Linguistic Choices

Most people in the world are bilingual or multilingual, and those who are not have a range of stylistic resources within their one language. This week will focus on the important role of gender in our use of linguistic varieties.

Readings

Gal, Susan. 1978.Peasant men can't get wives: Language change and sex roles in a bilingual community. Language in Society, 7.1-16.
Besnier, Niko. 2002. Transgenderism, locality, and the Miss Galaxy beauty pageant in Tonga. American Ethnologist, 29.534-66.
Fader, Ayala. 2007. Redeeming sacred sparks: Syncretism and gendered langauge shift among Hasidic Jews in New York. Journal of linguistic anthropology. 17:1. 1-23.

Recommended Readings

Holmquist, Jonathan. 1985. Social correlates of a linguistic variable: A study in a Spanish village. Language in Society, 14.191-203.
Sidnell, Jack. 1999. Gender and pronominal variation in an Indo-Guyanese Creole-speaking community. Language in society, 28.367-99.
Hill, Jane. 1987.Women's speech in modern Mexicano. In Language, Gender, and Sex in Comparative Perspective, ed. by S. U. Philips, S. Steele and C. Tanz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 121-60.