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Performative equality and state feminism

Gendered political discourses in Chinese EFL textbooks

 | Yonsei University
ORCiD logo with link | Yonsei University
 | Yonsei University
Published online: 12 October 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.25350.hua
Abstract
This study examines how contemporary Chinese EFL textbooks construct gendered meanings through everyday pedagogical discourse. Drawing on a corpus of 743 mixed-gender dialogues extracted from 72 state-approved primary and secondary EFL textbooks and employing corpus-based Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), the study investigates both patterns of gender representation and the discourse-pragmatic mechanisms through which gendered identities and social roles are constructed. Although female and male characters appear in broadly comparable proportions across the corpus, systematic differences emerge in occupational positioning, epistemic authority, interactional agency, affective positioning, and domestic responsibility. Building on these findings, the study proposes performative equality as an analytical concept that captures the coexistence of visible numerical gender parity and persistent discursive inequality in educational texts. The findings demonstrate that state-approved textbooks mediate broader policy discourses while highlighting the importance of evaluating textbook equality beyond numerical representation to encompass discourse-pragmatic dimensions of authority, knowledge, care, and social roles.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1State Feminism and Gender Governance in Contemporary China
    • 2.2Textbooks as ideological state apparatuses
  • 3.Feminist critical discourse analysis and analytical framework
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Research design and data
    • 4.2Coding framework
      • Gender identification
      • Occupational category
    • 4.3Analytical procedures
      • Corpus preparation
      • Descriptive and inferential statistics
      • FCDA interpretation
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Numerical representation of male and female characters across levels and grades
    • 5.2Occupational distribution and ideological patterns of gender representation
      • Pattern 1. Epistemic positioning
      • Pattern 2. Interactional agency and affective positioning
      • Pattern 3. Domestic interaction, speech acts, and turn-taking
  • 6.Discussions and conclusion
  • References
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