3.  SUE BLACKWELL, The University of Birmingham

School of English,
University of Birmingham,
Edgbaston,
BIRMINGHAM   B15 2TT
U.K.

+44 (0)21-414-3219

e-mail:
BLACKWELLSA@uk.ac.bham


At the time of my appointment, September 1992, I was 
asked to design a two-term course in Language and Gender 
to run as a Free Course in the second year of the B.A. in 
English.  The course is available to both Single and Combined 
Honours students, and is optional.  I have yet to see how 
many takers it attracts: since it is a "free" rather than a 
"core" course, if it doesn't reach a minimum quota 
(something like 5-6 students) it won't run, but I hope there's 
no danger of that.

My original course proposal met with various criticisms, 
some reasonable (overlap with existing courses) and some 
less so ("you won't have enough material for a two-term 
course" etc.), and so the syllabus has gone through several 
stages of refinement.

What has now been agreed by the English Language section 
of the School, subject to ratification by the School Committee 
(which includes the Literature staff as well as Language), is 
that in the academic year 1993-4 I will run a one-term pilot 
course as part of the existing course in Language and 
Ideology.  The person who normally teaches Lang.& Id. will 
be on study leave for one term, so my course will replace 
what he would normally be doing.  In the following academic 
year, if the "pilot" has run successfully, Language and 
Ideology will revert to its normal two-term format 
(including a couple of weeks on Gender), and the full two-
term version of my Language and Gender course will run 
alongside it as another second-year option.  I am therefore 
providing you with details of both the full and the pilot 
courses, but please bear in mind that the pilot course is just 
that, and will only run once.



LANGUAGE AND GENDER: A PROPOSAL

There has been some debate about the proposed Language 
and Gender course at the last two ELR meetings, and it is 
vital that a decision is reached soon if the course is to run in 
the coming academic year.  I would like to propose a way of 
proceeding which takes account of the following factors:

1.   Overlap
I am anxious that students who wish to pursue this course 
should not be precluded from doing so, either because they 
are taking the Sociolinguistics course at the same time or 
because they are not!  I have re-written the course proposal 
so that the amount of overlap is minimal and the necessary 
concepts will be explained as they are introduced.

2.   Content
It has been suggested that there is not enough material to 
justify a two-term course.  I hope that the attached teaching 
plan is sufficiently detailed to demonstrate that this is not 
the case.  It is true that I will be using some non-traditional 
teaching methods in the second term, with students 
presenting their own research in short seminar papers.  This 
will, I believe, be one of the strengths of the course.

3.   Staffing
Nonetheless there will be pressure on staff in the academic 
year 1993-4, with Murray Knowles being on study leave for 
one term.  It has even been suggested that Language and 
Ideology might not run at all.  My proposal is that Murray 
teaches Language and Ideology for the term during which he 
is not on leave, and I teach Language and Gender for the 
term when he is away.  Students would write one assessed 
essay for each term.

I would emphasize that I am not proposing that Language 
and Gender should become a permanent component of 
Language and Ideology; rather that, because of a specific and 
unique staffing situation in the coming academic year, we 
seize the opportunity to run a one-term pilot course in 
Language and Gender which, if successful, will be expanded 
into a fully independent two-term course in subsequent 
years while Language and Ideology reverts to its normal 
format.  This will mean both that the new course has a 
chance to run immediately and that students will not be 
deprived of the opportunity to take Language and Ideology.

I would therefore ask colleagues to approve both the full 
two-term course and the one-term pilot course at the ELR 
meeting.

Sue Blackwell
March 1992
B.A. 2: LANGUAGE AND GENDER  (FREE COURSE)
Reading List for one-term pilot course

Essential Reading:
Deborah Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic Theory, 2nd 
   edition, Macmillan, 1991

Recommended Reading
Jennifer Coates, Women, Men and Language, Longman, 1988.
David Graddol and Joan Swann, Gender Voices, Basil 
   Blackwell,1989.
Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place, Harper & Row, 
   1975. (out of print!)
Casey Miller and Kate Swift, Words and Women: New 
   Language in New Times, Penguin, 1976 (probably out of 
   print!)
Dale Spender, Man Made Language, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 
   1980.
Peter Trudgill, "Sex, Covert Prestige and Linguistic Change in
   the Urban British English of Norwich", in Language in
   Society 1.


