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Poster (LUO Remote) - Textual or Investigative

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The purpose of this research is to understand how gender bias is developed through language. Gender is represented within the human language in different forms such as in nouns, verbs, and/or pronouns that represent female and/or male versions of certain words (DeFranza et al., 2020). Each language consists of a degree of gendered language which is grammatical gender language, natural gender language, a combination of grammatical gender and natural gender, and genderless language (Prewitt-Freilino et al., 2012). This quantitative content analysis approach aims to understand how gender biases are represented in children’s literature in both grammatical gender language and natural gender language. The research questions how gender biases are found in both natural gender and grammatical gender languages within children’s literature. Then questions if there are any differences in these biases. This research compares gender biases within children’s literature in the natural gender language and the grammatical gender language. The content analysis uses children’s literature from the New York Public Library’s Best Books Lists for 2022 and 2021. For the natural gender language, the research uses English books from the lists and Spanish for the grammatical gender language. The study analyzes each book’s main character’s gender, target audience, and whether they are enforcing gender stereotypes. The first finding revealed that both lists of books had more female main characters than any other gender. Another finding is that the majority of both book lists did not enforce gender stereotypes. Lastly, if any books were reinforcing gender stereotypes, they were most likely to be female over male. In conclusion, there are more similarities than differences found between the two languages. For future research on this topic, the researcher would suggest comparing a larger variety of books and more than two degrees of gender languages.

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Apr 15th, 12:00 PM

Gender Bias and Children’s Literature: Understanding Natural Gender Language and Grammatical Gender Language within Gender Development

Poster (LUO Remote) - Textual or Investigative

The purpose of this research is to understand how gender bias is developed through language. Gender is represented within the human language in different forms such as in nouns, verbs, and/or pronouns that represent female and/or male versions of certain words (DeFranza et al., 2020). Each language consists of a degree of gendered language which is grammatical gender language, natural gender language, a combination of grammatical gender and natural gender, and genderless language (Prewitt-Freilino et al., 2012). This quantitative content analysis approach aims to understand how gender biases are represented in children’s literature in both grammatical gender language and natural gender language. The research questions how gender biases are found in both natural gender and grammatical gender languages within children’s literature. Then questions if there are any differences in these biases. This research compares gender biases within children’s literature in the natural gender language and the grammatical gender language. The content analysis uses children’s literature from the New York Public Library’s Best Books Lists for 2022 and 2021. For the natural gender language, the research uses English books from the lists and Spanish for the grammatical gender language. The study analyzes each book’s main character’s gender, target audience, and whether they are enforcing gender stereotypes. The first finding revealed that both lists of books had more female main characters than any other gender. Another finding is that the majority of both book lists did not enforce gender stereotypes. Lastly, if any books were reinforcing gender stereotypes, they were most likely to be female over male. In conclusion, there are more similarities than differences found between the two languages. For future research on this topic, the researcher would suggest comparing a larger variety of books and more than two degrees of gender languages.

 

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