely on American race relations, and the opening image is followed by a text that ends: “Will racial conflicts grow worse as the Spanish speaking community from Latin American grow bigger?” The image shows a man, a little boy, and a woman – they appear to be a Hispanic family − sitting on the floor in a homely environment. The father sits behind the child, and between them and the mother there are a heap of guns and bullets, which makes the image very disturbing. The child is holding a gun with the father’s help, and the mother looks at them, smiling approvingly.

This image connotes masculinity based on race, roughness, violence and danger. It draws on the myth of the dark, dangerous man and in combination with the text below, the image suggests that the playing with the guns and the child could be part of a larger racial uproar against white America. He has a very serious look on his face and the activity is clearly more than just a good time with his child. The woman does not take physical action but she looks mild and harmless which indicates that she approves of the situation. Weapons are often symbols of male protection of what their possessions – including women – and the image underlines that she is the passive part, the one that is protected by the men of the family.

Advertising as a gender neutral field

The chapter “Tainted Truth” discusses commercial ads. A common feminist claim is that women are often exploited in commercials. A flip through any commercial magazine would confirm this notion. Blueprint image shows a man in a position that connotes sexiness, this could possibly spark a discussion concerning men being commercially exploited on the same level as women. But because there is no equivalent picture of a billboard of a female, this discussion is not obvious. On the contrary, choosing a picture of a man with sexual connotations suppresses a gender discussion since it merely shows that men are used in sexualized commercials without further discussion of what that possibly entails. The textbook presents the ethical discussion about multinational companies advertising in the Third World, without taking the obvious opportunity to discuss the way contrast of how men and women are generally portrayed in commercials.

An argument against this could be that there is a picture of Britney Spears. The difference between Britney Spears and a typical billboard commercial of a female is that Britney Spears connotes agency and power. Furthermore, the pictures of Britney Spears is used in the

textbook to show the paradox that Naomi Klein, who is against commercial exploitation, uses the same tools for selling her book that Pepsi uses via Britney Spears for selling Pepsi. It is certainly a positive thing that women with agency are represented in a textbook, but it is peculiar that the textbook avoids a gender discussion entirely, especially since it brings up other discussions about power relationships.

Crime, punishment and gender definitions

As the title suggests, the chapter “Human Rights and Wrongs” sets out to discuss injustice. This would be an obvious place to include a gender discussion of some sort, but the chapter includes a story and a listening exercise about shoplifting and two texts about corporal

punishment of children, namely an excerpt from Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and a debate on the subject taken from The Daily Newspaper. In this way, the selection of themes in “Human Rights and Wrongs” is quite narrow.

The introductory image shows a girl of about seven. She stands in front of a concrete

building, and graffiti with the words “NO DRUGS SOLD HERE!” towers over her head. The image in combination with the chapter’s title creates an expectation about the content in the chapter. The title of the first text, which is written for the textbook, “A leather Jacket for a Drink”, further supports this expectation. There is an image showing a young man sitting in a room that looks like a club. He is hiding his face and seems to be “sleeping it off”. The text turns out to be about a teenage boy, seemingly well off, who gets caught shoplifting the first time he tries it. The story deals a little with the boy’s guilt and the immoral act of shoplifting but does not take the discussion any further. The tasks following the text are superficial questions like “How is he caught?” and a suggestion of dramatization. The teenage shoplifter is interrogated by a female police, but her role in the story is limited to interview-like

questions, whereas the boy’s thoughts and answers are reflective and complex.

The shoplifting story links to the excerpt by Roddy Doyle. In a presentation of the text, the students are asked to “imagine your father following you in circles around the living room, swinging at you with his belt – well, this is what happened to Paddy Clarke and his little brother Sinbad, after being caught shoplifting.” (Blueprint 164). The two boys have stolen candy on a stealing-spree, but their mother finds out about it and tells their father who hits the boys. The father acts out in an extremely violent way, but the mother is reduced to being an informer without further agency in the punishment. She does not sanction the punishment explicitly, but neither does she try to stop it, but it is indicated that it frightens her: “I looked at my ma. She was white. Her lips had disappeared. It served her right.” (169). In violent homes, beating the children and beating the wife is often a parallel process. The story provides food for thought, but again it does not have any in depth discussion about human rights, which is peculiar since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that

children should be protected from violence. Somalia and the United States are the only countries that have not signed the convention, which is a relevant fact for a discussion of differences within English speaking countries and for a discussion, although controversial, about gender, since circumcision of girls is a frequent practice in Somalia. The United Nations Human Rights Charter is included in a task for the chapter’s last text, though, in a suggestion for “further studies”.

