SEXUAL EDUCATION IN ARGENTINE SCHOOLS: DISCURSIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN HIGH SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze, within the framework of Discourse Analysis (Hodge & Kress, 1979; Martin & White, 2005) the first collection of textbooks developed for specific high school subjects in Argentina that incorporated Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE; ESI in spanish) as a distinctive feature. The Llaves más collection, published by Estación Mandioca, is the focus of our study, particularly the materials for the subjects Language and Literature and History in the first year of secondary education. Our aim is to investigate how CSE is integrated into the specific content of each discipline and what social representations about gender and sexuality are conveyed in these textbooks. To achieve this, in the first stage of the research, we analyze the ideational function of language in the syntactic-semantic dimension of the texts; and in a second stage, we examine the semantic-discursive dimension of the texts in order to analyze the identities that the speaker configures of themselves and their addressees, as well as the attitude they assume towards the different voices and discursive positions evoked.