L2 Journal (May 2021)

Gippius, Gender, and Textual Work in the L2 Classroom

  • Lawton, Dominick

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5070/L213151782
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 104 – 107

Abstract

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These comments make a case for the value of careful philological work with literary texts in the language classroom. I propose that grammatically sensitive close reading of literature is a valuable way to introduce students to the generative relationship between rules and originality in language use, the way that each utterance draws on the available resources of a language to intervene into a concrete situation. In support of this claim, I offer an example from my own Russian teaching, in which the alternating grammatical gender in Zinaida Gippius' 1905 poem "Ты" ("You") opens up linguistic strategies used by present-day non-binary and gender non-conforming Russian speakers.

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