GENDER CONSTRUCTION THROUGH TEXTBOOKS: THE CASE OF AN ETHIOPIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL ENGLISH TEXTBOOK

The objective of the study was to explore how gender was constructed in the English for Ethiopia Student's Book for grade four. In order to find out the discursive actions, representations and identifications by unpacking the employed genre, discourse and style, respectively, the case study was conducted using Fairclough's three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis. Despite Ethiopia's gender-sensitive education and training policy, the findings revealed that the texts in the book are a manifestation of the struggle of discourse that tries to maintain the existing social order on gender construction on the one hand and attempts to change the status quo on the other. While the discursive actions and identifications of characters promote egalitarian gender construction, the activity and attribute-based representations of characters reproduce the existing stereotypical gender constructions of the society that fall in line with the functionalists' perspective on gender roles.