ENGL 495 Language and Gender: Course Concepts
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Below are core concepts essential to understanding language and gender theory and research. Use this page as a study guide; refer to it when working on homework and your paper. They are in alphabetical order. Some are defined; others are key words for you to define from lectures/readings, etc. At the bottom of the list is advice for taking exams. Note: When you click on a cross-reference link, the linked text appears at the very top of the page.
CONCEPTS MARKED *** ARE SUBJECT TO TESTING ON THE FINAL. OTHERS ARE
NOT.
If an item is not marked, you can still use it in your analysis of data.
It will not be included in any objective questions.
FOR THE FINAL YOU WILL NEED ONE LARGE BLUE BOOK. PLEASE BRING A LARGE ONE.
The final will be very similar to the midterm, and probably not much longer (if at all). There may be more real language data than the midterm, but that would be short excerpts. The final will come with a list of the readings with a little reminder of their topic, as well as a list of the Course Concepts (without definitions!) to help you remember them.
Feel free to e-mail me with any and all questions!
***Backlash: |
Response by those in power to rights movements of the powerless. In a backlash, the powerful use their dominance to redefine the position of the powerless. The goal is to restore and preserve their power and keep powerless groups in marginalized positions. Sample tactics are minimizing the harm powerless groups suffer; invoking pseudoscience to defend inequality (e.g., claiming that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites, or that women are genetically unsuitable for combat); accusing the groups of hypersensitivity or of demanding "special rights" beyond those accorded other groups; reprisals, for instance demotion or negative performance evaluations of workers who accuse someone of sexual harassment; legislation to roll back powers gained by powerless or subordinate groups (e.g., legislation against gay marriage, prohibition of ballots in foreign languages, anti-affirmative-action initiatives). |
| Compulsory heterosexuality | Bing & Bergvall, Leap, Morrish |
| ***Critical discourse analysis (CDA): | Definition (Talbot 8); as a means of (a) exposing what seems natural as, in fact, created by society, esp. by the powerful; (b) of critiquing or pointing out ways that this 'common sense' might be helpful or harmful; and (c) of suggesting alternative ways of being/doing/talking, thereby actually trying to reform or remake 'common sense'. Bing & Bergvall, Leap, Morrish, Sheldon, August, Graddol & Swann, Talbot Ch. 8 |
| ***The deficit model | The belief that women's ways of using language are inferior to men's ways; that women's language is deficient. |
| ***The dominance model | The belief that one of the ways in which men dominate, control, and oppress women is through language. |
| ***The difference model | The belief that men and women use language differently not because of a difference in power, but because they grow up in essentially segregated cultures in which they develop different ways of relating to each other through language. In adulthood these differences cause what can be characterized as cross-cultural miscommunication. |
| ***Denaturalization: | Exposing the assumptions behind a text by replacing terms for those considered to be deviant with terms for those considered to be normal (e.g., the 'Questionnaire for heterosexuals', or rewriting headlines like 'feisty widow fights off carjackers' as 'feisty widower fights off carjackers'). Sheldon Remember that this is a conscious, deliberate, CDA tool. It isn't normally a naturally-occurring phenomenon. |
| ***What determines how people talk on any given occasion? | Is it their gender? Is it other factors, such as their role in the situation, their relationship to others in the situation, the purpose of the interaction, their power status, etc.? To what extent do these factors interact? (For instance, is 'women's language' common among women because it expresses feminity as no other language pattern can, or is it actually 'powerless language' which women use so often because they are so often powerless?) See also gendered language. |
| Dichotomies: | The human (Western?) tendency to organize the world into dichotomies: Sets of mutually exclusive opposites (masculine vs. feminine, homosexual vs. heterosexual, etc.) Bing & Bergvall, James & Clarke, Maltz & Borker |
| ***Discourse/discursive practice: | The most relevant sense of this term to this course is its use to refer to an organized scheme of knowledge and behavior, including language use, that organizes some facet of experience--that, indeed, defines and creates that experience. The facet may be very broad (what it means to be 'an American') or quite narrow (what it means to be a skilled and knowledgeable surfer). (See also power and discourse and Critical discourse analysis ). Morrish, Leap , Sheldon, August |
