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Women, Men and Language

Linguistics 343 - Spring 2011

OVERVIEW

This course examines the complex relationships among language, gender and sexuality.

Integrating different perspectives from sociolinguistics as well as gender theory and gender

studies, the goals of this course are to familiarize students with major theoretical approaches on

language and gender and to explore, through data-driven activities, how the different approaches

can shed light on everyday linguistic practices. Through lectures, group exercises, weekly

readings, class discussions and data workshops, the course will cover a wide variety of topics

including gender as cultural difference, gender as a social construct, sexist and heterosexist

language, language and gender in interaction (including turn-taking, gossip, access and power),

gender and style, cross-cultural perspectives on language and gender, language and sexuality,

and the linguistic construction of masculinities and femininities. Students will develop the ability

to evaluate and critique research; particular emphasis will be put on performing original research,

utilizing the analytical skills acquired to analyze gendered language in everyday life.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Instructor Anastasia Nylund

Email an249@georgetown.edu

Office Hours Monday, 12.30-2pm, ICC519E or by appointment

I am also happy to answer any minor questions about assignments or readings over email

please remember to start your assignments in good time, and identify problems early, as I reserve

the right not to reply to emails received less than 24 hours before an assignment is due.

CLASS MEETING SCHEDULE

Monday, 10:15-11:30am, WALSH 496

Wednesday, 10:15-11:30am, WALSH 496

ACADEMIC HONOR CODE

All students are required to comply with the Georgetown University Academic Honor code. Any

student who fails to comply with the Honor Code and is found guilty of plagiarism or cheating

will automatically receive a final grade of F. I urge you to become familiar with the Honor Code,

a detailed description of which can be found at this website: http://www.georgetown.edu/honor/

A good outside resource for understanding the Honor Code and honest academic practice is:

Lipson, Charles. 2004. Doing Honest Work in College: How to Prepare Citations, Avoid

Plagiarism, and Achieve Real Academic Success. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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REQUIREMENTS

READINGS

There is one required book for this course:

Tannen, Deborah. 2007 [1990]. You Just Dont Understand: Women and Men In Conversation.

New York: Harper.

The book (henceforth YJDU in the syllabus) is available for purchase at the Georgetown

University campus bookstore. All other readings are available as .pdf documents on Blackboard.

They are listed in the same order as on the syllabus, and can be found under the Readings menu

on Blackboard.

Please complete all readings before the class for which they are assigned, as discussion of the

theoretical issues depends on a thorough understanding of the assigned materials.

PARTICIPATION

Active engagement with the literature and participation in the class discussions is a major

component of this course. Therefore, you are required to attend all class meetings. It is

particularly important that you are present on dates when you are presenting, leading a

discussion, or otherwise are partially responsible for the class progressing felicitously.

If you know you will be unable to attend class, please schedule a meeting with me to discuss

your situation as soon as possible.

NOTE: More than one (1) unexcused absence will affect your participation grade and thus your

overall grade in the class. Absences are excused in case of sickness with a doctors note or with a

deans or coachs note explaining the reason for your absence.

ASSIGNMENTS

MEDIA PRESENTATION

This assignment is a 10 minute presentation in which you will discuss an example of gendered

language in the media. Your data can include a photo/photos, an advertisement/logo, a clip from

a movie or TV show, an interview, or a news broadcast. You will present your media example,

discuss what the role of gender is in it, draw links between gender and linguistic practices, and

generate a brief class discussion at the end of your presentation. Where possible, draw links

between your presentation and our class discussions. Also, you may use presentation aids such as

PowerPoint or a handout (though this is not required).

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DATA ANALYSIS PAPER

For the data analysis paper, you will carry out a more structured study of language and gender in

action. For this assignment, you will record and transcribe a conversation, and perform a

discourse analysis of the different linguistic devices and maneuvers at play in the interaction,

highlighting how gender is locally constructed or reflected in the interaction. The assignment

consists of two components. First, you will hand in a draft of your transcript along with a brief

plan for analysis, and receive feedback on the level of detail and your proposed argument. You

should incorporate my feedback as your construct and write up your data analysis paper. Your

paper (4 pages) should have a clear thesis which you argue by linking the discursive practices

you find in the interaction to one or more of the theoretical perspectives discussed in class.

FINAL GROUP PROJECT

For the final project, groups of students will conduct original research in language and gender.

The groups will together construct an original study on any topic relating to the course. The

research may be quantitative or qualitative in nature, depending on the methodology most

suitable for the investigation. Each group will write a project proposal and carry out the study

together. Each group member will produce an individual final paper (8 pages), presenting your

thesis, methodology, findings, and relating your investigation to relevant theories as well as

discussing the implications of your study on the field of language and gender.

