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?’