An Introduction of Sorts

This particular ‘Language and Gender’ seminar is focused on investigating the relationship between language and gender in several interrelated ways. First, it seeks to understand the relationship between the two in terms of talk. Does the gender of language users dictate their use of language? Or does use of language create particular gendered identities? Must it necessarily be one or the other? Second, the course examines the relationship between the two in terms of representation. How is gender constructed by and in language? And how much of this construction is shaped by already existing gendered representations? Finally, the course investigates the relationship between the two vis-à-vis other social categories. Is gender always the salient category, and can it stand on its own as an analytical category? Or is gender in fact part of a wider set of subjectivities—e.g. age, class, ethnicity—all of which must be considered in analysis? 

In asking these questions, the class also interrogates the very notions of ‘gender’ and ‘language’ and ‘power’: what does gender mean, and how is it different from related terms such as ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’? How much agency do users of the language, women and other sexual minorities in particular, have over these terms? What does language mean, and how critical is its role in the construction and elaboration of the world and one’s place in it? What do these things have to do with empowerment, with feminism and the fight for gay and trans rights—terms that almost always come up whenever gender is talked about?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but this final class project, where we offer ways to answer these questions in relation to particular texts and representation using different methodological and analytical frames, is our contribution to the ongoing conversations in the field of language and gender studies.