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International Perspectives on Gender

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS

(Papers, Posters & Workshops)

Valencia, 8-10 November 2006



SEMINAR VENUES

Facultat de Filologia, Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya

Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 32. 46040-Valencia

Tel. (34) 96 386 42 62 – Fax (34) 96 386 41 61

Main venues of the Conference (Facultat de Filologia)

Conference Centre (Ground Floor: registration, information, meeting point)

Opening ceremony: Sala Sanchis Guarner (Ground Floor)

Plenary sessions: Sala Sanchis Guarner (Ground Floor)

Paper presentations (parallel sessions):

Sala Sanchis Guarner (Ground Floor)

Sala de Juntes ‘César Simón’ (1st Floor)

Sala de Graus ‘Enric Valor’ (1st Floor)

Sala de Juntes (Instituts) (1st Floor, Institut de la Dona)

Lunch: At the Cafeteria (Ground Floor)

Abstracts – Papers

Aliaga Jiménez, José Luis (Universidad de Zaragoza) – jlaliaga@unizar.es

‘Descripción funcional y crítica feminista: Lectura alternativa del género gramatical en español’

Puede decirse que la categoría flexiva de género gramatical -su configuración y funcionamiento- es uno de los escasos aspectos morfosintácticos del español y de muchas otras lenguas cuya descripción se ha visto estimulada y hasta agitada por la conexión que presenta –o se le atribuye, según el punto de vista adoptado- con la categoría sociocultural de género (con la de sexo natural dicen muchas investigaciones). El debate abierto en la lingüística en torno al fundamento de tal vinculación es, en todo caso, un exponente de la existencia de actitudes favorecedoras de usos no tradicionales en la flexión de género; actitudes derivadas, a nuestro juicio, de creencias compartidas por buena parte de la comunidad hispanohablante sobre el alto grado de articulación entre ambas categorías de género. Todo ello ha suscitado por lo general una reacción de los estudios morfosintácticos especializados que, revestidos de un formalismo supuestamente aséptico, han venido a refugiarse no pocas veces en una mirada estrechamente prescriptiva.

Así pues, lo que modestamente pretendemos aportar en esta comunicación es una lectura diferente del funcionamiento del género gramatical en español (en el nivel de la norma, en sentido coseriano) y de su inserción en el engranaje morfosintáctico de la lengua (en el plano del sistema). Una lectura que maneja los instrumentos teórico-metodológicos del estructuralismo funcional a la luz de postulados de la lingüística feminista.

Tras una breve síntesis crítica de la aproximación tradicional y estructural al género gramatical nos ocupamos de las fluctuaciones e innovaciones que presenta la realización del género en el español actual, algunas de carácter ocasional y otras que han dado lugar a la coexistencia de varias normas de realización. Las tendencias observables al respecto pueden explicarse a partir de factores muy diversos –formales, semánticos y pragmáticos- y encuentran su principal punto de interés teórico y descriptivo en la posibilidad de que, en algunos casos, estén fomentadas por la propia configuración inestable de la categoría en el nivel del sistema, idea esta última en clara contraposición con las posturas estructuralistas más ortodoxas.

Atanga, Lem Lilian (Lancaster University, UK) – l.atanga@lancaster.ac.uk

‘Legitimating ‘Positive Action for Women’ in the Cameroonian Parliament’

In this paper, I examine the legitimation of a ‘positive action for women’ discourse within parliamentary debates in Cameroon. In the Cameroonian society, women tend to be construed as needing promotion and therefore there is a need for positive action. I situate the study in a socio-historical context, plotting the emergence of issues relating to positive action for women in the Cameroonian society. The ‘positive action’ discourse is a contemporary one within this society but has been abundant since the UN conference on women in Beijing in 1995 (Fonchingong 2005) and the introduction of UN the Millennium Development Goals (2000). ‘Positive action’ focuses on the notions of women’s empowerment, gender equality and gender partnership (in the sense of male/female collaboration).

In analysing the legitimation of ‘positive action for women’ in the public sphere (the parliament), I use the discourse-historical approach to CDA (Wodak 2001, Reisigl and Wodak 2001, Leeuwen and Wodak 1999). I have adopted some legitimation strategies from Wodak, for example, authorisation and legitimation through moral evaluation. However, I have also identified in the data some other legitimation strategies, including appeal to global tendencies and the very particular one of construction of women as ‘victims’ in a highly patriarchal society.

Legitimating ‘positive action for women’ in a society where there is no policy on gender mainstreaming could be an indication of at least some societal perceptions of inequality of women and men and the associated need for the promotion of women. But we should, however ask the question ‘by whom is this discourse being legitimated, and why?’ Although positive action in the text may be construed as progressive, it may actually (or also) be a form of reconstruction of traditional gendered ideologies.

Baxter, Judith (University of Reading, UK) – j.a.baxter@reading.ac.uk

‘Is it all tough talking at the top? A post-structuralist perspective of boardroom masculinities’

‘Workplace leadership’ is a gendered concept, according to Marra, Schnurr and Holmes (2006). This is because the workplace is typically a male-dominated environment; men still occupy the most powerful positions in companies and organisations, and women continue to be a rare presence in boardrooms. Recent language and gender research (op.cit) has tended to focus on the spoken interactions of senior women, examining the range of discourse strategies with which women typically ‘do leadership’.

This paper opts to focus upon the discourse strategies of male senior managers. Male leadership style, according to Vinnicombe & Singh (2002), is typically characterised as ‘transactional…relying on power position and formal authority.’ However, there is evidence to suggest that the popular adage ‘think manager, think male’ is being overturned within international corporations (Cameron, 2000). A more feminised leadership style relying on transformational values based on personal respect, mutual trust and social responsibility is entering corporate cultures.

Drawing on interview data from a research study in progress, this paper examines the ways in which ten male directors constitute the relationship between leadership and language. Initial findings suggest that male senior managers are concerned to position themselves within a transformational rather than a transactional paradigm. They perceive that it isn’t all tough talking at the top. Rather they say that they value good listening skills, engaging with others, being open, being polite and courteous, seeking advice, and admitting mistakes. They seem keen to distance themselves from stereotypically masculine leadership traits such as being confrontational or aggressive; giving orders and directions; telling humorous stories; establishing status; and using self-promotion. Yet, this (perhaps) surprising finding is not the whole story.

This paper will adopt a post-structuralist stance (Baxter, 2003; 2006) in suggesting that male managers construct multiple and often competing identities for themselves within their interview narratives. Often, the surface public rhetoric is undercut by competing messages in terms of delivery style, body language or sub-textual nuances. Masculinities as part of leadership identity are thus problematised as complex and ambiguous, shifting between different corporate, cultural allegiances in a post-modern world.

References

Baxter, J. (2006) Speaking Out: the female voice in public contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave

Baxter, J. (ed) (2003) Positioning Gender in Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Cameron, D. (2000) Good to Talk? London: Sage.

Marra, M., Schnurr, S. & Holmes, J. (2006) ‘Effective leadership in New Zealand: balancing gender and role’. In J. Baxter (ed), Speaking Out: the female voice in public contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Viinicombe, S. & Singh, V. (2002) Sex Role Stereotyping and Requisites of Successful Top Managers. Women in Management Review, 2002.

Behtary, Shahabaddin, Massoud Yaghoubi-Notash & Shahram Zeinizadehjeddi

(Islamic Azad University, Ardabil & University of Tabriz, Iran) – behtary@, myagoubi@tabrizu.ac.ir, shahzein@

‘Making Room for Gender in Task-Prompted L2 Oral Performance’

Characterizing a breakaway from the traditional approaches to language teaching, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has heralded a most forward-looking perspective of foreign language education (Skehan, 1998, 2003 among others). In this vein it has stimulated a wealth of research with psycholinguistic, sociocultural and cognitive research orientations to task. Among the dimensions of task-elicited performance fluency, accuracy and complexity of learner language are of highlighted emphasis.

Out of a multitude of factors that bring about variability in terms of learner produced language, gender and topic involve potentials for research. Gender, in particular, holds promises for ESL/EFL research, theory and practice in that it incorporates a growing concern with context of language learning (Davis and Skilton-Sylvester, 2004; Norton and Pavlenko, 2004 Sunderland, 2000; among others). A typically promising line of research would, therefore, be to inquire into variability in performance as a matter of gender and its hypothetical interaction with dimensions of topic. To this end, the following research question is posed: What are the effects of participant gender, teacher (addressee) gender, and the cultural inhibition of topic on the fluency, complexity, and accuracy of L2 learners’ monologic task-prompted oral L2 performance?

This study examined oral performance of 47 male and female Iranian EFL learners on locally established LCIT (the Least Culturally Inhibiting Topic) vs. MCIT (the Most Culturally Inhibiting Topic) addressed to male vs. female teacher regarding fluency, complexity, and accuracy. The results of a 2×2×2 ANOVA indicated all participants’ significantly higher fluency with female teacher, on LCIT task, and females’ higher fluency on LCIT task. Higher complexity was found on the MCIT task than LCIT one. As with accuracy, females’ speech was more accurate, and the speech to the male teacher was more accurate than that addressed to the female teacher. Also, females on MCIT task addressing male teacher were more accurate than males on LCIT task with male teacher.

Beline Mendes, Ronald (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil) – rbeline@usp.br

‘What is ‘gay speech’ in São Paulo, Brazil?’

The analysis I present in this paper is part of a research project at the University of São Paulo, in which a group of sociolinguists are attempting to answer two major questions: (1) what are the relations between linguistic practices and the construction of gender identity in the city of São Paulo? and (2) what are the relations between the linguistic perception of gender identity and the social expression of intolerance in the city?

In this paper, I address the first of the above questions. More specifically, I report the results of the first phase of my contribution to that research, in which I have analyzed the linguistic evaluation of “gay speech” in São Paulo, following previous work pursued in English (Gaudio 1994; Kulick 2000; Cameron & Kulick 2003; among others). I interviewed 50 people (stratified by their sex, age, education and sexual orientation) and asked them what they considered it means to “sound gay”. In addition to this general question, I asked them to classify previously recorded texts - read by 5 gay men and 5 straight men - as “more gay”, “less gay” or “not gay at all”.

The analysis of those interviews allows us to say that high pitch and pitch dynamism are linguistic traits generally perceived as indicators of a male gay speaker, in the Brazilian Portuguese spoken in São Paulo. Unlike what has been observed in English (e.g. Smyth & Rogers 2001), word final fricatives, although present in the speech of gay men there, are not perceived as such an indicator. Based on this analysis, I discuss how the linguistic attitude towards gay men in São Paulo interacts with and contributes to the construction of their identity, in order to show that the perception of what defines gay men, linguistically, is fairly homogeneous.

Key words: gay speech, linguistic perception of gayness, Brazilian Portuguese.

References

Cameron, D. & Kulick, D. (2003) Language and Sexuality. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gaudio, R. P. (1994) Sounding gay: pitch properties in the speech of gay and straight men. American Speech, vol.69, pp.303-318.

Kulick, D. (2000) Gay and Lesbian Language. Annual Review of Anthropology 29, pp.243-85.

Smyth, R. & Rogers, H. (2001) Searching for phonetic correlates of gay- and straight-sounding voices. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, vol.8, pp.44-64.

Benchiba, Najat (University of London, UK) – nbenchiba@

‘Language & Gender in Moroccan Arabic and English Codeswitching. A Levelling Phenomenon’

This study examines at the crossover between two typologically different languages; Moroccan Arabic (MA) and English within a codeswitching (CS) domain. Through natural parsing, bilingual (not necessarily productive) speakers engage in a levelling phenomenon when an English noun is utilized. Here, if an English noun ends in an ‘a’ the speaker will assign an MA feminine marker ‘a’ in the adjoining adjective as in sofa kbira ‘big sofa’. The same can be said if the English noun is devoid of an ‘a’ final sound as in ‘coffee’ which will then be assigned a masculine MA marker as in coffee zwin ‘nice coffee’. However, sometimes such gender assignment of language is not always clear and there will be feminine-masculine-feminine assignment until the end result is ‘levelled’ and agreed upon by both speakers. Is such levelling structurally formed? Is it uni-directional? This is a levelling phenomenon recorded and logged using my informants, Moroccan Arabic speakers who are either migrants or British born.

Bergvall, Victoria (Michigan Tech University, USA) – vbergval@mtu.edu

‘Genes, Gender, and Language: Challenging “Manly Men” and “Girly Girls”’

Recent feminist research celebrates postmodernist social construction of gender diversity, and the “persistent confirmation that long-established notions of sex-determined and gender-determined differences are being destabilized” (Freed 2003:17). Yet genetic research increasingly argues for greater gender/sex differentiation. In a forthcoming report in Genome Research (August 2006), Drake et al. give evidence that over half of 23,000 genes from brain, liver, fat, and muscle tissues of female and male mice show differences in behavior that may explain gender-differentiated disease rates and drug reactions. And in January 2005, then-President of Harvard Larry Summers commented that women might not be genetically disposed to hold advanced positions in science and engineering; though he backpedaled immediately on those claims—and was subsequently forced to resign, he certainly drew on Pinker’s (2002) vociferous critique of blank-slate social constructionist arguments. Cameron (2005) argues that language and gender researchers must find compelling narratives to critique these popular assumptions of biological essentialism.

This paper considers that we must begin with more overt challenges to the ways that genes and gender are formulated in the public media. For example, one headline reporting the Drake research, “Men’s genes are from Venus and women’s are from Mars” (Dougherty 2006), recasts the familiar Mars/Venus trope, but nonetheless emphasizes the “worlds-apart” theory of difference.” The continuing linguistic hyperbolization of possible statistical significance of (mice) research into separate worlds-reports of (human) women’s and men’s behavior is reinforced elsewhere in linguistic discussions that emphasize gender/sex differentiation. Despite social change in support of gender and sexual diversity, popularly held polarities (e.g., “manly men” and the infantilizing “girly girls”) vastly outnumber other formulations (*boyish boys, ?womanly women). It must be a central task of language and gender researchers to educate their students and challenge the public assumptions of overly simplistic and harmful sex/gender polarities.

References

Cameron, Deborah (2005) “Language, Gender, and Sexuality: Current Issues and New Directions,” Applied Linguistics 26.4: 482-502.

Dougherty, Elizabeth (2006) “Men’s genes are from Venus, and women’s are from Mars,” 10 July, 2006, C6, Boston Globe.

Drake, Thomas, et al. (2006) forthcoming article in August Genome Research, cited in Dougherty.

Freed, Alice (2003) “Epilogue: Reflections on language and gender research.” In Janet Holmes & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.) Handbook of Language and Gender, Oxford: Blackwell, 699-721.

Pinker, Steven (2002) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking.

Summers, Lawrence (2005) “Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce,” Cambridge, Mass. 14 January.

Bou, Patricia, José Santaemilia, Sergio Maruenda & Nuria Lorenzo (Universitat de València/University of Wales, Swansea) – Patricia.Bou@uv.es, jose.santaemilia@uv.es, Sergio.Maruenda@uv.es, n.lorenzo-dus@swansea.ac.uk

‘Researching gender and politeness: Finding ways ahead’

Members of the Universitat de València ‘Gender and Politeness’ Research Group present and discuss a few lines of study and development which bring together various academic interests : gender studies, politeness and impoliteness, intercultural pragmatics, academic discourse, etc. Just to cite a few examples, we will briefly discuss:

– the impact of new technologies on communicative events (e.g. CMC, virtual communities, e-mail communication and the academic community, etc.)

– methodological debates on intercultural and contrastive pragmatics.

– sex-related language and patterns of politeness vs. impoliteness associated with it.

– sexual euphemisms.

– lexical pragmatics.

– gender and politeness as salient categories in teacher-student interactions.

– Etc.

References

Bou Franch, P. (2006) (ed) Ways into discourse. Granada: Comares.

Maruenda Bataller, S. (2005) “La pragmática léxica y la negociación del significado”, Interlingüística 15: 947-959.

Santaemilia, J. (ed.) (2005) The Language of Sex: Saying & Not Saying. Valencia: Universitat de València.

Chang, Vincent Taohsun (National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan) – vthchang@ms32., vthchang@.tw

‘Doing feminine rhetoric in advertising discourse’

This paper aims to explore the dialogic relations between form and function in feminine rhetoric in Chinese advertising language. The rhetorical strategies of repetition and parallelism of name and metaphor are creatively crafted and widely employed to attract the audience's attention, to initiate cognitive poetic effects and advertising literariness, to perform diverse pragmatic/communicative functions thereafter, and to convey the significant and dominant ideologies in terms of gender relations and feminine awakening, viz. intellectualism, elitism, social critique of taste, friends' rapport, humanistic concern, and those current lifestyles of petits bourgeoisie in urban contexts. Placing quite little emphasis on the target commodity, they encourage an imaginative audience to spell out a variety of weak implicatures involving feelings, attitudes, emotions and impressions along these lines. They not merely invite and persuade the audience members to recognise the prominent inter-/cultural values and furthermore to construct the identity of cultural pluralism and social cognition, but also query the conventional value structures and social norms (patriarchic authority, social hierarchy, Chauvinism etc). Also they help shorten the social distance and shape the corporate image as a cultural landmark.

The audience's comprehension and interpretation in media communication are approached within Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995) by looking into contemporary Chinese print advertisements. The sociocultural aspect of language use, on the other hand, is further explored to see the inseparable relationship between language and social meaning. Advertising, lending itself as a symbolic domain for ideological analysis, not only serves a fashion-driven arena embracing competing forces/ideologies with social continuity and change, but reifies iconicity, personality, symbolic power and identity politics within mass culture. This functional and critical linguistic study reveals the social interaction and cognitive dynamics of communicator and audience, and thus maintaining the dialectical relationship between social structures and social practice/discourse (Fairclough 1995).

Key words: advertising discourse, implicature, (socio)pragmatics, pragmatic inference, relevance, rhetoric & stylistics

References

Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.

Lull, James. 1995. Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach. Cambridge: Polity.

Pilkington, Adrian. 1992. "Poetic Effects." Lingua 87: 29-51.

Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

van Dijk, Teun A. 1994. Discourse and Cognition in Society. In David Crowley and David Mitchell (eds.), Communication Theory Today, pp.107-126. Cambridge: Polity.

Chatterjee, Anindita (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India) – anindita_jnu@

‘Telling tales in gendered spaces: Ritual narratives in the Lokkhi Pooja of Bengal’

This talk will examine the narrative of a religious ritual “Lokkhi Pooja”, an established traditional ritual of Bengal, which takes place on the auspicious 15th day of the dark fortnight, once in a year. Narratives are an important feature of Bengal and the narration serves to complete the act. Although considered to be essential to complete the ritual, the narrative exists in a liminal space, in which neither the male votary nor the male priest are present; rather, the audience and the narrator are the female members of the household and neighbourhood.

In this talk I will analyze whether the feminine space created in the ritual by the narrative has the subversive potential, noted in the literature to inhere in tale-telling in the contexts of same sex interaction. I will aim to argue that the space created in the narratives divests them of their interactive nature, thereby almost entirely eliminating their potential to gain an emancipatory status, which poses a challenge to patriarchy.

The narratives, or kathas, that are performed are determined by the marital status of a woman-kumari katha read by unmarried women, sadhoba katha is narrated by married women and bidhoba katha is read by widows. I will concentrate on an instance of a sadhoba katha read by a married woman, by means of a video presentation and try to contrast the styles of two narrations of the same katha by the same narrator-once when it is told outside the ritual space, and once during the ritual. In the first case, the tale is told with feeling and empathy, but within the ritual space, it is read from an established text, in a style that has no characteristics of a spontaneous narration. This difference will lead us to explore the patriarchal nature of ritual spaces, and the role of women’s participation in their perpetuation.

Key words: Narrative, Space, Ritual, Patriarchy

Dabbous-Sensenig, Dima (Lebanese American University, Lebanon) dimadab@.lb

“A space for dissent? Language and Gender in al-Jazeera’s religious programming”

My presentation uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) in order to analyse the discussion of the Muslim dress code (commonly referred to as hijab) on Al Jazeera religious talk show A-Shari’a wal Hayat. Between 1998 and 2003, several episodes dealt with the ban and the ‘issue’ of the headscarf, most of them hosting prominent religious scholar Youssef Qaradawi. Drawing mostly on Fairclough’s critical analytical approach to the media, I will examine, at the micro- or local level, key linguistic strategies and rhetorical arguments deployed by participants (mostly Qaradawi, and to a lesser extent, hosts and viewers) in order to justify their position concerning the nature of the Muslim dress code. Throughout, an intertextual analysis will be used in order to study which religious discourses from the larger socio-cultural context are drawn upon in Al Jazeera’s discussion of the hijab. The purpose of this multi-levelled analysis is to answer the following questions: Which religious discourses on hijab are privileged by those talk shows? Are there any differences in the range of opinions covered by the various episodes dealing with the same issue? How are the various positions, when they exist, manifested at the local/linguistic level of analysis? Most importantly, what do these discussions on hijab tell us about Al-Jazeera’s self-confessed editorial line (“the opinion and the other-opinion”) concerning one of the most controversial religious topics for Muslims?

Del Saz Rubio, Milagros (Universitat Politècnica de València) – Milagros.Saz@uv.es

‘Exploring gender depiction in TV ads: How language and images remind us of who we are’

Nowadays, it is undeniable that advertising mirrors the current climate of society and the values that individuals might share and foster within it. As a manipulative agent (Pollay 1986), TV advertising does not only reflect the values we abide by but it also teaches us how to use language and how to behave depending on who we are, the social class or the gender group we belong to. Thus, gender representations in TV ads help frame the values, beliefs or norms of what Goffman (1979:8) called the “fundamental features of the social structure”. This means that we learn to behave as women or men by the mere imitation of models. In light of this trend, some advertising practices seem to reinforce traditional and outdated stereotypes about the genders by depicting demeaning and inaccurate portrayals of male and female individuals or groups (Craig 1992), not only with regard to how they look but also with regard to how they talk.

