L720 Language & Gender (Fall 2007)

This course is about language and gender: how women and men use
language and how language reflects the status of women and men in
society. Many people have specific ideas about the way women speak:
e.g., women are more polite than men and they speak better than
them, they talk and gossip more than men, they use expressions like
kind of and seek approval for what they say by making their
statements sound like questions or by adding tag questions: It’s a
nice day, isn’t it?. In this course, we will ask ourselves whether
any of the stereotypes about women’s language are true. We will try
to determine how differently women and men really speak and
understand why this should be the case. We will examine gender
differences in various cultures and ask how much of a role genetic
and social factors play in the linguistic behaviors of women and
men.  Finally, we will consider claims that English and many other
languages are sexist and that they deny women a level of recognition
equal to that granted to men.