Joanne Winter

Gender and Language Contact Research in the Australian Context

The focus of this paper is a (re)consideration of explanations and (re)presentation of second-generation bilingual women and their discourses of identities, language choice and language maintenance in Australia in the light of new directions for gender in language contact research. Here we present a (re)view of the value, roles and directions of past and present research about gender and language contact as well as provide an example for future directions through an examination of the emergent discourses of identity of a young Australian-born woman of Greek parentage living in Melbourne.

Gender Inclusivity or ‘Grammar Rules OK’? Linguistic Prescriptivism vs Linguistic Discrimination in the Classroom

This paper explores the potential conflict classroom teachers face in their dual roles as ‘guardians of grammar’ and as ‘agents of social language reform’ with reference to third person singular generic pronouns in English. We investigate to what extent teachers (primary, secondary and tertiary) experience tensions between these roles in relation to their own and students’ use of generic pronouns, and if they do, how they resolve the issue. Drawing upon survey and interview data from Australian classroom teachers we find substantial adoption of gender-inclusive alternatives to generic he with a clear preference for and tolerance of singular they in their own and their students’ writing. Remnants of social gender and the use of generic he and generic she are found for the antecedents real estate agent and teacher respectively. Younger teachers are by and large unaware of grammatical prescriptivism arguments while all teachers have awareness of the need to address and reform linguistic discrimination. Female educators lead the way as ‘agents of change’ and intervene in students’ writing to promote the avoidance of gender-exclusive generic he.

Gender in the construction and transmission of ethnolinguistic identities and language maintenance in immigrant Australia

The relevance and impact of gender and/or sex roles have long been recognized in the transmission of languages in situations of language contact. More recent studies of multilingualism, second language learning and language maintenance have moved beyond the investigation of gender roles to looking at gendered identities and questions of language maintenance/shift. Here we build upon these developments and examine the ways in which masculinities and femininities constrain and enable language maintenance practices and transmission of the community language among bilingual women and men who were born in Australia to immigrant parents (the so-called second generation). In particular we explore the gendered practices of ‘maintaining the community language’ among ‘second-generation’ women and men of Greek and German descent and discuss the construction of gendered ethnolinguistic identities and the survival of the respective community languages in Australia.

Gender-inclusive Language Reform in Educational Writing in Singapore and the Philippines: A Corpus-based Study

Abstract In this paper we examine the adoption of some gender-inclusive features (generic nouns and pronouns) in two varieties of “outer-circle” Englishes. The focus is on educational texts given the importance of the educational domain in the adoption and spread of language planning. The texts are from the Singapore and Philippine sections of the International Corpus of English [ICE]. Overall results point to minimal adoption of gender-inclusive alternatives for generic he and masculine generic nouns although differences emerge in relation to variety and type of text/genre.

Miss ing me and Ms ing the other

The introduction and spread of Ms as the courtesy address title for women is a cornerstone of feminist linguistic planning for English. Its introduction aimed to eradicate the discriminatory inequity in the address system that exposed women through their (non)marital relationship with men. The understanding, use and impact of the courtesy title are fairly well documented, particularly for Englishes of Australia (e.g. Pauwels 1987; 1998; 2001; 2003), US and Britain (Romaine 2001) and New Zealand (Holmes 2001). We have little knowledge of the form’s spread, impact and use by speakers for whom English is not the dominant language but forms part of their linguistic repertoire. Graddol (1997) argues that English-speaking bilinguals will outnumber first language speakers and, ‘increasingly will decide the global future of the language’ (p.10). Such contexts of English – second / third / foreign – usage loosely align with locales Kachru (1997) identified as ‘expanding circles’, and to some extent, many of the ‘outer circle’ Englishes, e.g. Hong Kong. In this paper we take up a new direction in feminist language planning: the exploration of courtesy title use and practices by English-speaking mono-/bi-/multilingual women around the world. We draw upon online survey data (available from http://www.teagirl.arts.uwa.edu.au/ ) to probe respondents’ strategies for addressing unknown women, as well as women’s use of courtesy titles for themselves. Our mapping of practices associated with Ms reveals an unexpected pattern of diffusion with implications for evaluating planned social language change. In relation to Ms , the implementation of feminist linguistic policy does not cohere with a pattern of spread from inner to outer to expanding ‘circles’ of English or from ‘first language speaker’ to … ‘foreign language speaker’ diffusion. The locale and personal contexts associated with education, awareness and personal commitment to gender equity interact in complicating, and surprising ways. Indeed our research exposes a new directionality for Ms as a preferred form for unknown women, without necessarily implicating its use in self-naming for many bilingual women resident in ‘outer circle’ locales.

Missing me and Msing the other: Courtesy titles for women in Englishes

Joanne Winter, The University of Western Australia Joanne Winter is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. She researches on issues related to the discursive construction of identity, language and gender and discourse features of Englishes. She is co-editor of Maintaining Minority Languages in Transnational Contexts (Palgrave, 2006), and recent publications include articles in International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Language and Education and Current Issues in Language Planning. Correspondence to Joanne Winter: jewinter@cyllene.uwa.edu.au Anne Pauwels, The University of Western Australia Anne Pauwels is Professor of Linguistics and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. Her main areas of research include immigrant language contact in Australia, language and gender, and language policy relating to higher education. She is the author of Boys and Foreign Language Learning (Palgrave, 2006 with Jo Carr), and Women Changing Language (Longman, 1998), and is co-editor of Maintaining Minority Languages in Transnational Contexts (Palgrave, 2006). She is chair of the steering committee for an Australian national research project, Innovative Approaches to Provision of Languages Other Than English in Australian Higher Education (Collaboration and Structural Reform Fund). Correspondence to Anne Pauwels: apauwels@arts.uwa.edu.au

Language Maintenance and the Second Generation: Policies and Practices

A focus on language maintenance for the second generation in transnational or diasporic contexts evokes discourses about the threats and challenges to linguistic diversity in the face of generational change and concomitant rhetoric of nationalism and social integration. In this chapter, we examine the institutional or policy-based discourses as well as the individual experience-based voices surrounding language maintenance for children of migrating sojourners to Australia. Frequently known as the second generation, they are seen to link the past and the future in numerous ways: as carriers of cultural histories and knowledge directly passed ‘down’ from the first generation, as bodies of integration into, or social cohesion of, the new society. The pivotal nature of the link is demonstrated in the ways in which the second generation are seen as threats or challenges to language maintenance as well as potential transformers for bi/multilingualism and linguistic diversity. Furthermore, the second generation are part of the broader sociocultural and historical landscape, attracting meanings about separation, distinction and difference. Reconsidering the spaces, or locales, occupied by the second-generation migrant/first-generation local (referred to as local second generation in our discussion) has been linked to ‘third spaces’ (Brah, 1996) or hybridity (Hall, 1992) for diasporic populations.