Taking all this into account, it is my aim to look into how the genders are portrayed in a corpus of British commercials by mainly focusing on the use of language that male and female individuals make and the stereotypical imagery employed to characterize them. I thus hope to corroborate or reject the traditional belief that the portrayal of one’s sexuality is affected by the language used and, in the case of TV ads, by the stereotypical imagery depicted. The linguistic realizations of men and women, whether primary or secondary characters within the mini-drama (Leech 1969) of the commercial, will be analyzed to see whether it is possible to differentiate gendered speech styles (Holmes 1995) that may conform to one or another stereotype. I hope to ultimately draw conclusions with regard to the more or less stereotypical portrayal of the genders and to how this can be aided by their different speech styles within a special kind of discourse practice, that of TV ads.

Didi-Ogren, Holly HK (The College of New Jersey, USA) - gahareba@

‘Gender, Politeness and Power in Japanese Women’s Decision-Making Processes’

Gender-marked language in Japanese, especially that associated with femininity, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. While the meaning of Japanese women’s language (hereafter JWL) forms were once considered static – associated with “powerlessness” and women’s lower social position in Japanese society– research in the last 15 years has challenged this notion by showing how particular ideologies about femininity were mapped onto linguistic forms during Japan’s period of intense modernization in the 19th century (Inoue 1994, 2006), the multiple meanings particular forms may carry within a particular interaction, and how regional and socioeconomic differences inform JWL usage (Okamoto and Smith 2004).

While this body of research has yielded a much richer understanding of JWL usage, the near-exclusive focus on gender-marked morphosyntactic forms has clouded scholars’ access to broader questions such as how women manipulate their speech to satisfy their goals, and how women's role and/or status affects how they speak. This paper builds on Abe (2001) and Takano (2005) in considering not only gender-marked morphosyntactic features (e.g. sentence-final particles), but also style shifts (e.g. from plain to polite predicate forms) and discourse-level patterns that inform the negotiation of role and status among women in face-to-face decision-making interactions. I consider not only single morphemes or utterances, but rather examine the reverberations of particular utterances across stretches of talk.

Data is drawn from 13 months of fieldwork in rural, northeastern Japan among four groups of women. The findings show that women creatively use both morphosyntactic and discourse-level resources to negotiate particular interactional outcomes in terms of taking on or assigning roles in the decision-making process. Further, the findings show the need for contextualizing the definition of “politeness” and “power” within an interaction by examining the effects of particular utterances on other interactants and interactional outcomes.

References

Abe, Hideko 2001. Speaking of Power: Japanese Professional Women and their Speeches. Lincom: Munich.

Inoue, Miyako 2006. Vicarious language : gender and linguistic modernity in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.

------------------ 1994. “Gender and linguistic modernization: Historicizing Japanese women’s language.” In Cultural performances: Proceedings of the third Berkeley women and language conference. Mary Bucholtz, A. C. Liang, Laurel A. Sutton and Caitlin Hines, eds. Berkeley Women and Language Group, Berkeley: University of California. 322 – 333.

Okamoto, Shigeko and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith 2004. Japanese language, gender, and ideology : cultural models and real people. New York : Oxford University Press.

Takano, Shoji 2005. ”Re-examining linguistic power: strategic use of directives by professional Japanese women in positions of authority and leadership.” Pragmatics 37: 5, 633-666.

Doukanari, Elli (Intercollege, Nicosia, Cyprus) – edoukanari@

‘Female Sexuality in Greek-Cypriot Chattista: Traditional Ideologies Re-evaluated and Negotiated’

Studies on Greek-Cypriot culture and the Greek culture at large have indicated that female sexuality is associated with the notions of honor and respect towards the males of the family; e.g. Argyrou (1996), Campbell (1964), Cowan (1990). Through a sociolinguistic-ethnographic investigation, this study examines how female sexuality is defined in traditional chattista performances. Chattista are rhyming couplets improvised impromptu, which often result in ritual verbal dueling. The data consist of videotaped and tape-recorded performances of chattista in private and public domains with “professional” and “amateur” singers. Supportive evidence is also elicited from interviews and ordinary conversations. The study demonstrates that men display a woman as the temptation that a man cannot resist, who is expected to control her sexuality and protect her chastity in order to preserve the honor of her family and consequently the respect towards the males of the family. Women, however, present themselves as female identities that have overcome certain taboos related to women’s sexuality such as becoming pregnant before they get married; yet they still display themselves as good spouses that take good care of and respect their husbands. The results of the study indicate that, although in chattista, traditional ideologies are still preserved, modern views concerning sexuality are also displayed on the part of women. The transition from traditional ideologies to modern views is re-evaluated through negotiation and manipulation of meaning.

References:

Argyrou, Vassos. 1996. Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean. The Wedding as Symbolic Struggle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Campbell, J. K. 1964. Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cowan, Jane K. 1990. Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ericsson, Stina (Göteborg University, Sweden) – stinae@ling.gu.se

‘“The Missus” and “the Co-habitee”: Performing heteronormativity in Swedish dialogues’

Taking work by Kitzinger (2005) as the starting point, this paper explores how heteronormativity is performed in Swedish dialogues. The Swedish data is a subset of the Göteborg Spoken Language Corpus - a large corpus of dialogues in Swedish from a number of different activities - and field examples by the author. In the dialogues analysed, explicit references to heterosexuality can be found, and the analysis also confirms Kitzinger’s findings regarding references to a person unknown to the hearer, which show heterosexuality as a taken-for-granted backdrop. A GSLC example is the following, where in reply to a question from the doctor, the patient has said that he notices no difference in his condition when he takes his medication and when he does not, and he then adds:

P: det är bara frugan som säger nu får du ta dom idag och då tar jag dom

it's just the missus who says that now you have to take them today and then I take them

In this example, the patient refers to his wife, not previously mentioned in the dialogue, while the conversation concerns the patient’s medication. From the dialogue context it can be seen that this reference is fully unproblematic for the dialogue participants.

This example can be contrasted with a field example in an interview situation. This example goes beyond the categories used by Kitzinger. A person A has referred to a person unknown to B using “sambo”, a common term in Swedish for someone you are living with without being married to, a “co-habitee”. Person B then asks about the co-habitee’s occupation, using a linguistically highly marked utterance of “sambo”. The example shows an interesting interplay between heteronormativity and non-heteronormativity: B avoids genderising the partner, but the marked form still shows heteronormativity being performed.

Kitzinger, C. (2005). “Speaking as a Heterosexual”: (How) Does Sexuality Matter for Talk-in-Interaction? Research on Language and Social Interaction. 38(3), 221-265.

Key words: heteronormativity, dialogue, Swedish

Falabella Fabrício, Branca (Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) – brancaff@

‘(Re)constructing gender dualism in classroom literacy practices’

In spite of the hot contemporary debate around changing genders and sexualities in different contexts (in the media, on the Internet etc.) and the growing concern with the role of genders and sexualities in the school process, these topics still tend to be silenced themes on most pedagogic agendas. This paper is an attempt to respond to this silence: it discusses an investigation carried out with a group of 5th graders in a Brazilian school aiming at these individuals' involvement in a de-naturalization process of gender dualism. The study, which took place in an educational context witnessing important changes at the pedagogical level, has its theoretical foundation in multicultural and identity studies as well as in Goffman's (1981) notions of footing and participant status and in Wood et al.'s (1976) concept of scaffolding. By re-defining the classroom as a multicultural site in which essentialist and stereotypical social identities are constantly challenged in varied literacy practices, participants in this 3-semester long research project engaged in unconventional pedagogical practices moving away from the more fixed interactional T-S pattern towards a more dynamic pattern in which participants, reconfiguring relations of power in the classroom, could take on different alignments. This new participation structure oriented discussions held in class on the fluidity of gender identities. These debates, in turn, besides encouraging students to revisit some taken-for-granted assumptions concerning gender, stimulated changes in the roles traditionally played by the teacher and by students: the former performed varied footings and provided scaffolding characterized by both support and challenge; the latter could perform the role of the more knowledgeable participant. The ethnografically generated data, showing mutually attained local realignments, point to the possibility of transforming lessons for young learners into a site of reflection and critical thinking while students work together at the de-familiarization of hegemonic gender perceptions.

Key words: gendered identities, de-stabilization, re-alignment process

Fernández Amaya, Lucía (Universidad Pablo Olavide, Sevilla) – lferama@upo.es

‘Las teorías de la cortesía y el análisis conversacional como herramientas de análisis: El caso de la secuencia de cierre de la conversación telefónica’

A pesar de que la cortesía lingüística es uno de los fenómenos que más ha sido estudiado en las últimas décadas, no existen demasiados trabajos empíricos que se lleven a cabo sobre lenguaje que ocurra de forma natural. La mayoría de estas investigaciones utilizan cuestionarios (Walters, 1979; Hill et al., 1986; Blum-Kulka, 1989; Weizman ,1989; Blum-Kulka y House, 1989; Olshtain, 1989; Suszczynska, 1999; House, 1989; Sifianou, 1994) y role-plays (García, 1993). Desde mi punto de vista, esta clase de estudios carecen del rigor necesario para obtener conclusiones que se puedan extrapolar al comportamiento lingüístico de una determinada comunidad de habla, ya que no se basan en situaciones comunicativas reales. Asimismo, numerosos autores como Hopper (1989), House (1989) o Yeung (1997), entre otros han reconocido la importancia de analizar datos que provengan de lenguaje que ocurra de forma natural. Además, las mayoría de los estudios sobre cortesía lingüística se centran en actos de habla tales como la petición, la queja, etc. Sin embargo considero, al igual que autores como Ide (1989), Matsumoto (1989), Pavlidou (1994), Meier (1995), Hayashi (1996), Placencia (1996), Buck (1997) y Arundale (1999), entre otros, que el fenómeno de la cortesía lingüística debe estudiarse en la interacción. En mi opinión, de los resultados obtenidos en las investigaciones sobre la cortesía presente en enunciados aislados no se pueden establecer conclusiones que se extrapolen a una conversación completa y real. Por estos motivos, he decidido utilizar como base de mi análisis conversaciones telefónicas. En esta ponencia, mostraré la necesidad de complementar dos paradigmas como la pragmática y el análisis conversacional, para estudiar el fenómeno de la cortesía lingüística en fragmentos auténticos del uso del lenguaje espontáneo.

Foster, Nena (London South Bank University, UK) – fostern@lsbu.ac.uk

‘Exploring Discourses of living with HIV and AIDS from Black Women’s Perspectives’

Across the globe, women, specifically black women are disproportionately impacted by the continuing spread of HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS 2004). And, as a population, black woman are underrepresented in HIV research, particularly language based research. As a result, black women both individually and as a group, are often positioned by discourses that do not allow for resistance and therefore lack the power to recreate the dominant ideals and experiences associated with being HIV positive and living with HIV and AIDS.

This paper will present findings from a study that examines the talk of women with Black African origins (Migrant African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American) in both the UK (London) and the US (Washington, DC). With the use of semi-structured interviews and focus groups, this paper examines elements of existing and often oppressive discourses utilising a post-structuralist approach to text, talk and discourse inspired by both feminism and Foucault. This paper will also explore the discourses and subjectivities present in the women’s accounts of their individual HIV experience, as their accounts both encompass and counter existing discourse as interpreted by the individual participant. Specifically, this paper will address existing discourses such as, but not exclusively, Black/African AIDS discourses, discourses on health promotion, specifically HIV health promotion and finally discourses on ‘living well with HIV’. Further, the implications of these discourses will be explored, in order to highlight the importance of creating space for the individual to resist and uptake varied subjectivities in light of existing discourse as a means to providing new ways of understanding and being an HIV positive individual.

Key words: Discourse analysis, HIV and AIDS, subject positioning

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar & Jill Stout (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA) – pgblit@

‘Selling and Gender: Rapport establishing Strategies used by American Shoping Networks’ Hosts’

The aim of this paper is to determine whether it is the norms of a given community of practice – that of shopping networks in the United Status of America – and a specific situation – selling jewelry to a mostly female audience – (Mills 2003) or gender that supersede in determining the politeness strategies used by male and female shopping channels’ hosts to establish and maintain rapport (Spencer-Oatey 2000) with their audience.

Six hours of shows from three different home shopping channels on American television (QVC, the Home Shopping Network and America’s Store) were recorded and transcribed to collect data for this paper. Three women and three men hosts are represented in each of the samples. All hosts were selling jewelry to the audience, which was mostly made up of women. The goal of these shows is to present and sell a certain number of items within the hour and to have viewers call in on the “testimonial line”.

Our findings seem to indicate that all hosts use the same rapport creating strategies, mostly keyed to the establishing of common ground (Brown & Levinson 1987) what would lead us to tentatively conclude that community of practice’s constraints on participants’ roles override gender in determining choice of linguistic behaviour.

García Gómez, Antonio (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares) – antonio.garciag@uah.es

‘Politeness Strategies in Disorderly Discourse: Gender and Language’

Drawing on a contrastive analysis of TV Talk shows Kilroy and Jerry Springer, this paper examines how female and male participants exploit different politeness strategies in Talk Show conflict and how they build public identities for themselves and their opponents through discourse. More precisely, this paper argues that the study of face management in British and American confrontational episodes makes it possible not only to justify a cultural-relativistic stance on the expression of politeness, but also to characterize and define different notions of face in this specific anger-evoking context.

Key words: Politeness Theory, Discourse Analysis, Gender, and Pragmatics

Giménez, Julio C. (Middlesex University, London, UK) – j.gimenez@mdx.ac.uk

‘Gender as a structural principle in social work and banking: Examining narrative networks’

Many studies of language and gender (L&G) have focused on gendered talk as individual practice, paying little attention to gender as a principle that structures social practices in institutions (though see Gal 1991, Holmes 2006, McElhinny 2003). Although a change of perspective has for some time been advocated in some disciplines (e.g. Butler 1993 in sociology), certain paucity has been recognised in studies of L&G (McElhinny 2003). Ignoring gender as a structural element can, however, contribute to maintaining the invisibility of systems of inequality.

This paper is based on a study that examines how men and women in communities of practice traditionally associated with the Other discursively represent gender as a structural principle in their workplaces. The paper focuses on men holding positions of ‘non-power’ in social work and women in positions of power in banking. Using work stories, the paper explores how the gender of institutional structure that contributes to invisible systems of inequality surfaces in the narratives of a male social worker and a female bank manager. The paper also demonstrates how a network of texts created around the work stories analysed can enhance the critical analysis of workplace narratives, showing narrative tensions and contradictions while avoiding pretextual assumptions (Widdowson 2004) and pre-conceived analyst categories (Schegloff 1997).

Key words: Gendered practices – critical analysis – workplace talk

References

Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies that matter. New York: Routledge.

Gal, Susan. (1991). Between speech and silence: The problematics of research on language and gender. In M. di Leonardo (Ed.): Gender at the crossroads of knowledge: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 175-203.

Holmes, Janet. (2006). Gendered talk at work. Oxford: Blackwell.

McElhinny, Bonnie. (2003). Theorizing gender in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. In Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff (Eds.): The handbook of language and gender. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 21-42.

Schegloff, E. (1997). Whose texts? Whose contexts? Discourse & Society, 8, 165-187.

Widdowson, H. G. (2004). Text, context, pretext. Critical issues in discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.

Gómez Morón, Reyes (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla) – rgommor@upo.es

‘La cortesía lingüística en los manuales de español como lengua extranjera: Breve revisión teórico-práctica’

El objetivo del presente trabajo es la revisión de los métodos empleados en la enseñanza de la conversación en español como lengua extranjera (ELE), proponiendo un aproximación pragmática a partir de la teoría de la cortesía (Brown & Levinson 1978, 1987; Leech 1983; Fraser 1990) como complemento indispensable de la misma, similar a la defendida por Garcés (2000) y Bou (2001). En primer lugar, definiré el concepto de “estrategia” y competencia pragmática y los aplicaré a la conversación, para después hacer una breve revisión de algunos estudios pragmáticos sobre la misma. Acto seguido se presentará una revisión de seis manuales de enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera muy conocidos entre el profesorado. Los resultados demuestran la escasa presencia de los conocimientos pragmáticos en dichos manuales por lo que se presentará una propuesta sobre la aplicación de la teoría de la cortesía lingüística a la enseñanza de la cortesía verbal. Finalmente, se concluye que la familiarización de los profesores con los conceptos y teorías pragmáticas sería algo bastante útil a la hora de enseñar los mecanismos conversacionales, ya que pueden ser el complemento necesario a las metodologías existentes en la enseñanza comunicativa de segundas lenguas.

Gray, John (University of East London, UK) – j.gray@uel.ac.uk

‘Representations of gender and the commodification of feminism in textbooks for the teaching of English as an international language’

Coinciding with the global boom in English language teaching, textbooks produced in the UK for the teaching of English as an international language have changed significantly over the last thirty years. This paper takes the view that such artefacts can most usefully be understood as examples of ‘promotional commodities’ (Wernick 1991) in which English is imaged and made to mean in highly selective ways. One feature of the imaging process is the progressive ‘feminizing’ of textbook content – a process whereby publishers, though the application of guidelines for authors on gender equality, selectively co-opt discourses of feminism as a means of inscribing English with ideas of modernity, freedom and egalitarianism. Using social semiotics as the main analytic tool for exploring representations of gender in textbooks, and drawing on work by Goldman (1992), I argue that such practices seek to elide the ideological challenge feminism poses for the status quo in patriarchal societies by constructing it as yet another lifestyle choice. I conclude by suggesting that the progressive feminizing of textbook content represents the commodification of feminism and has its basis in perceived commercial imperatives.

Key words: English language textbooks; promotional commodities; representations of gender; social semiotics

Gregori, Carmen (Universitat de València) – Carmen.Gregori@uv.es

‘What do we laugh at? Gender representations in “3rd Rock from the Sun”’

Chandler (2006) argues that representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts […] such as gender, ethnicity, race, etc (cf. Fairclough 1995). These representations are often manipulated, exaggerated or distorted, with the purpose, among others, of making us laugh. Such is the case of the representation of gender in the American TV sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Upon assuming human form, a team of aliens who are on a fact-finding mission on Planet Ear find themselves trapped in the bodies of three men and a woman. Lacking the awareness of what it means to grow up being a man or a woman, they find themselves immersed in different types of interactions with humans which they try to handle by applying logic, naturalness and honesty− as they would do in their world, where truth prevails upon politeness and social conventions; and gender does not exist. The result is a series of disparities that violate certain social premises and that make them hilariously funny and pragmatically extravagant, especially in the case of Sally, the woman and Dick, the eldest.

In this article I concentrate on the representation of women (Giles 2003) and femininity by analysing the character Sally in several episodes in which she is humourously portrayed as the alien overwhelmed by the juggernauts of being a woman who does not know what is socially expected from her. My intention is to show what kind of gender messages are present in the series− which often creates humour by making Sally act "inappropriately". Across many theories of humour it is accepted that humour can provide some form of tension release, and can facilitate a reinterpretation of a given situation or event (Koestler, 1964; Martin & Lefcourt, 1983 in Moran and Massan 1999). Underlying the analysis is the intention to prove how humour may help to question many established stereotypes and can help override sexist representations of women, as well as some social premises concerning gender biases.

References

Chandler. Media Representations. [date of visit 7 June 2006]

Fairclough, N. 1995. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.

Giles, D. 2003. Media Psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Moran, C. and M. M. Massan.1999 Differential influences of coping humor and humor bias on mood. Behavioral Medicine 25, 36–42.

Gregorio-Godeo, Eduardo de & Silvia Molina-Plaza (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha) – Eduardo.Gregorio@uclm.es, Silvia.Molina@uclm.es

‘May ‘new men’ be discursively constructed?: an approach through British men’s magazines’ problem columns’

Contemporary post-structuralist discourse theory has come to take as a basic premise the fact that discourses create ‘subject positions’ with which individuals negotiate their own identities when becoming temporarily attached to them in the course of their interactional practices (Hall, 2000; Barker, 2004). Taking the discursive construction of identities as a fundamental tenet (e.g. Fairclough and Wodak, 1997), critical discourse analysis (CDA) has become a highly effective tool for disentangling the role of language – and other semiotic systems – in such processes.

Together with other images of masculinity like the so-called ‘new lads’, ‘retributive men’ and ‘metrosexuals’, the ‘new man’ has come to delineate a major subject position in the discourses on masculinity articulated in various popular-culture genres of the past two decades in the UK (Nixon 1996; Edwards, 1997; Beynon, 2002). Although men’s lifestyle magazines are admittedly a key arena for the construction of such gendered discourses on masculinity in contemporary Britain (Benwell, 2003), and gendered subject positions like the ‘new man’ are recurrently represented in this genre (Jackson, Stevenson and Brooks, 2001), no attempts have been made to date trying to decipher how language and masculinity interplay in the constitution of this version of masculinity, which is often invoked in abstract terms (Nixon 1997, 2001).

Focusing of problem pages as a section in British men’s magazines where the ‘new man’ is often represented, this contribution will draw upon Fairclough’s (1989, 1992) early CDA work on socio-cultural change to shed light on the discursive construction of ‘newmannism’ is specific print-media genres. Thus, this contribution means to be consistent with both current research on gender and language assuming the existence of various ‘gendered discourses’ (Talbot, 1998; Sunderland, 2004), and with CDA’s major concern with gender issues (van Dijk, 2001). Through a detailed case study, we will come to evidence the crucial role of specific linguistic options in the discursive constitution of the ‘new man’ as a gendered subject position.

