Abstract
This chapter looks at institutional language (rhetoric) and its enactment (practice) through the lens of communication theory. Mayock here looks at codes of language, ways to challenge the status quo through language, women’s and men’s language uses and strategies, language on-script versus off-script, and the application of language to professional and social networking.
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Notes
- 1.
The author thanks Editorial Fundamentos (Madrid) for permission to reprint in this chapter parts of a previously published article: “Gender Shrapnel and Institutional Language in the Academic Workplace.” Estudios de Mujeres. Volumen VII. Diferencia, (des)igualdad y justicia. Eds. Antón Pachecho Bravo, Ana, Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico, Carmen Méndez García, Joanne Neff Van Aertselaer, and Ana Laura Rodríguez Redondo. Madrid: Fundamentos, 2010. 149–159.
- 2.
Cronin and Fine speak to this point: “A further spurious premise of most diversity training is that male and female traits are inborn and static. The truth is that most of the characteristics labeled ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are transient cultural concepts, as seen through the prism of the diversity trainer’s personal perspective” (58).
- 3.
Just recently I visited an intermediate Spanish class in which students were practicing vocabulary of the professions. Each time they responded with the feminine form of the profession, the instructor corrected them and supplied the masculine form. When the students gave the masculine form, no correction was offered. This is a small instance of reinforcement of power patterns in our speech, especially at a moment at which students could be learning more equitable use of language through their second-language acquisition experiences.
- 4.
See http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201104.html for the 2011 Office for Civil Rights “Dear Colleague” letter.
Reference
Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Government Department of Education. 2011. “Dear Colleague” Letter. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201104.html. Accessed 4 Jan 2015. Web.
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Mayock, E. (2016). Institutional Language(s) and the Enactment of Language. In: Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_5
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