Wednesday 14th December: Work in my absence and holiday homework - Language & Gender Research and Essay

Hi everyone,

I will not be here on Wednesday as I'm out on a trip, so here's the work that you need to start today and complete over Christmas.

This is a research task into language and gender, and will be useful when it comes to writing essays on this topic, and then you will need to write an actual essay, so please read the instructions below carefully.

For your exam, you'll need to write a discursive essay. This means that you will be given a fairly vague question with an idea that you can discuss, but ultimately what will get you marks is your wider reading and research into the topic that you can bring in to support your answer.

You need to have as many different studies, theories and theorists, articles etc. as possible to work with, so that you have plenty of wider reading to draw on for any question you are asked.

Here is an example question:

With this question, you would obviously need to talk about the theories, but you also need to bring in wider reading as evidence for your ideas.

So with that in mind, here is a list of articles related to language and gender. This is an ongoing task and you probably will not get through all 19 articles, so try to do about 10 or 11. As you read the articles think about the following questions and make notes / answer in detail where relevant. 

·         Do you think these articles are representative of the ways men and women are presented in the media? Why, or why not?

·         What influences our perception of gender within society?

·         One of these articles talks about gender roles in the book/film, Gone Girl. How are gender roles presented in two books or films you have recently experienced?

When you have read through and completed these questions, write a more extended response to the question below (approx. 1000 words)

To what extent do these articles support the language theory you have studied? Support your answer with evidence from the text. When answering this question, choose 3 or 4 articles, and discuss whether or not the conform to the ideas and theories presented by Lakoff, Zimmerman and West, and Tannen.

1.     ‘The ‘sexist’ words your children are no longer allowed to use at school’

2.     ‘Pink v blue - are children born with colour preferences?’

3.     ‘Campaign to end gender bias in children’s books gains pace’

4.     Stop calling women ‘girls’. It's either patronising or sexually suggestive

5.     ‘Not EveryBrand Loves Emojis. Always ‘Like a Girl’ Says the Female Ones Are Terrible’

6.     ‘Beyond ‘he’ and ‘she’: The rise of non-binary pronouns’

7.     ‘BBC’s James Naughtie apologises for calling Caitlyn Jenner ‘he’’

8.     ‘Emma Watson: Gender equality is your issue too’

9.     ‘Handbags and kitten heels – how not to write about prime ministers’

10.  ‘Kit Harington: film industry guilty of ‘sexism towards men’’

11.  ‘Unilever vows to drop sexist stereotypes from its ads’

12. 
‘How to Get Ahead as a Woman in Tech: Interrupt Men’

13.  ‘Women Get Interrupted More—Even By Other Women’

14.  ‘Johnson: Why men interrupt’

15.  ‘Gone Girl revamps gender stereotypes – for the worse’

16.  ‘Is some Olympic commentary sexist?’

17.  ‘How to talk about female Olympians without being a regressive creep – a handy guide’

18.  ‘Men do most of the talking in movies — even when they’re about women’

19.  ‘What language barrier?’

Creative Writing Language and Gender

Hi all,

Your task over the next 2 lessons is to write an article in which you discuss language and gender. Your article should include the 3 D gender theories we have studied and also draw on the information you learned when watching the documentary on Monday (link to video in post below).

The key points of this task are as follows:

• You need to write for a non-specialist audience, meaning you will have to present the gender theories in a way that anyone could understand, even if they are not studying language
• You need to write in the exact style of your chosen publication, so it will seem as if the article you have written could conceivably appear in that publication. 

Your tasks for today are:

• Decide upon the publication you want to write for. This could be The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Vice, The Lad Bible, Buzzfeed, Elle, Glamour, Cosmo etc. 
• These will all have very different GRAMPS. When you have chosen, find 1 or 2 articles to use as a style model and look at the kind of language choices they make
• Start planning how you will mimic this style in your own article, and then plan how you will incorporate the 3 gender theories and the information you learned from the article we watched on Monday.

You will have today and tomorrow's lesson to finish the article.

Creative Writing Prep

Hi all,

This week you will be planning and writing an article which outlines the 3 D Gender theories and summarises the documentary we watched in class today. Click here to re-watch the documentary.

Also, as you need to be engaged with both sides of the debate, here is an interesting atricle in New Scientist which disputes the documentary.

You need to choose which publication you intend to write your article for, and research where on their website or in their publication the article would be found. For example, in the Guardian you'd r likely to find an article with subject matter like this in the Lifestyle, Comment is Free or the Science pages.

Next you need to research the publication and GRAMPS one of their articles to decided what kind of language you need to use to appeal to their target audience, for example if you're writing for Vice, their target audience is around 21-35 year olds and they have a very interesting use of language, so you will need to mimic that.