| ***Discourse and the power to define, to control discourse in various settings: | How the powerful people in a society create and enforce reality--what will be acknowledged as existing or not; what categories of people there are; what it is permissible or possible to say or not say, do or not do; what counts as a 'real man', a 'good girl', a 'marriage', etc. Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap, Sheldon, August |
| Essentialism/biological determinism: | The notion that behavior arises from a masculine, feminine, heterosexual, or homosexual 'essence' that is a biologically based or an immutable characteristic of one's personality (e.g., that women are 'instinctively' good mothers, men 'essentially' violent/aggressive; homosexuals are homosexual by birth, not by choice) (Note: This notion is used to criticize M/F gender stereotypes, but to defend the rights of homosexuals.) |
| Linguistic gatekeeping | Control over which kinds of language are acceptable; control over public language in institutions such as law and the media. This plays a role in discourse power. See also power and discourse. Morrish, Leap, Sheldon |
| ***Gendered language: | Use of language by individuals to signal their gender identity; to conform to or violate social expectations for their gender; language use that 'performs' gender. Features of language may also be falsely understood by others as gendered, e.g., stereotypes about gay men's or lesbians' speech. Do not confuse gendered language with sexist language Remember that this is very different from sexist language. It is language emitted by a person that identifies them as belonging to one or another gender category. |
| ***The "gender straitjacket": | The limits placed upon a person by society's demand that they conform to gender norms. Currently, this is usually applied to boys and men, who suffer shame, ostracism, and even physical harm if they do not embody the macho ideal. |
| ***Hegemony: | Power so subtle and all-encompassing that the picture created by the powerful is viewed by all, powerful and powerless alike, as the only way things can be, as normal or natural (see 'naturalization'). Morrish, Leap , Sheldon, August |
| Heterosexism: | Bias or discrimination against people whose sexual orientation is other than purely heterosexual. Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap |
| Heterosexist language | language that expresses hatred, exclusion, dismissal, or insult towards those who are not exclusively heterosexual (for instance, carrying a sign that says "God Hates Gays" at a gay soldier's funeral; using gay as an insult; using "gay" speech to make fun of someone or of stereotypical gay interests such as interior decorating; even asking someone if they are married is dangerous territory. |
| Heterosexuality, compulsory | A cultural requirement that one must be heterosexual to be an acceptable human being. Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap |
| Intersex | A biological phenomenon in which a fetus develops as neither fully male nor fully female. There is a wide range of kinds of intersex, but intersex is little known, because, with modern medicine, an intersexed child can be surgically and hormonally altered to appear to be of one of the two sexes. The medical establishment and parents of such children generally believe their lives would be ruined by not being treated. Bing & Bergvall |
| Intertexuality: | A rhetorical strategy in which vocabulary and phrasing familiar from one topic or domain is applied in speech/writing about a different domain. Examples include using the phraseology of the pro-choice movement to advocate gun ownership as a choice, or using the phraseology of criminal or immoral action to characterize homosexuality. The purpose of intertextuality is to evoke in a reader or listener the feelings and beliefs they hold about the topic being borrowed from, and have them apply those feelings to the new topic. Morrish |
| (Enforced) invisibility | Low-status groups such as women, homosexuals, and intersexed individuals may
be rendered partially or totally invisible as a way of depriving them
of power and rights. Partial invisibility would pertain to exclusion
from certain spheres, such as not allowing women to serve in government
or in the military, or to ignoring the contributions of women speaking
at a business meeting, or to always associating parent with mother,
leaving fathers "out of the picture" (invisible). Total
invisibility is the denial that a category exists; the best current example
is intersex, which, again, is not well-known because the stigma attached
to it pressures parents into masking it through surgery or other means. Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap, Sheldon, August (e.g., men as parents) |
| Language: | as
thought control - as
organizing the world - gendered
language - as
a means of gatekeeping - heterosexist
language- sexist
language - determinants of
language variables - multifunctionality of - role of in struggle |
| ***Language is a major tool for organizing the world | (into categories, for example) and for acculturation (transmitting the culture's organization of the world to each new generation) Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap, Sheldon, August |
