The Role of Gender in Making Meaning of Texts: Bodies, Discourses, and Ways of Reading

Abstract

A sociocultural view of learning suggests that literacy is a product of social practices rather than a learned skill solidly positioned in individual minds; for this reason, literacy is intimately linked to participation in social practices. Beyond written language, literacy-related social practices consist of and integrate distinctive ways of talking, feeling, thinking, valuing, acting, and interacting, while using assorted symbols and tools (Lewis). In using Gee’s notion of Discourse as empowering and relating to social power, teachers can develop a classroom discourse about gender that improves students’ understanding of the literature and their relation to it. What happens when students talk about gender in school? Studies on gender discourses in classrooms have specifically examined how students negotiate their individual gender identities while disregarding their lived realities within a historical context (Cunnison; Davies; Francis; Kehily and Nayak; Francis and Skelton; Reay; Baxter; Abu El-Haj; Godley; Purohit and Walsh). Nevertheless, although it is difficult and uncomfortable for them, students’ responses to discussing gender reveal that the discourse positively changes students’ attitudes and improves reflection (Moore and Trahan; Widerberg; Titus; Cooks and Sun; Lili; Pace; Malkin and Stake). A goal of this article is to extend the dialogue on classroom discourse about gender by examining how students understand literature in the context of these gender discussions. Understanding literature is not about making meaning found in the text itself, but rather it is a creative action, a transaction between the text and the reader that produces meaning (Rosenblatt). Consequently, how a text is understood is determined in part by who is engaged in the act of reading at a particular place in a particular time. When literature is discussed in the classroom, how a text is understood is also determined by who is engaging in that discourse. Perhaps including gender as a discussion topic is not as important as how our students talk about gender and how it impacts the participants in that discussion. Consequently, feminist standpoint theory is a useful lens for examining the classroom discourse about gender because it is one way of connecting feminist knowledge and women’s experiences