REPRESENTATIONS OF CULTURE, RACE AND GENDER IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEXTBOOKS 

Authors: Adriana Petra Blažević, Mara Ruža Blažević

Paper categorization: Original scientific paper

DOI: https://doi.org/10.38003/sv.72.1.3

Paper: 2022. Vol. 71, No. 1. – A.- Blazevic, M.- Blazevic

Abstract:

In order to investigate and understand the relations between different social groups participating in copious anglophone settings, this paper sets out to present and discuss the findings of a quantitative analysis of culture, race and gender in English language textbooks. The first section of the paper offers a theoretical background of the phenomenon in the light of the importance of English in modern education, frequently associated with various systems of social inequality. What follows are the results of the content analysis of nine English language textbooks for first-year secondary school students in Croatia. The results of the study indicated significant differences regarding the representation of specific social groups as well as the intersections between gender and employment status. Thus, an inherent partisanship towards specific social groups was revealed, indicating a subliminal reproduction of social power through education. Such results align with numerous other studies on the topic, both in the Croatian and the foreign contexts..

Keywords:

education, language learning materials, social inequality