17.  SALLY MCCONNELL-GINET, Cornell University

Language and the Sexes
Linguistics/Women's Studies 244

Spring 1989, MWF 11:15 

Course Description

We will explore connections between language (use) and gender/sex 
systems, examining a variety of theoretical perspectives, 
methodologies, and findings in recent research and writing.  Readings, 
lectures, and class discussion will draw on work in linguistics, 
anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature, and 
general women's studies and feminist theory that addresses questions 
such as the following:  How do patterns of speaking and interpreting 
reflect, perpetuate, and create our experience of gender?  How does 
gender interact with race, class, socioeconomic status, age, 
occupational and social/familial roles, institutional settings, and other 
factors?  How does gender connect to linguistic change?  What do 
controversies about sexism and other biases in language suggest about 
the connections between language, thought , and socially situated 
political struggles?  How are meanings produced and reproduced, 
negotiated and legitimated?  What is the role of language in the 
development of theory and of ideology?  Participants will also learn 
(and use) some techniques for analysis of conversational and written 
texts. 

Course Requirements

All course participants will be responsible for (and graded on)

a.  Regular class attendance and participation in discussion; Fridays 
will typically be devoted to discussion though Monday and 
Wednesday lectures will also allow for some discussion.

b.  Required readings.  The readings will be available from Quoin 
Copy, 117 Dryden Road.  Readings will also be on reserve in Uris 
Library and in Women's Studeies, Uris Hall 333.

c.  Three "hands-on" projects to be presented for class discussion on 
Frebruary 17,  March 31, and April 28.  Written reports, reflecting 
class discussion as well as prior research, will be due a week later. 
Two of these will involve taping and transcribing conversations and 
analyzing them, and one will involve analysis of written materials. 
You will receive more detailed instructions on these assignments soon.

d.  Two mid-terms, based on take-home questions: March 3, April 14.

e.  An end-of-term project or research paper, collective or individual. 
Brief (one-page) but detailed proposals for the term project or paper 
are to be submitted no later than March 10. 

An S/U requires "passing" work quality on all three requirements 
(including attendance and participation); for letter grades, the 
weighting is roughly as follows: participation (15%), "hands-on" 
projects (40%), midterms (20%), final project or paper (25%). 
Extensions/make-ups for projects and midterms not allowed (except in 
exceptional circumstances); extension possible (but not encouraged) 
for final paper or project.

SEMESTER SYLLABUS OF TOPICS AND READING 
ASSIGNMENTS

Week 1  Overview and Orientation

We will begin by looking at some general methodological and 
theoretical issues raised in the study of language as it interacts with 
gender/sex.  The paper by me and that by Thorne, Kramarae, and 
Henley show something of the scope and development of recent 
research and thinking about gender and language but emphasize 
conversational usage in the American context.  Borker, in contrast, 
puts cross-cultural diversity in focus and also draws attention to the 
wide range of ways in which language enters into human lives and 
thought.  Finally, the selection from Kramarae and Treichler describes 
a recent project of compiling a dictionary of "women's words".  On 
Friday, January 27,  Professor Paula Treichler of the University of 
Illinois, who is coauthor of that reading, will speak on "Creating 'A 
Feminist Dictionary' ".  Paula Treichler is a Senior Fellow at the 
Society for the Humanities this spring. 

McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 1988.  Language and gender. IN Newmeyer, 
Frederick J., ed.  Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey IV, Language: 
The Sociocultural Context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 
1988), 75-99.

Thorne, Barrie, Cheris Kramarae, and Nancy Henley.  1983. 
Language, gender, and society: Opening a second decade of research. 
In Thorne, Barrrie, Cheris Kramarae, and Nancy Henley, eds. 
Language, Gender, and Society (Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983) 
(hereafter LG&S), 7-24.

Borker, Ruth.  1980.  Anthropology: Social and cultural perspectives. 
In McConnell-Ginet, Sally, Ruth A. Borker and Nelly Furman, eds., 
Women & Language in Literature and Society (New York: Praeger 
and Greenwood, 1980) (hereafter, W&L), 26-44.

