Sally McConnell-Ginet
Department of Linguistics
Cornell University

Friday 21st July, 9:00-10:00, Bayside Auditorium A

Abstract

Most natural language utterances convey not only meaning in the sense of CONTENT, the focus of formally oriented research in semantics, but also SOCIAL MEANING, the focus of sociolinguistic inquiry. Research on language, gender and sexuality has increasingly emphasized how social meaning enters into enacting social IDENTITIES such as those labeled by woman, man, lesbian, boi, or sheila, emphasizing identities as PERFORMATIVE, part of what one “does,” and not just something one “has” or “is.” It has also explored how conveyed content, both what is directly expressed and what is presupposed or implicated, creates, sustains, or challenges IDEOLOGIES, background systems of beliefs, about gender, sexuality, and their complex connections. Here the emphasis has shifted from examining particular lexical meanings (e.g., so-called “sexist language”) to looking at meaning as generated in DISCOURSE, where what is unsaid is often as or more important than what is explicitly uttered.

This talk emphasizes the centrality of social practice to understanding how language connects to gender and sexuality, sketching the framework sociolinguist Penelope Eckert and I have jointly developed and offering a few illustrative case studies, including mention of some research on gender and sexuality in computer-mediated communication.

Biography

Sally McConnell-Ginet is Professor of Linguistics at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY where she has also served as chair of Modern Languages and Linguistics, director of Women's Studies, and founding codirector of Cognitive Studies. At Oberlin College in Ohio, she majored in mathematics with a minor in philosophy and then studied as a Fulbright Fellow in philosophy at Cambridge University in England.

After a M.S. in mathematics from Ohio State and further graduate work in mathematics at the University of Michigan, she focused for a few years on her two young children and various kinds of part time work (editing, computer programming in machine language on a PDP4, etc.) and volunteer activities (e.g., progressive politics). Finally, however, she discovered linguistics, a discipline that allowed her to pursue many of her mathematical and her philosophical interests; her Ph.D. in linguistics is from the University of Rochester.

She is coauthor with Penelope Eckert of Language and Gender (Cambridge, 2003), coauthor with Gennaro Chierchia of Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics (MIT, 1990, 2nd ed., 2000), and coeditor with Ruth Borker and Nelly Furman of Women and Language in Literature and Society (Praeger/Greenwood, 1980/1986). In addition to coauthoring several articles on language and gender with Penelope Eckert, she has written on her own a number of articles on language, gender, and sexuality and has also published and talked on a range of topics in formal semantics. In the summer of 1997 she directed the Linguistic Institute sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), she served a 5-year term as LSA Secretary-Treasurer, and she is currently President of the LSA.

Contact Information

Sally McConnell-Ginet
Department of Linguistics,
Cornell University
206 Morrill Hall,
Ithaca, NY 14853-4701
smg9 at cornell.edu