Cheshire, J. 2002. Sex and gender in variationist research.
In J.K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes (eds.), Handbook of Language Variation and Change.
Oxford: Blackwell, 423-443.
Gratton, C. 2016. Resisting the gender binary: The use of (ING) in the construction of
non-binary transgender identities. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: 22(2): Article 7

Lakoff, R. 1973. Language and Woman’s Place. Language in Society 2(1): 45–80.

Romaniuk, T. 2016. On the relevance of gender in the analysis of discourse: A case study
from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential bid in 2007–2008. Discourse & Society 27(5): 533–553.

Speyer, L. G., & Schleef, E. 2019. Processing ‘gender-neutral’ pronouns: A self-paced reading study of learners of English.
Applied Linguistics 40(5): 793-815.

Students’ successful performance (Studienleistung) in the seminar is assessed through regular attendance, active participation, and an oral presentation.

Students must write a seminar paper (Seminararbeit) on a topic related to the topic of this class. It is part of the coursework to support students in
identifying and developing a feasible seminar paper project. Please note that a successful performance (Studienleistung) in class
is a prerequisite for submitting a seminar paper.

The relation between language and gender (or sex) has been of longstanding interest in sociolinguistic study since the 1960s when the role of women’s language use in
change and variation was first assessed. Since these early beginnings, research has moved from a more static perspective on the relation between language and
gender towards a more dynamic, contextualized one which considers language use of all, diverse genders. In this seminar, we will examine such research from
(Variationist) Sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis, and Cognitive Linguistics, and discuss what these results mean for our understanding of
language and gender, and more radically, if gender is at all an appropriate category to analyze and assess language use.

BA Vertiefungsmodul I - Linguistics