课堂笔记⎥Language and Gender / Session 1 - Introduction
Session 1 – Introduction
Class Topics and Goals
- Gaining an understanding of the concept of Gender vs. Sex vs. Sexuality and their relationships with language
- Getting familiar with major theories/approaches and key works in the field of Language and Gender
- Studying gendered Language Use: Same-Sex Talk and Mixed Talk
- Studying language used for women and men respectively: Linguistics Sexism and the call for a gender-inclusive language
- Creating an awareness for co-educational classroom situations with regard to a possible future as a schoolteacher
- Challenging heteronormativity and the male-female binary
Questions and Assumptions about men and women speakers
- Is there gender-specific language: Do men and women differ with respect to grammar, lexis, and/or pronunciation?
- Who speaks more?
- Do women and men speak about different topics?
- Are men or women the better communicators?
- How do men and women interact linguistically?
- Who accommodates more? (accommodation-theory: if two people like each other, they will tend to take linguistic characteristics from each other; respectively, if they don’t, they will avoid it.)
- Who interrupts more frequently?
- Who is more polite/impolite?
- …
Studying Language and Gender
- All-Female Talk vs. All-Male Talk
- How do women and men differ with respect to grammar and pronunciation?
- Gender-preferential vs. gender-exclusive differences
- Mixed Talk Situations
- Who accommodates more?
- Who is more polite/impolite?
- Do men employ particular strategies to dominate talk?
- Female-talk beyond the private domain: Did women have to adapt to traditional (androcentric) speaking practices when talking up careers in the public sphere?
- Gender Representation in Language: Markedness (for example: actress as a derivational form of actor)
- Relationship between society and gendered language use
Quizzes
1. “A woman’s tongue wags like a lamb’s tail – they are never still” (Old English saying): Women speak more than men.
- An interesting reaction from a male classmate: “True, but generalization is stupid”
Mansplaining
- the act of explaining something to someone in a way that suggests that they are stupid; used especially when a man explains something to a woman that she already understands (Cambridge Dictionary)
2. There are distinct genderlects: Women and men use language in different ways.
3. Language Change is more often lead by female speakers.
- It depends, but there is still a tendency of that
4. Men use more standard language
- It depends, but there is a tendency that women use more standard language
Relevant references (from the seminar Sociolinguistic Theries)
Labov, William (1990). "The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change." Language Variation and Change 2, 205-254.
Labov, William (2001). Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors. Malden, US, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Trudgill, Peter (1983). "Sex and covert prestige: Linguistic change in the urban dialect of Norwich." In: Peter Trudgill. On Dialect. Oxford: Blackwell, 169-185.
Trudgill, Peter (1988). "Norwich revisited: recent linguistic changes in an English urban dialect." English World-Wide 9:1, 33-49.