Kramarae, Cheris and Paula A. Treichler.  1985.  Words on a feminist 
dictionary.  In Kramarae, Cheris and Paula A. Treichler, eds.  with 
assistance from Ann Russo, A Feminist Dictionary (Boston, London 
and Henley: Pandora Press), 1-22.


Week 2  "Women's language": Scholarly and folklinguistic views

Traditional grammarians, dialectologists, and other writers on 
language have not always agreed on substance of differences linked to 
speaker sex but have generally seen women as "special" (and usually 
"devalued") language users.  Jespersen's survey is relatively benign 
and introduces some ideas that continue to be important: e.g. a focus 
on sex-differentiated work, mobility, interests, and values.  Baron 
examines other writings predating Jespersen, and Coates looks at early 
work by anthropological linguists and dialectologists.  Lakoff's more 
recent feminist-inspired proposals have been very influential; though 
adopting different explanatory frameworks from those prevalent in 
more traditional research, she also presents "women's language" in 
English as the marked case (and women as deficient speakers); 
compare her picture of women speaking English with Jespersen's. 
Valian is critical of Lakoff's failure to discriminate language systems 
from their use; Stanback draws attention to neglect of ethnic diversity. 
We will later consider other responses, direct and indirect, to Lakoff's 
discussion of "women's language".

Jespersen, Otto.  1922.  Chapter 13, The woman.  IN Language: Its 
Nature, Development, and Origin, 237-55.

Baron, Dennis.  1986.  Chapter 4,  An alien tongue; Chapter 5, 
Women's words.  IN Grammar and Gender (New Haven: Yale 
University Press), 55-89.

Coates, Jennifer.  1986.  Chapter 3.  The historical background (II) - 
Anthropologists and dialectologists.  IN Women, Men and Language 
(London and New York: Longman, Studies in Language and 
Linguistics), 35-53.

Lakoff, Robin.  1973.  Language and woman's place.  Language in 
Society 2, 45-79.  Reprinted as Part One of Language and Woman's 
Place (New York: Harper & Row, 1975). 

Valian, Virginia.  1977.  Linguistics and feminism.  IN Vetterling-
Braggin, Mary, Frederick Elliston, and Jane English, eds.,  Feminism 
and Philosophy  (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, and Co.), 154-66. 
Rpt.  IN Vetterling-Braggin, Mary, ed.,  Sexist Langauge: A Modern 
Philosophical Analysis (Totowa, N.J.:  Littlefield, Adams and Co., 
1981). 

Stanback, Marsha Houston.  1985.  Language and black woman's 
place: Evidence from the black middle class.  IN Treichler, Paula A., 
Cheris Kramarae, and Beth Stafford, eds.,  For Alma Mater:  Theory 
and Practice in Feminist Scholarship (Urbana and Chicago: Univ. of 
Illinois Press), 177-93.


Week 3  Cross-sex communicative interaction: Dominance

Lakoff proposed that women are in a linguistic "double-bind".  Using 
data from North Carolina courtrooms, O'Barr and Atkins propose that 
much of what Lakoff has called "women's language" is really 
"powerless" language, both in the sense of being used by those whose 
power is limited and in being relatively ineffective.  Much work on 
conversational analysis also seems to find women at a disadvantage in 
cross-sex exchanges though for somewhat different reasons than 
Lakoff suggests.  Fishman's research on allocation of responsibility for 
keeping conversation afloat, and West and Zimmerman's work on 
interruptions have been widely discussed as examples of men's 
exerting conversational dominance over women.  Mann's account of 
"bar talk" and Gardner's analysis of "street remarks" point to 
communication that is somewhat problematic for women in sem-
public contexts where gender and cross-sex relationships are 
expecially salient.

O'Barr, William M. and Bowman K. Atkins.  1980.  "Women's 
language" or "powerless language"?  W&L, 93-110.