| ***Language as 'thought control': | Language works by triggering or evoking thoughts, concepts, images in the mind of a listener or reader. Hence language can be used to direct or control thought. This principle underlies propaganda (e.g., calling inheritance tax the "death tax"), and is also used to argue for the power of sexist language, for example, enforcing masculinity standards through expressions like "take it like a man" or "the man of the house"; men addressing female work subordinates or retail clerks as "honey", etc. Morrish, Leap, Sheldon, Gastil, August |
| ***The multifunctionality of language: | We use language not only to 'represent' or describe the world, to communicate facts and ideas; we also use it to manage social relationships by signalling, with our language, our perceptions of our relationships to those we interact with, and to signal our attitudes towards or assessments of those individuals. Language also functions, as noted below, is an aspect of performing our identities. |
| ***Naturalization: | The process by which beliefs, categories, values, and practices come to seem like "common sense", "reality" and "just the way things are" in a culture or subculture. Naturalized concepts are taken for granted and questioning them is viewed as "upsetting the apple cart", "challenging authority", "causing trouble", "disrespecting tradition", etc. Examples are the notion that women make better parents than men, that men are mechanically inclined, that there are only two biological sexes, that homosexuality is a disease, that men are stronger than women. (This last depends on how "strength" is defined. Men can lift heavier things and are trained to endure pain and physical hardships of particular kinds. But the strongest muscle in the human body is the uterus; baby girls are more robust than baby boys in most ways and women live longer than men; one of the most painful experiences humans endure is childbirth -- and there didn't use to be painkillers for it. And women can be trained to endure the same kind of physical hardships as men.) Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap, Sheldon, August |
| *** Norms | are ways of being that are acceptable in a society. Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap |
| Patriarchal dividend: | The social 'goodies' that a male-dominated society awards to men who conform to gender norms for masculinity. These range from greater tolerance of dominant and aggressive behavior in young boys and favoring of sons over daughters; to larger amounts of attention boys receive in school; to greater support for boys'/mens' sports; to direction of boys towards better-rewarded occupations; to better-paid jobs; favoring of men over women in promotion, pay, speaker rights at meetings; old-boy networks in law enforcement and the corporate world; greater presence of men in political office; greater respect paid to men in commercial interactions such as car sales, loan applications, etc. Also included are the powers of men in the home: Being the highest authority in the home; having the right to demand care and sex from wives and dictate children's permissions and prohibitions. |
| ***Performativity: | The concept that our behavior displays our social identity. The idea is that we are always "acting out" who we are by adopting various behaviors -- the way we dress, move, use gesture and facial expression, and language. This concept emphasizes social identity as a process -- ongoing acts of creation of ourselves as one or another sort of person. With regard to gender, we are said to perform our gender in how we dress, act, and speak. For example, wearing a skirt acts out the feminine gender; being obsessed with sports acts out one aspect of the stereotypical masculine gender. If we change our behaviors, we can change how we are categorized by others and therefore change our social identity. |
| ***Political correctness: | Originally, a term of self-parody used by leftists/liberals when they found themselves using language that a liberal would normally find unacceptable. It was a way of letting others know that the speaker knew the language was offensive, and did not intend offense. It has now become a term used in the backlash against sensitivity towards powerless groups. See next box. |
| ***... and backlash | Accusations of 'political correctness' as backlash by those who have traditionally held power (upper-class WASP men) and those who agree with them against efforts to make language more gender-neutral; reinterpretation of political correctness from respect for the rights and feelings of marginalized/oppressed groups to 'hypersensitivity' or campaigns for 'special rights'. Backlashers will often appeal to "political correctness run amok" when, for instance, sexual harassment allegations are being brought on the basis of what they feel are unjustified reasons. Objections to "thought police" and "language police" are often tools of those who wish to resist reforms that de-marginalize the powerless. Often, the right to free speech is invoked in order to resist such reforms. A prime example is debate over hate-speech codes on college campuses. Mills Other important things: Accusations of political correctness are used as a silencing tool to make the claims of reformers look illegitimate. What the accusers object to is having their speech made openly political or ideological; they must now choose whether their speech will be politically correct or not. They, the powerful, are now subject to scrutiny, because there is now an alternative to their practices (a threat to hegemony); the naturalization that made their practices appear neutral or normal is being exposed. It's also important to note that the phrase is thrown around without being precisely defined. Precisely defining what is wrong with the reformers' ideas would require the accusers to reveal their prejudices. |
