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!WOW! : ''' '' THE -DIGITAL
PEDAGOGY- TAP '' '''
ON THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY - the great students of America lead. Bringing a great name to Mankind, Humanity, Justice, Freedom, their splendid country, and living a life of association with a higher and a greater cause.
Language is indispensable for any pedagogical process. !The Heroes! : The Global Founder Framers of !WOW! and the students of the entire world, should begin practicing and composing great content for the whole world. Are we clear?
TYPING THE WORD 'SUCCESS' IN 'YOUTUBE' would give a plethora of songs, videos, motivational talks, interviews, and visuals showing only men.
Whereas the insertion of word 'delicate' mostly revealed females and feminine images.
When I inserted the word ' intelligence ' in the search bar, I got several lectures, a majority of them delivered by men scholars, educationists and speakers, whereas the word 'beauty' unlocked a world of pretty female faces with pouting lips and sexually provocative gestures.
Linguistic associations are created in such a way that the whole system of digital network imbibes them as a given.
THE PHENOMENON OF LINGUISTIC BIAS is just so widespread. It has been observed in societies all over the world. Whether it is about race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or gender, language has the capacity to carve out a very unique place - a biased nuance, or a specific trend for its gendered users.
Most of the assumptions and practices employed in a language are rooted in a patriarchal ideology and driven by hegemonic influence of the powerful groups of society that are factually and categorically masculine.
Here I use the word 'pedagogy' in a broad sense. It involves instructions imparted at the educational institutes but also includes training of minds at a societal level. Language is indispensable for any pedagogical process. Language users are active agents that run this process.
The language feed by human agency channelises and orients precise meanings for language recipients. They, in turn, have to bear the burden of the ideologies inherent in these meanings.
The effects of language that caters to some and excludes the others have become an area of extensive research during the last few decades.
Researchers and educationists have emphasised the need to introduce and establish feminist perspective in language and prevalent discourses in order to erase the bias towards female gender.
Yet, even in the 21st Century we see a profusion of male-stream disciplines, male-centered pedagogies, and male-dominated institutions. There is, however, a gradual but influential shift, especially in academia to allocate a balanced and unbiased environment to all genders and respect their particularities and peculiarities.
Apparently, technology has played an important role in giving voice to the females and shedding many of the stereotypical linguistic biases considered as fixed.
A careful scrutiny of the digital world reveals how one gender is favored against the other. Most of the digital devices are designed and wired by professionals who adopt standard linguistic structures [masculine vocabulary].
For example, predictive text apps give options by assessing the co-texts, i.e., girls will be matched with words like 'doll' and 'cute'.
Boys may end up with 'fast,' 'power', 'brilliant', the qualities that empower an individual . This can be of special significance if we talk about digital pedagogy that has taken hold of the world's educational system and learning management systems with the suspension of physical classrooms.
Since most of the time the learners inhabit the digital world, tendencies towards genders are likely to get locked.
Moreover, texting via different apps has become an alternative mode of learning that can jeopardise the formation of fair learning platforms in the presence of masculine algorithms.
Assessing the predictive text feature, one of my colleagues noticed that Google has shown some improvements during the last few years in terms of introducing and appropriating linguistic repertoire related to gender.
She tried leading phrases like 'most boys are' and 'most girls are' and did get any autocomplete options. It was heartening, indeed.
Digital language must evolve but not with an intention to exclude, demean, ostracise or marginalise others.
The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Students, Education, State-of-the-world Thinking, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Nadia Anwar, Department of English and Literary Studies, LUMS.
With respectful dedication to Global Founder Framers, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter- !E-WOW! - The Master Ecosystem 2011 :
Good Night and God Bless
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