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GENDER REPRESENTATION IN CHILDREN’S STORIES:

ATRANSITIVITYANALYSIS

Ton Nu My Nhat*¹, Ho Nu Nhu Y²

1. Institute of Linguistics, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Vietnam

2. Department of Foreign Languages, Quy Nhon University, Vietnam

Received 6 February 2021

Revised 10 April 2021; Accepted 16 July 2021

Abstract: The overriding purpose of this study is to examine the features of gender

representation in the English stories for children by analyzing the transitivity system, which is a

component in the ideational meaning of systemic functional grammar, associated with the

internationally influential linguist M.A.K Halliday. The data were collected from the website

https://www.bedtimeshortstories.com and analyzed at the levels of clause and word group. The results

show that all the six types of transitivity processes are found, with material processes having the highest

frequency and followed by verbal, mental, relational, behavioral and existential processes. Besides, both

genders are represented in a relatively equal manner in terms of occurrences as participants in different

process types, though some gender bias still perpetuates. This may present a tangible challenge for those

who attempt to use stories for children for educational purposes.

Key words: gender representation, children’s stories, transitivity, Systemic functional grammar

1. Introduction^*

Children’s literature is widely

for most age groups, children’s literature is

normally utilized in the educational context

as reading input for ESL students. It is this

unwavering influence of children literature

that captured the attention of linguistic

scholars (e.g., Davies, 1993; Nazari, 2007;

Skelton, 1997). Driven by this same

direction, this study is aimed to contribute to

the practice of exploiting this genre in the

teaching of English as a foreign and/or

second language literature; it also aims to

contribute to the literature on language and

gender, ‘which has been moving from seeing

language as reﬂection of gender towards

language as construction of gender’

(Nguyen, 2017, p. 156). This study focuses

on the gender features in the English stories

for children and determines whether any

considered a potent medium through which

young readers absorb the long-standing

cultural heritage (Bettelheim, 2010). These

handed-down cultural values are preserved

and disseminated through stories for

children - through their ‘messages about

right and wrong, the beautiful and the

hideous, what is attainable and what is out of

bounds - in sum, a society’s ideals and

directions’ (McCabe et al. 2011, p. 199). By

orienting and shaping how children should

reflect on themselves and society, this form

of literature is, beyond doubt, endowed with

enormous social power (Smith, 1987).

Moreover, Lazar (1993) points out that given

its widespread popularity as a reading source

^*Corresponding author.

Email address:

[email protected].vn

https://doi.org/10.25073/2525-2445/vnufs.4678

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gender bias exists. The research questions to

be answered are: (1) how are female and

male characters presented in terms of

participant roles in the stories under study?

and (2) is there any significant gender bias in

the stories?

in the flow of events as taking place

through some input of energy’ (p. 179).

Prototypically,

these

relate

to

perceivable, concrete changes in the

material world. They also cover abstract

processes. The main participants in the

material process are Actor and Goal:

The Actor is ‘the one that does the deed’

― that is, the one that brings about the

change. (p. 179), and the Goal is the one

‘to which the process is extended.’ (p.

181)

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Systemic Functional Grammar

Systemic Functional Grammar

describes and explains the organization of

‘meaning-making resources’ used to

communicate meanings and perform

multiple functions in various contexts of our

everyday lives. This framework divides the

functions of language into three types. These

are the ideational meta-function - language

is used to construe our experience of the

outer world and our inner world; the

interpersonal meta-function - language is

used to enact our personal and social

relationships, and lastly the textual meta-

function - language is employed to organize

discourse and create continuity and flow.

• Mental processes construe participants

entangled in conscious processing,

including processes of perception,

cognition and affection. The main

participants in this process are Senser

and Phenomenon. Senser must be

endowed with consciousness because it

is ‘the one that ‘senses’ ― feels, thinks,

wants or perceives’ (p. 201). On the

other hand, what ‘is felt, thought,

wanted, or perceived’ is named

Phenomenon (p. 203).

