Action, Space, and the Construction of Gender Common Sense: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Vocabulary Example Sentences in University English Teacher's Manuals

Abstract

As a key vehicle for institutionalized educational discourse, textbooks' vocabulary example sentences serve as a crucial arena for the naturalization of ideology. This study employs Fairclough's critical discourse analysis framework, specifically its common sense construction perspective, to systematically examine the distribution patterns of gendered activity types and spatial configurations within vocabulary example sentences in collage English teacher's manuals. Employing a combined approach of quantitative content analysis and qualitative interpretation, this study developed a nested coding framework integrating Activity-Specific Classification (ASC) and Spatial-Domain Classification (SDC) to analyze 327 gender-related action sentences from a collage English teacher's manuals. Findings reveal: First, gender differences manifest not in action occurrence but in systematic activity type allocation—males predominantly engage in developmental and goal-oriented activities, while females tend toward social and emotional activities. Second, sentences exhibit stable gendered spatial configurations, with males occupying higher proportions of public domains like professional and educational spaces, while females are predominantly positioned in private spaces such as domestic and leisure settings. Third, by depicting routine actions of both genders within fixed spatial settings, the sentences naturalize specific gender orders as common-sense knowledge in daily life.