A study on how social gender identity is constructed in EFL coursebooks

Gender is generally a social identity reformulated by societies and cultures so it is not a coincidence that coursebooks used in EFL classes are abundant with the reflections of these socially constructed gender identities. Thus, this study aims to find out how social gender identity is constructed in the reading passages in two sets of coursebooks, Face 2 Face and English File, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate. To collect the data, the reading texts in these coursebooks were scanned and the adjectives used to describe both genders were identified and categorized to determine what kind of characteristics have been attributed to male and female and how their social identities have been constructed. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.