Group Antagonism as a Social Problem in Award-Winning Children’s Books: Stereotype, Prejudice, Discrimination

Abstract

From the perspective of language and literature education, children’s and youth books should be sensitive to the culture of human rights and democracy and should not endorse group antagonism such as stereotype, prejudice and discrimination. The main purpose of this research is to determine if there are any messages about group antagonisms in the award-winning children’s and youth stories/novels; and to understand the emotional aspect, style, context and content characteristics of those messages. The data source of this general survey model research consists of a total of 34 books that have received awards from various institutions and organizations in the field of children’s and youth literature. In the content analysis, the main category of group antagonism was divided into three subcategories: stereotype, prejudice and discrimination, which were further divided into sub-categories based on emotional aspect, style, context, and content and analyzed in cross-tables. The findings showed that most messages were in the prejudice category. In addition, it was determined that the messages that foster group antagonism were mostly related to the affective dimension and were conveyed in a blatant style and often without malicious intent. Within the scope of this study, it is recommended that fictional books addressing children and young people should address group antagonism with a critical and problem-oriented approach.