Key words: identities / CDA / masculinity

Guillamón Carrasco, Silvia (Universitat de València) – Silvia.Guillamon@uv.es

‘Género y representación en el cine español postfranquista’

En el marco de los actuales debates sobre cine español postfranquista se ha planteado la conexión entre las prácticas fílmicas y los contextos entendiendo los productos culturales como sintomáticos de determinadas coyunturas socio-históricas. Partiendo de esta consideración, el estudio sobre las representaciones cinematográficas debe entenderse en relación a los contextos discursivos en los que surgen. En este sentido, partimos del concepto de “discurso”, planteado por Colaizzi como “un principio dialéctico y generativo a la vez, que remite a una red de relaciones de poder que son histórica y culturalmente específicas, construidas y, en consecuencia, susceptibles de cambio.” (1990b: 20). Esta noción de discurso nos permite comprender la aparición de elementos tensionales en los textos que deben leerse en relación con la encrucijada histórico-social de la transición y la democracia. En este sentido, el movimiento feminista en los años posteriores al fin del franquismo supuso una forma de resistencia ante el enraizado sexismo que todavía se seguía manteniendo en la sociedad española.

Un texto como Vámonos, Bárbara (Cecilia Bartolomé, 1977) resulta sintomático de la crisis del sistema patriarcal en la representación cinematográfica. A partir de la retórica de la cotidianeidad, la película de Cecilia Bartolomé subvierte la lógica representacional imperante, anclada en el estereotipo de género, y permite la introducción de un nuevo marco del deseo para la mirada espectatorial. En este sentido, a través de diversos mecanismos: la falta de cierre narrativo, la representación de la maternidad como experiencia diversa, el viaje como fundamento de la identidad de la mujer o la solidaridad entre mujeres, la película de Cecilia Bartolomé explora los procesos subjetivos de la “feminidad”, deconstruyendo el imaginario patriarcal sobre “la mujer” y planteando una alternativa feminista a partir del viaje y la experiencia.

Key words: Género, representación, discurso

Hellinger, Marlis (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) – helllinger@em.uni-frankfurt.de

‘Why Merkel is not enough: On the representation of fe/male politicians in German newspapers’

About a year ago, before Merkel's election, the German League of Women Journalists invited their members to analyse the representation of Angela Merkel in the German print media. Not surprisingly, "Angela-Watch" listed a host of normative gender stereotypes despite frequent assertions that the candidate's gender was irrelevant.

I will report on a study of more than 1600 occurrences of nominal expressions of personal female and male reference covering the period from October 2005 to January 2006. The study analyses the use of functional titles, professional terms, general social labels, and the use of first and last names.

I am not making any global claims about labeling practices in the German print media, but will focus on four local communities of practice, i.e. four German quality papers. Each paper has a distinctive political and ideological profile, which can very loosely be described in terms of more conservative or more liberal affiliations.

Significant differences were found in the use of last names only to refer to men vs women (conservative papers avoid the use of Merkel), and the use of social title plus last name (Frau Merkel) which emerges almost as a gender-exclusive mechanism, since overwhelmingly female, but very few male politicians are thus referred to.

In political discourse, an excessive emphasis on femininity, where a corresponding emphasis on masculinity does not occur, creates unwanted gendered asymmetries. I argue that the newspapers' labeling practices not only contribute to the symbolisation of referents as gendered beings, but that underlying the choices of referential labels are opposing gender ideologies in the analysed CofPs.

Key words: political/media discourse, naming practices, community of practice

Hidalgo Tenorio, Encarnación (Universidad de Granada) - lgo@ugr.es

‘Language, politics and gender: The Spanish Parliament under scrutiny’

In previous research (Hidalgo Tenorio 1999, 2002), I tried to assess the power of some well-known theories developed in the area of language and gender (e.g. Mills 1995; Cameron & Kulick 2003; Coates 2003; Tolmach Lakoff 2004). By applying especially Janet Holmes’s (1995) views on politeness, my analysis of two different objects of study such as theatre and political campaigning led me to, interestingly, similar conclusions. Here, I will check the extent to which these are applicable to a somewhat different situation. Spain is a traditionally male-dominated country in which, nonetheless, dramatic changes have been taking place for three decades. After the Conservatives’ second term of office and the victory of the Socialists, issues such as “domestic violence” or “homosexual marriage” have started being (re)considered by society and the members of Parliament. With this phenomenon as the background of this research, the aim of this paper is as follows. I will observe the way Spanish politicians have dealt with these issues in the Parliament (minutes of the sessions included). As a consequence, I will study two relevant linguistic matters concerning these people themselves: how their gender and how their ideological positioning as well may presumably influence the way they make use of language. In short, I will try to see whether in this context there exists a “women’s language” distinct from a “men’s language”, and which features (if any) are distinctive of each political party (see R. Fowler 1991; N. Fairclough 2003).

Referenceces

Cameron, D. & D. Kulick (2003). Language and sexuality. Cambridge: CUP.

Coates, J. (2003). Women, men and language. N.Y.: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse. Textual analysis for social research. London & N.Y.: Routledge.

Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news. Discourse and ideology in the press. London & N.Y.: Routledge.

Hidalgo Tenorio, E. (1999). “The Playboy of the Western World: The subversion of a traditional conception of Irishness?”. Journal of Literary Studies, 15(3/4), pp. 425-458.

Hidalgo Tenorio, E. (2002). “‘I want to be a Prime Minister’, or what linguistic choice can do for campaigning politicians”. Language and Literature, 11(3), pp. 243-261.

Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. N.Y.: Longman.

Mills, S. (1995). Feminist stylistics. London & N.Y.: Routledge.

Tolmach Lakoff, R. (2004). Language and woman’s place. Text and commentaries. Oxford: OUP.

Hoffman, Barbara G. (Cleveland State University, Cleveland, USA) – b.hoffman@csuohio.edu

‘Of Bards and Bardettes: Sexism and the Semantic Transgendered Translation of Formally Gender-Neutral and Feminine Nouns’

In her 2001 study of linguistic gender, Pronoun Envy, Anna Livia analyzes the dynamic tensions between formal and semantic gender in French and English, asserting that “[i]n the event of a clash between the two systems, semantic gender will tend to take precedence over formal gender.” This paper asserts that the same tendency is exhibited by Western(ized) scholars confronted with clashes between the formal linguistic gender in two African languages and their own semantic gender schemata.

As more African languages and cultures are documented by scholars writing in a world language such as English or French, issues of gendered translation arise. This is particularly evident in French with its formal gender marking, but it also occurs in English where linguistic gender is semantically governed. While gender-sensitive scholars have been attempting to find gender-neutral pronouns to replace the gendered “generic pronouns” in English, the reverse trend has been taking place in English and French language scholarship on African cultures. This paper examines cases from the Mande languages of West Africa and from the Maa languages of East Africa that illustrate what amounts to phallogocentric scholarly distortion of indigenous linguistic gender, rendering both feminine and neutral nouns into the masculine. In the Mande languages, this paper will show that where nouns are gender-neutral and must be marked morphemically when gender is to be specified, the neutral nouns themselves become endowed with masculine gender upon translation into French and English and, subsequently, new feminized forms are created in both languages to pair with the now-masculine noun with no grammatical motivation from the language being translated. In the Maa language, the semantic distortion is even more overtly sexist: certain formally feminine nouns are translated as masculine. There is no grammatical motivation for transgendering these nouns, but there are clear cultural incentives for doing so. This paper illustrates, through a social history of a set of translations, how the gender, position, and, sometimes, religion of the scholar-translator influences how and to what degree noun transgendering takes place.

Holmes, Janet (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) – Janet.Holmes@vuw.ac.nz

"Did anyone feel disempowered by that?" Gender, leadership and politeness

The double bind facing women in positions of power is widely recognised: if they "do power" women leaders are regarded as unfeminine; if they "do femininity" they are regarded as unfit to lead. This conflict is evidenced in interesting ways in the discourse of the women leaders we have recorded in the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project.

One resolution of the conflict involves embracing social roles which acceptably combine "doing power" with enacting a feminine gender identity, roles such as "queen" or "mother". Another involves adopting an explicitly aggressive persona such as "harridan", "battle-axe", "witch", or "Iron Lady". In doing effective leadership at work, women leaders often draw on different roles for different tasks.

The analysis of specific interactions where these complex identities are performed indicates that discursive features enacting authority are frequently followed by some kind of politeness-driven, face-oriented attenuation strategy, such as an apologetic comment, or a friendly, informal overture, often expressed in a humorous key. This paper illustrates some of the diverse ways in which such politeness strategies serve as resources to facilitate the reconciliation of the apparently inconsistent demands of leadership and feminine identity.

Irwin, Anthea (Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK) – air@gcal.ac.uk

‘Villains and princesses: gendered identities in press coverage of asylum in Scotland’

This paper developed out of media monitoring research carried out for Oxfam UK’s Asylum Positive Images Programme. The paper considers the gendered nature of the identities constructed in press coverage of asylum in Scotland. Taking a Foucauldian approach, it identifies this coverage as a site of struggle where competing discourses vie for dominance and a simplistic distinction between positive and negative portrayals is problematised.

It is striking to observe the traditional nature of the narrative in much of the coverage and the binary oppositions this reinforces. Many articles lend themselves to a Proppian reading, with “heroic” indigenous people and “villainous” asylum seekers. Military discourses and animalistic metaphors further reinforce the negative masculinity of the villains. One interesting set of articles casts a woman as “indigenous hero”, thus arguably equating “heroic” elements of identity with femininity and “othering” the asylum seeking men yet further. Newspapers that take a more empathetic or challenging stance reproduce these discourses to very different effect, using them to highlight and criticize situations in which asylum seekers are arguably treated like criminals and animals.

Women seeking asylum are virtually invisible in the data, however a handful of articles focus on young women and girls. A notable set of articles about the threatened deportation of a family, which are on face value more positive than most, focus on the young daughter’s recent role as a ‘gala princess’, thus again drawing on traditional “fairytale” discourses and stereotypical gender identities. The discourse is different, but still arguably disempowering in that it constructs the asylum seeker as a young, passive, stereotypically female character who “needs saving”.

The paper, and the wider research, concludes that, while there is evidence in the data of balanced, empathetic reporting of asylum, there is little that affords asylum seekers complex identities and portrays them in proactive roles.

Key words: identity, asylum, media.

Jakubowska, Ewa (University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland) - ewajakub@wp.pl

‘Gender and Face’

Face is central to the functioning of people in any social setting. It is the image of self created on the basis of judgements concerning a person’s adherence to moral rules of conduct and position within a given social structure. These judgements are both internal and external to the individual, as face reflects the interaction of self and others’ perceptions and attributions (Earley, 1997). Thus, face is a public property, determined by the participation of others and earned through social interaction (Goffman, 1967; Lim and Bowers, 1991; Mao, 1994).

One of the most important elements of communicative behaviour is the presentation of self, which like other acts of communication is conditioned by social values and interactional norms specific for a particular culture. Self-presentation consists in using behaviour to communicate some information about oneself to others.

Face has culture-specific constituents. The basic, universal desire, inherent in the human nature, “for a ‘good’ face” earns different interpretations in different cultures and social groups. Men and women also interpret it in a different way, because the constituents of ‘good’ are partially determined by gender (gender-specific face) (cf. O’Driscoll, 1996). In other words, there are differences in the content of face. Lim says that “face is in terms of social values” (1994: 210; Goffman, 1967; Chu, 1985), and it is as complex as the value system of a society. Goffman (1967:5) defines face as "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself" or "an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes." Men and women have different hierarchies of values. Thus, their conceptualisations of face also vary.

The aim of the paper is to analyse differences in face-maintenance between men and women. The data used in the analysis come from the observation carried out during oral entrance exams at the University of Silesia.

Key words: face, social interaction, self-presentation

References

Chu, G.C. (1985). The changing concept of self in contemporary China. In: A.J. Marsella, G. DeVos and F.L.K. Hsu (eds.), Culture and Self. Asian and Western Perspectives. New York, London: Tavistock Publications.

Earley, P.C. (1997). Face, Harmony, and Social Structure. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Interaction. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Lim, T.-S. (1994). Facework and interpersonal relationships. In S. Ting-Toomey (ed.), The Challenge of Facework. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Lim, T., J. Bowers (1991). Face-work: Solidarity, approbation, and tact, Human Communication Research 17, 415-450.

Mao, L.R. (1994). Beyond politeness theory: "Face" revisited and renewed, Journal of Pragmatics 21, 451-486.

Matsumoto, Y. (1988). Reegxamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese, Journal of Pragmatics 12, 403-459.

O’Driscoll (1996). About face: A defence and elaboration of universal dualism, Journal of Pragmatics 25, 1-32.

Jiménez Catalán, Rosa Mª & Julieta Ojeda Alba (Universidad de La Rioja) – rosa.jimenez@dfm.unirioja.es

‘Politeness and Gender as L2: A Longitudinal Analysis of Learners’ Vocabulary in Letter Writing Tasks’

In 1975, Lakoff pointed to women’s tendency to be over-polite compared to men’s inclination to directness, and ever since, many authors (Cameron, 1992; Coates, 1993; Holmes, 1995, among others) have addressed the issue of politeness in the perspective of females’ and males’ language differentiation.

The letter as a genre offers an ideal scenery where gender, politeness, and L2 learning interplay in a natural way. Letter writing provides students with a communicative task, and gives researchers the opportunity to look at the polite conventions used by female and male students. Surprisingly, there are few publications on the analysis of these factors. The few studies found deal with native students’ letters of application to university (Henry & Roseberry, 2001), the comparison of native and non native students’ lexical features in business letters (Okamura & Shaw, 2000), and analyses of the vocabulary used in English as L2 by 4th year primary students (Jiménez Catalán & Ojeda Alba, forthcoming). Regarding letter openings and endings, these authors found that greetings and farewells were not frequently used by 4th year students, but, when used, female students were the ones who made a greater use and showed a wider range of formulae.

The present study adopts a longitudinal approach and focuses on the analysis of the vocabulary of greetings and farewells in letters written in English by 271 Spanish students throughout three years of primary education: 4th year (10 year-olds), 5th year, (11 year-olds), and 6th year (12 year-olds). Our specific objectives are: to identify, count, compare, and analyse the formulae of greetings and farewells used by female and male students throughout three consecutive years in order to identify the connection between the use of greetings and farewells as markers of politeness, -and gender seen from a longitudinal perspective.

Key words: gender in L2, letter writing task, greetings and farewells, politeness

Kanno, Misako (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Japan) - kmisako@idc.minpaku.ac.jp

‘The changing process of gender ideology: The case study of development programs in rural North India’

There have been many arguments that ideology and identity of individuals are closely related to language and discourse, and that identity of a subject and his/her experience is a variable phenomenon formed by discourse used in certain contexts and relationships with others. Accordingly, it is also justifiable that the discourse which affects identity and ideology construction is continuously reinterpreted and reconstructed through the interaction with alternative discourses. If so, how the discourse is reinterpreted and reconstructed? How it can affect the ideology or identity of the people who use the discourse?

To discuss these questions, I will focus on women participating in development programs in rural North India. In this region, women are imposed several restrictions and constraints due to the strong existing patriarchal system; and it is sustained that women have to be modest, tender, chaste and obedient to their husbands and in-laws. Therefore, a large number of development programs for women who are suffering from serious poverty and social discrimination have been deployed since 1980s. “Mahila Smakhya” the development program I am focusing here, aims at empowering women through the improvement of their own livelihood, and the provision of an alternative gender discourse.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that the introduction of this alternative gender discourse is necessarily the salvation for women or that they are receptive to them. In my 2-year-fieldwork in this region, I observed that women reinterpreted the discourse in relation to the existing one, and reconstructed it at their own convenience as a strategy for their own livelihood. From an anthropological perspective, I will analyze the process of reinterpretation and reconstruction of discourses and language brought by development programs, and how they affect the ideology of those women.

Kaul de Marlangeon, Silvia (Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, Córdoba, Argentina) – EDICE – skaul@.ar

‘(Des)cortesía y género en graffiti de baños de mujeres de Buenos Aires’

El objetivo de la presente comunicación es analizar la cortesía y la descortesía verbales presentes en emisiones producidas por mujeres en ciertos baños públicos de Buenos Aires. Se trata de interacciones escritas, colectivas, asincrónicas, amparadas en el anonimato, que se integran en un contexto idiosincrásico de comunidad de práctica regido por sus propias normas. El corpus ha sido extraído de cuatro antologías de graffiti aparecidos en tales baños y el criterio de selección ha sido circunscribir los ejemplos a intercambios entre mujeres jóvenes universitarias de clase media.

El marco teórico está constituido por Mills (2003), Bravo (1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 y 2005) y (Kaul de Marlangeon, [1992] 1995-2003, 2005a, 2005b y 2006).

Es éste un fenómeno colectivo, producido en un ámbito contrapuestamente íntimo y público; anónimo y cuasi-anónimo, de desinhibición de lo tabú sexual femenino. Para el estudio de la cortesía y de la descortesía que manifiesta, cuenta el papel que desempeña el estereotipo de género y el conocimiento de las premisas culturales del grupo estudiado.

Kaur, Surinderpal (Lancaster University, UK) – s.kaur@lancaster.ac.uk

‘“Men are built for combat women are not!”: An Analysis of argumentative discourse about women soldiers in online discussion forums’

This paper examines the construction of a gendered ‘self’ that is constituted in and through argumentative discourse in several online message board topics that focus on debates about women soldiers. The theoretical stance that frames this study is based upon Judith Butler’s theory of Performativity (Butler 1990, 1993) while the analytical framework will employ Critical Discourse Analysis, specifically a combination of Teun Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach (1989) and Ruth Wodak’s Discourse –Historical Approach (2004).

Gender based debates in online message boards are often characterized by the binary connection between dominant discourses and oppositional discourses. This paper is interested in exploring the discursive strategies that constitute the polarizing ‘self’ and ‘other’ presentation – positive self- presentation versus negative presentation of other – in debates on gender in the online setting.

The combination of the distinct frameworks of Performativity and CDA provides an ensemble of tools that allow for a rich and multi-layered analysis of debates on gender issues in the online setting. Performativity Theory, while useful for exploring the ‘performative’ aspect of gender construction in cyberspace, is not able to show us what is happening at the linguistic level because of the level of abstraction at which it works. CDA makes it possible for analysts to investigate what is actually happening at the level of linguistics detail, particularly in terms of the discursive strategies employed in polarizing discourses.

In this paper I will first of all make a case that there are several points of intersections between CDA and Performativity (namely their shared belief in the constructive function of discourse as well as the asymmetrical power relations that exist in social practices). Then I will illustrate the specific strategic discursive strategies that that I have chosen to adopt from Van Dijk and Wodak’s approaches to argumentation and prejudice discourse before going on to analyse an extract of my data.

Key words: Performativity, Critical Discourse Analysis, Computer mediated communication

References

Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'. New York: Routledge.

Butler, Judith (1999). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.

Dijk, Teun A. Van (1984). Prejudice in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Dijk, Teun A. Van (1989). Structures and strategies of discourse and prejudice. Ethnic minorities. Social psychological perspectives. J. P. v. O. T. M. Willemsen.ed. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger: 115-138.

Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. (2001). Discourse and Discrimination. London: Routledge

Wodak, Ruth (2004). Populist Discourse: The Austrian Case. Movements of Exclusion: Radical Right-Wing Populism. J. Rydgren.ed: Nova Science Publishers: 121 - 146.

Wodak, Ruth and Teun A. Van Dijk, Eds. (2000). Racism at the Top: Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. The Investigation, Explanation and Countering of Xenophobia and Racism. Celovec: Drava Verlag.

Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, Agnieszka & Joanna Pawelczyk (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland) – kagniesz@ifa.amu.edu.pl / pasia@ifa.amu.edu.pl

‘Gender and globalised customer service communication in Poland’

For the last few years call centres have become a new and rapidly expanding arena for communication between customers and companies. The prescribed procedures for this type of interaction have followed international corporate norms. It has been claimed (notably by Cameron 2000) that the prescribed communicative strategies for an interaction with the customer in call centres resemble what is commonly referred to as feminine discourse. Therefore, as far as professional desirability is concerned, women may be expected to be ‘naturally’ suited to the work of call centre operators.

Customer service work entails the management of emotional states and involves attending not only to others’ but also to one’s own feelings and emotions (Hochschild 1983, Taylor and Tyler 2000). We have tried to determine how the concepts of customer service, emotional labour and feminine discourse are applicable to the analysis of call centre communication. Specifically, we have enquired whether in the local Polish context stereotypically feminine interactive skills (cf. Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak and Pawelczyk 2006) are utilised to conform to the imposed global customer care standards.

For this purpose we have explored communication strategies in call centres and investigated three types of data: (1) written descriptions of call centre procedures (training manuals, scripts, etc.), (2) interviews with call centre trainers, supervisors and operators, (3) recordings of customer-operator exchanges.

Key words: call centre, feminine discourse, globalisation, Poland

References

Cameron, Deborah. 2000. “Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy”, Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/3: 323-347.

Hochschild, Arlie. 1983. The managed heart: The commercialisation of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, Agnieszka and Joanna Pawelczyk. 2006.”Gender stereotypes in language use: Polish and English”, in: Katarzyna Dziubalska Kołaczyk (ed.), IFAtuation: A life in IFA. A Festschrift for Professor Jacek Fisiak on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 349-383.

Taylor, Steve and Melissa Tyler. 2000. “Emotional labour and sexual difference in the airline industry”, Work, Employment & Society 14/1: 77-95.

Koller, Veronika (Lancaster University, UK) – v.koller@lancaster.ac.uk

‘Consuming the community: the discourse of gay and lesbian conservatives’

Despite increasing research into language, sexual identity and desire, lesbian discourse has remained under-researched to date. This study seeks to address this gap by looking at the image of community as constructed in contemporary instances of lesbian discourse. In doing so, it starts out by discussing how political polarization in many sectors of society has affected lesbian communities, focusing on the vocal minority of conservative gay groups challenging the taken-for-granted notion of leftist lesbian politics.

