Perception and Realization in Language and Gender Research

July 19-20, 2003
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan

Invited Speakers

Barbara Horvath (University of Sydney)
Celia Kitzinger (University of York)
Helga Kotthoff (Pädgogische Hochschule Freiburg)
Joan Pujolar Cos (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Margaret Wetherell (The Open University)

Workshop Leaders

Rusty Barrett (University of Michigan)
Lanita Jacobs-Huey (University of Southern California)
Shari Kendall (Texas A&M University)
Yumiko Ohara (Tokai International College, Honolulu)
Maria Stubbe (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
Qing Zhang (University of Texas, Austin)

This website provides the results of an international conference that brought together scholars from around the world to address the question: How is the relationship between language and gender perceived and realized, both by speakers and by researchers themselves?

Over the past decade, the related issues of perception and realization have become increasingly central in language and gender research. Concerns with the nature of gender differences in language use have been largely replaced with newer, and still emergent, research questions about how people perceive some linguistic features to be associated with gender and how such associations are realized in specific contexts of language use. These questions include:

How can we assert with confidence that a linguistic phenomenon is associated with gender?
How and when are gender identities salient?
To what extent do perceptions of gendered language use correspond to linguistic manifestations of gender identity?

The conference sought to address these new, central issues in the field by fostering dialogue among international representatives of various theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives. Click on the links above to see some of the results of the conference.

coswl igala

invited speakers workshops posters contact