Academic Journal
Gender Stereotypes in the Physical Depictions of Girls in Turkish Children's Literature: A Collocational Analysis.
| Τίτλος: | Gender Stereotypes in the Physical Depictions of Girls in Turkish Children's Literature: A Collocational Analysis. |
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| Συγγραφείς: | Pilten-Ufuk, Şahru1 (AUTHOR), Pilten, Gülhiz2 (AUTHOR) gulhizpilten@ayu.edu.kz, Yorulmaz-Kahve, Merve2 (AUTHOR) |
| Πηγή: | SAGE Open. Apr-Jun2026, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p1-12. 12p. |
| Θεματικοί όροι: | *Gender stereotypes, *Physical characteristics (Human body), *Children's literature, *Corpora, *Adolescence, *Turkish literature, *Preschool children |
| Γεωγραφικοί όροι: | Türkiye |
| Περίληψη: | This study examines the linguistic construction of the girl figure in Turkish children's literature through a corpus-based collocational analysis of physical descriptors. The data derive from the Turkish Children's Literature Corpus (TCLC), comprising 1,089 books published between 1970 and 2012 (8.6 million tokens). Using systematic adjective filtering and semantic categorization, the study analyzes recurring adjective–noun patterns modifying the word kız (girl) in order to identify how physical description contributes to the discursive organization of girlhood. The findings reveal three central representational patterns. First, girlhood is structured along a developmental trajectory: childhood is associated with smallness and domestic positioning, adolescence foregrounds appearance-based evaluation, and adulthood is increasingly framed through marriage-related expectations. Second, physical descriptions converge on a relatively homogeneous prototype characterized by beauty, slenderness, tallness, and light-colored features. Third, aesthetic evaluation frequently extends into moral assessment, as positive appearance descriptors systematically co-occur with virtue-related traits. The analysis further identifies divergence between literary prototypes and demographic indicators in Türkiye, with light-colored features appearing at higher rates in the corpus than in population data. While no causal claims are made regarding reader effects, the findings indicate that physical appearance functions as a central organizing dimension in the linguistic construction of girlhood. By linking collocational regularities to subject positioning, performative repetition, and normalization, the study demonstrates how recurring linguistic patterns may contribute to the stabilization of gendered norms and offers a replicable corpus-based framework for future comparative research. Plain Language Summary: How Girls Are Represented in Turkish Children's Literature: An Analysis of Descriptive Language This study looks at how girls are described in Turkish children's books. We examined over one thousand books published between 1970 and 2012 and analyzed the words most often used to describe girls' physical appearance. By studying recurring word patterns, we explored what kinds of images of "girlhood" are repeatedly presented to young readers. The results show three main patterns. First, descriptions of girls tend to follow a life-stage pattern: young girls are often described as small and connected to home life, adolescent girls are more frequently evaluated based on appearance, and adult women are often linked to marriage. Second, many books describe girls using a similar physical ideal, emphasizing beauty, slimness, tallness, and light-colored features. Third, positive physical traits are often connected to positive personality traits, suggesting that appearance is closely tied to moral value in these texts. Although this study does not examine how children respond to these books, it shows that repeated language patterns may shape common expectations about what girls should look like. The findings provide a clearer understanding of how children's literature can contribute to shared ideas about gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Βάση Δεδομένων: | Academic Search Index |
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