Sue Blackwell
March 1993
B.A.2:  LANGUAGE AND GENDER (FREE COURSE)
Course Outline: one-term pilot course

Title:    Language and Gender
Lecturer: Sue Blackwell
Level:    BA 2nd year 
Length:   1 hour per week x 1 term = 10 or 11 weeks 
including Reading Week = 9 or 10 hours' teaching in total.

Rationale:   Discussion of feminist concern with language in 
the popular press has tended to focus on (and ridicule) the 
apparently tokenistic and cosmetic efforts of the "politically 
correct".  This course will seek to identify the issues involved 
and to locate them in a historical perspective which includes 
academic and non-academic analyses arising from 
reactionary, feminist, Marxist and other ideological 
viewpoints.

Description:  No prior knowledge of sociolinguistics or 
political philosophy is assumed. 

The course will cover the way in which the study of 
language in relation to sex has shifted over the last few 
decades, from suggestions that women in some societies 
spoke different languages from men to equally startling 
claims by feminists, such as Spender's assertion that women 
inevitably occupy "negative semantic space".  We will be 
examining some of these theories in detail, and students will 
be encouraged to criticise them.

The emphasis throughout this course will be on informed 
debate, not orthodoxy!  Male as well as female students are 
positively invited to participate.

Objectives:  By the end of the course students should have 
acquired an understanding of the many complex currents which have 
contributed to the debates over language and gender.  They 
should be aware that the issues include not only variation in 
language according to sex, but also the names given to 
women and the terms in which women are described.

Assessment:   One 3,000 word essay to be written in the 
vacation following the course.

Reading:
See attached reading list.


B.A. 2: LANGUAGE AND GENDER  (FREE COURSE)
Teaching Plan for one-term pilot course

Week 1
Introduction to course.  Early sociolinguistic/anthropological 
work: "women's languages" etc.

Week 2
Early feminist work: Miller and Swift on changing sexist 
language.  Handbooks, institutional guidelines, etc.  "Political 
correctness".

Week 3
More early feminist work: Robin Lakoff.  Why "pairs" like 
master/mistress aren't equal.

Week 4
The politics of women's names.  Phyllis Trible's feminist 
analysis of Genesis: naming is the second sin.  Naming of 
property and slaves.  Alternatives to patriarchal naming 
conventions, from various cultures and feminist strategies.

Week 5
Radical feminist critiques of the reformist strategies 
examined so far.  Dale Spender: women occupy "negative 
semantic space".

Week 6
Grammatical gender: does it have anything to do with sex? 
If not, why do most Europeans think it has?

Week 7
Variation I: lexis, syntax, pronoun usage.

Week 8
Variation II: women's discourse, women's silence.

Week 9
The politics of variation: why study it?  Should women be 
studied as a speech community?

Week 10
Overview: ways of theorising language and gender. 
Reformist and radical feminist theories; a Marxist analysis. 
Is women's speech a sign of oppression or a sign of struggle? 
Where do we go from here?


B.A. 2: LANGUAGE AND GENDER  (FREE COURSE)
Reading List for full two-term course

Essential Reading:
Deborah Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic Theory, 2nd 
   edition,Macmillan, 1991

Recommended Reading
Jennifer Coates, Women, Men and Language, Longman, 1988.
Jennifer Coates and Deborah Cameron (ed.s), Women in their
   Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and 
   Sex, Longman, 1989.
Norman Fairclough, Language and Power, Longman, 1989.
David Graddol and Joan Swann, Gender Voices, Basil 
   Blackwell,1989.
Cheris Kramarae, The Voices and Words of Women and Men,
   Pergamon Press, 1980.
Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place, Harper & Row, 
   1975. (out of print!)
Casey Miller and Kate Swift, Words and Women: New 
   Language in New Times, Penguin, 1976 (probably out of 
   print!)
Bob Powell, Boys, Girls and Languages in School, CILT, 1986.
Dale Spender, Man Made Language, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 
   1980.
Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand, Morrow, 1990.
Peter Trudgill, "Sex, Covert Prestige and Linguistic Change in
   the Urban British English of Norwich", in Language in
   Society 1.


