ABSTRACT

Highlighting gender in relation to language and the media is not an uncontroversial project. Despite decades of feminist and queer interventions in academia and social life, it is still the case that a chapter that deals specifically with gender is needed. Perhaps the time is nigh for language and media scholars to do some self-reflection about empirical foci, theoretical choices, and epistemological allegiances (see Cotter and Perrin, this volume, Introduction). Waiting for that future moment when “ghettos, minority set-aside programs, and political marginalizations are ending” (Duggan 2015: n.p.), this chapter casts the spotlight on gender, but it does so mindful of the problems inherent in the strategic highlighting of one social category as an “identificatory site of political mobilization” (Butler 1993: 116), and academic prioritization.