Swapping glass slippers for Jimmy Choos : gendered discourses in current renditions of popular princess fairy tales

Abstract

The focus of this research is on gendered discourse in fairy tales with particular reference to identity formation in very young readers. Both the modern culture industry of adult consumption and children’s culture constantly take up and recycle fairy tale themes in visual entertainment, literature and merchandising. Without being overly deterministic it is credible to claim that fairy tales exert an influence on the collective consciousness in many societies. Moreover since fairy tales frequently from the backbone of early reader schemes in both first- and second-language programmes, it is important to study the language used to define the relationship between children and culture. Critical Discourse Analysis serves as the best approach to investigate how gender is constructed through language in my analysis of current renditions of three popular princess fairy tales. This linguistic analysis examines character action and character description through a transitivity analysis, an appraisal of attitudinal lexis and an investigation of stylistic markers. The findings from this research provide evidence of three gendered discourses, identified as ‘The Passive Princess’, ‘Women beware women’ and ‘The Beauty Contest’. An examination of how these discourses operate to align the reader indicates that they are potentially damaging to women, men, girls and boys and gender relations. The main conclusion drawn from this study is that the three prevailing discourses position children and they may enjoy or resist this subject positioning in part or total. This dissertation recommends that Critical Literacy strategies be adopted in school in order to prevent gender privileging when using fairy tales.