グローバル教養科目（Language and Gender）

Do we speak the way we do because of who we are, or do we become gendered (i.e., unequally positioned) through the way we speak? The question is complicated by the fact that "gender" points to at least two different things: something individuals are said to have, and something societies use to distribute power.

This course introduces the study of language and gender as a field of sociolinguistic and linguistic-anthropological inquiry. Moving beyond the assumptions that men and women simply "speak differently" and that language merely "reflects" innate differences and pre-existing states of the world, we examine how gender is produced, negotiated, and contested through everyday linguistic practice.

Drawing on Eckert and McConnell-Ginet's Language and Gender as our theoretical anchor, the course traces the field from its foundational debates to current work on ideology, indexicality, and the discursive construction of gendered subjects. In the latter half, we turn to contemporary cases to ask how these frameworks illuminate emerging sites of linguistic and social conflict.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:
(1) Explain the major theoretical developments in the study of language and gender, from early accounts of gender difference to current approaches grounded in practice, indexicality, and language ideology.
(2) Analyze language practices (including talk, text, and media discourse) to show how gendered meanings are produced rather than simply expressed, supporting claims with evidence from the data itself.
(3) Apply these frameworks to a case of their own choosing, situating a contemporary site of gendered language use within the theoretical debates of the field.