• Relational processes are processes of

being, becoming, in which a participant

The

ideational

meta-function

encompasses logical function (language

describes logical relationship between two

or more meaningful units) and experiential

is

characterized,

identified

or

circumstantially situated. The English

system operates with three main types

of relation – intensive, possessive and

circumstantial, and each of these comes

in two distinct modes of being –

attributive and identifying. (p. 215). The

items and participants involved are

variously termed Carrier, Attribute,

function

(language

expresses

our

experiences with external and internal

worlds). The experiential function is chiefly

construed by a configuration of a process,

participants involved and any attendant

circumstances.

Identifier,

Possessed, Token, or Value.

• Behavioral processes are processes of

‘physiological and psychological

behavior’, like breathing, coughing,

smiling, dreaming and staring. The only

participant in this process is Behaver, a

prototypically conscious being (p. 248).

• Verbal processes are processes of

saying, such as telling, stating,

Identified,

Possessor,

2.2. Transitivity

‘The transitivity system construes

the world of experience into a manageable

set of PROCESS TYPES.’ (Halliday &

Matthiessen, 2004, p. 170). Transitivity

includes six kinds of processes: (a) material

process, (b) mental process, (c) relational

process, (d) behavioral process, (e) verbal

process and (f) existential process.

• Material processes construe the ‘doing’

informing,

demanding,

asking,

offering,

querying,

threatening,

and ‘happening’, ‘a quantum of change

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suggesting, and so on. The major

participants are Sayer and Target.

• Existential processes function to

introduce an existence into the text, as a

first step in talking about it. The

Table 1

existence may relate to an entity or an

event, which is simply labelled Existent.

Table 1 summarizes the process

types, their meanings and participants.

Process Types, Their Meanings and Participants (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 260)

Participants,

PROCESS TYPE Category meaning

directly involved

obliquely involved

material:

action

‘doing’

‘happening’

‘behaving’

Actor, Goal

Recipient, Client;

Scope; Initiator;

Attribute

event

behavioral

Behaver

Behaviour

mental:

‘sensing’

‘seeing’

Senser, Phenomenon

perception

cognition

desideration

emotion

‘thinking’

‘wanting’

‘feeling’

verbal

‘saying’

Sayer, Target

Receiver; Verbiage

relational:

‘being’

Carrier, Attribute

Identified, Identifier;

Token, Value

Attributor, Beneficiary

Assigner

attribution

identification

‘attributing’

‘identifying’

existential

‘existing’

Existent

Another component of the clause as

representation is the circumstance. This is

the name given to those elements which

carry a semantic load but are neither Process

nor Participant. Circumstances, in some

respects, are more peripheral than

Participants. They occur freely in all types of

processes with essentially the same

an entity which is gender selected. In this

study, we chose to take into consideration

only the processes. This is an analytical

decision, far from a claim that circumstantial

elements are not associated with gender.

2.3. Relevant Studies on Gender

Representation

Given the potential effects of

children’s literature on the social

development of the young generations, these

types of discourse have withdrawn the

attention of many researchers, such as

Acevedo (2010), Esen (2007), Helleis

(2004), Mathuvi et al. (2012), Ullah (2013),

to name just a few. For example, Mathuvi et al.

(2012) conducted research on gender

displays in 40 picture storybooks which

were used as supplementary reading texts for

significance

wherever

they

occur.

Semantically, circumstantial elements refer

to such matters as the settings, temporal and

physical, the manner in which the process is

implemented, the people or other entities

accompanying the process. There are nine

types of circumstances: Extent, Location,

Manner, Role, Cause, Contingency,

Accompaniment, Matter, and Angle. Of the

types of circumstances, those of Behalf,

Accompaniment, Role, Angle may involve

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elementary students in Kenya. Based on

Goffman’s model of decoding gender

displays and visual sexism, the findings

indicated that though females were painted

in both positive and negative images, they

were largely portrayed as subordinate to men

in function ranking. These conclusions

corroborated with previous studies on

children’s texts (Acevedo et al., 2010;

Helleis, 2004). Gender display was also

examined in the light of proper names, nouns

and pronouns. Studies in different children's

books revealed that male characters were

given more culturally specific names, nouns

and pronouns than female counterparts

(Esen, 2007; Ullah, 2013).

commonly read, totaling 3,285 running

words. The criteria to be chosen were

accessible and sizable. The titles, along with

their word-count, are shown in Appendix

and coded as [S1]-[S10].

