Students learn to critically examine the relationships between social structures (including language) and norms of behavior and learn to speak out against oppressive norms.
Module Purpose
Students learn to critically examine the relationships between social structures (including language) and norms of behavior and learn to speak out against oppressive norms.
Questions at Issue
Through their reading and writing in this module, students will consider the following questions:
To what extent do individuals find their behavior influenced by social expectations in terms of gender and other aspects of their identity (norms)?
What role does language play in that influence?
What role can language play in countering social pressures?
Module Texts
Brooks, David. “Honor Code.” New York Times, New York edition, 6 July 2012, p. A23.
Butler, Judith. “phylosophe.” Transcript. YouTube, uploaded by Stef. Trans, 23 Feb. 2007, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLnv322X4tY. Accessed 9 Apr. 2019.
Chira, Susan. “The ‘Manly’ Jobs Problem.” New York Times, 8 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/sunday-review/sexual-harassment-masculine-jobs.html.
Lorde, Audre. “Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” The Cancer Journals,d Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1980, pp. 18-23.
Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Prelude: The Barbershop.” Preface. Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, Wayne State UP, 2007, pp. xi-xvi.
Module Video Text
Butler, Judith. “phylosophe.” YouTube, uploaded by Stef. Trans, 23 Feb. 2007, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLnv322X4tY. Accessed 9 Apr. 2019.
instructions
At the conclusion of the module, students will be able to
Explain the relationships among language, cultural norms, and identities (both personal and social)
Descriptively outline an article and a speech
Analyze and use personal experience, their own and others’, as evidence
Use adjective clauses to specify nouns
Evaluate and describe authors’ stylistic choices
Imitate authors’ styles
Use writing to propose social change
Rhetorical Concepts
The rhetorical concept emphasized in this module is audience with some attention to context.
English Language Arts Standards
Emphasized in this module are the following English language arts (ELA) standards for grades 11-12: Reading Informational Text 5; Writing 1; Speaking and Listening 2, 4-5; Language 3a.
English Language Development Standards
Emphasized in this module are the following English language development (ELD) standards for grades 11-12: Part I, A. Collaborative, 1-2, Bridging; Part I, B. Interpretive, 6, Bridging; Part I, C. Productive, 10, Bridging; Part II, A. Structuring Cohesive Texts, 1.
Defining Features of the Module
This module engages students in the following activities in the arc: Builds a conversation about gender and cultural norms and their influence and consequences, culminating in a call (by Lorde) to speak out against such norms when they are oppressive. Students answering that call about “the tyrannies [they] swallow day by day.” It also involves students in the analysis of style—particularly in terms of sentence length and complexity.
Culminating Task
At the close of the module, students “write a speech, a letter, or a public service announcement that proposes a meaningful change in their community.” This is an argumentative assignment that fulfills the module’s purpose by having students reflect on their own experiences of oppression and use their learning to propose a change.
Module Background
In this module, students investigate gender norms and the extent to which social pressures enforce those norms. They begin by reflecting on their own experiences of gender-based social pressures, deepening their understandings of the relationships between language, gender, culture, and identity. They then read a transcript and view a short talk by Judith Butler to prepare them to think more carefully about the concepts in this module. In addition to asking students to reflect on a range of topics including gender, identity, race, and culture, the module readings ask students to consider how norms of behavior may be enforced through language and social interaction, and to analyze the ways they may have been silenced or witnessed others being silenced. The final writing assignment invites them to transform their own silences into language and social action.
In addition to the video of Judith Butler, the module contains four readings, which vary in genre and complexity. David Brooks’s article is a newspaper Op-Ed; Audre Lorde’s chapter was written as a speech; Susan Chira’s article is news analysis, and Vershawn Ashanti Young’s speech is an academic autobiographical reflection. Teachers should read the texts carefully and consider whether all are appropriate for their students; the Young chapter may be challenging for some students. If any texts are omitted, references to those texts should also be omitted from any student handouts.
