Bias and Progressiveness in Textbook Naming Patterns

This article explores how three 21st century Swedish language textbooks represent gendered and cultural diversity for 10-year-old pupils through the use of names. The study is inspired by a Progressive Discourse Analytic approach (cf Hughes 2018), which aims to identify limiting representations (re)constructing prejudice or bias as well as potentially emancipatory representations offering readers to imagine diversity in new ways. The study focuses on primary school textbooks and an age group that has received little attention in previous research, but is of great importance, since pupils’ own experience of the world at this point are still limited, giving authoritative textbooks a stronger influence (Weninger & Williams 2005). By combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the study discusses who is treated as important enough to be known by name and which cultural and gendered identities seem emphasized or hidden in the construction of diversity. In addition, the study discusses the specific role of naming as tool for inclusion in a multi-semiotic discursive textbook landscape.