3.2. Data Analysis

The unit of analysis is the clause.

Given the aims of the study, only the

linguistic-gendered clauses were analyzed in

terms of the features under focus. Linguistic-

gendered clauses are those that involve one

gender – male (M) or female (F). Since the

samples are stories for children with

elements of fantasy and imaginary worlds,

various animals are endowed with human

characteristics, among which are verbal,

mental, physical abilities and, of course,

gender identity. It is therefore justifiable to

take such human-like characters into the

analysis. Gender identification was based on

the nominal groups. Some are inherently

either males, such as ‘King’, ‘Prince’,

‘brother’, ‘son’, ‘father’, or females, such as

‘Queen’, ‘Princess’, ‘sister’, ‘daughter’,

‘mother’. The personified animals were

based on the pronouns referring to the

antecedents, either ‘he’/ ‘him’ or ‘she’/ ‘her’.

Some recent studies have applied the

Transitivity system in the systemic

functional

grammar

(Halliday

&

Mathiessen, 2004) to explore gender

representation in English learning materials.

For instance, Sari (2011) investigated the

representation of males and females in a

series of Indonesian primary English

textbooks and found that male characters are

given higher visibility than females in terms

of their occurrence frequency and the

participant roles. Likewise, Gharbavi and

Mousavi (2012) examined four currently

used Iranian highschool English textbooks

and concluded that males outnumber their

counterparts in almost all participant roles,

except for the Senser role.

As regards the compound word

groups, we counted only the obvious males

or females (e.g., ‘the Stepmother and the two

Stepsisters’), which can then be referred to

by ‘they’ or ‘them’, ‘we’ or ‘us’. The

participants involving both genders (e.g., ‘a

good, kind King and his Queen’, ‘the ant and

the dove’, ‘the prince and Belle’ etc.) were

excluded from the quantification of

frequency. Besides, the nominal groups

which are not referring expressions (i.e.,

those used to refer to a particular character)

were also excluded (e.g., ‘The Prince visited

every house in the Kingdom, but he could not

find one girl who could wear this shoe.’).

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Sampling

The source of the data is the website

https://www.bedtimeshortstories.com/,

which offers a diverse collection of widely

known and captivating stories for children.

Therefore, the stories are usually exploited

as a resource for English language teaching

in foreign contexts. Due to the length of each

sample and the depth of the analysis, the

number of samples is restricted to only ten

stories deemed as well-known and

The analyses of each clause in terms

of process and of each nominal group

realizing a participant in terms of role were

manually undertaken because both are

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heavily dependent on the meanings in

context. The analyses were independently

performed by the two researchers, and then

compared between the two analyzers. The

fusing, indeterminate cases were agreed

upon based on discussion; these mostly

involved the behavioral processes, as “the

least distinct of all the six process types”

(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 248).

(tantamount to 43.48% of all gendered

instances found), followed by verbal,

mental, and relational processes, each of

which occupies a relatively equal share

(18.18%,

15.72%,

and

14.98%,

respectively). The dominance of material,

mental and relational processes is no

surprise,

since

Matthiessen

(1999)

generalizes that material, mental and

relational are the main process types in the

English transitivity system. However, the

frequent presence of verbal processes, which

account for approximately one-fourth

(18.18%) is worth noting, given its status as

one of the three marginal processes in the

transitivity system. This deviation can be

justified by the nature of children’s stories:

Talking characters and their verbal

exchanges are extensively used to ease

young readers’ understanding process. At

the other end of the scale are behavioral and

existential processes (5.89 and 1.71%,

respectively). The distribution of these

process types is summarized in Table 2.

In the following section, the source

of each example is referred to by the number

of the story as listed in the Appendix,

enclosed in square brackets.

4. Findings and Discussion

4.1. The Frequency of Process Types

The analysis reveals that 407

linguistic-gendered clauses are used across

ten chosen children’s stories. These

gendered instances were categorized in

terms of process types. Material processes

dominate the picture with 177 instances

Table 2

Distribution of Process Types

Process

Material Verbal Mental Relational Behavioral Existential Total

No. of occ. 177

74

64

61

24

7

407

100

%

43.48

Frequency

18.18 15.72

14.98

5.89

1.71

4.2.