In this module, students think carefully not only about issues related to language, gender, identity, and culture, but also about the writer’s style, genre, and purpose. They apply this learning to their own writing in the final assignment, for which they have a choice of genre: a speech, a letter, or a public service announcement. In that final project, they will be using language as a form of social action to propose a change in their community as a means of addressing what they perceive to be an important issue.
NOTE on Italics in the TEACHER VERSION: The activities for students provided in the Student Version for this module are copied here in the Teacher Version for your convenience. The shaded areas include the actual activities the students will see. The use of italics in the shaded areas generally indicates possible student responses. These are not meant to be definitive correct answers, only some version of possible student responses showing an acceptable degree of understanding. These are meant to help you keep discussions on the right track and indicate the need, should it arise, for further clarification or differentiation. If there are notes to the teacher within the shaded areas, they are indicated by italics and parentheses.
Reading Rhetorically
Preparing to Read
Getting Ready to Read
As students prepare to examine the issues of language, gender, identity, and culture in the readings, they can first bring to light their prior knowledge and understandings about these issues through the use of these quickwrites. Your students can do all their writing in a Language, Gender, Identity, and Culture Reflection Journal, which they can easily create by stapling together eight to ten sheets of binder paper to use for their reflections on the texts included in this module. Alternately, you can have students create an online journal, perhaps adding to a single online document with each entry.
Activity 1: Getting Ready to Read
Choose two of the five quickwrite topics below and write (or type) your responses in your Language, Gender, and Culture Reflection Journal.
Quickwrite 1: Some people assert that just one or two generations ago men and women seemed to have more rigid codes for how to behave: for example, men could be loud and assertive while women were expected to dress modestly and use a “feminine” voice. Do you think these codes or “rules” for male and female behavior still hold true today? What codes or “rules” apply to those who do not identify with one gender or the other? What experiences and observations can you point to as support for your position?
Quickwrite 2: Women and men now work in a greater variety of jobs than ever before: women take combat roles in the military and serve as police officers and firefighters. Men work as nurses and participate in cheerleading. More individuals are refusing the male/female binary, identifying themselves as gender-fluid or non-binary. Do you think there are still jobs or activities (for instance, sports) that are better suited to men or women? If so, what are they and why? If not, why not?
Quickwrite 3: How do children and young adults learn what is “appropriate” behavior, either in general or for them as boys and girls or young men and women? What happens when a young person acts in some way their families or friends consider “not normal”? How are they treated? Refer to your own experiences and observations to support your points.
Quickwrite 4: Imagine how some of the people you know walk. Are there any individuals you think of as walking in a typically male or female way? What aspects of walking behavior or style (speed, size of steps, carriage of the shoulders and hips, gaze [focus of the eyes], etc.) make a person’s walk seem “feminine” versus “masculine”?
Quickwrite 5: Describe how you see young men, women, non-binary, and transgender individuals treated at school, both by their peers and by teachers. If you see a difference, in general, in how individuals are treated based on gender or sex, how would you characterize that difference? What effect do you think it has? Why do you think the difference exists?
Exploring Key Concepts
As students engage thoughtfully with the texts in this module, they will enter a conversation about the relationships among language, gender, culture, and identity. In order to enter this conversation, students must begin to clarify their understandings of these relationships and of the terms related to engaging in meaningful dialogue about them.
In particular, it will be important for students to begin to explore the ways in which cultural norms may influence expectations for their identities, and the ways that social behaviors, including language use and notions of “deviant behavior,” may enforce those norms. For this activity, have students discuss the following questions in small groups, encapsulating the understandings they glean from that discussion in a quickwrite. Then invite a few students to share and discuss their responses with the class.
Activity 2: Exploring Key Concepts
As you engage thoughtfully with the texts in this unit, you will be paying attention to a conversation about the relationships among language, gender, culture, and identity. In order to understand—and ultimately enter—that conversation, it will help if you consider what you know about some key terms. In small groups, discuss the following questions. Then write or type about what you’ve learned from your peers in a quickwrite.