Fishman, Pamela.  1983.  Interaction: The work women do.  L,G&S, 
89-102.

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman.  1983.  Small insults:  A 
study of interruptions in cross-sex conversations between unacquainted 
persons.  L,G&S, 103-118.

Gardner, Carol Brooks.  1980.  Passing by: Street remarks, address 
rights, and the urban female.  Sociological Inquiry 50, 328-356.

Mann, Brenda J.  1974.  Bar talk.  IN Spradley, James P. and David W. 
McCurdy, Conformity and conflict: Readings in cultural anthropology 
[2nd ed.].  (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.), 101-111.


Week 4  Cross-sex communicative interaction: Difference

It has also been argued that there are gender-differentiated models of 
how communication ought to proceed basically acquired in single-sex 
peer interaction among children.  On this view,  at least some 
communicative difficulties between the sexes arise from 
misunderstanding.  Reviewing research on single-sex groups such as 
Goodwin's for children and Kalcik's study of narrative style in a 
women's group,  Maltz and Borker argue that (American) females and 
males come from different communicative "cultures" and that each 
misinterprets the other.  Though Maltz and Borker do not cite it, 
Edlesky's work showing that women say more when there is a "shared 
floor" is also suggestive of distinctive communicative cultures along 
the lines they suggest.  Tannen points to ethnic styles of 
communication as another source of misunderstanding important in 
cross-sex intimate communication (and also, though she does not 
discuss it, a potential problem for same-sex couples).

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness.  1980.  Directive-response speech 
sequences in girls' and boys' task activities.  W&L, 157-173.

Kalcik, Susan.  1975.  "...like Ann's gynecologist or the time I was 
almost raped":  Personal narratives in women's rap groups.  IN Farrar, 
Claire, ed., Women and Folklore, 3-11.

Edelsky, Carole.  1981.  "Who's got the floor?"  Language in Society 
10, 383-421.

Maltz, Daniel N. and Ruth A. Borker.  1982.  A cultural approach to 
male/female miscommunication.  IN John J. Gumperz, ed., Language 
and Social Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, Studies in 
Interactional Sociolingusitics 2), 196-216.

Tannen, Deborah.  1982.  Ethnic style in male-female conversation. 
IN Gumperz, ed. (see above), 217-231.

FIRST PROJECT DUE FEBRUARY 17


Week 5  Communicative Styles: Aims and strategies

Communicative style depends not only on group identity but is also a 
matter of aims and strategies for achieving them, given assessment of 
one's social resources.  Drawing on philosopher Grice's theories of 
conversation, linguist Michell proposes that women's "telling it slant" 
(conveying partial or distorted truths), while ultimately an imperfect 
strategy,  is nonetheless a reasonable and effective response to their 
communicative problems in male-dominated society.  Brown draws on 
a general Gricean-style theory of politeness as involving strategies to 
maximize one another's "negative face" (sense of one's autonomy and 
individuality being respected) and "positive face" (sense of being 
included in a connected social group).  She examines women's 
politeness to one another and to men in a particular social group where 
women's position is quite explicitly and strikingly subordinate to that 
of men.  It is illuminating to read Costello's paper on the poet 
Marianne Moore and her "subversive" use of "feminine" modes of 
language use for particular communicative aims with Michell's and 
Brown's strategic focus in mind.  From a somewhat different 
perspective, Treichler and Kramarae look at language use in academic 
settings and discuss strategies women students have used to restructure 
problematic classroom interactions.

Michell, Gillian,  1984.  Women and lying: A pragmatic and semantic 
analysis of "telling it slant".  Women's Studies Int. Forum 7.5, 375-83.

Brown, Penelope.  1980.  How and why are women more polite: Some 
evidence from a Mayan community.  W&L, 111-136.

Costello, Bonnie.  1980. The "feminine" language of Mariannne 
Moore. W&L, 222-238.