Please make sure you know what publication you want to write for by the time you come to class on Wednesday, as you will spend some of that lesson actually beginning to write the article.

Additionally, I need you to hand in your homework on Wednesday.

Claudia

Thursday's lesson and homework for Monday

Hi folks,

Here is the PowerPoint from today's lesson, please read it thoroughly and ensure that you have fully understood the '3 D' theories, and that you have completed yesterday's blog work.

A reminder about your homework, which is due Monday:

Go online and search for a male version of an Anatomicals product, known as Manatomicals. This is the kind of thing you are looking for:

Do a language analysis of the product, identifying any techniques used (puns etc.) and then discuss whether or not you think the product conforms to the 3 D theories, or whether it disputes them.

Then, you need to do a compare and contrast between the male version and the female versions:

What do the different versions of the product, aimed at men and women, tell us about the way men and women are represented in society? Does this support the 3 theories?

To confirm: this is due on MONDAY and needs to be approx. 800 words.

The 3 Models - Language & Gender

Morning all,

Today you need to read through the 3 PowerPoints in this post which outline the 3 'D' theory models that we focus on in language and gender:

Deficit - Robin Lakoff
Dominance - Zimmerman and West
Difference - Deborah Tannen

Ensure that you understand the theories as much as possible, to the point that you can recall the main information off by heart when asked, i.e. who developed the theory and what it outlines. If you need more info, look up the theories online (Wikipedia is helpful). Summarise each model on your blog in your own words and whether or not you would agree with the theories with an explanation as to why. There are some questions on each PowerPoint, so think about them and note down a few responses in your summaries.

Additionally, try to identify what problems there are with the theories. For example, the Dominance model is a very outdated study and only focused on a very small number of participants, so can the findings really be reliable?

As an extension task, look up Deborah Cameron's research into language and summarise her opinions on the idea that men and women speak differently.

1. Robin Lakoff - The Deficit Model

2. Zimmerman and West - The Dominance Model

3. Deborah Tannen - The Difference Model

Language and Gender Introduction

Hi everyone,

Here is the PowerPoint I went through in class today (Monday). Please re-read over it and ensure you have understood the main principles of the language and gender module.

See you Wednesday

Claudia

TED Talk Lesson

Morning everyone, welcome back!

I hope you have had a good break, and that you are rested and ready for the new term

We are not going to be doing anything too taxing today, so with that in mind here are today's tasks:

Firstly, I need your holiday homework - the analysis of the Mirror Money article. Please had that to me straight away. If you don't have it, as per the homework policy you have 24 hours to hand it to me, however if it's not then handed in tomorrow you will be escalated along the disciplinary process.

Today you are going to be watching TED talks about language and making notes on the content. Follow this link to view all the TED talks which discuss language, and choose 3 or 4 to focus on. Whilst watching, make notes and then as a summary write up 1-2 paragraphs on the content and the message of the talk, also discussing what you have learned from watching it.

Any problems let me know.

Meanings & Representations

Morning everyone; we're nearly there!

This term has been very full on, so well done for making it to the end (almost!). We've got 2 lessons left before we break, so we're going to be doing one last push to consolidate our study of language & technology and put this into practice using PEE.

As I discussed on Monday, as well as needing to have the ability to analyse the language used in any given text, you also need to be able to comment in detail on:

• The affordances of a particular text
• The constraints
• The context
• The way in which the text creates meanings and representations

We did a lot of this on Monday, and now with that foundation knowledge in place, you should be able to take a stab at answering an exam-style question using this framework.

Task 1

Get out your Mumsnet A3 sheets you annotated on Monday  - you-ll need those today - and for the first task, take 5 minutes to re-familiarise yourself with the content and your annotations. Can you make any more observations about the text? Remember the question: 

How does the text use language to create meanings and representations?

Task 2

Now, take a look at the exemplar response to the question and the text we are working on, which would receive an A grade in a real exam. Look at the way this response is structured, and how the student is using the PEE format. You will be writing PEE paragraphs in class tomorrow, so take a not of how it is done, and how the candidate includes a topic sentence,  point, evidence from the text and the explanation. 

Also, look at the examiner comments at the side, as this is a good way to ascertain how and what the examiner rewards (but don't worry about AO1 and AO3 for now). 

Go through the text and highlight the following in 2 different colours:

• Any identification of linguistic techniques
• Discussion of context, affordances and constraints, and meanings and representations.

(Note: You are not expected to be able to write to this standard at this point in your study. You should use this as an opportunity to see the standard that you will be working toward throughout the year)

Task 3

Using your feedback from me and the exemplar response for support, re-write your paragraphs from Monday. You should aim for at least 2 paragraphs. Email these to me by the end of the lesson and post to your blog.

As always, come and see me if you have any problems!