The discussion of lesbian conservatism is underscored by email interviews with female members of the US gay lobbying group Log Cabin Republicans and illustrated by the analysis of a text from one female chapter president’s weblog. This analysis will highlight the use of social actors, evaluation, metaphor and interdiscursivity. and will further be embedded in a discussion of the socio-political context and prevailing discourse practice, i.e. production, distribution and reception of texts.

Paradoxically, the sample text contributes to an emergent form of online community while openly calling into question the existence of a wider lesbian community. This effect is achieved by fluid social actors, especially ambiguous definitions of ‘we’ as either denoting geographically based social networks or an imagined wider community of lesbians as the in-group. Other textual features are a metaphor that negatively evaluates the Other by constructing left-of-centre lesbian activists as children, and ironic interdiscursive references to the Others’ perceived childishness.

While the text thus ties in with lesbian-authored texts from earlier decades that show in-group and out-group construction as their main discursive strategy for anchoring a particular image of the community, the analysed sample is contradictory in both implicitly reflecting the idea of a wider, imagined community while explicitly denying its existence. The latter move is informed by an assimilationist agenda that links up with political strategies of the 1950s and 1960s.

Wodak, R. (2001) ‘The discourse-historical approach’, in R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Sage, pp. 63-94.

Key words: critical discourse analysis, imagined communities, lesbian discourse

Kosetzi, Konstantia (Lancaster University, UK) – k.kosetzi@lancaster.ac.uk

‘Challenging (?) Conservative Discourses: the Case of Σχεδόν Ποτέ (ΣΠ) (‘Almost Never’)’

In this paper, my focus is on how conservative discourses - defined as those that sustain unequal power relations between men and women - can be seen as being challenged in the ‘text’ and how these challenges are ‘consumed’. I embark upon such an exploration in my broader analysis of how women are construed in terms of gender roles and sexual practices in the Greek fictional TV series, Σχεδόν Ποτέ (ΣΠ) (‘Almost Never’), and of how these construals are recontextualised by the audience (female focus groups). To this end, I employ a Faircloughian CDA framework of analysis (mainly, Fairclough, 2001a, 2001b, 2003), adapting it with accounts of visual analysis, irony, the narrator’s role and recontextualisation.

More specifically, I show how these challenges to conservative discourses are manifested through the use of irony and the role of the narrator in the series. Certainly, in some cases the challenge may be more obvious than in others, where there can be alternative readings, inherent in fiction. Additionally, I discuss how the focus group participants recontextualise these challenges, i.e. in the rare cases they discuss them, they mainly substitute the challenges (van Leeuwen, 1993, 2005; van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999) with the conservative discourses per se, thus reinforcing the latter.

As this research is situated in an urban Greek context, framed by the official EU equal-opportunities legislation and gender mainstreaming (e.g. Tzavella, 2004), and where women are better educated than in the past, make considerable strides in the public work arena, are financially independent, and are seen as taking the initiative in heterosexual relationships, these challenges to the conservative discourses could be seen as pointing to changing gender relations in Greece. However, their recontextualisations by the focus group participants reveal that this change may have a long way to go.

Key words: CDA, challenging conservative gendered discourses, recontextualisation

References:

Fairclough, N. (2001a) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis as a Method in Social Scientific Research’, in Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis: 121-138. London: Sage.

_________ (2001b) ‘The Discourse of New Labour: Critical Discourse Analysis’, in

Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S. J. (eds) Discourse as Data: a Guide for Analysis: 229-266. London: Sage in association with The Open University.

________ (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.

Τζαβέλλα, Π. (2004) Γενική Γραμματεία Ισότητας: Ρόλος και Πεδία Άσκησης Πολιτικής. Αθήνα: Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο Κοινωνικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών. [Tzavella, P. (2004) General Secretariat for Equality: Role and Fields of Exercising Politics. Athens: Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences.]

van Leeuwen, T. (1993) ‘Genre and Field in Critical Discourse Analysis: a Synopsis’, in Discourse and Society, 4 (2): 193-223.

_________ (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.

van Leeuwen, T. and Wodak, R. (1999) ‘Legitimising Immigration Control: a Discourse-Historical Analysis’, in Discourse Studies, 1 (1): 83-118.

Lambrou, Marina (University of East London, UK) – m.lambrou@uel.ac.uk

‘Telling stories: males and females ‘doing’ gender in personal narratives about ‘Trouble’’

This paper focuses on whether there are significant gender differences in narrative storytelling and importantly, where those differences can be found. Specifically, which stylistic features do male and female narrators use to construct identity and in some instances, ‘save face’ in personal experiences which are based on themes about ‘Trouble’ (Bruner, 1987)? Does variation exist at the level of story topic? For example, are male narrators only willing to disclose experiences of themselves in situations where they are cast ‘in the most favourable possible light’ or what Labov and Waletzky (1967) describe as ‘self–aggrandizement’, compared to women, who are less concerned with that aspect of their identity being undermined (Coates, 1995, Johnstone, 1993)? Or, are differences present in the formal lexico-grammatical features of narratives, which could therefore argue a case that storytelling may be gendered? Furthermore, why is humour often a feature of these ‘Trouble’ narratives when the crisis or complicating action describes difficult, traumatic and often violent situations which would be more likely to provoke the opposite reaction? This paper explores such questions by examining a corpus of spoken personal narratives from males and females (in three ages groups) from the Greek Cypriot Community in London and uses Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) narrative schema model as the central framework for narrative analysis. In this way, we can gain greater insights into how meaning through identity is constructed between narrators and their recipients through the act of storytelling.

Key words: spoken narratives; personal experiences; ‘self-aggrandizement’; ‘Trouble’

Le Master, Barbara (University of Long Beach, California, USA) – lemaster@csulb.edu

‘Preschool Communication Without Gender’

Research on older school children suggests that girls and boys act differently in the classroom. Teachers often claim that these differences require more attention to rowdy boys than to well-behaved girls. But, my research suggests something else. Girls and boys are equally verbal and participatory when entering school for the first time, and that the communicative requirements of school participation make gender relevant. This paper provides evidence that individual predispositions, not gender, initially guide whether children participate in structured teacher-student discourse. However, within a short time, children acquire distinctly gendered norms in school settings, rendering girls much more silent than boys in the preschool setting. I argue that this behavior conforms to the literature for older school children, and happens, in fact, because of cultural norms for a 30% female to 70% male "balance" in public discourse enacted in early socialization into communicative classroom norms.

Levon, Erez (New York University, USA) – erez.levon@nyu.edu

‘Politically Speaking: Prosodic variation among gay men in Israel’

This paper presents the results of a sociolinguistic and ethnographic inquiry of gay men in Israel. While Israel is one of the most politically progressive nations with respect to the legal rights of its gay and lesbian citizens, only in the past 15 years have homo ‘gay’ and lesbit ‘lesbian’ become socially accepted identity categories (Fink and Press 1999; Kama 2000; Walzer 2000). This disparity between legal enfranchisement and social acceptance is due in large part to powerful national narratives that define belonging in Israeli society as grounded in a discourse of the traditional family. In this study, I analyze prosodic variation in the speech of gay men in order to examine how these men vary their use of specific features in their linguistic performance of sexuality. Prosodic features are chosen both because they figure prominently in the literature on language and sexuality (Gaudio 1994; Levon 2006; Podesva 2003; Smyth et al. 2003), and because they are perceptually salient in the Israeli context.

I present a sociolinguistic analysis of the speech of 18 gay men, who were observed and recorded over a period of 12 months. Of different ages, ethnicities and political affiliations, these men represent the diversity of gay life in Israel, and the different ways in which gay identities can get linguistically materialized. Quantitative and qualitative results suggest that linguistics features such as pitch range, pitch dynamism and F0 floor may be significantly influenced by external social factors that determine how these men imagine their own sexuality. For example, those men who strongly identify with Israel as a nation and with their own identity as Israelis show little evidence of distinctive linguistic practice that could potentially be linked to the expression of a gay sexuality. On the other hand, those men who are more critical of Israeli society and distance themselves from identifying as Israelis make use of specific linguistic practices that challenge the norms of gender and sexuality in Israel.

These results are meaningful because they illustrate how gay sexuality remains partially marginalized in Israel, despite the progressive nature of the legal system. Israeli gay men find themselves in many ways caught between their own desires to realize their sexual identities, and the dominant conceptions of national belonging that exclude the possibility of that realization. Language provides a window into how these men negotiate this tension, employing different linguistic strategies to variably align themselves as more or less affiliated with the standardized conception of Israeli identity, and the discourses of gender and sexuality inherent in that conception.

Litosseliti, Lia (City University, London, UK) – l.litosseliti@city.ac.uk

‘Theoretical/Methodological Approaches in Gender and Language and the Scope of a Feminist Politics’

‘The current and new directions in the study of gender and language, in terms of theoretical and analytical frameworks, are the result of a critical rethinking of linguistic analysis, feminist theory and feminist linguistic analysis. This also involves a lack of consensus on how to evaluate the claims of the literature, and to what extent to revisit previous assumptions’ (Litosseliti, 2006: 2). This paper overviews some of the key claims and assumptions made by different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of gender and language (e.g. Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, and others). It then focuses on the particular perspectives and contributions of each approach in terms of a critical or feminist politics.

Key issues include:

❑ the role of the researcher (‘impartiality’, ‘objectivity’, ‘conscious partiality’, ‘self-reflexivity’)

❑ the relationship between the researcher and those researched

❑ the relevance of a feminist politics

❑ the possibility of research as emancipatory action (e.g. through empowerment of participants)

❑ the opportunities for interaction between feminist theory and feminist practice

These issues are discussed in relation to examples of analysis of written and spoken data (media texts and everyday talk) collected in the UK. This paper will contribute to the broader discussions on the directions of gender and language study/research and on feminist epistemologies.

References

Litosseliti, L. (2006). Gender and Language: Theory and Practice. London: Arnold.

Losada Pérez, Ana María (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) – anilosada@yahoo.es

‘“Landscapes of the Male Mind”: Feminist Readings of English Romantic Poetry’

Of all the features associated with English Romanticism, landscape and subjectivity are, perhaps, the most inclusive and most evocative. The title of my paper captures the significance of feminist readings of the poetry by the “Big Six Romantics”: W. Blake, W. Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley, and J. Keats. Gilbert and Gubar, Anne K. Mellor, Margaret Homans and Mary Poovey are some of the feminist critics here commented who denounced the patriarchal ideology pervading the representation of landscape in the poems by the “Big Six”. They read the so-called “romantic symbol” as the immaterial sublime guise that legitimises and perpetuates patriarchy and capitalism in early nineteenth century Britain.

With the representation of landscape as major argument and feminist readings as basis, this paper explores the exclusion of the female from the imaginative mind’s sublime experiences. Landscape and women in romantic poetry are intellectually and emotionally penetrated by the male poet’s gaze who, in turn, creates beautiful signifiers that effectively reproduce patriarchal relationships. Indeed, the growth of the romantic poet’s mind and its resultant symbol is only accomplished by appropriating landscape and the female, defining both as beautiful objects whose eventual fate, however, is denial and obliteration.

Key words: Romantic poetry, feminist readings, landscape, subjectivity

Lynch, Andrew (University of Miami, Florida, USA) – a.lynch@miami.edu

‘Gender and the expression of opinion in Miami Cuban Spanish’

Studies of Spanish in the United States have produced conflicting results with regards to gender. For example, Klee (1987) found that in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Spanish served to establish masculine identity and maintain male group solidarity. Zentella (1997), however, described the opposite trend among Puerto Ricans in New York City, where Spanish was more prevalent in female social networks. In Chula Vista (San Diego), California, Hidalgo (1993) reported that girls use Spanish more than boys, and identify more personally with a “Mexican way-of-being or speaking” (64). And among Miami Cubans, López Morales’ (2003) revealed a greater propensity toward Spanish among females.

The above studies have been more sociological than linguistic in their approach, however. The present study adopts a more discourse-oriented perspective on the differential usage of Spanish by females and males in the United States. The analysis is based on observations and recorded interviews in Spanish with individuals (N=25) who represent three generations of Miami Cubans: 1) the older generation (who immigrated to Miami during the 1960s); 2) Marielitos (who immigrated to Miami in mass exodus from the port of Mariel in 1980); and 3) the younger generation (who are the Miami-born grandchildren of the 1960s exiles). Analysis focused on those discourse features vital to the expression of opinions: the evaluative markers like and como; the participatory markers you know, (tú) sabes and (me) entiendes; the hedges tal vez, quizá(s), puede ser que and a lo mejor; the qualification markers (No) creo que and (No) pienso que; and the usage of subjunctive, indicative, conditional, and code-switched verb forms. The present findings are compared with those of other gender-based studies on English and Spanish in the United States and abroad. Discussion is framed within a unified theory of language and gender, language contact and cultural linguistics.

Key words: discourse analysis, epistemic modality, Spanish in the US, language contact

Maíz Arévalo, Carmen (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) – cmaizare@filol.ucm.es

‘”Good girls have good manners”: Teaching Politeness to Young Female Readers Via Fiction’

There goes without saying that our readings as children and teenagers help to construct our perception of gender as well as (in)directly lecture us about what good girls should or should not do. This communication aims at establishing a comparison between different comics for young female readers while analysing how the appearing female characters talk. The analysis focuses on two pragmatic issues: the distribution of conversational turns in female/male dialogues and the use of directives when addressing male characters. On the other hand, given the fact that the comics belong to different decades, we will also be able to observe whether the politeness strategies used by fictional female characters have kept being the same or have changed and if so, what this change might imply for current young female readers.

Maree, Claire (Tsuda College, Tokyo, Japan) – maree@tsuda.ac.jp

‘Onee-kotoba: Like a different language is the language of queens’

In my current research, I focus on the space beyond　heterogender assumptions where “masking” and other cross gendered articulations emerge; a contested space that provides us with the potential to embark on alternative readings on Japanese gender/sexuality and language, and to locate alternative discourses and ways of being in Japanese. To date, using material from ethnographic interviews undertaken with individuals in the Tokyo gay community, I have discussed the functions and uses of onee kotoba (lit. older women’s language/speech; a speech style generally used flamboyantly by queer men and viewed as a parody of stereotypical women’s language). By analyzing the metalanguage/metadiscourse of onee kotoba articulated in these interviews, I have a) contested the assumption that okama use “women’s language” in an attempt to mask their gender, or in an imitation of heteronormative femininity; and b) problematized the notion that a use of linguistic forms traditionally classified as “women’s” language by okama and/or other “men” indexes an attempt to reproduce heteronormativity.

In this presentation, I critically analyze television performances of onee kyara (lit. older sister characters; used to refer to popular personalities who speak in a “feminine” manner and perform non-normative masculinity in their media persona). Specifically, I examine the ways in which the speech styles of contemporary onee kyara intersect and diverge from onee kotoba performances referenced in the ethnographic interviews. In the metalanguage of one kotoba notions of “dokuke” (virulence/malice) emerge to mark off television performances from those of the bar scene. The articulation of difference between media performances and community based performances leads us to a discussion of the extension of diverse and multiple discourse of gender in contemporary Japan, the application of a theory of “communities of practice” in Japanese gender studies, and the intersections of queer studies with language studies.

References

Abe, H. ( 1993). The Speech of Urban Professional Japanese Women. PhD Thesis, Arizona State University.

Shibamoto, J. S. (1985). Japanese Women's Language. Orlando, Academic Press.

Yukawa, S. and M. Saito (2004). Cultural Ideologies in Japoanese Language and Gender Studies: A Theoretical Review. Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People. S. Okamoto and J. S. S. Smith. New York, Oxford University Press: 23-37.

McElhinny, Bonnie (University of Toronto, Canada) – bonnie.mcelhinny@utoronto.ca

‘"Building Business Value Through Communities of Practice": Progressive and Neoliberal Uses of Linguistic Ideologies around Performance and Flexibility’

One of the central theoretical goal of materialist feminism is to understand "why representations of identity are changing….and how these changes in identity are connected to historical shifts in the production of life under late capitalism” (Hennessey and Ingraham, 1997:9). In this paper I take up this challenge by considering community of practice, a way of understanding identity and interaction that has become widely used in linguistic anthropology (especially in feminist analyses) to challenge structural-functionalist accounts of social relations, bounded notions of speech community and essentialist accounts of identity (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992, 1995, Holmes and Meyerhoff 1991). Community of practice has also, however, circulated widely in corporate circles, as an innovative strategy for institutional reorganization (cf. 26 million citations on Google). Drawing on Emily Martin's (1994) work how ideologies of flexibility play into neoliberal visions of bodies and corporate culture, I offer a critical overview of recent writings on communities of practice by business consultants and in business journals, considering when and how representing the self as performed may contribute to the formation of a subject more adequate to a globally-dispersed, multinational corporate culture (Hennessey, p. 6), and when it may be used to challenge reified notions of identity and social relations in ways that envision alternatives to such cultures. This paper thus contributes to a growing body of literature on language ideologies which considers how "different images of linguistic phenomena gain social credibility and political influence," both within linguistic disciplines and beyond (Gal and Woolard 2001:2).

Key words: community of practice; neoliberalism; language ideologies

Miquel Baldellou, Marta (Universitat de Lleida) – mmiquel@dal.udl.es

‘Constructing Femininity and Masculinity through Nineteenth-Century American Conduct Books’

During a time when industrialisation, capitalism and urbanisation began to transform the structure of American society, the middle class emerged. The arousal of this new culture involved the necessity to define the conduct and the values that were regarded as appertaining to the status and lifestyle of the American nineteenth-century middle class. Between 1820 and 1860, more than a hundred conduct and advice books were published (Jeffrey 2000). This suggests the need Americans felt to define proper behaviour in the midst of the economic and social instability that characterised the new times. Conduct and advice books carefully described appropriate behaviour in each social gathering, placing especial emphasis on the different traits and features that characterised the behaviour of young men and women. By describing how young people should interact in society, gender differences were sanctioned and perpetuated in time.

In order to analyse the construction of nineteenth-century American femininity and masculinity through the discourse of these texts, a corpus of fifty-two conduct books has been selected to describe in which ways the authors of these texts depicted the manners, the behaviour, the values, the ideals, the morals and the ethics that should characterise the middle-class youth of the time, and how these descriptions often differed according to the sex of the subjects they addressed. The texts that are analysed cover a significant scope of thematic approaches within conduct literature such as ideology, physical appearance, domesticity, academic life, social gathering and proper-behaviour books addressed to both boys and girls. It is the aim of this paper to describe and prove how the so-called good manners and the ideals of politeness defended at the time contributed to constructing and reaffirming gender differences in nineteenth-century American society.

Key words: gender studies; discourse analysis; politeness; conduct and advice books; womanhood and manhood

Muchnik, Malka & Anat Stavans (Bar-Ilan University & The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel) – muchnm@mail.biu.ac.il, stavansa@mscc.huji.ac.il

‘Telling the Same Story: His or Her Style’

Bedtime stories are among the most popular discourse activities between parents and their children. Research shows linguistic differences between mothers and fathers telling a story. These differences are often in the amount of talk, kind of information provided, speech-acts performed, questions asked, and (non)supportive interactional style (Tenenbaum & Leaper, 1997; Leaper et al., 1998; Rowe et al., 2004).

The present study analyzes discourse characteristics in narratives of high-middle class educated mothers and fathers, users of Modern Hebrew. Eighteen parents were recorded while telling their children the "Frog Story" – a wordless picture book relating the story of a boy and a dog in search of a lost frog. This picture book has proven to be an efficient and reliable tool in narrative development research.

Our gender analysis focuses on both content and structure of the stories. From the content point of view, there were differences related to informative knowledge and affective characteristics. From the linguistic point of view, we found register differences related to the choice of a more normative and literary language as opposed to colloquial and informal language.

Style differences were found to be gender-directed not only according to parents, but also to child-addressee. Parents' narratives differed when directed to boys or girls, and a stereotyped view was clearly observed behind this behavior. This finding supports previous studies in that parents have different expectations from boys or girls (Wells, 1986; Gleason, 1987).

References:

Gleason, J.B. (1987), “Sex differences in parent-child interaction”, in: Philips, S.U.; S. Steele, and C. Tanz, (eds.), Language, Gender, and Sex in Comparative Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 189-199.

Leaper, C.; K.J. Anderson and P. Sanders (1998), “Moderators of gender effects on parents' talk to their children: A meta-analysis“, Developmental Psychology, 34, 3-27.

Rowe, M.L.; D. Coker and B.A. Pan (2004), “A comparison of fathers' and mothers' talk to toddlers in low-income families”, Social Development 13(2), pp. 278-291.

Tenenbaum, H.R. and C. Leaper (1997), “Mothers' and fathers' questions to their child in Mexican-descent families: Moderators of cognitive demand during play”, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 19, 318-332.

Wells, G. (1986), The Meaning Makers: Children Learning Language and UsingLanguage to Learn, London, Hodder Headline.

Mustapha, Abolaji S. (Lagos State University, Nigeria) – abolajimustapha@

‘Gender Differences in the Politeness Strategies of Nigerian English Speakers’ Compliments’

One theory of politeness that is perhaps the most influential and that has witnessed innumerable applications is Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. For example, many studies (Holmes, 1986; Herbert, 1990; Chen, 1993; Henderson, 1996 and others) have used the theory to identify and describe linguistic politeness in the speech behaviour of their subjects. However, other studies (Bilbow, 1995; Lee-wong, 1998; Ide, 1989; Kasper, 1990) show certain aspects, which point out the inability of the theory to account for cross-cultural linguistic politeness.

In this paper, we explore the compliments/responses of Nigerian English speakers for linguistic politeness and gender differences. It is assumed that this undertaking which has hitherto not been ventured into barring Adegbija (1989) would provide basis for testing out (i) the applicability of Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness in Nigerian English speech community, (ii) gender differences in their politeness strategies and (iii) the universality of the theory and of the proposed sociolinguistic universals in gender and language.

