Teaching
Linguistic Anthropology
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Unit 3
Language and Gender
Words, phrases, and context tell us a great deal about how we think, speak about, and ultimately view people of different genders. This unit encourages students to think about the way language lays bare the gender inequality that is present in our societies and how changes to language are part of creating more equitable systems.
Sapiens articles
Unmanning Space Language
Do the terms we commonly use to discuss space exploration reflect the reality of humankind and our engagements with outer space?
The Power of the Dictionary
Dictionaries are typically viewed as being value-neutral. But they are just as steeped in culture and prejudice as the rest of the world—and they have the power to shape what we see as “normal.”
Keywords
View All in Communication
![In a pitch-black environment, a person with black smudges on their face wears a fur pelt and holds a lit torch.]()
![On a wood-paneled floor, four barefoot people wearing different outfits in shades of red, yellow, and blue dance in front of a gray wall. Captured in motion, and therefore blurry, each has several of their dance moves overlapping and visible at once.]()
![Two black-haired chimpanzees lie on the dirt ground in front of a blurred background of brown rocks and green, leafy trees.]()
![Four people, one wearing a red baseball cap and another a blue shirt, ride a boat on a khaki-colored river surrounded by dense forest.]()
![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A colorful mosaic shows several people wearing helmets and holding metal shields in front of a pillared building.]()
How Accurate Is the Stone Age Thriller Out of Darkness?
An archaeologist with expertise in human origins assesses the accuracy of a 2022 film about Homo sapiens who encounter Neanderthals.
Making Anthropological Poetry Reel
In featuring three SAPIENS poems, students in a digital anthropology seminar infused video reels for Instagram with vivid history and powerful emotions.
Spend a Day Tracking Chimpanzees
A series of short videos captures a rare view into the lives of wild chimps through the eyes of a researcher.
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
The Rebellion Recorded on the Rosetta Stone
An archaeologist explains how recent archaeological finds in Egypt expand our knowledge of a violent revolt discussed on the now-famous Rosetta Stone.
View All in Gender
![A crowd watches a parade float shaped like a building with rainbow-colored windows and a heart made of rainbow handprints. Text reads, “justice community equality” and words on a blue roof read, “United Church of Christ, UCC.org/lgbt.” A small sign propped up against the float reads, “Amen. Advocate for Marriage Equality.”]()
![Two people hug in a bathroom, with one seated on a closed toilet and the other kneeling on a tan-and-brown tiled floor. Two standing onlookers flank the image’s foreground.]()
![A person wearing a white dress whose skirt is made of ribbons, each with a name written on it, leans back with their eyes closed. They are on grass with a Black Lives Matter banner on the ground beside them and a circle of drummers and bystanders around them.]()
![A black-and-white film still features a person wearing a hoodie, clear vest, and cap looks upward at the face of a person holding small objects in front of them with a gloved hand. The two are on rocky terrain in front of a graffiti-covered stone wall.]()
![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A human figure with a large white cloth draped over them stands in a long, dark corridor lined with windows on one side.]()
Being LGBTQ+ in U.S. Protestant Churches
As homophobic and transphobic rhetoric sweeps the U.S., some churches are increasingly welcoming LGBTQ+ parishioners who participate in religious life and help reconcile Christianity with a spectrum of sexual and gender identities.
How Eugenics Shaped the U.S. Prenatal Care System
Black women in the U.S. are far more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and birth than White women. Two scholars explore how the discrediting of Black midwives helped create these racial disparities—and call for alternative models of prenatal care.
The Urgency of Envisioning a World Without Police
An anthropologist working in Baltimore argues that safety for Black communities requires an end to policing. That also means taking a hard look at how policing intersects with patriarchy and intimate partner violence.
Excavating a 19th-Century Detroit Saloon
A filmmaker highlights the work of urban archaeologists who are excavating the site of a woman-owned business that opened in the late 1800s.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
What It Means to be Human in an Asylum
A sociocultural anthropologist from Pakistan speaks to how women in asylums in a patriarchal culture are in a battle between their realities and their lost dreams. Yet those dreams offer hope for tomorrow.
