Feminism, the vote.

[Sally McConnell-Ginet]

I've been lurking and trying to weigh the options presented for a vote.
I'm not sure that I really like any of the options as laid out.  Although I
strongly endorse a feminist orientation of the general sort detailed by
Alice Freed (but with some reservations of the sort Miriam Meyerhoff
expressed about how the "practical" part gets realized), I do think it is
important to be inlusive and also important not to bog ourselves down in
negotiating definitions of "feminism."  Several people have said they want
some mention of feminist contributions to the study of gender and language,
while also not wanting to exclude queer theorists or folks studying
masculinities or others who might not self-identify as feminists.  Maybe
this is what (2) aims at but I'm not completely sure.

How about something like:

GALA is an organization that seeks to promote research on the interaction
of gender and language.  This field of scholarly inquiry began developing
in response to feminist concerns about the ways in which sex, power, and
language connect to one another; research has often had not only a
theoretical but a practical aim, seeking to understand the linguistic
underpinnings of male dominance in order to dismantle male privilege.
Queer theorists have brought the linguistic dimensions of sexualities and
hetersexism into the picture.  Critical studies of language and racial
identities, ethnicities, and masculinities have also expanded the field far
beyond what was included under the early "women and language" rubric.  GALA
is being started to help foster more regular productive exchanges among
scholars of language and gender with many different research emphases and
orientations and from diverse disciplinary backgrounds.

I'm voting for (2), construing it along the above lines.


Sally McConnell-Ginet
Professor of Linguistics
Chair, Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall, Cornell
Ithaca, NY 14853
607-255-6469
(Linguistics office: 255-1105, 255-3384)
FAX: 607-255-2044