Key words: politeness, gender, compliments/responses, Nigerian English, universality

References

Adegbija, E. 1989. A comparative study of politeness phenomenon in Nigerian English, Yoruba, and Ogoni. Multilingua 8(1) 57-80.

Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: CUP.

Henderson, Anita 1996. Compliments, compliment responses, and politeness in an

African-American community. In Arnold, J, and Blake, D. Davidson, S., Schewenter, S. and Solomon, J. (eds) Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory and Analysis: Selected Papers from NWAV at Stanford Centre for Study of Language and Information, Stanford, pp 195-208.

Namba, Ayako (University of Edinburgh, UK)

a.namba@sms.ed.ac.uk, colibri_p_an@

‘Politeness and Laughter in Japanese Female Interaction’

The purpose of this study is to clarify laughter patterns practiced by the listener in Japanese female interactions drawing on laughter sequences such as invitation, acceptance, declination, volunteered and unison (simultaneous) laughter (Jefferson: 1979, Jefferson, Sacks and Schegloff, 1976). This study also seeks correlations between laughter and various social factors from politeness theory (Brown and Levinson, 1978).

In relation to the listener’s behaviours, there have been no empirical studies of laughter in Japanese conversation. In fact, laughter contributes to determine the listener’s role and to identify Japanese women’s communicational styles. To examine such a style, it is also crucial to clarify whether or not social factors influence laughter activity in Japanese female interactions.

Data consists of 130 minutes of a videotaped corpus and includes conversations by 24 Japanese female dyads. Two types of dyads were used: two university students who were friends (12 dyads), and a teacher and university student who had never previously met (12 dyads).

Based on the general sequences of laughter, a quantitative analysis dealing with social variables shows some significant differences of laughter frequency, especially in terms of declination and simultaneous laughter. Considering declination, the student (listener) tends to accept the laughter (declination: 2/12) as encouraged by the teacher’s invitation; while the teacher (listener) could flexibly decide whether to accept or decline the student’s invitation (declination: 7/12). By contrast, most of the listeners in the students’ dyads seem to accept the invitation (acceptance: 22/24). Moving on to simultaneous laughter, the students’ dyads tend towards simultaneous laughter considerably more than the teacher and student dyad (students’ dyad: 7/24; teacher and student dyad: 2/24).

In discussion, this study will interpret how differences in frequency might involve social factors such as power and intimacy from politeness theory and how they might help to identify Japanese women’s communicational styles.

Key words: laughter sequences, politeness theory, the listener’s behaviours, and Japanese female interactions

Nissen, Uwe Kjær (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark) – ukn@language.sdu.dk

‘Is Spanish more non-sexist than 10 years ago? Towards a cognitive understanding of generic expressions’

For more than three decades, guidelines for non-sexist Spanish have repeatedly proposed that the so-called 'generic masculine' (e.g. los profesores, 'the teachers' [masc.]) be substituted by other expressions, such as supposedly sex-neutral terms (e.g. el profesorado 'the teaching staff') or sex-explicit terms (e.g. los profesores y profesoras, 'the teachers’ [masc.], [fem.] resp.). The implicit assumption of such guidelines is that sentences containing the generic masculine forms will lead to associations primarily to men, whereas sentences containing either the sex-neutral or sex-explicit forms will evoke a generic association. Moreover, the guidelines tend to be static in approach, failing to take into account that the interpretation of terms may change over time. While the male bias of the 'generic masculine' has been attested for English, relatively little is known in this respect about languages that have grammatical gender (as e.g. Spanish).

This paper investigates the perception of generic expressions in Spanish over time by means of two questionnaire surveys carried out in 1995 and 2005 at various universities in Spain. Three different types of questionnaires were used: type one contained only masculine forms (e.g. los profesores); type two contained only sex-neutral forms (e.g. el profesorado); type three contained explicit reference to both sexes (e.g. los profesores y profesoras). Each questionnaire contained twelve carefully chosen sentences into which two Christian names were to be inserted (two male names, two female names or one female and one male name). Naturally, a cover story was made up to hide the real aim of the survey.

Preliminary analysis indicates that the assumptions of guidelines for non-sexist use are not entirely valid, e.g. sex-neutral terms (e.g. el profesorado) are not interpreted generically; surprisingly they seem to have an even stronger male bias than the ‘generic masculine’ form (e.g. los profesores). With respect to the analysis over time, it appears that - despite which form is used - the generic interpretation is increasingly favoured today in comparison with 10 years ago.

Key words: language and gender, cognition, generics

O’Mochain, Robert (Osaka University, Japan) – omochain@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp

‘Exploring gender and sexuality issues in an EFL college classroom in Japan’

This presentation explains how a language educator in a women’s junior college in Japan found and implemented an appropriate teaching strategy to explore issues of gender and sexuality with students. I sought a pedagogic strategy that would be educationally effective, institutionally viable, and culturally appropriate for EFL students in a cultural studies course at a Christian women’s college in western Japan. My aim was to adopt an approach that would harmonize with the sociocultural context and with the principles of effective language learning, as well as affirm the identities and rights of queer identifying individuals but without reinforcing static sexual-identity stereotypes. The strategy adopted involved the use of a narrative-based pedagogy, which used life-history narratives from interviews with queer individuals and that elicited in-class narratives and generated classroom inquiry. Five main reasons are given for the effectiveness of this teaching strategy: (a) it takes account of surrounding sociocultural conditions and focuses on local queer lives; (b) it can be adopted for use in learning contexts that have traditionally been averse to issues surrounding sexuality; (c) it affirms the identities and rights of queer-identifying individuals in the face of masculinist ideologies; (d) it avoids reinforcing sexual identity stereotypes; (e) it harmonizes with principles of effective language teaching and provides valuable data for language analysis. The classroom discussions in question seemed to indicate that using local queer narratives as teaching material may prove an effective way of exploring issues of sexuality, gender, and language, especially within institutional or regional contexts in which open discussion of sexuality may seem challenging or unfamiliar. This presentation may encourage a diverse range of educators who are interested in alternative pedagogies to use this or other locally-based strategies to integrate sexuality issues into their teaching lives.

Olivares, Amparo (Universitat de València) – Amparo.Olivares@uv.es

‘Las mujeres y la ciencia: ¿un caso de igualdad o de “diferencia”?’

This study is an approach to the written work of several women scientists (e.g. I. Stengers, Marie A. Hermite, D. Vaughan), through texts belonging to interviews where these women present their viewpoints on the scientific world. We claim that the gender mark in these cases should not be looked for in tracks appearing at the surface of their writing, as we found in earlier work (cf. Olivares 2002, 2003a, 2003b), but on their sensitivity and positioning with respect to the problems in the world. When intellectual women deal with the domain of knowledge, science or epistemé, their language, in principle, is not different from that of their men colleagues. However, it is in the domain of emotional intelligence –i.e. concerning attitudes, sensitiveness, raising awareness regarding environmental issues, ecology, among others— that the “difference” can be seen, even if only qualitatively. Women scientists tend to be more “conciliatory” when speaking about problems menacing us (e.g. I. Stengers in her defense of ecology and democratic spirit). They want to be fair in their evaluations of others (M. A. Hermite). They also rise against the “incompetence” of aerospace technology (e.g. work by D. Vaughan). Equality and difference exist side by side in their writings.

References

Olivares, Amparo (2002) «Lenguaje y género: un ejemplo de literatura «asexuada» , in J. Santaemilia, B. Gallardo & J. Sanmartin (eds.) Sexe i llenguatge: la construcció lingüística de les identitats de gènere, Quaderns de Filologia, Estudis Linguistics VII, 179-191.

Olivares, Amparo (2003a) "Chéri, tu m'écoutes? / Cariño, me escuchas? Del discurso estereotipado femenino al discurso transgresor" in J. Santaemilia (ed.) Género, lenguaje y traducción, Valencia, Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de València, Generalitat Valenciana, 234-246.

Olivares, Amparo (2003) "Análisis del discurso y género", ponencia presentada en el 1st Valencia Workshop on Gender and Language, Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de València, celebrado en Valencia 14-15 de abril.

Ostermann, Ana Cristina (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil) – aco@unisinos.br

‘Can gendered healthcare mean a more humanized healthcare? The case of gynecological and obstetric consultations in the public healthcare system in Brazil’

Healthcare professional-patient interaction has become a focus of research in several countries (e.g. Sarangi 2002; Wilkinson 2000). Feminist studies, in particular, have emphasized the power relations in health professional-female patient interactions (West 1998; Wilkinson 2003). In Brazil, however, studies that look at talk-in-interaction as the constitutive locus of the healthcare are scarce, and those that investigate interactions in women´s healthcare are inexistent.

Recently, the Brazilian government has launched a policy called “Humanization of the Public Health System” and a plan that focuses specifically on women´s health, the National Plan for Comprehensive Attention to Women’s Health. Such a plan aims at enlarging the concept of women´s health to include stages in their lives which go beyond the reproduction period. It emphasizes issues such as sexuality, contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, and gendered violence. In particular, the humanization process in women´s healthcare aims at a “transformation of the relations between women and health professionals, which allows women to become active subjects of their life history” (Giffin 1991, p. 134).

Yet, in order to contribute to the humanization process in women’s health, it is necessary for us to understand how these policies and national plans get translated onto the communicative events themselves; i.e. it is necessary that we look at what is actually happening in the day-by-day interactions between healthcare providers and patients.

It is within such scenario that this study is rooted. It investigates the workings of the so-called “humanization process” within the locus of healthcare provider-female patient interactions. It analyses the interactional phenomena of formulations (Heritage & Watson 1979) and of co-constructions (Lerner 2002) in audiorecorded face-to-face interactions between gynecologists and female patients, which took place in a public women´s health center, center in Southern Brazil. The analysis concentrates around the moments in which sexuality, contraception and gendered violence are discussed.

Key words: women´s health; gynecological consultations; humanization of the healthcare system; doctor-patient interactions

Padilla Cruz, Manuel (Universidad de Sevilla) – mpadillacruz@us.es

‘Politeness: Always implicated?’

Since the publication of Grice’s (1975) and Searle’s (1969) Works, it has normally been assumed that politeness is communicated as an implicature that the hearer has to recover when he realises that the speaker’s linguistic behaviour deviates from the standards captured in the Cooperative Principle (e.g. Brown and Levinson, 1978/1987). Research in Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986, 1995) has shown that, when interpreting utterances, hearers have to develop logical forms into a fully-fledged propositional forms by means of pragmatic processes whose result is the derivation of the explicatures of utterances. Among such processes, hearers have to identify the speaker’s propositional attitude towards the propositional content of utterances. In order to do so, they may rely on certain linguistic expressions that have a conceptual meaning that does not affect the truth-conditional meaning of the utterances in which they occur. Therefore, this presentation will argue and illustrate from a Relevance-theoretic viewpoint that hearers may make judgements about (im)politeness when recovering the explicatures of utterances. This leads to reject the statement that politeness is always communicated as an implicature.

Page, Ruth (University of Central England, Birmingham, UK) – ruth.page@uce.ac.uk

‘Gender, Age and Cultural Identity in New Zealand Children’s Storytelling’

The relationship between emergent narrative skills, gender and ethnicity continues to be an important area of debate, with significant socio-political consequences. One country where this has attracted recent attention is New Zealand (Wilkinson, 1998). This paper explores the ways in which these variables intersect in a cross-cultural, longitudinal study of children’s storytelling, comparing data taken from a school in the UK with that from a multicultural school in Auckland, NZ.

The data consists of written narratives (both personal narratives and retellings) told by 66 children. The initial study compared children at 7 and 10 years old. Building on Holmes’s (2005) work on potential gender difference in the use of Maori English (ME), I analysed the narratives using Labov’s (1972) framework, with a particular interest in the use of evaluation devices and the construction of closure. Differences according to gender were both age and culture specific, occurring only in the NZ sample for the 10-year-old children, and were most polarised between the Pakeha girls and Maori boys, with the Pakeha girls being most like and the Maori boys most unlike the conventional Labovian pattern.

A longitudinal comparison indicated that these differences were by no means fixed, and that over time the older ME boys’ storytelling altered in line with the literacy demands to conform to the dominant westernised pattern being imposed in this pedagogic context. It seems that academic achievement was only gained at the expense of losing cultural identity for this group of boys. This study thus points to the ongoing importance of analysing the complex and shifting ways in which gender and cultural identity are shaped and renegotiated in educational contexts, suggesting that there is more scope for questioning and potentially changing dominant literacy practices in this part of New Zealand.

Key words: New Zealand, Maori English, narrative analysis

References:

Holmes, J. (2005). Using Maori English in New Zealand. International Journal of Society and Language, 172: 91-115.

Labov. W. (1972). Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Wilkinson, I. A. G. (1998). Dealing with diversity: achievement gaps in reading literacy among New Zealand students. Reading Research Quarterly, 33 (2): 144-167.

Pavlidou, Theodossia-Soula (Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece) – pavlidou@lit.auth.gr

‘On the lexical representation of women and men in Modern Greek’

Early feminist work in linguistics has repeatedly stressed the invisibility and derogation of women in language (for references cf. e.g. Thorne B. & N. Henley, 1975, and Thorne Β., Kramarae C. & N. Henley, 1983). In contrast, however, to previous studies on the representation of women and men in the linguistic system, the research reported here (a) focuses on an inflecting language in which grammatical gender is deeply rooted, (b) examines exhaustively all noun entries of a large (and recent) dictionary, the Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek (Λεξικό της Κοινής Νεοελληνικής), published by the Institute of Modern Greek Studies (1998). The aim was to show how men and women are treated lexically in the system itself and how this interplays with grammatical gender.

About 28.000 nouns have been codified, in several stages, for grammatical gender and for various semantic aspects. In particular, nouns with person reference in their literal meaning were examined with respect to whether their content is evaluative and along what dimensions evaluation takes place. Furthermore, nouns with metaphorical person reference were analyzed with respect to the metaphors involved in referring to men and women. The paper presents some of the results and discusses to what extent these confirm earlier claims from English, showing at the same time how grammatical gender fits, or does not fit, into the picture; for example, although the feminine nouns are almost twice as many as the masculine ones, when it comes to human reference, this proportion is reversed. Finally, the implications of these findings for the use of the language and the perception of the world that it allows are examined in the light of evidence from other languages (cf. e.g. Hellinger M. & Bussmann H., 2001-2003, Gender across Languages).

Key words: lexicon, grammatical gender, evaluation, metaphors

Pennock, Barry (Universitat de València) – Barry.Pennock@uv.es

‘“Because you are worth it.” A multimodal analysis of the promotion of beauty products for women in L’Oreal TV commercials’

TV ads for cosmetics, like a lot of commercials, are complex artefacts which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and in which every single detail matters. In some cases, the original commercials with small variations, can be seen in several countries. Many cosmetics commercials feature famous actresses but no firm uses as many as L’Oreal whose ads include Milla Jovovich, Eva Longoria, Andie McDowall and Charlize Theron.

I will be analyzing how the producers of these cosmetics commercials attempt to make ordinary people relate to products advertised by world-famous film stars with seemingly perfect skin and hair and the similarities and differences between the original ads and their Spanish counterparts. My analysis will take in several distinct but connected levels in each commercial: the linguistic message, music, and images as well as a the combination of all of these. I will also focus especially on paralinguistic signals such as voice.

Pichler, Pia (University of London, UK) – p.pichler@gold.ac.uk

‘Hybrid or in between cultures - traditions of marriage in a group of British Bangladeshi girls’

Popular media representations of arranged marriage continue to perpetuate the stereotype of the suppressed Asian girl as a victim of culture clash, thereby contributing to a discourse of ‘cultural pathology’ (Shain 2003: 9; Brah 1996: 74), which positions “Asian culture” in terms of constraints and essentialises the concept of culture itself. Early academic work such as Watson (1977) and the Community Relations Commission (1976) did not present an altogether different perspective, describing the situation of second generation Asian adolescents in Britain as being trapped ‘between two cultures’. On the other hand, sociological and anthropological research in the last decade highlights that young British born “Asians” are experienced users of a range of British and Asian cultural practices, thereby developing bicultural or ‘hybrid’ identities (Anwar 1998; Ballard 1994; Barker 1997, 1998; Brah 1996; Dwyer 2000; Gavron 1998; Gardner and Shukur 1994; Ghuman 1994, 2003; Modood et al. 1994; Pollen 2002; Shain 2003).

Language and gender research has so far not explored the topic of arranged marriage, or the talk of British Bangladeshi girls. My own paper’s discourse analytic approach to the spontaneous marriage talk of five adolescent girls and to ethnographic-style interviews with one of the girls is therefore guided by cross-disciplinary research on young hybrid British Asian identities. My exploration of the intersection between gender, ethnicity and culture aligns itself with Brah’s (1996: 234) conceptualisation of culture as a ‘process’ and as ‘semiotic space with infinite class, caste, gender, ethnic or other inflections’ (ibid. 246). However, my post-structuralist celebration of the girls’ hybridity, based on my analysis of the girls’ negotiations of a modified discourse of arranged marriage in their spontaneous talk, is, to some extent, challenged by my in-group informant in our interviews. My paper will therefore take a critical and reflexive approach to perspectives of researcher and researched, and ask if a focus on conversational micro-phenomena ‘may accord people an unusual degree of agency and flexibility in their construction of themselves’ (McElhinny 2003: 26-27).

Key words: British Bangladeshi; hybridity; arranged marriage; girls

Piller, Ingrid (Basel University, Switzerland) – ingrid.piller@unibas.ch

‘Sexing multilingualism: the semiotics of the sex industry in Switzerland’

The sex industry is one of a number of tourism-related growth industries. In Switzerland, a nation of 7.5 million inhabitants, for instance, the sex industry grossed CHF 3.2 billion in 2005 (Bundesamt für Polizei, 2006). In this paper I will explore the ways in which the sex industry in Switzerland is semioticized as a high-quality and “clean”. My data come from four sources: (1) shop fronts; (2) advertising in local newspapers; (3) prostitutes’, nightclubs’ and escort agencies’ websites; and (4) clients’ blogs. I will show that multilingual proficiency is eroticized, if not fetishized, in this context. Describing the sex workers’ language skills is one way to associate the industry with “quality”. This association occurs in a context where multilingualism is stereotyped as a central aspect of the national identity. It also needs to be placed in a context where the majority of sex workers are actually migrant women from Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean (Le Breton & Fiechter, 2005). Thus, in these discourses stereotypical Swiss quality needs to be dissociated from Swiss bodies (e.g., from a client’s blog: “Be careful with Swiss street hookers: they are drug addicts and many of the [sic] HIV positive.”) and associated with institutions (e.g., from a client’s blog: “Big swimming pool, saunas all with usual Swiss cleanliness and quality.”)

Key words: sex industry; multilingualism; semiotics

References

Bundesamt für Polizei. (2006). Bericht Innere Sicherheit der Schweiz 2005 [2005 internal security report for Switzerland]. Berne: Bundespublikationen.

Le Breton, M., & Fiechter, U. (2005). Verordnete Grenzen - verschobene Ordnungen: eine Analyse zu Frauenhandel in der Schweiz [Ordered borders - shifted orders: an analysis of the trafficking of women in Switzerland]. Berne: eFeF.

Pujolar, Joan (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) - joan.pujolar@

Gènere i bilingüisme: connectant experiències i teories ~ Gender and bilingualism: connecting experiences and theories

En aquest paper, vull argumentar la necessitat d’enfortir les connexions entre els estudis de gènere i llengua i els d’altres camps de coneixement de la lingüística que també es preocupen sobre formes de dominació social. Parlaré sobretot sobre la connexió entre els estudis de gènere i llengua i els estudis de bilingüisme o multilingüisme que examinen el paper de la diversitat lingüística en la producció i reproducció de relacions de desigualtat entre grups socials. En tot cas, moltes de les meves reflexions també són aplicables a altres camps similars, com el de llengua i etnicitat, llengua i classe o llengua i educació.

Els estudis feministes o els estudis sobre gènere han fet aportacions importants a les humanitats i les ciències socials, tot posant al descobert la base androcèntrica de moltes pràctiques socials, incloent-hi el treball científic. En endegar la crítica de les relacions de dominació, molts feministes han explorat les connexions entre desigualtats de gènere i altres formes de desigualtat, com la raça, l’etnicitat o la classe social. Des d’aquest punt de vista, han contribuït a donar llum sobre els mecanismes de dominació social que operen subtilment dins diversos contextos socials, incloent-hi el món intel·lectual, i no només en relació al gènere, sinó d’una forma més genèrica. El feminisme aporta en definitiva una nova forma d’entendre la societat i d’estudiar-la.

Els estudis sobre gènere i llengua han aportat reflexions crítiques sobre la lingüística en concret, tot posant al descobert les pràctiques i biaixos androcèntrics dels lingüistes. També han contribuït a descobrir i analitzar subtils pràctiques socials i comunicatives que revelen la desigualtat entre homes i dones i entre diferents models de gènere i sexualitat en contextos diversos. Amb tot, cal preguntar-se què aporten els estudis sobre llengua i gènere al feminisme i als estudis de gènere en conjunt. Què tenen a dir sobre la dominació social? En aquest paper, exploro aquestes qüestions a través de diversos estudis sociolingüístics que aborden de forma integrada qüestions de gènere i multilingüisme. Acabo argumentant que és a través d’aquests estudis que combinen dimensions diverses de categorització social que els estudis de gènere i llengua poden fer aportacions valuoses en la lluita contra les desigualtats.

In this paper, I argue for the need to strengthen the connections between gender and language studies and other fields of linguistics concerned with forms of social domination. I will mainly address the connection between gender and language studies and bilingual or multilingual studies that examine the role of linguistic diversity in the production and reproduction of inequalities amongst social groups. I expect many of my reflections to be relevant to similar fields, such as language and ethnicity, language and class and language and education.

