Just to add my 2p - I spend quite a bit of time going over different approaches (dominance, difference, deficit, dynamic), as well as different methods of looking at language and gender (quantitative, cda, narrative, sexuality, queer theory etc), but I always remind students that looking at 'gender differences' is a) pretty basic, b) has been done before and c) of limited interest (another one that comes out is 'media representations of men/women'...).
As always, there are students who end up seeing this kind of approach as the 'easy' one, but the better projects tend to go well beyond this, thank goodness. Encouraging them to read widely (and especially more recent stuff) is always good, but one thing that I've recently started trying is getting them to review conference abstracts and discuss them in seminar groups. This at least shows them that research is an ongoing process and hopefully it inspires them to expand their thinking. I also use the Eckert and McConnell-Ginet book, which is a very good resource.
Rob
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From: Teaching Linguistics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Mcdowell, Joanne [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 24 November 2015 16:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Deconstructing gender for (socio)linguists
Hi ya Dave (and teachling gang)
sorry I could not open you link so have to bash your (and other's!) poor inbox!
This is my specialist subject area in both teaching and research and I am not presupposing here at all what you do /do not teach, but just to reflect on my own practice (if it helps you in anyway) when teaching the history of the area I always include new developments (after all social constructionist approach is over 20 years old in language and gender studies and Community of Practice came onto the scene in 1999 - there is TONS of literature on workplace discourse than shows men and women use the same speech styles and linguistic strategies and its their CoP that can be the overriding factor, I have two of my own papers published on this topic (Gender Work and Occupation May 2015 and Journal of Language and Gender forthcoming Dec 2015) ,happy to send you them or you can find me on Research Gate : )). I stress to my students at the start that what I teach in the first lecture is HISTORY and then I move on to contemporary stuff. I find that this helps them (a little) to avoid the whole starting with the assumption that ' men and women talk differently and setting out to show it projects' or from wanting to do projects to disprove dominance /difference theory- I stress to them that this is not allowed as its already been done a long time ago and things have moved on already!! They now think beyond that to things like 'what do men and women do in this context' and look for similarities as well instead of barrelling in with the opinion that a) gender differences are always there and b) trying to explain why or explain differences in relation to gender instead of other factors that intertwine such as professional identity, that gender performance is only one aspect of our identity that is often inseparable from other aspects. Students tend to use gender to account for everything!
a good book on this topic is Language and Gender by Penelope Eckert- a new edition has just came out earlier this year, as well as Janet Holmes Gendered Talk in the Workplace 2006 which highlights feminine/masculine CoPs and how this context can affect how speakers interact in the workplace.
hope this helps
Jo
Dr Joanne McDowell
Senior Lecturer in English Language and Communication
Associate Programme Tutor for Humanities
School of Humanities
Room R320
De Havilland Campus
Postal address
University of Hertfordshire
College Lane
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 9AB
Tel. +1707 285551
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From: Teaching Linguistics <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Dave Sayers <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 24 November 2015 15:11
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Deconstructing gender for (socio)linguists
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
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