Gender and sex (or biological sex) are sometimes treated as referring to the same characteristics or as perfectly aligned. But they’re not. Discuss what you know about these terms and the differences between them.
Culture incorporates many elements of our daily lives—from language, rituals (or routines), clothing, foods, and holidays to expectations for how we behave and treat others. Discuss what you know of your own culture, particularly in terms of its expectations of you as a male or female.
Who are you? How much of your identity is determined by your genetics, where you come from, your family, your education? These are not questions to which anyone has absolute answers, so discuss with your group what each of you thinks and why.
Im a men who grew up like that even today Im still a guy who playes volleyball and likes to play videos games
Quickwrite: What have you learned from this discussion about the relationships among language, gender, identity and cultural norms?
Video Text 1 and Text 1 – Butler, “phylosophe”
Exploring Key Concepts – Judith Butler Video
Watch the Judith Butler video together as a class, allowing students to read the transcript while they watch.
Activity 3: Exploring Key Concepts – Judith Butler Video
Reflection: After watching the Judith Butler video, reread the quickwrites you wrote for Activities 1 and 2 and then answer the following questions:
Though you may not know any examples as extreme as the Butler story, have you seen or heard of similar instances in which gender norms have been enforced through violence or bullying?
How does this story deepen your understanding of the relationship between identity, gender, and culture?
Surveying the Text – Connecting Texts and Their Authors
For each text in this module, ask students to do the following:
Examine the titles and make a prediction about the content of each piece
Note the types of texts and genres (The New York Times Op-Ed piece, or speech, or book excerpt) and make any additional relevant predictions about the content or rhetorical stance of each piece
Examine the brief author biographies provided below and then imagine how each author’s identity and gender—as described in these biographies—might influence the text’s language content or purpose
In this activity, students survey all four texts at once, based on the titles and genres of the texts and brief biographies of the authors.
Note: It is totally fine for students’ predictions to be varied; the intention of this activity is to inspire curious and purposeful reading in order to confirm or disconfirm their predictions.
Activity 4: Surveying the Text – Connecting Texts and Their Authors
Based on the information provided for each of the four texts in this module (Chira, Brooks, Young, and Lorde), do the following:
Examine the titles, and make a prediction about the content of each piece
Note the types of texts and genres (The New York Times Op-Ed piece, or speech, or book excerpt), and make any relevant predictions about the content or rhetorical stance of each piece
Examine the brief author biographies provided below, and then imagine how each author’s identity and gender—as described in those biographies—might influence the text’s language, content, or purpose
Susan Chira – “The ‘Manly’ Jobs Problem” is a news analysis article originally published in the “Sunday Review” section of The New York Times (2018) under the headline, “Being a Woman at a ‘Manly’ Job.”
Susan Chira is a graduate of Harvard University, where she was the writer and president of the Harvard Crimson. She has been writing for The New York Times since 1981 and currently serves as a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues. Chira is the author of A Mother’s Place: Taking the Debate About Working Mothers Beyond Guilt and Blame.
David Brooks – “Honor Code” is an Op-Ed piece from the The New York Times (2012).
David Brooks is a political and cultural commentator as well as a columnist for The New York Times. He has written for the Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Newsweek, and The Atlantic Monthly. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in History and later taught at Duke University in Public Policy. His books include Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000); On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense (2004), and The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011).
Vershawn Ashanti Young – “Prelude: The Barbershop” is the introductory section to the book, Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity (2007).
Vershawn Ashanti Young earned a Ph.D. from the Department of African American Studies and English at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is an expert on the contemporary African American experience and is particularly interested in issues dealing with African American language, literature, gender (masculinity), and performance/performativity. He is the author or editor of several books, including Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity (2007), and two recent collected volumes. The first is in African American literary and performance studies, From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances (2011), and the second is in sociolinguistics and literacy, Code-Meshing as World English: Pedagogy, Policy, Performance (2011).