View All in Language
![Dark gray clouds hang in a pale blue sky. With orange light shining from behind them, these clouds seem to touch dark rolling hills scattered with trees and buildings.]()
![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A picture features a sky with a large, slightly orange, billowing cloud at its center that morphs on its left side to look like the side profile of dark-skinned woman’s face. To the left of her is a bright-blue sky with clouds.]()
![From an aerial perspective, a photograph features a large circular garden with green shrubs crisply pruned into arc shapes oriented to form a maze. A gazebo topped with similar greenery sits at the maze’s center.]()
![A photograph features five people in colorful clothing standing on cement tiles in front of tall trees and green grass.]()
![A crowd faces a large outdoor screen showing video of a nuclear missile launching into a blue sky. Several buses are visible in the background.]()
Speaking in Tongues
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
Indigenizing What It Means to be Human
SAPIENS offers a curated collection of poems and stories that center Indigenous values, worldviews, and insights, creatively reimagining anthropology and the human experience.
Best of SAPIENS 2022
In a year of continuing global conflagrations, anthropologists investigated a wide range of pressing and curious questions about humanity’s past, present, and future. Here are the editors’ picks for this year's most compelling contributions.
How a Song Bridged Diné and Ndebele Worlds
An anthropologist recounts a magical moment of songwriting collaboration between Diné (Navajo) and Ndebele artists gathered for the WOMAD Festival in South Africa.
What Commentators Get Wrong (and Right) About North Korea
An anthropologist argues that unfair portrayals of North Korea as a hopelessly irrational hermit state has huge implications for policy and security.
Professor Talking Points
- Gender inequality in various societies is mirrored in and supported by people’s use of language.
- Linguistic anthropologists who study gender are well-positioned to observe changes in the way language reflects adaptations in how the concepts of masculinity, femininity, gender binaries, and gender fluidity are understood and conveyed.
- The rise of gender neutral language is an example of these ongoing shifts in language and culture. Gender neutral language provides a way to speak about human beings without assuming or imposing a gender identity on them. An example of gender neutral language in English is the use of “they,” “them,” and “their” as singular pronouns instead of “he/she” or “his/hers.”
- Shifts in language are happening alongside shifts in cultures by way of social institutions and interactions that lead many to think more critically about assumed gender traits.
- These shifts are also taking place in our linguistic institutions, including dictionaries, journalistic guidelines, style guides, etc.
Academic Articles
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Kiesling, Scott Fabius. 2008. “‘Now I Gotta Watch What I Say’: Shifting Constructions of Masculinity in Discourse.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11 (2): 250–273.
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Kulick, Don. 2000. “Gay and Lesbian Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 243–287.
Student Discussion Questions
- What do this unit’s articles say about the way people think about gender hierarchies in general?
- What are the effects of the changes in these hierarchies on the way people talk about women’s and men’s places?
- How does the Kiesling (2008) article inform the two SAPIENS articles in terms of how gendered language is being contested and adapted?
- What can we learn from Kulick’s (2000) article about the way gender and sexuality are expressed through language? How does his message relate to the other articles?
Activities
- Have the students list all of the gendered words in English they can think of that are loaded with meaning and power. Then have them discuss the implications of individual words and the list as a whole.
Additional Resources
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Book Review: SAPIENS’ “The Anthropologists Who Undid Sex, Race, and Gender”
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PowerPoint: University of Chicago’s “Language and Gender”
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Video: Deborah Tannen’s “Gender-Specific Language Rituals”
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Video: The Economist’s “Sexism and the English Language”
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Video: Deborah Tannen’s “She Said, She Said (You’re Wearing That?)”
Unit By
Eshe Lewis (2020)
Teaching
Linguistic Anthropology
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Unit 4
Language and Colonialism