Feminist, women or gender studies have made important contributions to the humanities and the social sciences by uncovering the androcentric assumptions of many social practices, including scientific work. By engaging in a critique on relations of domination, many feminists have explored the connections between gender inequalities and other forms of inequality, such as race, ethnicity or social class. From this viewpoint, they have contributed to illuminate the ways in which domination operates in subtle ways in different social contexts, including the academic and intellectual world, and not only in relation to gender, but also in a more generic way. Feminism, in conclusion, proposes a new way to understand and study society.

Gender and language studies have also made critical contributions from a linguistic and sociolinguistic view point, often uncovering androcentric practices and biases in the work of linguists too. They have also contributed to uncover and analyze subtle communicative and social practices that reveal inequalities between men and women and between different gender and sexuality models in many social contexts. However, it is necessary to reflect on what gender and language studies can actually contribute to feminism and gender studies as a whole. What do they have to say about social domination? In this paper, I explore these questions through various sociolinguistic studies that address in an integrated way issues of gender and multilingualism. I will finally argue that it is through such studies that combine various dimensions of social categorization that gender and language studies can do valuable contributions in the struggle against inequalities.

Robles, Goretty (FOREM-PV, València) – gorettyr@

‘Where are women in Spanish Second Language textbooks? What they do? Who they are?’

The paper discusses gender bias in Spanish as Second Language textbooks from the point of view of a women teacher. I have revised a sample of 13 textbooks (all but one, published in the last five years) for gathering information about how gender is represented. The paper is twofold I analyze the paper of nameless women in daily life scenes but also the reflection of celebrities. The former are analyzed through images, the latter through citations. More than one thousand references to celebrities have been recorded in relational database where aspects such as profession, nationality, role, and how they participate in the action have been counted. Historical comparison factors are introduced to try to establish a general trend in how more a more women of an increasingly panoply of jobs are being introduced in Spanish as Second Language textbooks. From a theoretical standpoint I subscribed feminist theory mainly the work of Sunderland and colleagues.

Some striking remarks can be drawn from current Spanish as Second Language textbooks, in my sample only two manuals have as many nameless women as nameless men, however in the case of celebrities men appear almost thrice than women (426 cited men versus 180 cited women at least once). But going deeper some imbalance are more disturbing like the fact than more than 60% of women are Spaniards when Spaniards only count about 10% of Spanish speakers in the world. Details such as age and occupation are further discussed. The paper wraps up with some recommendations for editors and authors in order to avoid stereotypes and a claim for diversity in Spanish as Second Language textbooks. The emergence of representative voices from varying social and cultural standpoints should be reflected in our textbooks.

Key words: Spanish (Second Language); Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Sex Bias; Textbook Research.

Saito, Masami (Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan) – saitoh@p1.tcnet.ne.jp

‘Body politics through the media: Japan’s first female voters with babies on their backs’

This paper explores the role of the media which sent an ambivalent message at the critical moment when women first took the vote in Japan. Japanese women did not finally receive the franchise until 1946 during the American occupation following the country’s defeat in World War Two.

Before the election, the media had actively campaigned for women’s suffrage. Then, 39 Japanese women successfully got seats in the House of Representatives. Yet, women’s issues disappeared from the news shortly after the election and they only got 15 seats in the 1947 election.

This paper examines coverage of the 1946 election by Japanese newspapers through Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA). I discuss the gender norms embodied in many photos of women voters carrying babies on their backs wrapped in Nenneko jackets, titled “Voting with her grandchild on her back“. As women voters, young or old with baby on their backs, symbolized the mother’s role which in turn stood for the psychological unity of the nation state, through the unity of the family. Women’s bodies with babies camouflaged the occupation’s true goal of demilitarization. Women’s suffrage was welcome propaganda by both the media and American occupation as both innocuous and opportune. Women’s issues were reported just as scandals in the newspapers after the election.

In this paper I present diverse photos of women voters carrying babies on their backs; this highlights the hegemony that Japan’s newspapers exercised. It is assumed that media engaging in a discourse designed to elicit the consent of their readers who had the gender ideology of a multi-role model. In conclusion, hegemonic gender hierarchy was in fact strengthened by articles and photos which superficially focused on women’s rights. I propose that there is a need to comprehensively rethink the history of women’s rights in Japan.

Key words: Female suffrage, post-war Japan, media propaganda, Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA)

Sallo, Ibrahim (Gulf College, Muscat, Oman) – reeman2005@yahoo.co.uk

‘A Sociolinguistic Study of Gender Differences in Mosul/Iraq’

This paper examines language gender differences (henceforth GDs) in Mosul at lexical, syntactic and semantic levels and attempts to explore the influence of sociolinguistic incentives (i.e., topic, setting, and participants including their age, sex and literacy). It is hypothesized that females and males (henceforth Fs and Ms) speak differently. It aims proving that Iraqi speech community is not a homogeneous one with shared linguistic norms as Chomsky claims (i.e., ‘the ideal speaker/listener theory’). It is based on data collected from Mosuli Arab informants. This study is also expected to shed light on this phenomenon with reference to its nature, causes, how and where they occur. This paper also tackles GDs in expressing apology, compliments, complaints, condolence, congratulations, greetings, leave-takings, refusal, swearing, thanks giving, and threatening. It ends with some findings and recommendations, which call for future empirical studies of GDs to give a comprehensive picture of them in Iraq and the Arab World with reference to sex-mixed interaction, gossip and verbosity, interruption, joke-telling, language acquisition, language change, communicative competence, self-disclosure, social stereotypes, taboo expressions, use of proverbs, tag questions and stylistic GDs.

Salonen, Marko (University of Tampere, Finland) – Marko.Salonen@uta.fi

‘Explicit hetero identity on Internet forums’

Sexual identity is mainly claimed and made explicit by those who do not fit into heteronormative expectations of the society (lesbians, bisexuals, gays etc.). Thus heterosexuals have not named, talked nor made hetero identity an explicit frame of sexual life. Recent developments in contemporary sexual identity discourse in Finland, however, suggest that even hetero may become explicit starting point for discussing sexual life. During the last ten years some youth and adults have started to discuss and debate what calling oneself and others regular hetero, half hetero, potential hetero or full hetero might mean. Naming oneself and others as straight/hetero has become possible, sensible and in some situations necessary, too.

In this presentation I analyse the mobile use and functions of explicit hetero identity on several widely read Finnish Internet forums. I will use discourse analysis, positioning theory and rhetorical analysis to argue that hetero identity on these forums is liquid and multifunctional. Instead of describing sexual orientation, I argue that in discourse hetero category is powerfully used to shake, but also to re-establish and legitimise prevailing sexual and gender hierarchies.

Key words: sexual hierarchies, Internet forums, discourse analysis, hetero identity

Sauntson, Helen (University of Birmingham, UK) – h.v.sauntson@bham.ac.uk

‘An appraisal analysis of gender and sexuality in an electronic corpus of coming out narratives’

This paper uses appraisal analysis (Martin, 2000; White, 2002) to investigate the patterns of evaluation surrounding references to gender in an electronic corpus of coming out narratives produced by young lesbians and gay men (available at ). Coming out is often experienced and perceived as an event of major significance by those identifying as lesbian, gay and bisexual. References to gender in these narratives are often accompanied by dense linguistic markers of evaluation, suggesting it is considered important to the narrators in their ongoing process of coming out. Such evaluative references to gender suggest that gender and sexuality are not experienced separately by these narrators and lend support to Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004: 477) claim that ‘[a] reason why the ideology of gender essentialism cannot be discarded is that social actors themselves use it to organize and understand identities.’ Whether confirming or not to socially dominant gender norms, the narrators of the stories draw on ideologies of gender essentialism to understand and construct sexual identities for themselves and others. The narrators in this corpus clearly do not separate gender and sexuality into discreet variables, but conflate them in the process of constructing a social identity. Therefore, this paper illustrates how sexuality, as a form of social identity, is linguistically constructed through coded references to forms of gendered behaviour. More broadly, the appraisal analysis presented in this paper contributes to our understanding of how sexual identities are constructed, depending on the attitudinal experiences of the narrator, and can highlight some of the real social issues at stake in young people’s coming out experiences.

References

Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. 2004. Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society. 33. 469-515.

Martin, J. 2000. Beyond exchange. Appraisal systems in English. In Hunston, S. and Thompson, G. (eds) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 142-175

White, P. 2002. Appraisal – the language of evaluation and intersubjective stance. appraisal.

Scheu Lottgen, U., Antonia Visiedo Nieto & Elena Zamora Sánchez (Universidad de Murcia) – dagmar@fcu.um.es

‘”Crash”: Cortesía y género en la juventud multiétnica en España’

¿Cuántos choques culturales estallan a diario debido a la diferencia entre ‘nosostros’ y ‘ellos’ en el comportamiento social? ¿Tratamos todos por igual a las personas del otro sexo? Ciertamente hay diferencias socioculturales en las estrategias de cortesía y, probablemente, estas diferencias sean mayores en el trato entre géneros. Desde este supuesto, el objetivo principal de nuestro estudio se centra en averiguar cuales son las diferencias de cortesía hacia el otro género a nivel intercultural.

Numerosos estudios dentro del campo de la cortesía intercultural (Brown & Levinson, Lakoff, Leech, Scollon & Scollon entre otros) se han ocupado de examinar las diferencias culturales en el comportamiento social como resultado de diferencias en los criterios de valores interpersonales. A partir de este marco teórico, adoptamos el concepto del ‘yo público’ de la psicología cognitiva (Traindis, Somech) así como la visión del discurso como acción social en la psicología discursiva (Edwards, Potter; Wetherell) como procedimiento metodológico más adecuado para la consecución de nuestro objetivo.

Mediante el análisis psicológico discursivo estudiaremos las estrategias de cortesía empleadas hacia el otro género en informantes jóvenes de diversos orígenes culturales. Los resultados serán interpretados a la luz de las actitudes que generan entre los jóvenes de esta sociedad multicultural y los efectos sobre su contacto interpersonal.

Schleicher, Nóra (Budapesti Kommunikációs Főiskola, Budapest, Hungary) – schleichernora@axelero.hu

‘Borrowing and swearing. Indirect construction of gender at a Hungarian workplace’

The paper would present some empirical results and theoretical conclusions of a research aimed at studying the relationship between gender and language use at a workplace setting.

In the framework of a qualitative research I spent three months at two departments of a Hungarian factory where I studied the interface between gender and language use among 35 white-collar workers, 18 and 17 at the two departments, respectively. Combined methods of participant observation, conversation analysis, sociometry (network analysis) and semi structured interviews were used. Theories informing the research included symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, postmodern feminism and the communities of practice model.

Analysis of the data led to the following conclusions:

1.- Neither our biological sex nor our gender (conceptualised as an attribute we obtain through socialisation) determine language use.

2.- In most cases gender is not constructed directly through language use either.

3.- Language use plays an important part in constructing certain characteristics like honesty, expertise, courage etc. which characteristics themselves are gendered. Gender is thus indirectly constructed and should be conceptualised not as an attribute of people but rather as a field filled with meanings (specific to the given communities of practice) about ‘man’ and ‘woman’. These meanings affect both the linguistic behaviour and the interpretation of the linguistic behaviour of speakers moving within this field.

I would like to prove the above conclusions by detailed analysis of the language use of two of the observed women. In one case, while the language of the conversation was always Hungarian, the frequent borrowing of English words characterising the woman’s speech played an important part in the specificly gendered construction of the quality of expertise. In the other case the frequent use of swear words characterising the language use of another woman helped constructing the quality of honesty also in a highly gendered way.

Key words: gender, language use, workplace, borrowing, swearing

Simó, Isabel-Clara (writer and journalist)

‘Hi ha una literatura de dones?’

Conferència de l’escriptora i periodista Isabel-Clara Simó.

Simon-Maeda, Andrea (Nagoya Keizai University, Inuyama, Japan) – andy@nagoya-ku.ac.jp

‘Bigger is better: Masculinity and consumerist discourses in Viagra advertisements’

Internet advertisements for bodily management play a powerful role in the display and reproduction of dominant ideologies of male and female sexuality. Universal standards for male performance framed by heterosexual desire are discursively fashioned and exploited for marketing purposes through Internet advertisements for vasoactive agents (Viagra, Cialis) and other sex enhancing medications. Biometaphors for masculine sexual potency (“throbbing member”) and (hetero)sexist depictions of function/dysfunction (“Can’t perform in bed?”) problematize aspects of male biology that can be repaired or enhanced with medications offered to the consumer in "the friendly voice" of advertisements (“I’ve been there and, trust me, I understand and empathize with you.”). The sexual pharmacology industry depends on advertising strategies which highlight prevalent notions of (hetero)sexual relationships wherein effective hydraulic performance of the “power tool” is conflated with ideas of “authentic” masculinity. To send this ideological message to consumers, advertisers employ visual and textual types which, sustained by dominant views of sexuality, construct an idealized version of “manhood.” In addition to provocative images and vocabulary, advertisers appeal to the implied sexual needs and expectations of “consumption communities” (Fairclough, 1989) through the use of discursive features (e.g., direct/indirect address, declarative/imperative modals, overwording) that create a “synthetic personalization” and simulated sense of solidarity with the reader of the text. Although the commodification of women’s bodies continues to predominate discourses of the “sex sell,” a considerable investment is now being made by advertisers in the appropriation of male bodies and masculinity for the sake of contemporary capitalist enterprises intent on promulgating the slogan “bigger is better” among consumer and sexual cultures.

This presentation will include visual and textual examples of Internet advertisements for Viagra and other sexual enhancement products analyzed from a CDA perspective.

masculinity, consumerism, sexuality, heteronormativity

Sopeña Balordi, A. Emma (Universitat de València) – amalia.sopena@uv.es

‘Tracy Chevalier, El azul de la virgen’

Integrarse en una sociedad diferente a la propia - los lingüistas pragmáticos lo saben perfectamente - no estriba solamente en aprender la lengua, ni siquiera en seguir estrictamente las normas sociales occidentales; todo un compendio de savoir faire impide la súbita integración en la vida de una pequeña comunidad provinciana. Existen códigos y convenciones que rigen los comportamientos: la cortesía del lugar, el savoir vivre, las bonnes manières que no se confunden con la etiqueta, aunque pueden llegar a ser igualmente rígidas.

Estos códigos de comportamiento facilitan el día a día de los individuos, sus relaciones, y crean una armonía social. Definen lo que se espera de cada cual en cada momento, lo que está permitido y prohibido, dictan las obligaciones según las jerarquías sociales, el sexo, la edad, etc., y permiten situar a las personas donde les corresponde según dichos códigos: es, en cierto modo, una comodidad, una evitación de situaciones comprometidas. La ausencia de un comportamiento esperado, o al contrario, la presencia de un comportamiento cuando no se espera ninguno, atraerá la atención de forma negativa.

Nuestra contribución al Seminario utilizará como corpus de trabajo el texto de Tracy Chavalier El azul de la virgen en su traducción española.

Isabelle de Moulin vive fascinada por el profundo color azul de la hornacina de la Virgen en la iglesia de su pueblo. Es la Francia del s. XVI, cuando el protestantismo libra una lucha feroz contra la religión romana. Cuatrocientos años más tarde, una americana, Ella Turner, llega al mismo pueblo con su marido, que ha sido destinado en Francia. Guiada por unos extraños sueños - y con la ayuda del bibliotecario -, buscará el rastro de su pasado, hasta desentrañar el secreto familiar, permanecido oculto durante siglos. Ella Turner, en su estancia en el pueblo, hace todo lo posible por integrarse en la vida francesa, toma clases de francés, se fija en las costumbres de las gentes del pueblo, pero en vano; lleva la marca de la mujer americana en su forma de comportarse, y no es aceptada. Este sentimiento de soledad, unido al descubrimiento de sus raíces y a la relación sentimental que entabla con el bibliotecario - otro ser desarraigado que conoce bien la vida americana por haber vivido en los Estados Unidos -, provocarán la ruptura de su matrimonio.

Veremos como ya en su primer día como residente en la aldea entra en la boulangerie de la plaza, comercio prototípico del día a día de la pequeña sociedad provinciana, empieza a sentir el rechazo de los habitantes, actitud que no mejorará a pesar de los esfuerzos que realiza para integrarse.

Del texto de trabajo tomaremos no solamente los elementos lingüísticos sino los paralingüísticos, ya que éstos van a poner de manifiesto de manera fidedigna las actitudes ante la presencia de la extraña.

Souhali, Hichem & Souraya Bouzidi (University of Batna & University of Khenchela, Algeria) – hichemhicham2003@

‘Rai and Pop Culture: A discursive analysis of Rai Lyrics echoes on Sentimental and Sexual discourse among Algerian Teenagers’

Our contribution proposes a close outlook at the most popular musical type in Algeria: Rai. The often-dismissed effects of Rai in the construction of a socio-cultural component in young people identities are being considered from a different angle. Hitherto, Rai is not only seen as a post-colonial generational popular art, but further into a “faiseur” of youth cultural subconscious in matters of love and sexual relationships. Hence themes (loaded with raw words) such as extra marital relationships, homosexuality, (homo) eroticism, sadomasochism…become more and more currents and got mirrored in the daily language of young teenagers.

Our work is an interdisciplinary approach to a cultural phenomenon that is shaping the language of young Algerians and eventually their conduct.

Su, Hsi-Yao (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan) – hsysu@ntnu.edu.tw

‘Refinement, Qizhi and Taike: Ideologies of Language, Gender, and Class in Contemporary Taiwan’

This study investigates the interwoven relationship between gender stereotypes and language ideologies in contemporary Taiwan. Drawing data from 44 sociolinguistic interviews conducted on college campuses in a recent fieldwork in Taiwan, this study examines three terms that systematically appear in the interviews, qizhi, roughly equivalent to “a refined disposition, ” and taike and taimei, literally “Taiwanese guest/customer” and “Taiwanese sister,” respectively. Taike and taimei are cultural stereotypes of the male and female versions of a particular group of Taiwanese young adults often perceived as distinctively local and unknowingly unsophisticated and, in many ways, as the antithesis of qizhi. Focusing on the interaction among the three terms and how interviewees talk about them, the study shows the following. First, while the three terms are commonly associated with a wide range of social practices, linguistic practices remain highly significant in the interviewees’ interpretations and definitions of the three terms. Second, qizhi as heavily loaded cultural concept is used more frequently to evaluate women’s degree of refinement than men’s. Third, qizhi and taike/taimei are related to common linguistic varieties in Taiwan, such as Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, to a different extent. Mandarin, the national language, is considered the most prestigious, while Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is a stigmatized “hybrid” variety often indexing a lack of qizhi. Fourth, an investigation of the interaction between qizhi and taike/taimei indicates that talk on these frequently invoked cultural concepts is heavily related to a class-based ideal of femininity and language ideologies. Starting from the examination of the three terms, the study seeks to illuminate the mutually constitutive relationship between talk on qizhi and taike/taimei, on the one hand, and ideologies of language, gender, and class, on the other.

Sulstarova, Brikela, Pascal Singy & Patrice Guex (Lausanne University Clinic, Switzerland) – Brikela.Sulstarova@chuv.ch

‘Politeness and the Linguistic Construction of Gender in a Medical Setting in French-Speaking Switzerland’

Feminist research has suggested that gender and politeness should be analysed from the communities of practice perspective. This notion of CofP is important for conceptualising gender as an aspect of social identity that is achieved through language use. An ongoing PhD study in sociolinguistics attempts to show the construction of gender identity through medical discourse among Swiss health care professionals. It aims mainly at the detection of gender linguistic practices of health care professionals when they are discussing amongst themselves in a formal setting in French-speaking Switzerland.

Data are collected in the Psychiatry Service of the University Clinic of Lausanne where the women are highly present but not in high ranking positions. Supervision meetings are filmed, where several male and female physicians, nurses, psychologists and social workers discuss problematic psychiatric consultations. This presentation will discuss some results drawn from the quantitative and qualitative discourse analyses of verbal interactions. Even though professional identity seems to be the more relevant aspect of the social identity in medical settings, the analysis of the verbal interactions illustrates that gender differences in linguistic practices influence professional identity. The evaluation of speaking time reveals an evident asymmetry between male and female health care professionals in this CofP: males dominate the verbal exchange and this independently of their professional status. Different models of turns allocation seem to influence the opportunities to speak to specific social groups and particularly to women.

Gender differences are also observed in the ways that male and female health care professionals use politeness linguistic resources on medical discussions related to : transgression of taboos, formal vs informal style for sexuality topics, meta-discursive forms with self-evaluative functions and directness or indirectness strategies for criticism.

Key words: gender, sociolinguistics, politeness, verbal interactions

Sunderland, Jane (Lancaster University, UK) – j.sunderland@lancs.ac.uk

‘Literary affordances in children’s fiction’

To date, critical feminist analyses of children’s fiction have tended to look negatively at the content of stories (e.g. Petersen and Lach, 1990) and at the ways they are told, in terms of linguistic features (e.g. Baker and Freebody, 1989). They have thus investigated what is wrong with children’s books in terms of gender representation. This paper in contrast starts with the premise that some children’s fiction carries its own implicit feminist critique, and in this paper I look at the ‘affordances’ of fiction to textually construct women, girls and gender relations in a progressive manner. I am thus looking for positive possible readings, rather than negative ‘hidden agendas’ (though both are a legitimate part of critical text analyses; see Wodak 2006). However, the analyst must treat fiction as fiction to show this affordance. This includes considering point of view, irony and humour, fantasy, and visuals.

Of course, fiction can introduce readers to ‘positive role models’ for women and girls, and create worlds closer to feminist utopia than exist at present. However, much more interestingly, it can also allow ‘anachronistic’ voices: historical characters can articulate feminist discourses which would have been inaccessible at the time to which those characters technically ‘belong’, through the strategy of what has been called ‘achronological intertextuality’ (Stephens, 1992). The main data source for the study and paper is the award-winning children’s book Holes (Louis Sachar, 1999), which is set in modern times, but which includes episodes from the past. The use of ‘achronological intertextuality’ may be particularly effective for children’s books, due to children’s still-developing understanding of history.

