As it is known Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) focuses on the relationship between

language and power and examines the multiplicity of historical, political and institutional forces
(including values, interests and beliefs) operating in a single given text (Baxter, 2010). CDA has
created immense interest in language and gender among other fields. In a similar vein, Feminist
CDA seeks to demystify the interrelationships of gender, power and ideology in discourse
(Lazar, 2005). Every discourse act is assumed to have a potentially conscious intention that
promote writers’ gender ideologies. Using different lexical choices, writers perpetuate
ideologies of male and female roles. These stereotypes seem to be subordinated to the notion
that “a person is a gender and is one in virtue of his or her sex, psychic sense of self, and various
expressions of that psychic self, the most salient being that of sexual desire” (Butler, 1999, p.
29)
Several researches have appeared in recent years documenting the pervasive of
stereotypical male and female characters in literary works. Describing specific attitudes and
behaviours of characters, writers appear to perpetuate gender roles via language. Eagly (1987)
suggests that the differentiation of roles according to sexual division of labour and societal
expectations produce gender stereotypes (Eagly, as cited in European Institute for Gender
Equality, 2013). It seems to be that writers cannot escape from these prototypical stereotypes of
gender. The study by Fast et al (2016) examine an online fiction writing community and the
way in which authors describe female and male characters. Based on a quantitative study, the
research found that commonly male characters are associated to adjectives such as strong and
dominant whereas female characters are depicted as submissive and weak.
Another fully articulated study which document male and female stereotypes has been
carried out by Mills (1995). Under the label of feminist stylistics or (post-) feminist text
analysis, Mills’s form of stylistics involves an explanation not only of how gender is
represented within the text but also of how the text draws the reader into its ideological
framework. She claims that “there seems also to be a set of skills which we as readers have
acquired in interpreting the ideological knowledges about women and men which texts provide,
particularly at the level of stereotypes” (Mills, 1995, p. 124). Thus, the representation of female
characters in texts is based on this stereotypical knowledge which describes women as
housewives and mothers whose main task is washing the dishes and caring for children.
.
New theoretical background

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) focuses on the relationship between language and power and
examines the multiplicity of historical, political and institutional forces (including values,
interests and beliefs) operating in a single given text (Baxter, 2010).
Language is thought as a system of choices for making meaning . illustrates that
meaning intexts is determined by (1) context of culture, (2) context of situation,
and (3)metafunctions.
as a system for making meaning and choices,
language can only be understood in relation to its environment of use

SFL is functional
because these linguists
are concerned with how
language is used to
achieve goals in society
(Eggins, 2004)
SFL is functional
because these linguists
are concerned with how
language is used to
achieve goals in society
(Eggins, 2004)
SFL is functional because these linguists are concerned with how language is used to
achieve goals in society (Eggins, 2004)
SFL scholars have set out to build a theory that can account for the many different
ways in which societies use language to meet their needs.
Language is, in the first
instance, a resource for making meaning; so text is a process of making meaning
in context.
A language is a
resource for making meaning, and meaning resides in systemic patterns of choice.
This acknowledged the fact that a language is a complex semiotic system, having
various levels, or strata.
We use language to make sense of our experience, and to carry out our interactions
with
other people. This means that the grammar has to interface with what goes on
outside
language: with the happenings and conditions of the world, and with the social
processes
we engage in. But at the same time it has to organize the construal of experience,
and the
enactment of social processes, so that they can be transformed into wording. The
way it
does this is by splitting the task into two. In step one, the interfacing part,
experience and
interpersonal relationships are transformed into meaning; this is the stratum of
semantics.
In step two, the meaning is further transformed into wording; this is the stratum of
Lexicogrammar

The context of culture is what the members of a community can

mean in cultural terms; that is, we interpret culture as a system of higher-level
meanings
(see Halliday, 1978) – as an environment of meanings in which various semiotic
systems
operate, including language, paralanguage

since text is language functioning in context