The

of

Gender

the poor man, etc. A closer look reveals that

there are more male characters than females

in most stories, except for S6, S7 and S8.

What seems intriguing here is that most

animals endowed with human traits are

taken as males, especially ones that embody

potent entities, such as the flounder in S5 or

noble personalities such as the monkey in

S1, the frog in S2 and the beast in S10. There

are also female animals like the ant in S9 and

the baby horse in S3, yet none of them are

endowed with any paranormal or social

powers.

Representation in Transitivity Processes

As seen from Table 3, all the ten

chosen stories have both male and female

characters and the total proportions of the

two genders are roughly equal, with the

figure for males being insignificantly above

that of females (51.02 vs. 48.97). The

nominal group realizing the participants are

mostly simple, hardly modified, such as the

prince, the stepsister, his wife, the baby, the

princess, the Queen, the King, Belle, her

father, the beast, the flounder, his first son,

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Table 3

Number of Male and Female Characters

Total

No.

No. of characters by gender S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10

%

Male

4

2

4

3

2

1

3

5

3

4

1

3

2

1

2

1

25

24

51,02

48,97

Female

Table 4 summarizes the frequencies

of each participant role across gender in the

six process types.

doing, or undertaker of the process

happening. That males corner a significantly

high proportion of material processes

portrays them as active, powerful and

Table 4

autonomous.

frequently

Moreover,

described

males

are

Distribution of Types of Processes

in

physically

Type

M

F

Total

177

demanding actions like ‘riding’, ‘taking’

(catching or grabbing something), ‘going’,

‘catching’, ‘getting’, or ‘finding’. A point to

note is that in S7 and especially S6, females

constitute a higher number of Actor roles,

which seems to be conflicting with the

overall trend of male dominance. However,

this difference must partly result from a

significantly higher number of females in

these two stories, as introduced in Table 3 (5

vs. 3 and 4 vs. 3).

MATERIAL

Actor

89 84 163

03 26 29

04 04

Goal

Recipient

VERBAL

Sayer

74

38 36 74

14 11 25

61

Receiver

RELATIONAL

Carrier

Female characters show a higher

inclination to Goal participation (as

summarized in Table 4), at whom the actions

are directed. This result echoes with what

has been found by Sari (2011), who

discovered the dominance of male as Actor

and female as Goal in the English textbooks.

Such representations may perpetuate the

stereotypes of females as passive,

dependent, and simultaneously cement the

image of males as being active, independent.

26 35 61

64

MENTAL

Senser

38 26 64

06 05 11

01 01

Phenomenon

Recipient

BEHAVIOURAL

Behaver

24

08 16 24

07

EXISTENTIAL

Existent

Another noticeable result is the

interaction between females and males in

material processes. When males take the

position of Actor, they tend to direct their

action at females, who can be Goals or

Recipients (e.g., ‘till he met a kind girl’ [S2];

‘[The Prince] accompanied her in’ [S6];

‘[He] trying to bring his daughter back to

life’ [S8]; ‘he had found a real princess’

[S4]). In contrast, female Actors are more

02 05 07

4.2.1. Material Process

The most frequently occurring

participant in the material process is Actor,

with 89 featuring male characters and 84

female characters. Seven out of ten stories

see higher occurrences of males as Actor.

Actor is the performer of the process of

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likely to aim their actions at other females

(e.g., ‘[the old Queen] allowed her to rest’

[S4]; ‘The old Queen led the princess to the

bed’ [S4]; ‘The Prince met her at the door’

[S6]).

significant margin in the cognitive group,

roughly 3 times higher than females.

Meanwhile, females enjoy

a

higher

frequency in desideration sub-processes,

particularly with processes like ‘crave’,

‘wish’, ‘hate’ (e.g., But as she craved for

more, one sleepless night she wished the

ultimate wish - she wanted to be like a god.

[S5]).

