Course Description
N/A Teaching guide (syllabus) for this course was not present.
Course Summary
Under the instruction of Pilar Ucar Ventura, the course reviewed many cultural aspects of the Spanish language and how they promote sexism in the media. In the beginning of the course we studied what communication is and established that for there to be communication there must be a transmitter (something or someone that transmits) and a receptor (someone that receives). In order for communication to take place, both the transmitter and the receptor must use the same code to understand each other. This code is what would be considered to be the language being used to communicate. The transmitter and the receptor can interchange with each other, but while studying the media we focused on media and publicity as the transmitter and the object audience as the receptor. After establishing basic communication principles we began to discuss how the Spanish language is non inclusive and as a result is unable to reflect reality. Unmarked gender is masculine, but because of this rule women have been excluded from their own language. An argument used by the media is that there is not enough time to include both men and women in all news reports and commercials. It would disengage the audience by taking longer to get to the point. Even so, the professor acknowledges that there is a problem of inclusion, but that it should still be recognized by the media while also considering ways of how to evolve and be more inclusive. Another interesting topic that we reviewed in class is the use of "@" and the use of "x" to create an inclusive language. Unfortunately, although they can be used in written language, these are not solutions to inclusivity or sexism because they can not be applied in the spoken language. Besides not being able to pronounce these concepts, "@" is predominantly recognized as an a and would undermine the inclusion of men. Meanwhile, "x" also poses a problem because its symbol is used as an unidentified variable posing confusion and uncertainty. Further more, after identifying problems in the spoken language of Spanish, we critically analyzed commercials by establishing what the objective is, who the target audience is and why it is potentially sexist. Below I have attached my final paper which consists of my own analysis of commercial using what I have learned in the class.
Work Sample
sexismo__trabajo_final_.pdf | |
File Size: | 102 kb |
File Type: |