A pro/con debate over corporal punishment is carried out between Richard Lynn, “professor of psychology at the University of Coleraine until his retirement earlier this year” (Blueprint 172) and “leading expert on child development” (173) Penelope Leach. The article dates back to 1995, and Lynn’s claim is that “physical punishment sometimes has a useful role in

bringing up children.” (172), while Leach believes in the opposite. The way that the debaters are introduced is remarkable. Although Leach has held a Ph.D. in psychology since 1964, she is not given any academic credit but merely labeled “expert” which can mean anything. Lynn, on the other hand, is accredited for his professorship, which doubtlessly gives his statements scientific substance. This selection supports the dichotomy of men being rational, scientific and stern, and women being emotional and representing “soft values” that are more or less instinctive rather than based on scientific observations. This is a choice made by the editor of the debate in the newspaper and the textbook is merely presenting what is already there. In the student tasks following the texts, however, the debaters are continuously referred to as

“professor Richard Lynn” (174), while Penelope Leach is referred to plainly by her name.

The positive examples

In the chapter “What’s Wonderful?”, a story about a young woman, Aliy, who has moved to Alaska to work as a professional dog-racer is included. It is implied that she had a difficult time finding a race that would include women (Blueprint 75). She has been successful as a dog-racer, but it is implied that her age and gender has not been entirely uncontroversial: “There are a lot of old guys who always race, and it seems like it has always been the same names. I broke into this circle.” It is also implied that this place in Alaska dominated by men demographically. Aliy works part-time as bartender, “doing an excellent job of serving the male customers” and that she is “the most eligible bachelor around.” (Blueprint 77). This doesn’t affect Aliy, who “handles these men with ease, she’s quick with words and even

In the chapter “Life on the Edge”, stories about women doing things traditionally reserved for men are included. The texts in the chapter deal with the search for a thrill found in adventure-sports, and the main picture shows a woman about to do a bungee jump off a cliff, and one of the two listening exercises is an interview with the first woman to reach the North Pole. Nonetheless, the male, universal perspective dominates the text “Is Everyday Life too Dull”, which is based on a TIME-article. It is said that “risk-taking is as old as man vs. saber tooth” (Blueprint 29), claiming that the drive for risk-taking is in the genes passed on from our forefathers. Although it is not explicitly stated whether “man” means male or humankind, the myth connected to “man vs. saber tooth” is a male. The foremothers play no significant role when explaining today’s search for thrill except for implicit carriers of offspring: “Those who were good at such risk-taking were not only better at killing lions, but also more likely to attract the opposite sex and pass their desirable survival traits on to their off-spring – which would be us!” (Blueprint 30). The text takes a universal stance, but at the same time it draws on the myth of the male caveman. In this way, the “thrill-seeking gene” has male

connotations, but it is positive to see that women participating in these activities are included in Blueprint A.

5 Concluding discussion

Of the thirty-four printed texts presented in Blueprint A, ten are constructed specifically for the textbook and has no explicit author. Sixteen of the acknowledged authors are men, while eight are women. There are eighty-five images in the book, of which fifty-two depict males, and twenty-three depict females. The gender-gap continues in regard to the perspective of the narration (regardless of the gender of the author): In seventeen of the texts, there is a clear male perspective, whereas a clear female perspective is present in only six. Eleven texts are “gender-neutral”, yet a text like “is Everyday Life to Dull” turns out to have a male

perspective. Furthermore, of the six texts presented from a clear, female perspective, three depict the female in situations where she is vulnerable to attack from a male, and there is no female equivalents to the texts and images that connote male force and violence.

This little quantitative assessment of Blueprint A underlines the lopsidedness in gender equality. Although the book presents male as well as female perspectives, there is a significant majority of male representation in all aspects.

A textbook is only a small part of the complex entity that is education. Most teachers

probably vary their teaching material and few would use a textbook only. On the other hand, most teachers probably use textbooks sometimes, because textbooks are practical and “hands-on”. Furthermore, this investigation only comprises one textbook. That means that other textbooks for English may have included gender discussions, and the fact that I have not had access to the teacher’s manual for Blueprint A means that I cannot assess whether or not gender discussions are suggested in that material. I would have expected to find explicit gender discussions in a textbook as recent as Blueprint A, and I was surprised to find that women in vulnerable situations as well as male force are left unproblematized.

The main objective of a textbook for English is naturally to facilitate the students’ language learning. Textbooks are one of the main tools used for this purpose. In the case of Blueprint A, some of the ideological values from the school policy documents shine through in the

textbook, while others, like gender, are left out entirely. This is odd in the light of the

Works Cited

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Skolverket. Curriculum for the non-compulsory school system Lpf 94. Ödeshög: Fritzes, 2006.

Skolverket.”English – aim of the subject” 2000. Online 18 August 2006.

〈http://www3.skolverket.se/ki03/info.aspx?sprak=EN&id=EN&skolform=21&ar=0607&infot yp=8〉