NOTE: Citations for all written assignments must follow the guidelines of the most recent

edition of the Citation and Style Guide of the American Psychological Association (APA). If you

are unsure of how to use this citation format, come see me or use the wide variety of tutorials and

guides available online, such as: http://apastyle.apa.org/

GRADE BREAKDOWN AND DUE DATES

Course component Weight (%) Due dates

Participation 10%

Media Presentation 10% Sign-ups Week 2

Data Analysis Paper 25% Transcript due Wednesday, 2/16

Paper due Wednesday, 3/2

Final Group Project 55%

- Proposal 10% Wednesday, 3/30

- Group presentation 15% Wednesday, 4/27 or Monday, 5/2

- Individual paper 30% Tuesday, 5/10

SCHEDULE

NOTE: Changes may occur throughout the semester. Readings for the next class will be

announced at the end of each class.

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WEEK TOPIC AND READINGS NOTES

Week 1 Introduction

W 1/12 Overview, syllabus (no reading)

Week 2 Early work in Language and Gender

M 1/17 NO CLASS Martin Luther King Day

W 1/19 Lakoff (1973), Bucholtz and Hall (2006)

Week 3 Language/Gender preliminaries

M 1/24 Ochs (1992)

W 1/26 Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003)

Week 4 Theoretical Approach 1: Gender as Cultural Difference

M 1/31 Maltz and Borker (1982), YJDU chapter 1-3 and afterword.

W 2/2 Guest Speaker: Professor Deborah Tannen

Week 5 Theoretical Approach 2: Gender as Dominance/Power

M 2/7 OBarr and Atkins (1980), Hall (1995)

W 2/9 Fishman (1983), YJDU chapter 7

Week 6 Theoretical Approach 3: Gender as a Social Construct

M 2/14 Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992), Livia and Hall (1997)

W 2/16 Review Communities of Practice TRANSCRIPT DUE

Week 7 Language, gender, and ethnicity

M 2/21 NO CLASS Presidents Day

W 2/23 Bucholtz 1995, Bucholtz 1996

Week 8 Gender ideologies: Emotion and expressiveness

M 2/28 Holmes (1995), Brown and Levinson (1978)

W 3/2 Lutz (1994), Sattel (1983) DATA ANALYSIS PAPER DUE

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** SPRING BREAK March 5th

-13th

**

Week 9 Language and masculinities

M 3/14 Kiesling (1997), Pujolar i Cos (1997)

W 3/16 Cameron (1998)

Week 10 Language and sexuality

M 3/21 Cameron and Kulick (2003), ch. 1 & 4

W 3/23 Guest Speaker: Professor Robert Podesva

Podesva (2007)

Week 11 Cross-cultural perspectives on language and gender

M 3/28 Okamoto (2002), Kulick (1998)

W 3/30 Guest Speaker: Sakiko Kajino PROPOSAL DUE

Week 12 Gender and sociolinguistic variation

M 4/4 Eckert (1989), Schilling-Estes (2002a) PROJECT MTGS

W 4/6 James (1996) PROJECT MTGS

Week 13 Language, gender and style

M 4/11 Schilling-Estes (2002b), Coupland (2007)

W 4/13 Rickford and McNair-Knox (1994)

Week 14 Sexist language, taboo and feminist innovations

M 4/18 Ehrlich and King (1994), Armstrong (1997)

W 4/20 Sutton (1995), Miller (2004)

Week 15 Wrapping up

M 4/25 NO CLASS Easter Monday

W 4/27 GROUP PRESENTATIONS

Week 16 Wrapping up

M 5/2 GROUP PRESENTATIONS

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FINAL PAPER due May 10th

, 12 noon, by email (an249@georgetown.edu) and a hardcopy in

my department mailbox (ICC 479)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Armstrong, James D. 1997. Homophobic slang as coercive discourse among college students.

In Anna Livia and Kira Hall (eds.), Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality.

New York: Oxford University Press. p. 326-34.

Brown, Penelope and Steven C. Levinson. 1999. Politeness: Some universals in language usage.

In Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland (eds.) The Discourse Reader. London/New

York: Routledge.

Bucholtz, Mary. 1995. From Mulatta to Mestiza: Language and the Reshaping of Ethnic Identity.

In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (eds.), Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially

Constructed Self. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 351-374

Bucholtz, Mary. 1996. Black Feminist Theory and African American Women's Linguistic

Practice. In Victoria Bergvall, Janet Bing, and Alice Freed (eds.), Rethinking Language

and Gender Research: Theory and Practice. Longman, pp. 267-290

Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall. 2006. Gender, Sexuality, and Language. In Keith Brown (ed.)

Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 2. Oxford: Elsevier.

Cameron, Deborah. 1998. Performing Gender Identity: Young Mens Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity. In Jennifer Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader.

Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 270-284.

Cameron, Deborah and Don Kulick. 2003. Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, selected chapters.

Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. High Performance and Identity Stylisation. In Nikolas Coupland,

Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.

146-176.

Eckert, Penelope. 1989. The Whole Woman: Sex and Gender Differences in Variation.

Language Variation and Change 1: 245-267.

Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2003. Constructing, deconstructing, and

reconstructing gender. Language and Gender. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge

University Press. 9-51.

Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992. Think Practically and Look Locally:

Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice. Annual Review of Anthropology

21: 461-490.

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Ehrlich, Susan and Ruth King. 1994. Feminist Meanings and the (De)politicization of the

Lexicon. Language in Society 23: 59-76.

Fishman, Pamela. 1983. Interaction: The Work Women Do. In Barrie Thorne, Cheris Kramarae,

and Nancy Henley (eds.) Language, Gender, and Society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House,

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Hall, Kira. 1995. Lip Service on the Fantasy Lines. In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (eds.)

Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self. New York: Routledge,

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Holmes, Janet. 1995. What a Lovely Tie! Compliments and Positive Politeness Strategies. In

Women, Men, and Politeness. London: Longman, pp. 115-153.

James, Deborah. 1996. Women, Men, and Prestige Speech Forms: A Critical Review. In Victoria

Bergvall, Janet Bing, and Alice Freed (eds.) Rethinking Language and Gender Research:

Theory and Practice. London: Longman, pp. 98-125.

Kiesling, Scott. 1997. Power and the Language of Men. In Sally Johnson and Ulrike Hanna

Meinhof (eds.) Language and Masculinity. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 65-85.

Kulick, Don. 1998. Anger, gender, language shift, and the politics of revelation in a Papua

New Guinean village. In Bambi B. Schieffelin et al. (eds.), Language Ideologies:

Practice and Theory, pp. 83-102. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, Robin. 1973. Language and Womans Place. Language in Society 2: 45-80.

Livia, Anna and Kira Hall. 1997. Its a Girl! Bringing Performativity Back to Linguistics. In Kira Hall and Anna Livia (eds.) Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-18.

Lutz, Catherine. 1994. Engendered Emotion: Gender, Power, and the Rhetoric of Emotional

Control in American Discourse. In Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod (eds.) Language

and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 69-91.

Maltz, Daniel N. and Ruth A Borker. 1982. A cultural approach to male-female

miscommunication. In Jonn J. Gumperz (ed.), Language and Social Identity.

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Miller, Laura. 2004. Those Naughty Teenage Girls: Japanese Kogals, Slang, and Media

Assessments. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14: 225-247.

OBarr, William and Bowman Atkins. 1980. Womens Language or Powerless Language? In Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman (eds.) Women and Language in

Literature and Society, pp. 93-110.

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Ochs, Elinor. 1992. Indexing gender. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds.) Rethinking context:

Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 335-

358.

Okamoto, Shigeko. 2002. Ideology and Social Meanings: Rethinking the Relationship between

Language, Politeness, and Gender. In Sarah Benor, Mary Rose, Devyani Sharma, Julie

Sweetland, and Qing Zhang (eds.), Gendered Practices in Language. Stanford, CA: CSLI

Publications, pp. 99-113.

Podesva, Robert. 2007. Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing

a persona. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11: 478-504.

Pujolar i Cos, Joan. 1997. Masculinities in a Multilingual Setting. In Sally Johnson and Ulrike

Hanna Meinhof (eds.) Language and Masculinity. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 86-106.

Rickford, John R. and Faye McNair-Knox. 1994. Addressee- and topic-influenced style shift: A

quantitative sociolinguistic study. In Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan (Eds.)

Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Sattel, Jack. 1983. Men, Inexpressiveness, and Power. In Barrie Thorne, Cheris Kramarae, and

Nancy Henley (eds.) Language, Gender, and Society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, pp.

118-124.

Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2002a. American English Social Dialect Variation and Gender. Journal

of English Linguistics 30: 122-137.

Schilling-Estes. Natalie. 2002b. Investigating stylistic variation. In Chambers, J. K., Peter

Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.) Handbook of Language Variation and

Change. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell.

Sutton, Laurel A. 1995. Bitches and skankly hobags: the place of women in contemporary

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