THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION AND TRANSGRESSION OF GENDER I
Queer Linguistics poses the following critical questions concerning the academic application of gender and sexual identity categories: Does one need to pre-assume two binary macro-categories ‘female’ and ‘male’ which are to be contrasted? Does such a procedure not further polarise these categories? Does one have to observe the behaviour of the members of these two macro-groups and then set up an average behaviour that is deemed to be typically female or male and serves as a normative standard, implying that individuals that show different behaviours are deviant? Why is gender-coherent behaviour treated as normal even though many people are aware that they do not completely adhere to normative gender standards? Why is the extensive similarity between women and men often not even mentioned? Are there ways of studying the (linguistic) behaviour of people without viewing them in advance through the mask of normative gender binarism?
—Heiko Motschenbacher, Language, Gender and Sexual Identity: Poststructuralist perspectives (8)
Required Readings
- Motschenbacher, Language, Gender and Sexual Identity: Poststructuralist perspectives, Ch. 1 Introduction: “Poststructuralist perspectives on language, gender and sexual identity” (1-4), Ch. 2 “Queer Linguistics” (5-19) [Moodle2]
- Girshick, Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men, Introduction: “Identity Boxes” (1-23), Ch. 1 “The Social Construction of Biological Facts (23-50), Ch. 2 “Self-Definition: Birth through Adolescence” ( 51-68), Ch. 3 “Constructing the Self: Options and Challenges” (69-97), Ch. 5 “Gender Policing” (133-53), Epilogue: “Gender Liberation” (179-189), Glossary (201-207)
https://librarylink.uncc.edu/login?url=http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9781584658382 - Nagoshi et al., Gender and Sexual Identity: Transcending Feminist and Queer Theory, Ch. 1 “Overview” (1-14), Ch. 2 “Feminist and Queer Theories: The Response to the Social Construction of Gender” (15-30), Ch. 4 “The Qualitative Approach to Socially Constructed Identities” (55-60), Ch. 5 “Transgender and Trans-identity Theory” (73-90), Ch. 7 “Intersectionality and Narratives of Lived Experiences” (107-111, 115-119), Ch. 11 “Conclusions” (177-190)
https://librarylink.uncc.edu/login?url=http://link.springer.com/openurl?genre=book&isbn=978-1-4614-8965-8
Due This Week
Weekly journal entry including observations about language from daily life.