| ***Power and discourse: | Powerful discourses are those that control people's lives: Their access to employment, health care, education, recreation, positions in government, tolerance of their religious practices, transportation, home ownership, insurance, 'social acceptability'--even access to food (or alcohol and cigarettes!) and various qualities of consumer goods. Powerful discourses determine who 'gets heard' in a society: whose opinions are published; who gets to put content in broadcast media; who is allowed to speak in a courtroom, etc. Power in itself is neither good nor bad, so a powerful discourse may be a beneficial one (for instance, social 'safety net' programs such as Medicare, Social Security or government-subsidized education like we have here at Cal Poly give people access to basic needs like health care and housing or important advantages like a college education). A powerful discourse may be oppressive, however: The discourse of the pre-Civil-War South, for example, promoted depriving slaves of basic human rights. The various civil-rights movements in our history, from emancipation of slaves through the campaign for women's voting rights, through civil rights for women and minorities and animal rights--have been disputes over who gets to create the powerful discourses in society, and therefore control people's lives. Discourses are usually taken for granted and therefore 'invisible' to both the powerful and the powerless, although oppressed people may sometimes be aware of their suffering and the unfairness of their situation. See hegemony, power to define. Morrish, Leap, Sheldon, James & Clarke |
| Problematization: | Making some facet of everyday life into a "problem" -- something that a person must be preoccupied with; something a person must spend effort (and often money!) on in order to conform to a norm or ideal set up by whomever is doing the problematizing. A prime example is the problematization of women's looks: very large segments of media and business activity are directed towards making women worry about their weight, their skin, their hair, their degree of beauty and sexual attractiveness; correct ways to dress and use makeup, needing to shave, tanning, and so on. Problematization is accomplished by making it seem natural that a person would worry about and desire to improve the domain of the problematization. For instance, a magazine cover might include a line such as "how to keep him faithful to you". This makes it seem like common sense that a boyfriend or husband might have an affair; it makes it seem like common sense that a woman would object to such behavior; it makes it seem natural that a woman must do something -- take positive action -- to prevent such behavior; it also lays the responsibility for preventing such behavior on the woman, not the man. In other words, it makes fidelity in a love relationship into a problem that requires effort to avoid. In CDA, this has a much narrower meaning than the components of the word suggest. Problematization is a tool used for commercial ends; it's a propaganda device advertisers use to create a need which can only be satisfied by purchasing a product. |
| Prestige: | Overt prestige is attached to behaviors or attributes that are approved by society and rewarded with recognition, high social status, social acceptability; covert prestige is attached to behaviors or attributes that are disapproved of by society at large, but that have value for an individual or group within a more limited community (for instance, youth today admire rap music, while many older people find it offensive; some people admire a person who disrespects authority because they believe this shows the person's bravery or strength). |
| Protest masculinity: | A kind of acting out that men belonging to subordinate masculinities might engage in. Deprived of access to wealth and power through the channels of the dominant group, they find other ways to highlight their masculinity and/or gain wealth, e.g., gang membership, violent domination of partners and children, fighting and crime, opposition to authority, engaging in aggressive sports or pastimes, etc. |
| ***Reproduction: | The passing on, from one generation to the next, of particular cultural practices and values. For instance, gender construction that follows the traditional hegemonic norms of a society reproduces those norms in each generation that is raised to conform to them. |
| Schemas, scripts, or frames: | Units of information by which our minds structure our knowledge of
the world. These are complex, structured, and interconnected. They are
holistic; multiple aspects of schemas are understood simultaneously.
