the gendered elective
Hey Psychosuperchick,
It is a confusing and new up in theair study this gendered language elective. I can completely understand.
What you need to remember is that in this course they don't want us to discusss gender issues in relation to our society but how texts shape and reflect language and values in a range of contexts and modes of production in the way that language is gendered. Ths means, like in the 2 unit course one explores and evaluates ect. how the language makes meaning. That is, in this case for instance how are male and female characters positioned? What are the assumptions/generalisations Tannen makes? How does she represent her context on a cultural level (coming from a western American perpective) and her situational contexts (the fact that she is a doctor in linguistics and perhaps comes from a traditional Jewish and ordiary feminist perpeective).
They also want you to specifically look at the notions associated with POWER in texts and its asociation with gender stereotypes/positioning.
I guess the most difficult thing is drawing together all the various threads of the topic from a range of texts. You could perhaps categorise the topics e.g hierachy. feminism..... And the most difficut thing will be to put this in an essay. Perhaps you may wish to have a specific focus in your essay and dicuss all texts in the same light.
The language and values for english extension syllabus tells we can analyse texts in 3 ways:
1) Historical perspective: representations across time
so they know you have looked at different perpectives
not just our own context as the syllabus wants us to do
- "evaluate...processes of valuing (stage 6 syllabus)
2) Stylistic perpective: Mode of production, structure, style.
3) Sociolinguitic perpetive: How the language words convey
society's/contexts and the form of this language.
These all tie in together.
So my steps tips:
* Know your texts well- memorise quotes, know and categorise gender issues.
* Note the structures, conventions and mode of production of texts.
* Know how masculinity and feminity is produced and reflected in and through texts.
And about the lecture/study days for gendered language- there has been only one at The University Of Sydney by The English Association but my notes are untypedand the actual lecture that was presented is on paper and iis 40 pages long.
Remember we're all in the same boat.
Best wishes.