Treichler, Paula A. and Cheris Kramarae.  1983.  Women's talk in the 
ivory tower.  Communication Quarterly 31, 118-132.


Week 6  At the "edge" of language

Prosodic features of speech --(relative) tempo, rhythm, pitch--are to 
some extent controlled by linguistic rules and to some extent not.  My 
paper looks at some of the research on women's and men's uses of 
these features and problems raised for interpretation of their 
significance.  Movements and gestures are also important 
accompaniments ot speech in communication; to some extent, they are 
conventionalized and structured although not grammaticized in quite 
the same ways that language is (except in languages such as ASL used 
by hearing-impaired people in this country). Henley explores a number 
of dimensions of the sexual politics of bodily movement.  Goffman 
analyses postures and demeanors as components of stylized gender 
display.

McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 1983.  Intonation in a man's world.  L,G&S, 
69-88.

Henley, Nancy.  1977.  Body Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 
Prentice-Hall), chapters 1-2, 6-7.

Goffman, Erving.  1979.  Gender display.  IN Goffman, Gender 
Advertisements.

FIRST MIDTERM, MARCH 3


Week 7  Social variation and language change

Linguists have been very interested in systematic variation in language 
use that is keyed to social identity; such variation is of special interest 
because of its ties to ongoing language change in a community.  Some 
linguists have proposed that women are generally in the vanguard of 
change, others that women are conservative in their usage; as might be 
expected, matters are far more complex.  Coates reviews 
sociolinguistic research on gender-linked variation (with a focus on 
work in urban Britain), looking both at the ties to social stratification 
and at work on social networks.  Eckert's work in a Detroit high school 
is of interest as a case where gender identity is far less significant than 
self-identified adolescent social group membership.  Nichols' research 
deals with a rural setting where mainstream English is in competition 
with Gullah, an English-based creole; she explains sex-linked variation 
chiefly in terms of women's and men's occupational opportunities. 
Hill's research looks at Spanish influences on a Mexican Indian 
language, tying women's language use to their lives and values in the 
community.  Rather than variation within a single language, Gal looks 
at competition between two different languages (German and 
Hungarian) in a situation where very different langauge-associated 
options exist for women and men.

Coates, Jennifer. 1986.  Chapter 4, Quantitative studies, and Chapter 5, 
Social networks.  IN Women, Men and Language.  57-95.

Eckert, Penelope. 1988.  Adolescent social structure and the spread of 
linguistic change.  Language in Society 17, 183-207.

Nichols, Patricia C.  1983.  Linguistic options and choices for black 
women in the rural south.  L,G&S, 54-68.

Hill, Jane H.  1987.  Women's speech in modern Mexicano.  In Philips, 
et al., eds., 121-60.

Gal, Susan.  1978.  Peasant men can't get wives: Language change and 
sex roles in a bilingual community.  Language in Society 7, 1-16.

TERM PROJECT PROPOSALS DUE, MARCH 10


Week 8  Cross-cultural perspectives on genderized language use

Recent research has made clear the diversity in the ways that speech 
and gender interact.  We will discuss a variety of ethnographic 
situations and consider whether it is possible to say anything 
systematic about how general features of social organization and of the 
"arrangements between the sexes" link to genderized language use. 
Are we able yet to posit interesting universals?  To connect kinds of 
interactions between language and gender with broad differences in 
types of societies?

Ochs, Elinor.  1987.  The impact of stratification and socialization on 
men's and women's speech in Western Samoa.  IN Philips, Steele, and 
Tanz, eds..

Schiefflin, Bambi B.  1987.  Do different worlds mean different 
words?:  An example from Papua New Guinea.  In Philips, Steele, and 
Tanz, eds..

Kuipers, Joel Corneal.  1986.  Talking about troubles: Gender 
differences in Weyewa speech use.  American Ethnologist 13 (3), 448-
6.

Lederman, Rena.  1980.  Who speaks here?:  Formality and the politics 
of gender in Mendi.  Journal of the Polynesian Society 89 (4), 479-98.


