Hi everyone,
I teach sociolinguistics in different forms to first year and second year undergrads.
Both modules involve group projects, and they usually choose to explore some aspect
of language and gender (almost invariably in fact!). It's fine because their topic
ideas are usually not as deathly boring as just 'do men and women speak differently?'
(for example one of my groups wants to compare male and female discussions of ISIS!)
but still they do tend to oversimplify gender roles. I quickly and consistently pull
them up on this, and to my surprise and delight it gets easier every year as gender
diversity becomes a more mainstream topic, but still it's an uphill trek.
This is partly my own stupid fault for spending a lot of the lectures showing
language differences between 'men and women' - in my defence that's kind of
unavoidable when you're reviewing the history of a discipline that has not really
deconstructed gender until really quite recently.
So two related requests for info: textbook-type readings that draw out gender
diversity beyond a two-way split (ideally in relation to language), and primary
sociolinguistic research - accessible to undergrads - which picks apart the primacy
of gender as an explanatory category and/or explores a diversity of gender roles in
relation to linguistic behaviour.
As is my way, I've made a publicly editable Google document for this so that people
can more easily see each other's contributions, and to save my poor inbox:
https://goo.gl/1olMEG.
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions!
Dave
--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk
Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk
[log in to unmask] | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
|