Text Box: ANT 343: Language and Gender Spring 2007 T/Th 1:00-2:50

 

 


Text Box: Instructor: Dr. Barbara G. Hoffman CB 145, Office Hours TBA Voicemail: (216) 687-3549 Email: b.hoffman@csuohio.edu

 

 

 

 

Course Materials:

·        Coates, Jennifer.  2004. Women, Men and Language, 3rd Edition. Required [referred to as WM&L throughout]

·        Readings on reserve in the library: http://scholar.csuohio.edu/search/r?SEARCH=ANT+343

>Power Point Presentations<

 

Course Description:
Why is it that when men and women talk to each other, sometimes they feel like they're talking to a creature from another planet? What happens to make them feel this way? Is this just a feature of American cultures, or is it more widespread?

This course explores connections between language use and gender systems through a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and findings in recent research. Course materials draw from anthropological, linguistic, and psychological studies that address questions such as the following: How do patterns of speaking and interpreting reflect, perpetuate, and create our experience of gender? What do controversies about sexism and other biases in language suggest about the connections between language, thought, and social-political issues?

Are differences in language use reflective of or contributive to the dominance of one gender over another? Or are differences in language use merely indicative of different cultures or subcultures linked to gender?

The formal study of language and gender is a young one and as such, has raised more questions than it has answered. You have the opportunity in this class to investigate some of these questions in terms of your own experience, and to progress toward finding answers through your own research.

 

Evaluation:
Participation: classroom & web-based discussion, assignments: 40%
Essay: 15%
Final project: 45%

Readings should be done by the day they are to be discussed (the date they appear on the syllabus). Pop quizzes over the readings may occur at any time.

 

Assignments:
All assignments must be satisfactorily completed. These may be assigned at any point during the semester as I monitor your progress. Check the Blackboard (WebCT) site everyday.

 

Essay:
A well-organized, typewritten essay (approximately 3-5 double-spaced pages). See the Assignments section of the Blackboard site for details.

 

Final Project:
In about a month, you will submit to me a proposal for a final project which explores, elucidates, describes, analyzes, or reports on a set of linguistic practices that correlate with gender roles. This may be a paper or a Power Point presentation. Whatever you choose to do research on, you will analyze it following the theoretical positions discussed. Guidelines and suggestions will follow.

 

Course Schedule

Text Box: Overview and Orientation

 

Jan 16 – 18  

Ø      Introduction: Language, Gender, & Culture

Ø      Overview of Gender & Linguistics

 

Jan 23 - 25 (Readings: WM&L, ch. 1)

Ø      Video: He Said, She Said (Deborah Tannen)

Ø      Constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing gender

 

 

Text Box: Historical Background of Gender Linguistics

 

 

   

Jan 30 -Feb 1 : (Readings: WM&L, chs.2-3)

Ø      Early hints: folklinguistics and early dialectology

Ø      Linguistic basics

 

Feb 6 - Feb  8: (Reading: Lakoff: Language and Women's Place, Part I (reserve)

Ø      How does a Fair Lady talk differently than a Gutter Snipe? Gender, class, and language.  

Ø      The book that launched a thousand studies. Lakoff’s assertions on Women’s Language.

 

Text Box: Overview of Language and Gender Topics and Methods of Study

Feb 13 - 15: (Readings WM&L ch. 4-5)

Ø      Quantitative methods

Ø      Network studies

 

Feb 20 - Feb 22: (WM&L, ch. 6-8)

Ø      Conversational analysis: mixed sex, same sex

 

Feb 27 - Mar 1:

Ø      Women’s Language redux: what have we learned?

 

Mar 6 - Mar 8:  (No Readings – Finalize your Essay!)

Ø      Video: Gender and Communication: Male-Female differences in language and nonverbal behaviors 

Ø      Group Exercise

Essay Due March 8th

 

SPRING BREAK: MARCH 12-16

 

Text Box: Language and gender case studies: doing gender through language


Mar 20-22: (Readings on electronic course reserve)

Ø      Zimmerman & West: “Sex Roles, Interruptions and Silences in Conversation”

Ø      O'Barr & Atkins: "`Women's Language' or `Powerless Language'?”   


Mar 27 -29: (Readings on electronic course reserve)

Ø      Jane Hill: “Culture Shock, Negative Face and Positive Face: Being Polite in Tlaxcala”

Ø      Penelope Brown: “How and Why are Women More Polite: Some Evidence from a Mayan Community”

 

Ø      Last Day to Withdraw: March 30

Apr 3 – 5:  (Readings on electronic course reserve)

Ø      Keenan: Norm-makers, norm-breakers: uses of speech by men and women in a Malagasy community.

Ø      Ochs: The Impact of Stratification and Socialization on Men's and Women's Speech in Western Samoa

 

Apr 10 – 12 (Readings on electronic course reserve)

Ø      Maltz & Borker: A Cultural Approach to Male-Female Miscommunication

Ø      Tannen: Interpreting Interruption in Conversation

Ø      Sherzer: A Diversity of voices: Men's and Women's Speech in Ethnographic Perspective



Apr 17 – 19 (Readings on electronic course reserve)

 

Ø      Phillips and Reynolds: “Interactions of Variable Syntax and Discourse Structure in Women’s and Men’s Speech”

Ø      Tannen: “Gender Differences in Conversational Coherence: Physical Alignment and Topical Cohesion”

 

Apr 24 -26  (Readings: WM&L ch. 10-11)

 

Ø      The Social Implications and Consequences of Gendered Language

 

 

May 1: Student Presentations

 

May 3: Student Presentations