They can include static configurations such as our knowledge of the components
and arrangement of a typical house (it will have a roof, floors, bedrooms,
bathrooms, a kitchen, front and back doors, etc.) or 'scripts': a sequence
of events by which a certain scenario unfolds. Examples include a wedding
script, a birthday-party script, a summer-vacation script, a going-camping
script, a grocery-shopping script, etc. Schemas vary tremendously in
size, and smaller schemas can be embedded in larger ones (for instance,
tossing of the bridal bouqet at a wedding is a subschema of the wedding
schema). We have very basic schemas, such as our expectations of the
configuration of a normal human face, or basic space-organizing schemas
such as "path" or "container". Schemas make sense of the world for us: We are constantly, subconsciously measuring our moment-to-moment experience against our schemas--this is how we detect things that are strange or 'out of the ordinary'. We also use schemas to guide our own behavior so that we know what to do, for example, when we enter a classroom as either student or teacher. Many linguists believe that words are defined within schemas. Words like 'bachelor' or 'pet' can only be understood within schemas that organize marriage or human/animal relations. One way to view a culture is as a huge set of interlocking schemas that is shared by a particular community. |
| ***Sex vs. gender vs. sexual behavior: | Biological categories of people (sex) vs. cultural creation of biology-based categories (gender); how sexual behavior is used in societies to express gender categories. Morrish, Bing & Bergvall |
| ***Sexism: | Action, speech, or thought that puts one sex or gender at a disadvantage as compared to another solely because of their sex/gender, especially when their sex/gender is irrelevant to the matter at hand (for instance, anyone can be a good pilot or doctor; gender, sex, or sexual orientation is not a reason to exclude one category of person from being a pilot).Morrish, Leap, August |
| ***Sexist language: | ways that the language expresses gender stereotypes and gender expectations through vocabulary, naming practices, markedness, etc. (this is independent of whether the language user is displaying their gender identity through other features of language). Examples: feminine suffixes ("majorette", "dudette", "governess"); generic he, kin-dependent labeling ("mother", "grandmother" instead of "woman"), insults ("faggot", "wimp", "sissy") Morrish, Leap, Sheldon, August |
| ***Struggle: | In the context of this course, challenges to hegemony by marginalized/oppressed groups or individuals (women, homosexuals, non-conforming men). Struggle may be manifested in many forms, from an individual simply refusing to conform, to books, protest marches, lawsuits, proposed legislation, even violence. In the domain of language, struggle is the attempt to take control of language away from those who have traditionally held power over it, and claim power over interpretation of meanings and permitted language usage. Examples include acts such as a woman not taking her husband's name upon marriage; men not accepting other men's sexist humor; the Intersex Society's call for avoiding the term 'hermaphrodite'; reforming prescriptions such as the requirement to use 'he' as a generic; changing textbook language to avoid words such as 'man' or 'mankind' as generics; homosexuals reclaiming the term 'queer' as a term of proud self-identification; etc. Note that this word is not used in the ordinary sense of having to fight hard for something, or trying to succeed against bad odds. In CDA, it refers specifically (narrowly) to attempts by the disempowered to claim power over their lives; the fight of the disempowered against the hegemony that oppresses them. |
| ***Subject positions: | The confines within which an individual must operate in order to satisfy the demands of the discourses they wish to participate in; the interests, needs, and desires a discourse dictates to a person. These can control not only one's social acceptability, but even access to very basic needs such as housing and food. Gays & lesbians, for instance, must often hide their sexual orientation and go along with gay-bashing jokes or worse in order to insure their personal safety; landlords often refuse to rent to unmarried couples or people with children; problematization causes adolescents to focus disproportionately on dating, etc., etc. The individual participates in the construction of their subject positions through their responses to the positioning forces of society. |
