"But one day she met this wonderful boy,he make her smile and believe in her self": : An Investigation into the Construction of Gender in School pupils' essays

• Main Author: Lysén Frej, Ulrika
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan i Gävle, Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap 2009
• Subjects: Keywords: gender; education; texts; Halliday; adjectives; verbs; nouns; predicatives.; Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk; Didactics; Didaktik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-6466

This essay analysed how gender is established in students’ texts. The aim of the study was to find out if the students in a class in an upper secondary school were able to produce texts where female and male subjects were not influenced by prevailing gender roles. The analysis was based on Halliday’s Functional Grammar Theory. Furthermore, the results are interpreted in the light of the guidelines of the Curriculum and the Education Act. To fulfil the aim of this essay 32 texts were analysed from the extra linguistic factor of gender.                       The linguistic factors examined were verbs (dynamic/stative, transitive/intransitive), if the subjects function as actors or not were the factors used to establish if there is a difference between how females and males are represented in the texts. Furthermore the use of adjectives, nouns and predicatives modifying the grammatical subjects were also taken in consideration in the analysis. The hypothesis was based on a previous study made on the teaching book Blueprint A and the results from this current study were compared to the results from that study. The study finds that in the texts examined females are established as more stative than males and because of that it is possible to draw conclusions that the teaching book can influence the student in their writing but also that school not always uphold the goals of the Curriculum and the Education Act in the issue regarding gender equality.