B.A.2:  LANGUAGE AND GENDER (FREE COURSE)
Course Outline: full two-term course

Title:    Language and Gender
Lecturer: Sue Blackwell
Level:    BA 2nd year 
Length:   1 hour per week x 2 terms = 21 weeks including 
Reading Weeks = 19 hours' teaching in total.

Rationale:  Discussion of feminist concern with language in 
the popular press has tended to focus on (and ridicule) the 
apparently tokenistic and cosmetic efforts of the "politically 
correct".  This course will seek to identify the issues involved 
and to locate them in a historical perspective which includes 
academic and non-academic analyses arising from 
reactionary, feminist, Marxist and other ideological 
viewpoints.

Description:  No prior knowledge of sociolinguistics or 
political philosophy is assumed. 

The course will cover the way in which the study of 
language in relation to sex has shifted over the last few 
decades, from suggestions that women in some societies 
spoke different languages from men to equally startling 
claims by feminists, such as Spender's assertion that women 
inevitably occupy "negative semantic space".  We will be 
examining some of these theories in detail, and students will 
be encouraged to criticise them and put forward their own 
findings and ideas.

The emphasis throughout this course will be on informed 
debate, not orthodoxy!  Male as well as female students are 
positively invited to participate.

Objectives:  By the end of the course students should have 
acquired an understanding of the many complex currents 
which have contributed to the debates over language and 
gender.  They should be aware that the issues include not 
only variation in language according to sex, but also the 
names given to women, the terms in which women are 
described and the standards by which women's language is 
evaluated.  They will have conducted their own research and 
will have developed their skills in the presentation of 
seminar material.

Assessment
   First term: one 3,000 word essay to be completed over the 
Xmas vacation.
   Second term: a seminar paper to be researched during 
Spring Reading Week, presented and discussed in the second 
half of the term and written up over Easter.  Only the 
written-up version will be formally assessed.

Reading:
See attached reading list.


B.A. 2: LANGUAGE AND GENDER  (FREE COURSE)
Teaching Plan for full two-term course

Term 1
Week 1
Introduction to course.  Early sociolinguistic/anthropological
work: "women's languages" etc.

Week 2
Early feminist work: Miller and Swift on changing sexist
language.  Handbooks, institutional guidelines, etc.  "Political 
correctness".

Week 3
A case study: the University of Birmingham's Language
Guidelines.  Who knows about them?  Who practices them?

Week 4
More early feminist work: Robin Lakoff.  Why "pairs" like
master/mistress aren't equal.

Week 5
The politics of women's names.  Phyllis Trible's feminist
analysis of Genesis: naming is the second sin.  Naming of
property and slaves.  Alternatives to patriarchal naming
conventions, from various cultures and feminist strategies.

Week 6 - Reading Week

Week 7
Radical feminist critiques of the reformist strategies
examined so far.  Dale Spender: women occupy "negative
semantic space".

Week 8
Grammatical gender: does it have anything to do with sex? 
If not, why do most Europeans think it has?

Week 9
Acquiring "gendered consciousness" - Lacan, Luce Irigaray 
etc.  Differences between male and female children in 
language acquisition.

Week 10
Patriarchy and prescriptivism in language and linguistics. 
Who writes the dictionaries, grammar books and syllabuses?

Week 11
Another perspective: a Marxist analysis of language, gender
and class.

Term 2
Week 1
Variation I: lexis, syntax, pronoun usage.

Week 2
Variation II: women's discourse, women's silence.

Week 3
The politics of variation: why study it?  Should women be
studied as a speech community?

Week 4
Workshop on research methodology: students plan their 
seminar papers.

Week 5 - Reading Week
Students carry out research for their seminar papers.

Week 6
Feedback from research exercise.  Is there such a thing as a
theory-neutral methodology?  What problems did students
encounter in planning their research, obtaining data, 
observing language in use?

Week 7
Presentation and discussion of seminar papers.

Week 8
Presentation and discussion of seminar papers.

Week 9
Presentation and discussion of seminar papers.

Week 10
Overview: ways of theorising language and gender. 
Reformist and radical feminist theories; a Marxist theory.  Is 
women's speech a sign of oppression or a sign of struggle? 
What conclusions have students drawn from their own 
research?  Where do we go from here?