Audre Lorde – “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” is a speech from her collection titled The Cancer Journals (1980).
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) earned a B.A. from Hunter College and an M.A. from Columbia University in Library Science. The author of numerous collections of poetry and prose, Lorde was deeply concerned with issues of class, race, age, gender, and health, particularly as they related to the experiences of women in the 1960’s. A librarian, writer, poet, teacher, feminist and lesbian, Lorde won numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant and the American Library Association Gay Caucus Book of the Year Award in 1981 for The Cancer Journals. She died of liver cancer in 1992.
Making Predictions and Asking Questions – Authors’ Purposes and Arguments
Carefully considering predictions helps students develop curiosity about reading and provides a sense of purpose for reading. Have students work in pairs, or groups of three, to respond to the following prompts. Because each of them brings different life experiences to their predictions, encouraging them to ensure that all voices are heard within their group will promote more discussion and learning about how they make predictions based both on the texts and the life experiences they bring to reading the text.
Activity 5: Making Predictions and Asking Questions – Authors’ Purposes and Arguments
What questions do Chira’s, Brooks’s, and Young’s titles raise for you?
What does Lorde’s title tell you about the topic and purpose of her chapter?
Read only the first two paragraphs of each of the four longer texts (Chira, Brooks, Young, and Lorde).
What predictions can you make about each text based on the opening paragraphs?
What questions do those paragraphs raise for you that you hope the reading will answer?
Based on only the first two paragraphs of each text, what can you infer about the audiences and purposes each author seems to have imagined for his or her text? Explain.
Understanding Key Vocabulary – Synonym Chart for Butler, Chira, and Brooks
This activity helps students utilize collective knowledge about key terms while also drawing their attention to various ways of researching words they will encounter in these texts. It also sensitizes students to shades of meaning among synonyms.
Each of the texts in this module includes some words that may be new to the students. Using the key vocabulary and synonym table below based on three of the texts, ask students to check off any words and/or their synonyms with which they are familiar (“familiar” meaning that they would recognize and understand these words if they saw them in another context). Then ask students to work in pairs to brainstorm an additional fifteen synonyms in the far right column for any of the key vocabulary words that they find particularly intriguing or useful. They can find synonyms by questioning one another, using their cell phones to find definitions, using electronic or print dictionaries, or searching on classroom computers for acceptable synonyms. Finally, if there is time, students can work briefly in foursomes (two pairs to a group) to share their newly expanded synonym lists and exchange some of the synonyms they like best.
Activity 6: Understanding Key Vocabulary – Synonym Chart for Butler, Chira, and Brooks
Using the vocabulary and synonym table below, review the list of key vocabulary words for each author, checking off any words and/or their synonyms you know (meaning you would recognize and understand these words if you saw them in another context). Then, working individually or in pairs, brainstorm an additional 26 synonyms in the far-right column for any of the key vocabulary words that you find particularly intriguing or useful. You can find synonyms using a number of resources: ask a classmate, use your cell phone to find definitions, use electronic or print dictionaries, or search on a classroom computer for acceptable synonyms. As you generate synonyms, discuss what new predictions these vocabulary words lead you to make about the articles.
Author Vocabulary Word or Phrase Synonym or a Similar Phrase Another Synonym or a Similar Phrase
Judith Butler
negate
expunge
eradicate
comply
gender norms
coercion
deny
wipe out
eliminate
obey
sex-linked expectations
force
Susan Chira
harassment
uppity
intractable
embodied
status quo
stark
banter
wield
entitlement
status
dexterous
hierarchical
hyperbolic
persecution
self-assertive
resistant, hard to change
represented
current state
obvious
repartee, joking conversation
use
privilege
level, stature
skillful
ranked
exaggerated
David Brooks
rambunctious
plummet
lewd
eminent
homogeneous
cretin
social engineering
very active, noisy
drop
vulgar
well-known
all the same
idiot, stupid person
using policies based on social science to deal with social problems
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