Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies & Representations of Gender in Children’s Literature (and a little bit of AI)

Dr Sally Hunt, a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Rhodes University, is presenting a Departmental Research Seminar entitled "Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies & Representations of Gender in Children’s Literature (and a little bit of AI)" on Wednesday 18 February 2026.

Abstract:
Fiction is a relatively new object of study for Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) researchers, and children's fiction is especially interesting in that it forms an important part of children's socialisation. It contains the 'building blocks' children use to build their identities and make sense of the world, and so any bias in the representations of gender, race, etc is significant. In this presentation, I will review the major findings from my ongoing study of the best-selling children's fiction published in English in the last 100 years, and present the gendered patterns I've found in terms of verbs of speech, descriptions of appearance, agency and other aspects of identity. I will also outline the work I'm doing as part of a team looking into Young Adult Fiction, including the (limited) use of Generative AI as a research tool.