| Subordinate masculinities: | Categories of men who are excluded from the hegemonic power structure, usually by factors such as lack of wealth, education, or high-placed connections, or by membership in a disfavored ethnic group. They might also be excluded for failure to conform to the masculine norm. Oppressed ethnic groups, working-class men, and homosexuals can all be seen as subordinate masculinities. |
| ***Variables: | aspects of language (or of the people/situations being studied) that vary across individuals or situations. Variables are what linguists study in empirical language/gender research. When studying one variable, it is optimal to try to keep other variables equal (to keep them from varying!) Linguistic variables include such things as the pitch of the voice, the pitch range of an individual's voice, the highs and lows of pitch contour (rise/fall patterns in the voice); use of 'bad language' such as swear words or curse words; standard or nonstandard grammar or pronunciation; particular grammatical structures such as tag questions, etc. Nonlinguistic variables include such things as gender, sexual orientation, age, region of origin or current residence, socioeconomic status, role in a situation, level of education, whether a group is mixed-sex or same-sex, etc. |
| The world is organized for us | by (a) the built-in structuring of our brains (perceptual and cognitive biases) and (b) the culture we are raised in. Bing & Bergvall, Morrish, Leap, Sheldon |
How to study for exams - Slightly updated 11/30
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Three kinds of questions generally appear on tests for this course: (1) You are
presented with one or more course concepts and asked to define/explain
them and exemplify them from specific readings and/or from your general
experience. You will usually have a choice among topics/questions ("answer three of the following", "choose one of these two essay questions", etc.). With regard to the readins: the hypothesis, thesis, or research question of the article, and general details regarding data (for instance, did the article use interview data, or was it a psychological experiment?) You also need to know the general nature of the results of an experiment or the conclusions an author drew from CDA, or the central arguments used in a theoretical article to support the claim/thesis. Finally, you need to be able to talk about the significance of the article to language & gender studies: Did it cause a rethinking of former beliefs/theories? Did it prove/disprove a belief or "accepted wisdom"? Etc. Look for similarities among the articles in the course concepts they illustrate or discuss. For instance, how does powerful discourse exercise thought control, according to Morrish, Gastil, and Sheldon? Or how does language help construct gender, according to Bing & Bergvall, Sheldon, August, Mehren? Etc.! Group work could be very productive here. A very likely type of exam question could be something like "discuss the ways Cameron, O'Barr & Atkins, and James & Clarke use their data to challenge the Difference model of gendered language". Obviously, your worksheets will be very helpful here: use them as you would flash cards. Throughout the quarter, practice language/gender analysis: Be mindful of the way language and images around you relate to gender. Make mental or written notes of 'language samples' from TV, movies, reading, conversation, etc. Take time to sit down with some examples and the course concepts list and write out a few paragraphs applying several course concepts to your examples. This would be terrific for group work! And it would be fun to bring them in to me in an office hour for us to chew on together! To prepare, assemble your readings, worksheets, class notes, and Course Concepts list. For each, write up a few paragraphs in which you define it, give examples, relate it to class lectures and the readings and to other Course Concepts. If you start on this right away, you will have the opportunity to come to me with questions about concepts or readings you haven't understood. I never criticize a student for not knowing or understanding something -- those are the students I am supposed to help most! |
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