Key Terms Flashcards
Verbal hygiene
collection of discourses and practices through which people attempt to ‘clean up’ language and make its structure or its use conform more closely to their ideals of beauty, truth, efficiency, logic, correctness and civility . Deborah Cameron. Cleaning lang. verbal hygiene describes any intentional attempts to change language. E.g. The change from “fireman” to “firefighter,”
Heteronormativity
the attitude that heterosexuality is the only normal and natural expression of sexuality. It’s the idea that binary gender identity and heterosexual orientation (meaning, there are only two sexual orientations and genders) are the norm. When your identity does not cohere with heteronormativity, you are often asked to explain yourself — why you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend, how sex for you “works,” and other insensitive, inappropriate questions. In our world, we commonly think of gender as just male and female, especially when we’re categorized by things like color and clothing. Even if someone “looks” like a guy, they may prefer to use the pronouns “she/her”
Gender fluid
your identify (like male or female), can move from one side of the spectrum to the other, and some people are genderless
Patriarchy/ matriarchy
Matriarchy is a social system in which women hold the primary power positions in roles of authority.
Tautology
a phrase or expression in which the same thing is said twice in different words. e.g. they arrived one after the other in succession
Marked/unmarked terms
H
Patronymic surname
A patronymic surname is a surname originated from the given name of the father or ancestor.
matronymic
A matronymic is a personal name based on the given name of one’s mother, grandmother, or any female ancestor. I
Lexical Priming- Micheal Hooey
uses the phrase lexical priming. This suggests that each time a word or phrase is heard or read, it occurs along with other words (its collocates). This leads you to expect it to appear in a similar context or with the same grammar in the future, and this ‘priming’ influences the way you use the word or phrase in your own speech and writing.
Stanley (1977)
stated that women occupy a negative semantic space because of the number of marked forms that exist to describe female equivalents of male roles, ‘lady doctor’ and ‘female surgeon’ women are unable to move into the positive space occupied by men because they will always carry a mark of femaleness and therefore inequality with them.
semantic reclamation
process by where a word which had previously has negative connotations can be reclaimed by the group it was used against and turned into something positive
Lexical asymmetry
An imbalance in the meanings of two ostensibly matching words- e.g. man and woman should have opposite but equivalent meanings, however this is not the case. Manliness is seen as strength, ‘man up’ womanliness as weak, ‘cry like a girl’. Another e.g. bachelor/spinster
Heterosexist Terms
These terms are those which give negative connotations for anything female such as calling a male a “girl” or any insulting phrase that uses female genitalia as an insult (which links to Stanley’s insults, Spender’s ideas about patriarchy and Cameron’s “male is norm”). It also includes overtly positive connotations for anything masculine, such as the positive spin on being able to do something ‘like a man’ or the phrase ‘man up’
Sexual Terrorism (Carole J Sheffield)
This theorist created a term which is a feminist analysis on gendered power differences in society. It looks at rape as an exercise in male power, pornography as a cultural eroticisation of women and calls into question any area where men frighten, control or coerce women.
Liz Kelly
This theorist furthers the concept of ‘sexual terrorism’ by claiming that all women will experience sexual violence at some time in their lives. This could be due to verbal abuse such as being labelled a ‘*****’ or ‘slut’ which is in part harassment and, as such, has links to criminal activity.
