Conversation Analysis with Reference to Gender and Power Relations

Abstract

Instructional textbooks are still of prevailing importance as the school’s basic framework of learning and as the emblematic reflection of their societies’ values and cultures. Likewise, they tend unwittingly to embody a substratum of patriarchal agendas that are discriminatory against females. By reviewing previous research studies that examined textbooks’ discourses and by looking at gender prejudice in the Algerian society, this research paper examines gender and power relations manifested through conversations in one of the Algerian EFL textbooks. The results revealed that males spoke more then females did, and they controlled the conversations. Hence, the researcher assumes that the target textbook discursively transmits relations of asymmetry and dominance in favor of males.