SPRING BREAK


Week 9  Everyday genders and gender relations

Approaching language use analytically uncovers its complexities in 
much more familiar settings.  We will look at research that shows 
some of the richness and complexity of many everyday kinds of 
language use--children's games, jokes, graffiti--in connection to 
gender/sex systems.

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness.  1985.  The serious side of jump rope: 
Conversational practices and social organization in the frame of play. 
IN Journal of American Folklore 98: 315-330

Bruner, Edward M. and Jane Paige Kelso.  1980.  Gender differences 
in graffiti: A semiotic perspective.  IN Women's Studies Interantional 
Quarterly 3, 239-252.

Bergmann, Merrie.  1986.  How many feminists does it take to make a 
joke?: Sexist humor and what's wrong with it.


SECOND PROJECT DUE, MARCH 31


Week 10  Genderized meaning: Grammatical gender and pronouns

Grammatical gender systems of the sort found in many familiar 
European languages (e.g., French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian) 
is sometimes said by linguistis to be totally unconnected to 
sociocultural gender, but matters are considerably more complex than 
this.  English essentially lost its grammatical gender system hundreds 
of years ago; nonetheless, anaphoric pronouns in English (pronouns 
that are understood via their connection to some other linguistic 
expression--e.g., "Every woman thinks that she is intelligent") do vary 
in ways that depend not just on the sex of potential referents.  We will 
explore briefly what grammatical gender systems convey. We will 
then consider both the subtleties of actual pronominal usage and 
interpretation in English and the reforms proposed and resistance to 
them. 

Silverstein, Michael.  1985.  Language and the culture of gender: At 
the intersection of sturcture, usage, and ideology.  IN Elizabeth Mertz 
and Richard H. Parmentier, eds., Semiotic mediation: Sociocultural 
and psychological perspectives (Orlando: Academic Press), 219-59.

Martyna, Wendy.  1983.  Beyond the he/man approach: The case for 
nonsexist language.  IN Thorne, Henley, and Kramare, eds., L,G&S, 
25-37.

Wolfe, Susan J. 1989.  The reconstuction of word meanings: A review 
of the scholarship.  IN Frank, Francine Wattman and Paula A. 
Treichler, eds., Language, Gender, and Professional Writing: 
Theoretical Approaches and Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage (New 
York: MLA), 80-93.

Frank, Francine Wattman and Paula A. Treichler.  1989.  Language, 
Gender and Professional Writing. [Introduction, up to but not 
including "The social and professional context of scholarly writing"]. 
IN Frank and Treichler, eds., 1-24.

Frank, Francine Wattman and Paula A. Treichler.  1989. Common 
problems of sexist usage: "Generic" He. IN Frank and Treichler, eds., 
141-181.


Week 11  Addressing and labelling

Address forms designate the recipient of an utterance ("you guys", 
"Miss", "honey", "smartass", "ladies") and at the same time convey 
messages about assessment by speakers of the social situation and of 
their relationsip to their addressees.  Many of the same forms are also 
used to label and refer to third parties though some forms are only 
referential/labelling and others only address.  We will look at some of 
the work on how address and labelling not only reflect but help create 
gender relations.

McConnell-Ginet, Sally, 1978.  Address forms in sexual politics. IN 
Butturff, D. and E.L. Epstein, eds., Women's Language and Style 
(Akron, OH: L&S Books, 1978), 23-35.

Fiske, Shirley Jeanette.  1978.  Rules of address: Navajo women in Los 
Angeles.  Journal of Anthropological Research 34 (1): 72-91.

Kalcik, Susan J.  1985.  Women's handles and the performance of 
identity in the CB community.  IN Rosan A. Jordan and Susan J. 
Kalcik, eds., Women's Folklore, Women's Culture (Philadelphia: Univ. 
of Pennsylvania Press), 99-108.

