HAYEF: Journal of Education
BOOK REVIEW

Gender-Neutral Characters in Children's Literature: A Survey Sample

1.

AMASYA ÜNİVERSİTESİ

HAYEF: Journal of Education 2017; 14: 389-408
Read: 4829 Downloads: 1174 Published: 02 April 2017

This study aims to reveal in what roles the gender-neutral characters in the work “The Whale and the Tangerine” were defined. Thus, whether the emotions, ideas and behaviors of these characters in the book were stereotyped and reflected in a sexist approach or not will be determined. Accordingly, a qualitative research design was used and the way the gender-neutral characters were presented was examined. Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca’s work provides the data source of this study in which document analysis method was used. The data collected were analyzed through the frequency analysis which is a type of content analysis. Therefore, the data were transferred into computer and what roles the gender-neutral characters in the work had was found via QDA Miner 4 program. As a result of this study, the character “whale” was found to be emotional by a 15 (19,65%) ratio, researching and questioning by a 11 (14,41%) ratio, happy by a 10 (13,1%) at most; and the character “tangerine” was found to be emotional by a 14 (19,6%) ratio, researching and questioning by a 10 (14%) ratio, imaginative by an 8 (11,2%) ratio and happy by an 8 (11,2%) ratio at most. This situation meant that the gender-neutral characters in the book reflected no stereotyped sexist conception of male and female roles.

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EISSN 2602-4829