GENDER STEREOTYPES IN LEXICAL VERB USED BY MALE AND FEMALE CHARACTER IN CHILDREN LITERATURE BOOKS

Lexical choice usage especially lexical verb in children literature may contain messages that represent gender stereotype and contribute to forming a child's view of the meaning of being boy and girl. Therefore, to understand gender stereotype reflected in lexical verb, the writer analyzed the lexical verb usage in children literature book using the theory proposed by Biber et. al (1999). The study aims to find out the types of lexical verb used by male and female characters, the most frequent type of lexical verbs used by male and female characters and to find out which one is the more dominant one in the usage of lexical verb type between male and female character in each children book. Two children books The Inquisitor's Tale and The War that Saved My Life were chosen as the object analysis. The writer used qualitative methods design to analyse the children book. The results of the study showed that two children literature books use all the types of lexical verbs and the most frequent type of lexical verb used by the characters is activity verb. In the inquisitor’s tale, male character are dominant in the usage of activity verb, communication verb, causation verb, verb of occurance, verb of aspect while in the war that saved my life, female character are dominant in the usage activity verb, mental verb, causative verb and verb of existance. From the investigation, the writer concluded that both of children books have gender stereotype toward male and female character