Another interesting observation

relates to a common process in children’s

stories, the act of becoming the husband and

wife. This act can be linguistically realized

in two ways. It could be put as “A marries

B”, which is a material process with A as

Actor and B as Goal. Otherwise, we could

say “A and B get/are married”, which is a

relational process with A and B as Carriers

(equal participants). What captures the

researchers’ attention is that the material

pattern “A marries B” is more frequently

used, and mostly realized with a male

character as A (Actor) and a female as B

(Goal) (e.g. ‘The King marries a beautiful

princess’ [S1]; ‘The King marries a new

Queen’ [S6]; ‘The Prince took her for his

wife’ [S6]; ‘The Prince then asked if he

could marry the Princess’ [S7]. An

exception is found in S6, where the prince

asked Cinderella: ‘Will you marry me?’.

Here, for the first and only time across ten

stories under investigation, a female is

positioned as the Actor of the process

‘marry’. Nonetheless, it should also be

noticed that this clause is projected by a male

character in which he is the Sayer.

Table 5

Distribution of Subtypes of Mental

Processes

Male Female Total %

Cognition

Perception

15

11

6

21

18

12

13

64

32,81

28,12

18,75

20,31

100

7

Desideration 5

7

Emotion

Total

7

6

38

26

Secondly, the process verbs seem to

be distributed in a gendered manner. Some

processes can be used for both males and

females (such as hear, know, love, realize,

see, think, want); however, many others

accompany males only, such as believe,

decides (x3), find, forget, like, overwhelm,

stun, devastate, alarm (e.g. ‘He was so

overwhelmed by her beauty’ [S7]; ‘The King

is stunned by the little girl’s answers.’ [S3];

‘He was devastated and started crying and

trying to bring his daughter back to life

[S9]’; ‘The dove was alarmed by the voice of

the hunter [S9]’).

4.2.2. Mental, Relational and

Verbal Processes

Mental processes constitute about

16% (15.72%), and male Sensers outnumber

their female counterparts (59.37% vs

40.62%). Phenomenons appear in well under

one-fourth of the mental processes (17.18%)

and only one Recipient is found (‘He only

wanted the rose for his daughter Belle’

[S10]). Some surprising findings arise from

a detailed analysis of the mental processes

(Table 5). Firstly, males have larger

proportions in three sub-processes cognitive,

perceptive and emotive, especially with a

The final revelation is concerned

with the equal treatment of Phenomenon:

Males and females alike are heard, seen,

loved (e.g. ‘heard the princess crying’ [S2];

‘seeing the ant in trouble’, ‘loved his

daughter more than anything’ [S8]; ‘loves

him’ [S10]; ‘saw the beautiful dove sitting on

the tree’ [S9]; ‘loved the beast’ [S10], ‘hears

of the two brothers.’ [S3]).

Relational processes account for

approximately 15% (14.98%), which were

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92

further analyzed in terms of the three sub-

processes. The findings are shown in Table 6.

There are only three instances of

circumstantial sub-processes, tantamount to

a marginal proportion of 4.91% (e.g., ‘You

are at the Ball?’ [S6]; [two brothers] ‘are off

to the market.’ [S3]; ‘the boy is not there!’

[S1]). Regarding possessive sub-processes,

7 out of 12 Carriers are female; moreover,

from a semantic viewpoint, three of these

female Carriers possess items related to

‘baby’ (e.g., ‘the Queen had a baby girl’;

‘The King’s wife soon has a baby boy’; ‘The

new wife has a baby boy’. [S1]), while the

other instances involve material, concrete

items (e.g., ‘Cinderella instantly had a

lovely dress and shoes’, ‘We must get new

dresses’ [S6]).

by males are varied, ranging from abstract

entities like ‘dream’, ‘idea’, ‘opportunity’

(e.g., ‘One night, the teacher has a dream.’

[S1]; ‘The poor man has no ideas.’[S3]; ‘he

had an opportunity’ [S8]), to concrete,

touchable things like horse or castle (e.g.,

‘The rich brother has a big, strong stallion.’

[S3]; ‘The castle belonged to a hideous

beast’ [S10], ‘The poor brother has a young

mare.’ [S3]). One cannot ignore the different

natures of the concrete items possessed by

the two genders: while males are entitled to

things traditionally attached with long-term,

stable values like cattle - useful for

transportation and farming, or castles -

permanent accommodation and a token of

social status, females are often conjured up

within the image of frivolous, short-valued

possessions like dresses or shoes.

