Textbooks act as an embodiment of education policy and carry great significance in classroom teaching. The content of these discourses reflects the existing cultural, religious or social norms of a country and acts as a means to exercise power of the dominant groups. The present investigation focuses to unmask prevalent cultural and social ideologies in the literary discourses of Pakistani English primary textbooks of the four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). The analysis pertains to two levels: content analysis to quantify cultural themes and discourse analysis to validate the results and gain insight into the data by using three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis framework by Norman Fairclough. The findings of the study highlight significant disproportion of cultural representations in the data. The results reflect embodiment of dominant provincial ideologies and advocate a revision of curriculum and education policy for serving wider educational needs in the local and international context.
Autobiographies provide useful insights from the narrator’s personal experiences, feelings, ideas, challenges and struggles. This paper explores the autobiographies of two women politicians, Benazir Ali Bhutto (BB) and Indira Gandhi (IG) from Pakistan and India, with a focus on personal pronouns from a feminist perspective. This study undertakes only three personal pronouns (I, we and they) in order to examine how the selected authors, project their self-image in their autobiographies and how they describe their relationships with others. Through corpus-based discourse analysis (CADS) this research throws new light on the narratives of the female leaders by recounting their portrayal of selves accomplishing different roles and duties in their situational dynamics and constraints. The findings of the study contribute to feminist literature by providing insights into the struggles of ‘accomplished’ women in their respective societies that transcends any geographical, religious and cultural boundaries.
PurposeThis study intends to unveil the imbalance in gender portrayal, reflected in English textbooks, used at the primary level in the four provinces of Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachWithin the framework of feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA), this paper aims to explore the ways in which gender stereotypes and ideologies are inculcated through the discursive schemes in the selected textbooks. The methodology adopted is to connect the linguistic features in the texts (the Micro) to the social factors (the Macro). The analysis has been done on two levels: on the first level, the content analysis was employed to quantify the gender representation in the textbook. On the second level, the discourse analysis was carried out to view gender stereotypes in the wide spectrum of social norms.FindingsThe results of this study reveal a significant disproportion and imbalance in gender representation in the four books. They clearly show that the textbooks in Pakistan contribute to the socialization of children in a very traditional and stereotypical way. The findings of the study recommend extensive awareness at societal level in general, and particular reforms in the education sector for a step toward a progressive and prosperous society.Originality/valueThe current paper is innovative as it demystifies how gendered ideologies are ingrained in the curriculum, used for English language teaching in a developing country like Pakistan. It fosters the value addition in existing research since it investigated the gender disparity systematically by employing quantitative content and qualitative FCDA.
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