The image of the man in textbooks in French : a diachronic study from a gender perspective

By using the tools offered by gender studies in general and men’s studies in particular, we have in our study analysed four different French language textbooks developed for the Swedish market. Our aim has been to study how the image of the man and the idealized masculinity is portrayed in these textbooks and how this image has changed over time. With an understanding of the male gender role as a product of normative conceptions of male gender, our intention has been to identify the image of the man that emerges through the textbooks' images and texts. The corpus consists of four textbook series, which were published during different decades. The first volume of each textbook series is published in the following years: Parlez français in 1969, Tour de France in 1985, La Nouvelle Chouette in 2002 and Chez nous in 2011. Seen as products of each era they therefore can be considered as representatives of four different generations of textbooks in French. Analysing our corpus, we have been able to observe a change in the portrayal of the man and how different masculinities have been idealized throughout the years. Our conclusion is that the image of men in the textbooks, reflects the idealized norm of masculinity in force at the time the textbooks were written. Furthermore, the target group of the textbooks also has an impact on the type of man portrayed and the masculinity idealized.