Gender and Language

Researching Language, Gender and Sexuality: A Student Guide

Jingna Qiu — 2020-06-18

Language, indexicality and gender ideologies

Erez Levon — 2020-06-18

It is well established that listeners’ attitudes to variability in language are affected by context. One speaker’s use of a particular form will not necessarily be evaluated in the same way as another’s use of that same form, and the pragmatic meanings listeners associate with speech depend on the specific social setting in which that speech occurs. In this article, we explore how this contextual sensitivity of sociolinguistic perception interacts with broader ideologies about gender. Specifically, we examine how the use of ‘uptalk’, or rising final intonation on declarative utterances, impacts the perceived credibility of women versus men in different legal contexts, including those characterized by strong ideologies of gender (e.g. a rape trial) and those in which that ideological framing is less pronounced (e.g. a medical malpractice trial). Our goal is to identify how social ideologies about gender affect listeners’ perceptions of uptalk, and to explore the ramifications that these perceptions have on women’s ability to be believed in a courtroom.

Occupational titles and personal pronouns

Helga Hilmisdóttir — 2020-06-18

The aim of this article is to investigate gender categorisation in sequences that introduce referents by their occupational titles. The study addresses the following three questions: (1) What can the systematic patterns in authentic conversation tell us about the use of gender in Icelandic? (2) What is the distribution of labour between grammatical and referential gender? (3) Does the mismatch between grammatical and referential gender cause any problems in the conversation? The data used come from 10 hours and 22 minutes of conversation recorded between 1996 and 2018 comprising everyday conversations, phone calls, radio interviews about current affairs, moderated political debates and spontaneous speeches in the parliament. In total, 55 sequences of occupational titles were identified in the data. The analysis shows that when the gender of the referent is known to the speaker, the choice of pronoun is based on the referential gender, but when the gender is unknown or the main referent is hypothetical, the speaker uses a pronoun that matches the grammatical gender of the noun. Finally, the data show that the choice of pronoun rarely triggers repairs.

Aggressive but loyal

Elizabeth Poynter — 2020-06-18

Language powerfully impacts the construction of our gender identities. In the mid-twentieth century gender stereotypes were strong, but at the same time feminism was giving rise to new ideas and becoming increasingly mainstream. What gender-related discourse prosodies did children encounter in popular literature? Did these merely reinforce the conventional stereotypes or did they contain the seeds of change? This study of British children's fiction published in the 1940s-60s seeks to answer these questions through an analysis of personality descriptors collocated with female and male characters in eight books by four prolific children's writers. Although gender stereotypes (as represented by the Bem Sex-Role Inventory) are to some extent reinforced in these books, there are also considerable discrepancies. Children were meeting a range of positive models which did not always match ‘feminine' or ‘masculine' stereotypes.

Study abroad as a space where akogare (??) circulates

Chika Kitano — 2020-06-18

This study explores the complex dynamics of akogare, a Japanese concept describing a strong attraction to something or someone unattainable. Prior research on the dynamics of akogare in English language learning studies has largely been limited to the consideration of Japanese women’s sexual or romantic desire for the West. The classical hypothesis of gendered akogare arising from this research has led to a disproportionate representation of akogare as Japanese women’s active sexualised agency. This study scrutinises narratives derived from semi-structured interviews with seven Japanese students, male and female, who participated in study abroad programmes in the UK. Drawing from theoretical understandings of ‘materiality’ and ‘space’, the analysis observes how multifaceted akogare circulates in a study abroad setting that is influenced by learners’ linguistic and gendered relations to the West. The analysis suggests that the study abroad setting serves as a multidimensional space to (re)construct oneself through the lens of akogare as a discerning English learner who asserts cognitive distance from Western hegemony.