gender & language & social interaction course

[Cecilia E. Ford]

Hello:

I am putting together a course for next semester ("English in Society") in
which I hope to combine an introduction to some structures of English with
a the themes of language, gender and social interaction.  Perhaps this is
too specific and too ambitious at the same time, but I have hope.  The
course will be attended by a combination of upper division undergrads and
graduate students, from English and other departments.  I cannot assume
background in linguistics, but one goal of the course will be to engender
interest in social aspects of language use (while providing an initial
grounding in English structures in use).

I have in mind, for example, combining such topics as noun phrase structure
with naming practices in interaction and the interactional construction of
gender through reference forms and address terms.  Or -- the structure of
tag questions and the potential unequal distribution of the work such
questions do (I am not up-to-date on this literature)....

If any of you has suggestions of topics, articles, textbooks etc.  that
might work for this dream course of mine, please contact me (through the
list or privately).  I will share the responses in a summary later.

By the way, I am aware of Celia Kitzinger and Hannah Frith's article "Just
say no? The use of CA in developing a feminist persective on sexual
refusal"  -- If you know of any other articles like this, I think they'd be
very usable in this course - given a bit of linguistic elaboration.  The
article shows the relevance of CA's findings on preference organization for
a critical analysis of the ways women are held accountable for not being
direct in their formulations of refusals.

Thank you thank you thank you,

Cecilia Ford

ceford at facstaff.wisc.edu






Cecilia E. Ford
Department of English
600 N. Park St.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison  WI 53706    USA

ceford at facstaff.wisc.edu