Gender, Language and Communication

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

Teaching Methods

Lack of previous training in language and communication studies demands a) intensive lecturing in initial sessions in tandem with b) practical critical language awareness exercises, c) actual collection of verbal and textual data drawing from documented sources, personal lived experience, natural occurrences, textual artifacts of various orders, to be used in final research essay. Also, discussion and debate of theoretical essays by following a restricted number of key questions to be applied across the modules of the syllabus. Oral presentations, writing and discourse analysis exercises.

Learning Outcomes

The seminar aims at developing the ability to identify, apply and compare insights from Feminist, Language and Communication studies – in what concerns the role of human language activity in the production and negotiation of sex and gender related subjectivity and knowledge. By the end of the term the student
a. will have developed critical awareness, in particular regarding the relationship between language, sex and gendered subjectivities
b. will have identified and used tools of language, discourse and media analysis from a feminist standpoint;
c. will have articulated distinct analytical tools to distinct corresponding theories relating language, gender and sex, in the intersection between feminist, language and social studies;
d. developed critical abilities in the analysis of media representations;
e. will have produced an original piece of academic work that applies and articulates in critical and empirical ways.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

This course introduces tools for linguistic, discourse and ideological analysis which situate the lived experience manifest in structures and uses in actual everyday contexts. The course covers the following areas of feminist language and communication studies:  
I) language(s):  grammar, structure, sexist representations;
II) uses of language in context:  language socialization, discourse and conversation, genres, styles and registers;
III) discourse, power and ideology: subjectivities and representations of sex, sexual identities and sexualities ;  
IV) gender representations and constructions in different types of media texts by the use of language both a perspective of production and consumption of messages, framed by gender identity and ideologies.

Assessment Methods

Assessment
75% presences; simulation of abstract (10%); oral presentation of final project (20%), previous preparation and debate in class (10%) : 40.0%
Synthesis work: 60.0%

Bibliography

Carter, C., Steiner, L., McLaughlin, L. (2014). The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender. London: Routledge

Gill, R. (2007). Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Goodwin, M. (2006). The Hidden Life of Girls: Games of Stance, Status, and Exclusion. Oxford: Blackwell.

Harding, S. (2004). The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. New York / London: Routledge

Hellinger, M. & Bussmann, H., eds. (2001). Gender across languages: the linguistic representation of women and men. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Lakoff, R. T. (2004). Language and Woman’s Place. Text and Commentaries. Revised edition, ed. Mary Bucholtz. London: OUP.

Lazar, M. M. (2005) (ed.). Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse. London: Palgrave.

Macedo, A. G., Amaral, A. L. (2005) Dicionário de Termos Feministas. Porto: Afrontamento

Talbot, Mary M. (2010) Language and Gender: An Introduction. 2nd edition. Malden, MA: Polity Press.