On the contrary, the items possessed

Table 6

Distribution of Subtypes of Relational Processes

Male

Female

No. of occurrence %

Total

No. of occurrence %

4,91

Circumstantial 2

3,27

8,19

1

7

1,63

3

11,47 12

44,26 46

57,37 61

Possessive

Intensive

Total

5

19,67

75,40

100

19

26

31,14 27

42,62 35

The intensive group has the biggest

figure across the table (75.40%). Given its

high percentage, closer analysis was

undertaken with its instances being put into

2 modes: attributive and identifying

(Table 7).

Table 7

Distribution of Two Modes of Relational Processes

Male

Female

No. of occurrence %

41,30 27

Total

No. of occurrence %

Attributive 8

Identifying 11

Total 19

17,39 19

58,69

41,30

100

23,91 9

19,56 19

58,69 46

41,30 27

As regards Attributor, a significant

number of male Carriers are described in a

positive light. For instance, ‘The King is very

happy with the wise little girl.’ [S3]; [He] ‘to

become richer’ [S8]; ‘the Beast was very

good natured and not vicious’ [S10]; ‘I am

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an enchanted prince!’ [S10]. Only four

negative cases were found (‘the Prince was

very unhappy’[S6]; ‘his first son is lost

‘[S1]; ‘The teacher is very sad.’ [S1]; ‘he got

blinded by the shiny new towers of the

palace.’ [S5]).

male characters beg, croak, explain, speak,

thank (e.g., ‘The prince thanked her and

explained that a witch cursed him’ [S1]).

Meanwhile, only female characters admit,

answer, argue (x 5), reply, mock, question,

curse, scream (e.g.: ‘The stepsisters mocked

her’ [S6], ‘The Queen questioned the

Princess’ [S4]; [They] screamed [S6]). That

the process ‘curse’ is female-only speaks

volumes about the unbalanced choice of

gender for certain characters: the evil,

insidious powers are mostly represented by

witches (females) rather than wizards

(males).

This favorable representation of

male characters throws female portrayal into

sharp relief: The numbers of positive and

negative words for females are roughly

equal. Here are some examples of positive

and negative portrayal of females:

Negative: ‘his wife wasn’t happy at

all.’[S5]; ‘she was forever indebted to the

dove’ [9]; ‘the wicked fairy in disguise’ [S7];

‘they were always terrible to poor

Cinderella’ [S6]; ‘who was mean and

wicked but very powerful’ [S7]

4.2.3. Behavioral and Existential

Processes

Only 24 instances of behavioral

process are found, accounting for merely 6%

(5.89%). The number of female Behavers

double that of males (16 against 8). Small as

the number of instances is, further analysis

of behavioral processes does yield

unexpected outcomes. While both males and

females ‘cry’, ‘die’, ‘sleep’ and ‘smile’,

other behavioral processes are exclusively

used for one gender. Only males ‘look’ and

‘kiss’ (e.g., ‘he kissed her gently’ [S7]; ‘the

teacher looks back’ [S1]), whereas ‘laugh’

and ‘wake up’ are solely found with female

Behavers (e.g., ‘You are at the Ball? Don't

make us laugh’ [S6]). This finding certainly

provides some food for thought; for

example, one may wonder why the process

of ‘kiss’, which involves high levels of

agency on the part of the doer, is solely

assigned to a male Behaver. Another

interesting result is that only one instance of

male ‘crying’ is found, while this figure for

females amounts to 5. For instance,

Positive: ‘She was like a god.’ [S5];

‘She looked wonderful!’ [S6]; ‘she was

delighted to see it.’ [S9]; ‘The Stepmother

and the two Stepsisters were so excited.’

[S6]; ‘We get new dresses and look our very

best’ [S6]

A redeeming point is the values

attached to both genders are mostly positive.

For instance: ‘She became the emperor and

soon enough, the pope’ [S5]; ‘she turned

into a gold statue’ [S8]; ‘The monkey

changes into the King’s older brother.’ [S1];

‘the rat into a coachman’ [S6].

As regards verbal process, the

analysis shows a higher frequency of males

as both Sayer and Receiver, which contrasts

sharply with the common belief that females

are more of a talker. However, the margin is

relatively narrow; therefore, no fundamental

judgement should be made here. A

qualitative analysis points out that both male

and female participants frequently ‘say’,

‘tell’, ‘ask’, ‘call’ or ‘shout’, among which

‘say’ and ‘tell’ (27 and 8 instances

respectively) have the highest frequency and

are equally paired with both genders.