Key words: fiction, CDA, affordances

Sylvester, Louise (University of Central England, Birmingham, UK) – louise.sylvester@uce.ac.uk

‘Linguistic Constructions of Heterosexuality’

Much of the current work focusing on language and sexuality is concerned with gay, lesbian and queer identities and the usefulness of sexual identity labels as categories of thought. This work makes only glancing references to heterosexuality which remains ‘[u]nstudied and naturalized’ (Campbell-Kibler et al. 2002: 12) and is described as having normative and naturalized status and as the ‘unmarked’ or ‘default’ sexual identity (Cameron and Kulick 2003: 59). This pervasive notion of the naturalness of heterosexuality prompts closer examination. In this paper I will consider representations of heterosexual encounters in two Middle English romance texts. The focus will be on the construction of the masculine role as offeror of heterosexual sex and the constraints on the set of responses available to the culturally-constructed feminine role of offeree.

Sara Mills has observed that romance scenes are particularly fertile ground for transitivity analyses (1995: 145; see also Wareing 1994). Analysis of the processes and participants in scenes in which the heterosexual script is represented enables us to examine the gender roles and positionings within a dominant cultural narrative. In this paper I will consider the fifteenth-century romance Sir Degrevant and the story of the Fair Maid of Astolat in Malory’s Le Mort Darthur examining the processes and participants and analysing conversations between the participants in terms of the speech acts performed, numbers of turns taken, and use of hedges and tag questions. The findings will be interpreted in the light of the shift in cultural understandings of female sexuality which took place in the Middle Ages and which inform cultural expectations about the construction of heterosexuality in language up to the present day.

References

Campbell-Kibler, K, Podesva, Robert J, Roberts, Sarah and Wong, Andrew eds. 2001 Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice. Stanford, California: CSLI Publications

Cameron, Deborah and Kulick, Don 2003 Language and Sexuality. Cambridge University Press

Casson, L F ed. 1949 The Romance of Sir Degrevant. A Parallel Text-edition from MSS Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2 and Cambridge University FF.1.6. (EETS o.s. 221) Oxford University Press

Mills, Sara 1995 Feminist Stylistics. London: Routledge

Wareing, S 1994 ‘And Then He Kissed Her: The Reclamation of Female Characters to Submissive Roles in Contemporary Fiction’ in Wales, K ed. 1994 Feminist Linguistics in Literary Criticism. Cambridge: D S Brewer, pp. 117-136

Vinaver, E ed. 1971 Malory: Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Key words: heterosexuality; romance; transitivity analysis

Talbot, Mary (University of Sunderland, UK) - Mary.talbot@sunderland.ac.uk

‘Jamie’s School Dinner Ladies’

This paper focuses on a TV expert making strategic use of his media access and TV persona. Jamie Oliver is a British ‘celebrity chef’, familiar from lifestyle TV. Jamie’s school dinners, however, is something rather different. While it has lifestyle elements, it is a combination of docu-soap, celebrity biopic and makeover. Ambitiously, it is a kind of mediatised political activism: part of a campaign to improve the quality of food in British schools and, more ambitiously still, impose constraints on the junk food industry and improve British eating habits. The series is of particular interest because of a tension between two conflicting objectives: the maintenance of the celebrity’s persona of likeable ‘ordinariness’ and the unfolding drama of epic transformation. At the centre of both are the dinner ladies, who are both his instruments and his greatest hurdle.

In the first two episodes, the epic transformation that he undertakes is the establishment of nutritious, freshly prepared food in a single secondary school in a London borough. Once he succeeds in that challenge (with many dramatic and conflictual engagements with both kitchen staff and children), he goes on to ‘tackle’ the whole borough. The male voice-over asks: ‘Can Jamie Oliver transform what 20,000 kids eat right across one London borough and change British school dinners?’ As an elaborate TV stunt it makes absorbing viewing and, as the biopic elements of the documentary make abundantly clear, this is a huge undertaking, that has been conducted at considerable personal cost. From the docu-soap elements, it is also evident is that the cost wasn’t only Oliver’s. This is dramatically represented in the interactions that have been selected for the finished programme, including those between the male celebrity chef-expert and the dinner ladies. Examining the visual and verbal texture of these interactions, this paper looks at the cost for the dinner ladies, as they are subjected to male dominance and control in the masculine space of a military training school.

Key words: male TV expert, performance of masculinity, face-threatening acts

Tanaka, Lidia (La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia) – l.tanaka@latrobe.edu.au

‘Perpetuating and reinforcing stereotypes: The printed media and Japanese women’s language’

This paper shows the role of the media in perpetuating and reinforcing traditional conceptions of women’s language. More than 30 years Akiko Jugaku (1979), one of the most eminent feminists, described the use of the masculine personal pronoun boku by school girls as an act of linguistic subversion. Masculinization of the Japanese language by young women is still reported, and current studies show that women’s everyday speech is different from the constructed ‘women’s language’ promoted since the early 19th century (Abe, 2000; Endo, 1997a, 1997b; Matsumoto, 2004; Ozaki, 2004; Sunaoshi, 2004). However, the general perception of how women should speak is still very traditional, a belief reinforced and perpetuated through representations of women and their language by the printed media.

In this paper I analyse published materials on women’s speech in contemporary Japan. I look at the public perception of ‘proper’ women’s speech through letters written to newspapers’ editors. I also examine recently published books, magazines, and internet journals on women and their language, which are aimed at a mature audience, particularly at professional females.

The detailed analysis shows that the general public acknowledges, but not necessarily approves of, the different styles in women’s speech. Some readers write that they themselves use some lexical items considered ‘rough’. Others lament at the ‘masculinization’ of women’s language and take a critical view. At the same time, self-help type books claim that success depends on how ‘well’ a woman can speak. Direct associations between ‘polite’ language and beauty, intelligence and success are made in various overt and hidden forms.

This paper shows how the media and general books reinforce the perception that once women enter the workforce, they are expected to conform and adhere to the use of ‘proper’ or ‘correct’ linguistic forms in formal and public settings, in order to be accepted and acknowledged as adult members of society.

Key words: Japanese, printed media, stereotypes

Tarim, Seyda & Amy Kyratzis (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) – starim@education.ucsb.edu, kyratzis@education.ucsb.edu

‘Turkish Preschool Girls’ Gender Practices in Peer Play’

Many researchers of gender and language view gender “as a set of practices through which people construct and claim identities” (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003: 205; see also Butler, 1990; Cameron 1997). Through close analysis of talk in interaction across contexts, we can study the identities that for speakers are “operative on specific occasions of use” (Goodwin 1999). This paper examines the set of practices by which friendship groups of middle-class Turkish girls construct themselves as feminine in particular contexts of play. An ethnographic study was conducted. Children in one preschool classroom in Turkey were videotaped during the free play portion of their day in naturally occurring interactions. Videotaping occurred one month in the Winter and two months in the summer of one academic year. The classroom was visited every week-day during these periods. Friendship groups were identified. This report is of a specific gender practices observed in one friendship group of girls, including the use of tag questions. Group members used tag questions in settings such as task activities when they played with one another. They used them to a heightened extent when they were engaged in a particularly “feminine” activity, using make-up. They did not use tags when they played with boys, or when they assumed the role of mother in role play. These results suggest that tags comprise a way for these young preschool girls to construct particular personae, personae which they wish to make operative on some occasions of peer play, but not others.

Torres Roncallo, Luz Marina (Universidad del Atlántico, Colombia) – EDICE – luzmarinatr@

‘Cuando los hombres hablan de mujeres’

En esta ponencia se pretende mostrar la imagen femenina y masculina que jóvenes unversitarios de la ciudad de Barranquilla construyen a partir de las apreciaciones esbozadas en sus temas conversacionales.

El asunto tiene que ver con la forma cómo estudiantes de sexo masculino tratan en sus temas conversacionales las experiencias de sus aventuras eróticas. Lo cual permite, en una especie de espiral de miradas recíprocas, dar cuenta de la imagen que los estudiantes construyen de sí mismo, de la imagen que éstos creen construyen las estudiantes de ellos y la imagen que de ellas construyen ellos.

El trabajo aquí planteado se desprende de un proceso de pesquizas que alrededor del ámbito de la articulación lenguaje-género he venido realizando. Esto con el propósito de examinar dicha relación y a la vez aportar los resutados obtenidos tanto a los estudios de género como a los de la linguística en Colombia. En realidad, a la fecha no se conoce estudio alguno en nuestro país sobre la cortesía ligado al tema de género.

Para el estudio en referencia de la ponencia aquí praopuesta se toma como corpus una conversacion que se desarrolló en el campus Universitario y cuyos integrantes en la etapa inicial de la misma son jóvenes Universitarios del sexo masculino, quienes posteriormente involucran en su tertulia a una joven compañera de clases.

Por otro lado, el análisis y tratamiento metodológico de este corpus se fundamentó especialmente en la propuesta teórica del denominado "análisis semiolingüístico del discurso", propuesto por Patrick Charaudeau. Especialmente en lo relativo al proceso organizacional de la enunciación y por ende las marcas formales de la misma a la luz de su respectivo marco situacional. También soportan este estudio fundamentos teóricos sobre la categoría de análisis Género y por supuesto Cortesía.

Torres Zúñiga, Laura (Universidad de Granada) – lzuniga@ugr.es

‘”Mother was a woman of action as well as of words”: Politeness and Matriarchy in Tennessee William’s Plays’

Drama is dialogue; consequently, paradigms of discourse analysis can be applied to the study of dramatic texts in order to uncover the underlying implications of the verbal exchanges taking place on stage. One of these enlightening perspectives for the study of conversation is politeness theory, which in Brown and Levinson’s approach (1988) combines with Goffman’s notion of face to analyze the strategies used by participants to achieve their communicative goals without imposing on their interlocutor or losing their own position. In this paper I will follow Brown and Levinson’s model to examine the linguistic construction of characters in two of Tennessee Williams’s major plays, The Glass Menagerie (1944) and Suddenly Last Summer (1958). Said to be a writer of character’s rather than of plays (Robinson 1997: 32), Williams is best-known for the powerful portrayal of his women, and both these plays offer the profile of a feminine role hardly exploited in the rest of his work: i.e. the mother, protagonist in the cases of Amanda Wingfield (The Glass Menagerie) and Mrs. Venable, and a minor character in the case of Mrs. Holly (Suddenly Last Summer). I will study the politeness strategies employed by these three mothers, to reveal the type of relations between them and their children, with particular interest in the rapport and face maintenance with their sons. Taking also into account the autobiographical tinge present in The Glass Menagerie, I intend to illustrate how Williams renders his personal (son-oriented) construct of “the mother” role by means of a(n) (im)polite conversational behavior (Culpeper 2001: 1) with the aim of creating in the audience a particular impression of the mother characters that matches his own.

References

Brown, P. & S. Levinson (1988). Politeness : some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Culpeper, J. (2001). Language and characterisation : people in plays and other texts. Harlow, England : Longman.

Goffman, E. (1982) Interaction ritual : essays on face-to-face behavior. New York : Pantheon

Robinson, M. (1997). The Other American Drama. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Williams, T. (2000) Plays 1937-1955 / 1957-1980. New York: The Library of America.

Troutman, Denise (Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA) – troutma1@msu.edu

‘Signifying & Black woman’s “place”’

As Eckert (2003) has articulated, when people have no real economic capital within a society, they must find capital elsewhere. This lack of economic capital bears upon the African American speech community (AASC). Significantly, speech allowed “soul people” to display verbal capitalism.

Within academia, scholars have given short shrift to Black women’s contribution to the linguistic market within the AASC. This presentation focuses on one type of speech act within the Black linguistic market, signifying. As part of a cultural speech act system, signifying has been described primarily from an African American male perspective. Spears (2001) replenishes the thinking on Black language-gender ideology, acknowledging “it must be remembered that most of the aspects of language usage that have been documented are also found, often in a modified form, among women and the middle class, to single out two under-researched African-American groups” (242).

I argue for a deconstruction of signifying in order that the linguistic practices invoked by Black women are muted no longer. My data collection suggests a broadening of signifying. Specifically, I argue for a re-configuration of signifying. I suggest that there are at least three component elements of signifying, two of which have been overlooked that I deem to be the more prominent instances of the everyday speech act system for ‘Black woman’: (1) direction through indirection (the more common, highly touted of the signifying components); (2) smart talk, an instrument of preferred directness; and (3) talking back, an instrument of resistance.

Black women are consummate initiators and users of some Black linguistic practices. On the local level, African Americans reared in dense African American contexts have firsthand empirical evidence that Black women hold pivotal “places” in these practices. If scholars want to contribute to the socially real fullness of Black speech acts, they must acknowledge the role of Black women as linguistic resources.

Key words: Black speech act system, signifying, Black women, linguistic practices

Unger, Susanne B. (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) – sbu@umich.edu

‘Talking Gender, Talking Politics: Women Politicians and the Gendering of State Bureaucracies in Berlin, Germany’

This paper examines excerpts of a transcript of an interview with a top-level bureaucrat who is in charge of gender equity in the municipality of Berlin, Germany. The interview was conducted by the author of this paper in July 2005 as part of a larger research project on the role of language in the implementation of a recent European Union (EU) policy, “gender mainstreaming” in Germany. The European Union policy of “Gender mainstreaming” aims to bring issues which had previously been framed as “women’s issues” into the “mainstream” of society, and has led to the introduction of new policies and practices in the public sector. All top-level bureaucrats, civil servants, and local politicians are now required to educate themselves about existing gender inequalities, and to acquire models for reducing them in their specific areas of expertise. These changes, along with a growing awareness of gender mainstreaming in the general public, have led to the emergence of new popular discourses about men, women, and gender in Germany.

An analysis of the transcript investigates how the interviewee employs different kinds of (linguistic, social, political) strategies to situate her personal trajectory and accomplishments against the larger backdrop of these structural changes. Drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of multivocality, Buehler’s notion of deixis, and on Goffman’s concept of “footing” and participant roles, the author examines how the interviewee negotiates different social group memberships and approaches to gender as she presents her work. A careful analysis of her discursive strategies illustrates how actors may draw on a repertoire of ideas and ideologies about gender in order to position themselves within a larger discourse. This analysis of linguistic strategies can illuminate how scholarly and feminist discourses on gender become re-entextualized and, possibly, transformed, as they enter the “mainstream” of institutionalized political discourses and practices.

Key words: gender and bureaucracy, institutionalized discourses of feminist politics, multivocality (Bakhtin), footing (Goffman)

References:

Buehler, Karl. [1934] 1990. The Theory of Language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Bakhtin, M. M. 1981 (1975). “Discourse in the Novel.” In M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. 259-300.

Goffman, Erving. 1981. “Footing.” in Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. 124-157.

Goffman, Erving. [1974] 1986. “The Anchoring of Activity,” “Breaking Frame,” and “The Frame Analysis of Talk.” In Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 247-299, 345-378, 496-559.

Irvine, Judith. “Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles.” In Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, eds. 1996. Natural histories of discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 131-159.

Van De Mieroop, Dorien & Marleen van der Haar (Lessius Hogeschool, Antwerpen, Belgium & Utrecht University, The Netherlands) - dorien.vandemieroop@lessius-ho.be, m.vanderhaar@uu.nl

‘Negotiating the empowerment of women in diverging cultural contexts’

We investigate two interacting views on female identity constructions by two women from different cultures from a linguistic point of view, combining information from an ethnographical approach with a discourse analytical study of the data we collected. We focus on one conversation between a Dutch social worker and an Afghan client (A). A’s situation is complex: she was sent to the Netherlands to marry an Afghan man who battered her, she fled, went to a Dutch shelter for battered women, and finally ended up living independently under the supervision of a social worker. The counseling, which includes discussing practical as well as psychosocial matters, aims at helping A to manage an independent existence and to broaden her social network. At the time of the meeting the client is not officially divorced and has no certainty about her residence permit. In our paper, we focus on the way the professional and the client negotiate the position of women in society. The client voices the Afghan perspective in which getting divorced is not allowed and women are to obey their husbands in any case. From a Dutch perspective, A’s leaving her husband is an act of an empowered woman. Moreover, Dutch social work accentuates the script of an autonomous self-reliant individual framing the counseling process.

This clash between viewpoints is clearly reflected in the conversation we are discussing: for example, whenever A initiates negative talk about her choice and shows feelings of sadness and shame, the social worker interprets her words as expressions of fear for the husband and anxiety because he might try to come after her. The conversation’s institutional context, including the power difference between the interlocutors, appears to shape A’s realignment with the social worker’s identity projection of an empowered woman.

Key words: discourse analysis, ethnography, identity construction, intercultural differences

Varis, Piia (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) - pivaris@cc.jyu.fi

‘Maud Gonne’s autobiography A servant of the queen and the limits of Irish womanhood’

Maud Gonne (1865-1953) was one of the most prominent female figures in the early twentieth-century Irish nationalist movement. Although probably most widely remembered as the woman who inspired a large number of W. B. Yeats’s poems she, among other things, founded a nationalist women’s organisation, lectured and collected funds and wrote numerous articles for newspapers to promote Irish independence.

Gonne’s autobiography A servant of the queen (1938/1994) is the life story of a woman who actively took part in the Irish nationalist movement. Women’s participation in public affairs was not, however, widely accepted at the time and nationalist discourse reserved the position of the active nationalist for men, while the positions available for women were mainly restricted to those of the wife and mother. Consequently, Gonne, together with other women refusing to accept the prevailing model of Irish womanhood, faced criticism from those who considered the home to be the proper place for women.

An intertextual analysis of Gonne’s autobiography illuminates the tensions emerging from the effort to write both as a woman and as an active nationalist. Fairclough’s (1992, 1999) model of intertextual analysis, comprising manifest intertextuality and interdiscursivity, is employed in the analysis of Gonne’s autobiography to highlight the ways in which the writer embraces and rejects certain discursive roles. Thus, the paper discusses the ways in which different texts and discourses are drawn upon in the autobiography to negotiate the limits of early twentieth-century Irish womanhood.

References

Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity.

Fairclough, N. 1999. Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. In A. Jaworski and N. Coupland (eds.), The discourse reader. London: Routledge, 183-211.

MacBride, M. Gonne 1938/1994. A servant of the queen. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Key words: intertextuality; autobiography; nationalism; gender

Vasvári, Louise O. (New York University, USA) – louise.vasvari@sunysb.edu

‘Translation and Gender[lessness] as a Feminist Issue’

This study will contrast the linguistic, cultural, literary, and in particular, translational implications, of linguistic gender in three types of languages: those, like German and the Romance languages, which possess grammatical gender, languages such as English, with only pronominal gender, and languages such as Hungarian, which have no linguistic gender. While in a strictly linguistic sense gender can be said to be afunctional, this does not take into account the ideological ramifications of the “leakage” between gender and sex[ism], showing that linguistic gender is indeed a feminist issue.

I aim to highlight the role of gender throughout the history of translation theory and practice, illustrating that what proclaims itself to be an aesthetic problem is consistently one of sexual politics. The more specific focus of my discussion will be a contrastive analysis of feminist experimental texts in French, English, and Hungarian, which attempt to inscribe non-normative subjects and objects of desire that have been excluded from the patriarchal linguistic code. I shall study, first, how successful such experiments can be in the three types of languages, and, second, can translation as a feminist act work in the re-inscription of a text originally conceived within the feminism of another language and culture. I will show that some highly linguistically innovative texts from French or English become totally eclipsed in a Hungarian translation, while some Hungarian texts are literally untranslatable into gendered languages. I shall also discuss translation of some English-language lesbian poetry, which by necessity becomes overdetermined in Spanish translation.

Weber, Orest, Brikela Sulstarova, Pascal Singy & Patrice Guex (Lausanne University Clinic) – orest.weber@chuv.ch

‘Gender and discourse about sexuality among francophone Sub-Saharan migrants in Switzerland’

In many societies, sexuality is a delicate topic of discussion. In the context of face-to-face sexual health prevention this kind of difficulties can hinder the transmission of information. This is especially dreadful for populations at high risk of AIDS infection, such as the sub-Saharan migrants living in Western countries. Existing research suggests that in some African communities the topic of sexuality is highly taboo and tends to be discussed in different manners by women and men. Our study addresses the question of the way in which sexual health prevention should be provided to sub-Saharan migrants in French speaking Switzerland. We namely ask, which languages should be used and by which type of professional. In this context, we expect the target population’s opinion to vary in terms of gender and other social criteria.

In order to gain insight into language attitudes and reported behaviour of sub-Saharan migrants, a female and a male socio-linguist carried out more than fifty in-dept interviews with a sample of this population, equally composed of women and men. The selected results for this symposium are drawn from quantitative and qualitative discourse analyses of the transcripts of these interviews.

Qualitative findings of our work reveal several contextual factors contributing to taboo in African migrant communities, such as excision and intergenerational communicative barriers. Sub-Saharan women seem to face more difficulties in this area. Social integration in the host country is seen by some interviewees as favouring change of social norms related to taboo, thus offering to some immigrants the possibility to talk more freely about sex. In this context, code-switching into French or “secret codes” in African languages are used as linguistic strategies in order to reduce the impact of taboo. In medical encounters with sub-Saharan migrants, doctors’ gender seems to influence discussions about the patient’s sexuality, especially as far as woman are concerned.

Key words: Sociolinguistics, gender, sexuality, health prevention, migrants

Yang, Jie (University of Toronto, Canada) – jie.yang@utoronto.ca

‘Discourse, Gender and New Urban Poverty in China’s Neoliberal Restructuring’

The groundbreaking literature on welfare state reform and Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) shows that neoliberalism has generated more negative impact on women and even feminized poverty (Afshaar and Dennis 1992, Beneria 1992, Comaroff and Comaroff 2001, Dai 2004, Kingfisher 2002, Thomas-Emeeagwali 1995). But most of the literature focuses more on “economy,” e.g., the economically impoverished condition than “culture,” e.g., the cultural processes through which neoliberal power works on institutions and individuals. This paper contributes to this growing literature with a postsocialist perspective, China’s neoliberal restructuring. Through discourse analysis, this paper examines the dynamics and discursive conditions that make women “become impoverished” rather than focusing on their condition of “being poor.”

