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MODULE C: Language and Values

This module requires students to investigate, explore and evaluate the ways in which language shapes and reflects culture and values. It allows students to focus on the study of language as they develop their understanding of values and the processes of valuing. (Reread English Stage 6 Syllabus , p 90.)

Introduction to Elective 2: Language and Gender

In this elective students explore through texts drawn from a range of media the idea that part of the role of language is to express and create the social identity of the speaker, of which gender is an important element. Students investigate, challenge and evaluate the ways in which language can be used to construct, perform or conceal masculine or feminine aspects of identity and their associated values through characters, voices and contexts. Language may express gender, but it also may provide a means of escaping strict limitations of conventional roles and values. There is a dynamic spectrum of possibilities and great flexibility in texts, as composers create voices and characters, and as characters themselves explore and challenge language and gender codes. Texts provide a playful and experimental space in which composers explore questions of identity through their language.

In this elective students are required to study at least three of the prescribed texts as well as other texts of their own choosing. In their responding and composing they explore, analyse, experiment with and critically evaluate their prescribed texts and a range of other examples in this elective. Texts should be drawn from a range of contexts and media and should reflect the interrelationships between language, gender and values.

Prose Fiction

Woolf, Virginia, Orlando, Penguin Modern Classics, 2004, ISBN-13: 9780140622812

Drama

Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night,New Cambridge Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN-13: 9780521535144; or Cambridge School Shakespeare, 2006, ISBN-13: 9780521618779

Poetry

Tranter, John, The Floor of Heaven, Arc Publications, 2000, ISBN 1900072440
(order through Fremantle Arts Centre Press, PO Box 158 N Fremantle WA 6159)

Or
Tranter, John, The Floor of Heaven, University of Queensland Press, 2007, ISBN: 9780975698006

Film

Kapur, Shekhar, Elizabeth, Universal, 1999

Specific editions of the set text are listed. Schools, however, may use any suitable edition of the text selected, if the specified edition is unavailable. Where a text is quoted in an examination question it will be from the listed edition.