Linguistic Representations of Gender in Children's Literature

“Ever wondered why women are caught in an authority gap, labelled the ‘hysterical gender’, and why men are seen as natural leaders? Or why individuals who do not conform to binary gender norms face significant challenges? Look no further than Sally Hunt’s systematic analysis of gender and language in bestselling children’s fiction series. Through meticulous corpus-based discourse analysis, her book reveals some of the origins of these inequalities: in the persistent stereotypical representations of female and male characters who have the power to influence the formation of identities and expectations among young readers. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book is an essential read for anyone interested in gender, language, and education, including scholars, students, teachers, and parents.” --Sylvia Jaworska, University of Reading, UK This book examines how aspects of gender and identity are represented in some of the best-selling children's book series published in English over the last 100 years. Combining the quantitative methods of corpus linguistics with Critical Discourse Analytic interpretation, the author's analysis shows how gendered constructions of identity are built on uneven patterns of representation. Stories, and the characters who inhabit them, not only provide child readers with entertainment, but also the building blocks of their identities: linguistic choices construct representations of how to be a girl or how to be a boy, often in binary, mutually exclusive terms. Hunt's critical corpus linguistic approach uncovers patterns of representation beyond the fiction author's awareness, which reveal their assumptions about how girls and women behave, or should behave, or what boys and men do, or should do. Chapters cover the gendered patterns found in how characters speak, how they express emotion and how they act on the world, as well as those characters who contradict these patterns and perform their genders in different ways. The detailed analysis and its implications will be relevant to teachers of literature, both at school and at university level, media researchers, lecturers and students of linguistics or gender studies, and anyone interested in child development and the fiction written for children. Sally Hunt is a Staff Tutor and Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Open University, UK. She specialises in discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and language and gender. Her research focuses on the ideological analysis of media, particularly fiction, with an emphasis on the representation of intersectional aspects of identity such as gender and race.