Another finding is that certain processes are

exclusively used for females or males. Only

(1) He was devastated and started crying and

trying to bring his daughter back to life. [S8]

(2)Afrognearbyheardtheprincesscrying. [S1]

(3) She cried thinking the water was too deep

for her to find the golden ball. [S2]

(4) Cinderella sat down and cried. [S6]

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(5) They [the stepsisters] pushed and pulled

and screamed and cried but … [S6]

between male and female characters in the

investigated stories should, therefore, be

seen as a positive outcome. Third, repetitive

instances of word choice, such as ‘crying’

females and males ‘marry’ females, are

some obvious indications of gender

stereotypes embedded deep within the

stories.

(6) She held the Beast and cried. [S10]

Existential process is normally used

at the very beginning of the stories to

introduce characters; as a result, this process

is scarcely featured. The results, however,

point out that more male characters are

introduced this way, even if the males play a

secondary role in the story’s plot. Instances

of existential process at the beginning of the

tales include:

In

terms

of

methodological

implications, this work has reconfirmed the

huge potential of Systemic Functional

Grammar as a tool for discourse analysis.

However, if the researchers applied this

framework to quantitative analysis only, the

results would have been a list of closely-

valued numbers with no significant margins;

therefore, the researchers may have found it

more challenging, or even have failed to

draw any major findings. This is to highlight

the importance of qualitative analysis in the

application of SFG, especially in studies

where the focus is not on making hypotheses

or generalizations, but on examining

whether the presumed problems exist.

(7) Once upon a time, there lived a King. [S1]

(8) Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful

princess. [S2]

(9) Once upon a time there was a prince who

wanted to marry a princess [S4]

(10) Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful

girl called Cinderella that lived [S6]

(11) Once there lived a greedy man in a

small town. [S9]

(12) There once was a merchant who got lost

in a storm… [S10]

This study has also gone some way

towards enhancing our awareness of the

issue of gender representation in children's

literature. It is advisable for teachers to keep

an open eye for any sexist ideologies

subliminally embedded. However, it does

not necessarily entail that stories that carry

gender stereotyping should be avoided

altogether; there are some possible ways to

turn these writings to good use. Learners at

elementary levels can practice English by

retelling a story with the given clues such as

pictures or flashcards, with which the

teacher can make small twists to discard the

gender bias. For example, the princess is

brave and confident (instead of beautiful and

caring); the prince and the princess could get

married (instead of ‘The prince could marry

the princess’), or she held the crying beast

(instead of ‘She held the beast and cried’).

For learners at a higher proficiency level,

besides story telling or acting out activities,

teachers can engage them in a critical

5. Conclusion and Implications

This paper is aimed to contribute to

the research on language and gender with

reference to children literature. Based on

systemic functional grammar as a tool of

discourse analysis, we have a detailed

account of how males and females are

represented in the English well-known

stories for children.

Some noticeable findings are worth

restating here. First, verbal processes have

higher occurrences than mental and

relational processes, which can possibly be

attributed to the nature of children’s stories.

Second, females surpass males in the

Carrier, Behaver and Existent roles. This

result was not anticipated since in some

similar research (e.g., Gharbavi & Mousavi,

2012; Sari, 2011), males were consistently

found to dominate all the Participant roles.

This relatively balanced representation

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Esen, Y. (2007). Sexism in school textbooks prepared

under education reform in Turkey. Journal

for Critical Education Policy Studies, 5(2),

109-115.

discussion of the way the male and female

characters are portrayed in the original

version. Offering learners such a non-

pedagogical goal of examining a social

problem could probably raise their interest

and reduce boredom.

http://www.jceps.com/archives/560

Gharbavi, A., & Mousavi, S. A. (2012). The

application of functional linguistics in

exposing gender bias in Iranian highschool

English textbooks. English Language and

A tangible weakness of this study

lies in the data scale, but such intentional

restriction on the samples did allow the

researchers to thoroughly probe into the

matter on a wider range of levels - text,

clause and word-group. However, future

studies on a larger scale are required since

our findings might not be transferable to