Gender and language in the professional workplace

Timetable

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Module aim (aims)

The aim of this seminar is to examine the relationship between language and gender as well as the relevance of gender as a social construct in the context of workplace communication and interactions.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

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Syllabus

Gender shapes our lives and influences our behavior, including the way we use language and conduct our conversations, but few of us are aware of it. Gender is also built into how organizations function.

 The aim of this seminar is to examine the relevance of gender as a social construct in the context of workplace communication and interactions. Gender will be approached from the sociolinguistic and (widely defined) discourse analytic perspectives. In this seminar we will look at how symbolic femininity and masculinity are reflected in language use and how they contribute to constructing professional identities. We will discuss how contemporary leadership has changed to include language practices symbolically linked to femininity and why. Other focuses include: gender ideologies, gender microaggressions in professional communication, gender violence

Reading list

Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 139-158. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124390004002002

Burr, Vi. 2003. Social constructionism (second edition). London: Routledge.

Cameron, D. 2007. The myth of Mars and Venus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Cameron, D. (2020). The gender respect gap. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard (Ed.), Innovations and challenges: Women, language and sexism (pp. 19-33). Routledge

Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. 2003. Language and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2011. “Communities of practice: Where language, gender, and power all live”, in Coates, Jennifer and Pia Pichler (eds.), Language and gender: A reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 573-582.

Fitzgerald, L. F., and Cortina, L. M. (2018). Sexual harassment in work organizations: A view from the 21st century. In C. B. Travis & J. W. White (Eds.), APA handbook of the psychology of women: Vol. 2. Perspectives on women’s private and public lives (pp. 215-234). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000060-012

Foley, M., Oxenbridge, S., Cooper, R. and M. Baird. 2020. “I’ll never be one of the boys”: gender harassment of women working as pilots and automotive tradespeople. Gender, Work, Organization https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12443

Holmes, J. and Schnurr, S.. 2011. “’Doing femininity at work’: More than just relational practice”, in Coates, Jennifer and Pia Pichler (eds.), Language and gender: A reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and woman’s place. New York: Harper and Row.

 

Ochs, E. 1992. “Indexing gender”, in Duranti, Alessandro and Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Rethinking context. Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge: CUP, 335-358.