The Print Media
January 22, 2007

 The media, from genres such as letters, magazines and novels, to more visual media such as the internet, advertisements, television and film, play varied and important roles in the construction of gender and sexuality. Today's class will feature Professor Miyako Inoue from the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology (CASA), who will talk about the role of Japanese print media in the construction of Japanese "women's language".

Class Slides for this lecture will not be posted.

Readings

Read the following paper for discussion in section this week.
Elinor Ochs and Carolyn Taylor's paper on dinner table conversation:
The "father knows best" dynamic in dinnertime conversations. Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self, ed. by Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz, 97-120. New York and London: Oxford University Press. 1992.

Purely Optional

This article is about the construction of a specifically Chinese imagined gay community:

WONG, ANDREW and ZHANG, QING. 2000. The linguistic construction of the tongzhi community. Journal of linguistic anthropology, 10.248-76.

To read about Miyako Inoue's historical analysis of Japanese women's language, see her article INOUE, MIYAKO. 2002. Gender, language and modernity: Toward an effective history of "Japanese women's language". American Ethnologist, 29.392-422.