Firefighter or Fireman? Teachers’ attitudes towards gender neutrality in the foreign language classroom

• Main Author: Wessman, Sofia
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Högskolan i Jönköping, HLK, Ämnesforskning 2007
• Subjects: Gender decisive; language; gender neutrality; English; education; foreign language; linguistics; sexism; Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-11704

This essay investigates the extent and significance of a gender decisive language in the foreign language classroom. Focus lies on teachers teaching English as a foreign language and their attitudes towards gender neutrality from a pure linguistic point of view. My starting point was previous research done concerning my topic and the survey was performed through questionnaires that were sent out with both qualitative and quantitative questions to thirty teachers.   My findings indicate that the teachers contradict themselves when answering the questionnaire. Their knowledge of gender neutrality is surprisingly low, but they think they know more than they actually do. It is essential to teach more about gender decisive language in schools and at the Teachers’ Education to promote equality. Conclusions can be drawn that this is an issue not dealt with enough and that teachers seem to have a distorted image about their approach concerning gender neutrality.