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.