With respect to consent: The language of sex education

Abstract

Comprehensive sex education contributes to positive health and social outcomes, including decreasing rates of sexually transmitted infections and increasing acceptance of gender and sexuality diversity (UNESCO 2018a). While there is extensive evidence that sex education accomplishes these outcomes, little is known about how they are achieved. This thesis seeks to describe what actually goes on inside sex education classrooms. The data for this study are 30 hours of video recordings of Year 9 Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) lessons on sex education delivered at an all-girls school in Sydney. In particular, this thesis describes the pedagogy of consent and respect. It shows that consent is taught through a process called technicalisation. Evaluative meanings such as wanting sex or feeling afraid are discharged, instead foregrounding the legal definition of consent. In the assessment task, students must demonstrate their understanding of both the legal definition of consent and the evaluative meanings that underpin it. By contrast, respect is taught through a process called iconisation. Respect hypercharges evaluative meanings, functioning as something you do (you respect the other person), something you are (we are respectful to each other) and an abstract concept (respect is really important). The process of iconisation discharges ideational meaning and neutralises the field, making respect something that applies to all people and situations. This thesis draws on a range of Systemic Functional Linguistic tools including APPRAISAL (Martin & White 2005), field (Doran & Martin 2021) and genre (Martin & Rose 2008). It builds on existing work on technicality (Wignell et al. 1993; Martin 2017a) and bonding icons (Stenglin 2004), describing the complementary processes of technicalising and iconising attitudinal meanings through what will be called distilling and instilling. It consolidates this into a typology of highly condensed meanings that ‘do the heavy lifting’ of building fields and communities.