Lesson 4: Early Work on Language and Gender

Submission: Google Classroom

Font: Times New Roman 12, paper size A4
800-900 words, single-spaced, 50 points
Document title: NAME – ENG213D – WrittenTask1
Discussion: November 06, 2020
Deadline: November 13, 2020 (before 1:00 pm)

Read and analyze the following Proverbs, Quotations, & Folk-Linguistic Beliefs.

1. ‘Three women make a market’ (Sudan).

2. ‘Three women together make a theatrical performance’ (China).
3. ‘Women are nine times more talkative than men’ (Hebrew).
4. ‘Women’s and children’s opinion’ (China).
5. ‘A woman’s tongue spreads gossip fast’ (China).
6. ‘Men talk like books; women lose themselves in details’ (China).
7. ‘Never listen to a woman’s words’ (China).
8. ‘The tongue is babbling, but the head knows nothing about it’ (Russia).
9. ‘Three inches of a woman’s tongue can slay a man six feet tall’ (Japan).
10. ‘Silence gives the proper grace to women’ (Sophocles, Ajax).
11. ‘As men/Do walk a mile, women should talk an hour/After supper. ’Tis their exercise’
(Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster, II. iv).
12. ‘How hard it is for women to keep counsel!’ (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II.iv.9).
13. ‘Her voice was ever soft, /Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman’ (Shakespeare,
King Lear, V.iii.274).
14. ‘She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman’ (Shakespeare, Merry Wives of
Windsor, I.i.48).

Reflect and explain their implications for our current society. You may compare and contrast
the beliefs these lines entail to our modern views on genders and sexes (think about our
discussion). You may evaluate their truth values by elaborating the lines you have chosen to
focus on (reference the lines, e.g. “in line 12”). You may also start reflecting by observing how
the society perpetuates these beliefs against women. How do these beliefs reflect the kind of
society they have before? Or, are there still elements of such that persisted through time? And,
how do we, as a community, react to them? Do we, in some way, still conform to these beliefs?
To forward your arguments, you can provide your own examples in your mother tongue.