Stirling, Lesley.  1987.  Language and gender in Australian 
newspapers.  IN Pauwels, Anne, ed., Language, gender and society in 
Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne: River Seine Publications), 
108-128.

Jabbra, Nancy Walstom.  1980.  Sex roles and language in Lebanon. 
Ethnology: An International Journal of Cultural and Social 
Anthropology 19 (4), 459-74.

SECOND MIDTERM, APRIL 14


Week 12  Authority, discourse, and meaning

Implicit in much of our earlier discussion has been the view that being 
able to say what one means can be problematic.  In this section we 
consider questions about the development of meaning in discourse and 
about competition among alternative meanings.

McConnell-Ginet, Sally.  1989.  The sexual (re)production of 
meaning: A discourse-based theory.  IN Frank and Treichler, eds., 35-
50.

Treichler, Paula J. 1989.  From discourse to dictionary: How sexist 
meanings are authorized.  IN Frank and Treichler, eds., 51-79.

Scheman, Naomi.  1980.  Anger and the politics of naming.  IN 
McConnell-Ginet, Borker, and Furman, eds., 174-187.

Penelope, Julia.  1988.  Interpretive strategies and sex-marked 
comparative constructions.  IN Alexandra D. Todd and Sue Fisher, 
eds., Gender and discourse: The power of talk (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press), 255-275.



Week 13  Language, theory, and ideology

We turn finally to look at the very deep and difficult question of how 
ways of talking and ways of thinking and acting are mutually 
influential.  Examples are drawn from a number of different domains: 
sociobiology, feminist philosophy of science, feminist discussions of 
lesbianism. 

Brown, JoAnne.  1986.  Professional language: Words that succeed. 
Radical History Review 34, 33-51.

Hoagland, Sarah Lucia.  1980.  Androcentric rhetoric in sociobiology. 
Women's Studies International Quarterly 3, 285-293.

Cohn, Carol.  1987.  Sex and death in the rational work of defense 
intellectuals.  SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12, 
687-718.

Wolfe, Susan J.  1988.  The rhetoric of heterosexism.  IN Todd and 
Fisher, eds., 199-224.



Week 14  New voices, new readings

We close by briefly looking at some of the innovative uses of language 
in recent writings by women and at women's re-reading of familiar 
texts.

Rich, Adrienne.  1971.  When we dead awaken: Writing as re-vision. 
IN Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 
(New York: W.W. Norton & Co.), 33-50.

________.  1977.  Power and danger: Works of a common woman.  IN 
IN Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, 247-258.

Daly, Mary.  1978.  Gen/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical 
Feminism, (Boston: Beacon Press), preface and introduction.





LANGUAGE, GENDER, AND POWER
Linguistics/ Women's Studies 244

Sally McConnell-Ginet
Morrill 222 -- 255-6469
Spring 1992
MWF 10:10-11:05

How do gender and language interact?  How are linguistic 
resources used in constructing ourselves and others as 
"women" or as "men", as "gay" or "straight", as "people of 
color" or "white"?  As "jocks" or "burnouts"?  As "airheads"? 
As "nerds"?  As "feminists" or "sexists"?  How do such 
identities intertwine and change as we enter new 
communities and engage in new activities?  How does their 
content vary in particular local groups?  How do we use 
gender identities or beliefs about them to structure our 
relations across gender boundaries?  Within the same gender 
class?  How is gender used in wielding power?  Are forms of 
power genderized?  And how is gender used in restructuring 
other power relations?  What are links between racism and 
gender?  Heterosexism?  Social mobility?  Class privilege? 
When and how are gender relations like race or class 
relations?  In what ways and under what conditions are they 
different?

What role is language playing in the various social activites 
from which gender emerges?  How do gender dynamics 
affect changes in a language's sound system?  What are 
linguistic resources for resisting conventional gender 
arrangements?  How do particular linguistic forms function 
in structuring and restructuring our communities?  How does 
language use tend to obscure our noticing privilege?  How 
and why are meanings contested and changed?  How are 
social conflict and change linked to language use?

