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- Volume 10, Issue, 1993
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. Supplement Series - Volume 10, Issue 1, 1993
Volume 10, Issue 1, 1993
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Language and gender
Author(s): Joanne Winter and Gillian Wigglesworthpp.: 1–12 (12)More LessIn our introductory discussion to this Series S volume on language and gender in Australia we argue for the recognition of gender research in a broadened interpretation of applied linguistics. We forecast the place of feminist (applied)1 linguists within a wider understanding of the applications for linguistic knowledge. We discuss how this collection of papers reflects the ongoing developments and changes in language and gender research through the implementation and critique of methods and methodologies. We also present a brief overview of the panel discussion; the people, topics and directions, which was primarily responsible for this publication and forecast some directions and possible challenges for language and gender research in the Australian context.
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Language planning, language reform and the sexes in Australia
Author(s): Anne Pauwelspp.: 13–34 (22)More LessThis paper deals with the phenomena of linguistic sexism and non-sexist language reform (feminist language planning) in the Australian context. It surveys Australian work on linguistic sexism and discusses various aspects of non-sexist language reform in Australia. Particular emphasis is placed on problematic issues relating to feminist language planning, i.e. the selection and evaluation of non-sexist alternatives and the implementation mechanisms for this type of reform. Linguistic change resulting from the reform initiatives and its spread throughout the community is also described briefly.
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The representation of women in three medical texts
Author(s): Annette Harrespp.: 35–53 (19)More LessThe theoretical framework of this paper is based on the literature on language and ideology as well as language and gender, focussing on the reflection of gender ideologies in medical texts. Three medical texts were analysed with regard to the linguistic representation of women. While one text is taken from a gynaecological textbook, the other two texts are representative of popular medical books. The main objective of the study was to determine how ideologies of gender are reflected in the authors’ choice of lexis, and the syntactic relations in the texts. The findings indicated that the use of language mirrors the ideological orientation of the authors, and that medical discourse is characterised to a large degree by sexist language.
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The female radical
Author(s): Ng Bee Chin and Kate Burridgepp.: 54–85 (32)More LessThe paper discusses the sexist portrayal of women in Mandarin Chinese. It begins with a study of asymmetries in the lexicon; e.g. naming conventions, address terms, abuse terms, etc. which exemplify the marginalisation of Chinese women. The focus of the paper is on the stereotyped depiction of women in the written script through an analysis of characters with the female radical. Our analyses indicate that 90% of words which co-occur with the female radical are either semantically negative or convey images of women steeped in damaging stereotypes. These sexist portrayals are further reinforced by the pervasive Yin-Yang cosmology, an ideology which has enormous impact on the Chinese way of life. We argue that despite popular belief, the Yin-Yang cosmology actively serves to maintain and fortify the gender imbalance. We also discuss the omission of language and gender issues from the agenda of past and current discourses on language reforms. Finally we advocate that language reform is a crucial impetus to ideological change.
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Gender and Aboriginality
Author(s): Christine Waltonpp.: 86–128 (43)More LessThis paper re-examines ideas of culture that have been dominant within the field of Aboriginal education. It draws upon feminist post-structuralism and postmodernism in order to critique the practice of dichotomising differences between Australian Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultural practices. It uses this critique to examine current mismatch theories of differential educational location. Finally, it asks whether we need to sustain an interest in macrotheories in order to retain the ability to theorize about gender and Aboriginality across different sites.
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The construction of gender in early writing
Author(s): Barbara Kamlerpp.: 129–146 (18)More LessThis longitudinal case study explores issues of gender by examining the writing development of two children, a girl and a boy, who learned to write in process writing classrooms in Australia. Participant observation was used to study the children writing in their Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2 classrooms. The systemic functional grammar developed by Halliday (1985) and the models of genre and register proposed by Martin (1984, 1986) provided the theoretical framework and the means for analysing the children’s written texts. The findings reveal that even with free topic choice; a) the majority of texts were of one genre, the Observation genre, where the writer reconstructs and evaluates personal experience with family and friends; b) a significant pattern of gender differences occurred within this genre whereby experience was reconstructed by the girl as a passive observer of experience and by the boy as an active participant in the world. A number of implications for classroom practice and future research are suggested.
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Gender differences in spoken interaction in same sex dyadic conversations in Australian English
Author(s): Anne Thwaitepp.: 147–179 (33)More LessThis paper is a quantitative study of gender differences in a corpus of spontaneous spoken discourse of approximately 2000 clauses. Subjects were same sex pairs of speakers of Australian English, from a sample that was homogeneous in all respects except gender. Grammatical analyses derive from the work of Halliday, with conversational analyses developed by Berry (1981a,b,c) and Martin (1992). Results show that statistically significant gender differences occurred in the phonological, lexicogrammatical and semantic strata of the language. A Systemic Functional model was found to be most useful in capturing these differences, and in relating them in a holistic picture of this type of language variation.
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