Readings, discussion, and assignments will focus on such 
issues.  Class participants will spend some time looking at 
details of language use that usually go unnoticed in their 
own communities and exploring how those details connect to 
other features of social practice.

TEXTS:

Jennifer Coates and Deborah Cameron, eds.  1989.  London 
and New York:  Longman.

David Graddol and Joan Swann.  1989.  Oxford:  Basil 
Blackwell.

Deborah Tannen.  1990.  You Just Don't Understand:  Women 
and Men in Conversation.  New York:  William Morrow 
(Ballantine Books paperback, 1991)

Additional readings will be available as a coursepack later in 
the semester.

WEEKS 1 AND 2

During the first two weeks, we're going to focus on a view of 
gender as "separateness" and cultural difference popularized 
in Deborah Tannen's recent best-seller.  We will use 
Tannen's discussion to start ourselves thinking about how 
gender difference gets constructed and used in gender 
relations, how it might be differently constructed and used 
in different communities and in different situations, the 
range of variation in particular communities within each 
gender and the similarities across gender, the role of 
differences (real and perceived) in constructing male 
domination and female power and relations within and 
across gender divisions.

Tannen writes in general terms and offers anecdotes without 
much information on how particular episodes fit into larger 
patterns of social life in which the cast of characters is 
engaged.  Her focus is on isolated couples.  Although she tells 
us little of their backgrounds, she seems to imply that they 
are white heterosexual middle-class professionals, probably 
in their thirties or forties.  As you read, ask yourself such 
questions as these:

Do I think this incident might have occurred in my family? 
In my home neighborhood?  In my living unit here in 
Ithaca?  In some other community of practice to which I 
belong?  Why?  Why not?  What rings true about Tannen's 
explanation of the "miscommunication"?  What does not? 
What would you like to know about the context of the 
incident discussed?  About the backgrounds of the people? 
About their participation in larger communities?  About 
their histories and possible futures?

Wednesday, 22 January
READ  Tannen, Preface, Chapters 1 and 2

Friday, 24 January
READ  Tannen, Chapters 3 and 4

Monday, 27 January
READ  Tannen, Chapters 5 and 6

Wednesday, 29 January
READ  Tannen, Chapters 7 and 8

Friday, 31 January
READ  Tannen, Chapters 9 and 10

READING ASSIGNMENTS FOR WEEKS 5 AND 6

Monday, 17 February
READ  Graddol and Swann, Accents of femininity:  Gender 
differences in language use, ch. 3 of Gender Voices, pp 40-
68.

Wednesday, 19 February
READ  Deborah Cameron, Introduction, ch. 1 of Women in 
Their Speech Communities, ed.  Coates and Cameron, pp 1-
12.
   Deborah Cameron and Jennifer Coates, Some problems in 
the sociolinguistic explanation of sex differences, ch. 2, pp 
13-26.

Friday, 21 February
READ  Patricia C. Nichols (1983), Linguistic options anad 
choices for black women in the rural south, in Language, 
Gender, and Society, ed. B. Thorne, C. Kramerae, and N. 
Henley, pp 54-68.  (xerox to be distributed)

Monday, 24 February
READ  Edina Eisikovits (1987), Sex differences in the inter-
group and intra-group interaction among adolescents.  In 
Women and Language in Australian and New Zealand 
Society, ed. Anne Pauwels, pp 45-58.  (xerox to be 
distributed)

Wednesday, 26 February
READ  Margaret Deuchar, A pragmatic account of women's 
standard speech, ch. 3 in Coates and Cameron, pp 27-32.
   Viv Edwards, The speech of British Black women in Dudley, 
West Midlands, ch. 4  in Coates and Cameron, pp 33-50.

Friday, 26 February
READ  Beth Thomas, Differences of sex and sects:  Linguistic 
variation and social networks in a Welsh mining village, ch. 5 
in Coates and Cameron, pp 51-60.