This paper investigates the official anti-poverty discourses and programs since the mid-1990s. Unlike “communizing poverty” in Mao’s era, the post-Mao urban poverty is relative poverty, caused by yawning income gaps and wealth disparity along gender and class lines, which tends to cause social unrest. The analysis will focus on how official discourses, by legitimizing the diminution of public support, highlight certain type of poverty as a “problem” that needs to be managed while downplaying other types of poverty. The paper illustrates that with China’s current preoccupation with social stability for political legitimacy, the discursive construction of stability as a male individual thus implicitly downplays women’s poverty and tilts anti-poverty policies towards male workers. Some poverty-relief programs are even charged with finding ways to pacify disgruntled male workers rather than those really in need, women in particular. The paper argues that those anti-poverty discourses, by implicitly reducing poverty to individual pathology, resonate with China’s neoliberal rationality that emphasizes individualism and family values in order to erase structural factors in the formation of social policy. Finally, the analysis illustrates how discourse serves to intensify social stratification and gender inequality.

Key words: discourse, gender, class, poverty, neoliberalism

Abstracts – Posters

Abdelhay, Bakhta (Mostaganem University, Algeria) – abdelhay666@yahoo.fr

‘Males' and Females Voice Quality: A Socio Acoustic Analysis’

One of the most remarkable perspectives in current socio-linguistic studies is the pertinently observed variability between males and females’ language. This variability is present in the lexicon, the grammar, the style, and the phonology and in the voice quality, this extra-linguistic parameter both sexes make use of in their communicative interactions and role display.

This paper is an attempt to examine the extent to which social phenomena have an impact on speakers voice quality in terms of production and perception. This subject is interdisciplinary. It combines two distinct provinces of research; sociolinguistics, the study of the correlation between language and society, that is how language operates in society and how society is reflected in language, added to acoustic phonetics, that branch of phonetics which studies the physical properties of speech sounds.

It demonstrates that voice quality and acoustic perception are not to be attributed a biological description only, that is with the sole reference to the anatomy of the vocal tract in terms of shape and size, but that the socio-cultural background should be accounted for.

It points at the possibility of introducing a socio-acoustic method in the gender analysis of voice quality . The primary goal is the proposal of a combination of acoustics and sociolinguistics to understand the nature of the social functionality and social value of voice quality in terms of the way and the manner social disparities are displayed in men and women’s voice quality.

Starting from the hypothesis that no word, no idiom, no grammatical structure is sociolinguistically innocent, we might hypothesize that linguistic patterns are either sex referential or sex preferential because they crystallizes the way a cultural scheme has been shaped. Males and females display their roles and their social disparities through the subordination of their behaviour to a linguistic code.

Thus the fact that speech protagonists are bound to accommodate their voice to the persons they are , to the persons they are speaking to and to the context in which they are found in has led us to query about the social dimension of voice.

Abe, Hideko (Colby College, USA) – abeh@umich.edu

‘The Study of O-nee-Kotoba ‘Queen’s Speech’ among Gay Men in Japan’

O-nee kotoba (lit. ‘older sister’s speech’) is understood as a speech style commonly used by gay men in Japan. While this style of speech is marked and recognized within both gay and straight communities in Japan, whether this speech presents a set of identifiable features of linguistic structures is a question. At the same time, o-nee kotoba shares some of the characteristics with the strong version of imagined/idealized Japanese women’s speech, such as the use of marked sentence-final forms (wa, no and kashira) and first person pronouns (watashi and atai). Taking o-nee kotoba as a socially positioned system of communication, this study analyzes the characteristics of o-nee kotoba spoken in a play called Chigau Taiko ‘Different drum’. This two-gay-men play was first performed a few years ago in Tokyo. The playwright (and the actor) claims that he intentionally utilized o-nee kotoba for one actor, who later told me that it was really challenging to perform convincingly. This study examines when, how, and why o-nee kotoba is manipulated in an interaction between the two gay friends, as well as how the playwright imagined/perceived o-nee kotoba in his scenario. In conclusion, this study tries to answer why the use of o-nee kotoba is, in most cases, perceived negatively among gay men. Because it imposes culturally imagined and reproduced notions of femininity upon gay men, they generally try to avoid it. However, it seems they cannot escape it completely. Everyone is subject to dominant ideology, and for gay men the default position in Japanese society is ‘woman.’ They reject that position, so the practice of o-nee kotoba is considered unwanted, thus negative. Instead, they emphasize the difference between a culturally imagined femininity and their own understanding of femininity, which is reflected in a twisted and exaggerated form of ‘feminine’ speech. O-nee kotoba is one of the sites where they resist their categorization as either ‘man’ or ‘woman.’

Key words: o-nee kotoba, gay men, Japan

Acikalin, Isil (Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey) – iacikali@anadolu.edu.tr

‘What about gender based pseudonyms in blogs’

The study investigates the pseudonyms used in blogs from the gender point of view.Blogs are personal journals or reversed chronological commentaries written by individuals and are publicly accessible on the web.Weblogs represent a medium for computer-mediated communication and may insight into the ways in which people present themselves online,in terms of self-expressions.So the use of pseudonyms is inevitable.Pseudonyms are often chosen to hide explicit identity ,yet they may be gender based.

It is a well known fact that females are more likely to qualify and justify their assertations and in general manifest an ‘aligned’ orientation towards the other party,that is, they are colloboration-oriented;on the other hand males use more violant words and use language to negotiate their status and power in the group,in other words they are competition-oriented.”

Consequently, both of the genders tend to have different habitual ways of saying what they mean.Therefore,the purpose of the study is to examine the pseudonyms used in blogs from the gender point of view.The study aims at investigating the following hypothesis:

Males prefer to use pseudonyms which can negotiate their power and prefer to use words whose connatations refer to power and are more violant in meaning.Whereas, females prefer to use pseudonyms which express support and manifest aligned orientation.

To test the hypothesis,quantative and qualitative analysis will be conducted.Data is collected from two kinds of blogs:female oriented blogs and male oriented blogs.After eliminating 60 male and 58 female pseudonyms 40 male and 40 female pseudonyms are taken into consideration.Then they are classified according to the followings:a) pseudonyms emphasizing manhood,wildness fear and power;b)pseudonyms indicating feminity,domestic issues and ability carrying positive connatations.

The author of the study has also searched for the true identities of the users.

Baider, Fabienne H. (University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus) – Fabienne @ ucy.ac.cy

‘Women in politics, Feminisation in linguistics: How Is the French Press coping ?’

In the last year a few states trusted women to be head of state such as Liberia, Chili and Germany among others. At the same time, France is lagging behind Uganda as far as women representation is concerned (Scott 2005). This political under-representation explains why a parité law had to be voted in the year 2000 and had to be applied to any party list presented in a French election: every party whatever their size has to include 50% of women candidates on their electoral lists. In depth analysis have demonstrated why France could not do otherwise but inscribing gender in politics so that, paradoxically, gender would not be a factor later on (Schor 1995, Balibar 1995). To achieve equity you must enforce equal numbers. To avoid power sharing tricks have been played and the political parties prefer to pay a fine rather than including women. However, even though the political representatives did not wish to give up their seat to female colleagues, public opinion think differently; polls show that French people, whatever their age maybe, were overwhelmingly in favour of women representatives, at any level of political representation (Besnier 1996). The same divergence between political representatives and the public who vote for them arises with the language law called Loi de la feminisation (Allegre 2000) which requires the feminine gender to be inscribed into language so that women are no more erased from texts and laws and to reach a linguistic parité.

How is the press coping with the women in politics phenomenon ? Are their discourse practices still belittling female politicians ? Are their linguistic practices in favour of feminisation ? The answers given to these questions will stem from the analysis of a corpus which consists in articles published just before and right after the elections of the women politicians to whom it has been referred in this abstract.

Key words: Political discourse practices. Women (re)presentation. Language law

Bogdanowska, Monika (University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland) – nika.bogdanowska@wp.pl

‘Academic Discourse - Gendered or Not?’

It is widely assumed that academic discourse is a type of discourse which is used by scholars. Therefore, theoretically, it should be beyond any divisions - universal. In practice, however, it turns out to be different.

A lot of research has proved that academic discourse differs cross-culturally, first of all on account of ethnic factors. That is why the researchers talk about ethnoretorics of academic style, which reflect systems of social and cultural values which determine general patterns of communication. Some researchers prove that there is a considerable diversity of academic discourse with respect to gender, that searching for the truth and trying to be objective in expressing it we cannot get rid of what determines us. If we admit that it is really possible to observe in academic discourse these differences appear and what their intensity is. Can we talk about the academic discourse of women and the academic discourse of men, or only about gender differences in general academic discourse?

To answer these questions I have carried out an analysis of texts of pragmatic character: reviews and polemic papers. Paying attention to potential differences between texts written be men and texts written by women I tried to answer the questions:

❑ if the utterance is marked by aggression or by reserve,

❑ if the author took a competetive or cooperative attitude,

❑ concerning rationality of argument,

❑ if the author strives to be objective,

❑ concerning the level of conventionality of academic discourse,

❑ if the utterance concentrates on stressing the differences or on showing the similarities,

❑ if the author manifests unwillingness to understand the other and tries to exclude him/her from mutual activities, or to wants to reach agreement,

❑ if there are the utterance direct statements unfavourable to the other, or expressions imposing on him/her the author's opinions.

Key words: academic discourse, rhetoric, style, gender

References

Holmes, J., Stubbe, M. (2003): Power and Politeness in the Workplace. A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work. London: Pearson.

Stokoe, E. H. (2001): Talking about Gender: The Conversational Construction of Gender Categories in Academic Discourse. Discourse & Society Vol.9, No.2.

Sunderland, J. (2004): Gendered Discourses. New York: Palgrave Macmilan.

Tannen, D. (2002): Agonism in Academic Discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 34/ 10-11.

De la Flor Ponce, Nieves (Universitat de València) –

‘Discursive meaning of the construction do+infintive in the genre of weblogs’

Auxiliaries are frequently considered empty words providing no meaning to the main verb. The aim of the corpus-based analyses provided in the paper is to account for the various discoursive meanings do + Infinitive pursues. Despite the position that do is a dummy carrier verb, it will be stated and observed that as a word, it must (and actually does) add an extra status to the main clause.

Initially, the present paper is aimed at providing a gender based analysis over discourse and language uses. Research on stereotypically femenine and masculine language on recent genres (weblogs) is the domain investigated. The data analysed up to the present moment reveal that t in Modern English the use of do + Infinitive continues alive. The predicate construction is not relegated to legal documents in Modern English. It is mainly in use with an emphatic meaning. Users take the auxiliary and place it in front of the infinitive just to state and reassure the meaning of the simple tense.

Falabella de Souza Aguiar, Ângela (Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) – angelafalabella@.br

‘Identity effects of the implementation of a multicultural perspective in the classroom’

This paper is the result of the implementation and evaluation of an intervention project in a school setting in Rio de Janeiro, involving three groups of 5th graders. The project, drawing on multicultural studies and on a foucauldian perspective of discourse and social identities, generated a one-year ethnografic research work , which aimed at investigating the possibility of promoting the de-stabilization of cultural naturalized concepts and beliefs concerning race, gender and sexuality. Moreover, its purpose encompassed a concern with students’ organization toward difference as well as the mitigation of prejudice. Employing multimodal strategies and procedures , besides those traditionally favored in education, that value multiple meaning-making spaces – such as the theater, images, the body, music, talk etc., – the study highlights the variety of cognitive processes at play in the teaching-learning enterprise. The analysed data describe a series of local movements regarding changes in students’ identity, showing how pupils develop more responsible, critical and reflective stances towards difference in general and genders and sexualities in particular.

Key words: gender and sexual identities, de-stabilization, multiculturalism

Fu, Jing (University of Toronto, Canada) – serenity.fu@utoronto.ca

‘Gender affects in Japanese and Chinese students first language and second language writing’

In applied linguistics, gender has traditionally been considered an independent variable that impacts linguistic production. Previous studies have demonstrated that previous studies have investigated gender differences from feminist perspectives (Graham, 2002; Belcher, 2000; Wagner 1997) based on the differences of communication between female and male (Tannen, 1990); and from postmodernist perspective (Lutz, 1995; cited in Belcher, 2000) or poststructuralist perspective (Pavlenko & Piller, 2001; Cameron, 1997). More recent studies about gender in writing showed male/female differences with respect to topics and psychological viewpoint (Janssen & Marachver 2004). Most of those studies code samples of learners’ writing; there are very few research studies that investigate the nature of differences between female and male students; what factors affect those differences from the learner’s perspective; or how gender identity might shed light on students’ thinking and writing in cross-cultural contexts.

Cameron (2005) has compared the concept of the binary differences. From the theoretical foundations perspective, Cameron points out that gender and language are provisionally characterized as a kind of ‘postmodern turn’. From second language teaching perspective, Freeman and McElhinny (1996) suggests that teacher may encourage that students should learn firsthand what they need and incorporate methodologies from ethnography of communication. Regarding to language and gender, Freeman and McElhinny also advocate that participants should be observed in a particular context

Gender in Japanese language has been widely studied, particularly in Japanese women’s language (Siegal & Okamoto, 2003; Matsumoto, 2001; Shibamoto, 1987) However, there has been little research on how these gendered and cultural differences influence Japanese speaker’s L1 and L2 writing. Both China and Japan are East Asian countries. They share similarities in their cultures (Kaplan, 1966, Hinds, 1990) in writing, but also differences.

In this paper, I will compare Chinese and Japanese students’L1 and L2 writing, to look at how gender identities and sociocultural differences influence students’ writing. There are some studies in this field (Yang et al, 2004) but in there is no comparison between Chinese and Japanese students’ writing. Therefore, comparing gender differences in writing between Chinese and Japanese in multilingual contexts is extremely important. This paper will focus on Japanese group and Chinese group, based on their intensive writing, and interview, to investigate how gender identities shift on their writing and communication.

Gómez Pascual, Natalia (Universitat de València) – nandreablue@

‘Un cruce entre dos mundos: reflejo y fracturación de estereotipos en el mundo mágico de Harry Potter’

The unprecedented success of the Harry Potter series in the history of children’s and juvenile literature has been a controversial topic among scholars. The Harry Potter phenomenon (so-called Pottermania) has assembled fans and academia together around the world. Events such as Nimbus 2003, Accio 2005, Patronus 2006, Sectus 2007, of international relevance, aim at determining the role played by the Potter novels among youngsters living in a society with a marked growth of consumerism.

Some of the analyses carried out recently (Zipes 2002, Whited 2002, Gupta 2003, Heilman 2003, Lurie 2004, Blake 2005), share a common interest in framing this bestseller either as an element of the compendium of works acknowledged to be “quality literature” or else as an example of paraliterature .

Furthermore, the question is raised as to the reader’s implied need to find a behavioural model. Do they really look for a sociological paradigm of their society or do they simply seek fun in their spare time?

I will make an attempt to differentiate these aspects of quality literature in relation to the potential ties to linguistic patterns. A brief analysis of the narrative structure and the language used by the author in the first and second books will be carried out. The angle of observation will be gender identity. Above all, the reflection or, by contrast, the fracture of gender stereotypes will be the point of departure by examining adjectives, verbs – activity verbs, communication verbs, mental verbs, causative verbs, verbs of simple occurrence, verbs of existence or relationship and aspectual verbs – , adverbs and so on.

In sum, Rowling seems to make use of a very clear differentiation between Muggles and the magic world represented in the books as a tool for developing the narrative stream by means of either considering gender stereotypes or refusing their presentation. This seems to be an invitation of the author for the audience to cross the bridge of their mental schemata and walk across two different worlds. The main challenge is to reconstruct the inherent characteristics associated to the romantic notion of the hero and, as a consequence, depriving him of a superhero element.

Hardy, Thomas, Yuji Kitajima & David Freedman (Keio University & Hoso Daigaku, Japan) – thomas@sfc.keio.ac.jp, moose@sfc.keio.ac.jp, kitajima_yuji@ybb.ne.jp

‘Translating sex: Japanese gay manga for French readers’

The concepts of culture, power, and constructed identities as propounded by Foucault et al becomes a central issue, regardless of philosophical basis, when erotic material is produced within one cultural and linguistic context and consumed within another. The school of erotic or dangerous manga, when it exits the Japan of its compartmentalized birth, enters into a world where the sexual gaze has a different set of signs.

This presentation focuses on the book-length gay erotic manga Gunji by Tagame Gengoroh in which he tells the story of Gunji, a chief at an elite Japanese restaurant. The picturesque tale develops in a number of cinematic flash-backs and flash-forwards in which Gunji moves from being the lover of the owner of the restaurant, to being the guardian of the son of the owner when the owner dies, to being the slave of this sadistic son as he moves into manhood and the ownership of the restaurant.

Using this narrative base, within the concepts of culture, power, and identities, the authors explore transformations of the language of love as the frame changes from Japanese through English to French. Sexual onomatopoeia that have a specific resonance need replacement. Social relationships that vibrate with sexual dissonance in the Japanese context are shifted, with some achieving heightened salience, and others moving into unexpected silence.

In this presentation we look specifically at how languages change within the translation of erotic manga. How the delineation of characters’ identities and relationships are handled as implicitly or explicitly erotic matters within one culture and language are translated to another. Finally, by articulating the cultural / historical tradition of depicting the erotic within Japan, the presentation will formulate a preliminary narrative of the renewed worldwide interest in erotic art.

Key words: translation, sexuality, manga

Hernández Pérez, Mª Beatriz (Universidad de La Laguna) – bhernanp@ull.es

‘Secrecy and utterance: the confessional dimension in The Book of Margery Kempe’

Margery Kempe presents her Book as the result of a series of confessional moments which define its autobiographical nature as subject to the operations of self-concealment and progressive revelation. This basic dynamism, inherent to the dimensions of secrecy, turns readers into sudden confessors who, in having to take a position in front of the female figure, are exposed to the contradictions of self-representation as fashioned in late-medieval England. This paper examines the diverse situations where confessional technologies operate so as to emphasise the conflictive nature of female autobiographic discourse: the forced inquisitorial interrogations, the searched for common confessions to local priests and the confidential conversations with her husband and with Christ are examined and compared within the boundaries of the general confession that frames the narrative process. The assessment of these episodes in the Book not only renders linguistic strategies as crucial to the development of particular public and private dimensions in the late Middle Ages but also highlights how the confessional discourse remains a basic reiterative device that leads on to self-parody and narrative instability.

Key words: secrecy, confession, gendered subject, late-medieval literature, Margery Kempe

Jones, Lucy (University of Sheffield, UK) – lucy.jones@sheffield.ac.uk

‘The stylistic construction of lesbian identities through interaction in communities of practice’

This poster details my current research into lesbian communities of practice (CofPs), focusing on locally-defined identities as they are constructed through interaction. The research investigates stylised practices which emerge from the mutual engagement of gay women in and between a number of CofPs evolving in one British city. Specifically, it aims to locate the symbolic meaning of stylistic practices and interactional features observed, and understand, through direct engagement with participants, how their use constructs locally-meaningful identity categories or joint interpretations of self. From ethnographic investigation and engagement with the CofPs in their local contexts, I present my experience as a legitimate peripheral participant (Lave and Wenger 1991) of the CofPs under observation.

This work in progress challenges essentialist approaches to gender and sexual identity by putting forward data demonstrating the mutual negotiation of practices and their meanings in order to collaboratively construct a group’s social identity. By considering stylistic and sociolinguistic variation within small-scale lesbian CofPs, I further challenge approaches placing speakers in homogenous categories according to their gender and/or sexuality. This study considers style in lesbian CofPs for the first time, but also contributes more generally to current research which considers identity to be emergent in interaction. In particular, it tests contemporary frameworks of identity and identity analysis (cf. Bucholtz and Hall 2005). Through observation of the self-positioning of CofP members, and an understanding of the symbolic meaning behind the styles implemented to express these stances, it will be possible for me to provide coherent analyses of how contextually-specific social identity categories are constructed by my participants, and how the macro-level ideological category ‘lesbian’ is reworked or reproduced.

Key words: community of practice, identity, interaction, sexuality

Lamoureux, Charles & Victor J. Boucher (Université de Montréal, Canada) – charles.lamoureux@umontreal.ca

‘Linking testosterone, physiological dimensions, and speech behavior: A preliminary report’

This presentation examines the relationships between salivary testosterone levels, body measurements, and speech parameters associated with the concept of gender. During an experiment, saliva samples were collected from 40 male native speakers of French aged between 20 and 25 years. Body dimensions of subjects were measured, including weight, body mass, and length of arms and legs. Subjects were then asked to produce a carrier phrase containing a monosyllabic word, which was composed of either a voiceless stop [p, t, k], or fricative [s, B], and a cardinal vowel [a, –, i, u, y]. After the experiment, salivary testosterone levels were assessed. Temporal (VOT of stops, durations of vowels and fricatives, speech rate) and spectral (peak frequencies of fricatives, F1 and F2 of vowels, mean speaking F0) aspects of speech were measured. At this time, the speech of 20 subjects has been analyzed. The results already indicate significant relationships between physiological measurements and some of the speech variables. However, no direct correlations were observed between testosterone levels and speech, except for the temporal properties. These data are interpreted as suggesting an indirect link between testosterone exposure and speech behavior, but a direct link with respect to speech timing. The presentation will outline the complete results and highlight the influence of hormone-based factors on some gender-related articulatory and vocal parameters, with special reference to differences between spectral and temporal aspects of speech.

Key words: Testosterone; physiological dimensions; speech behavior; gender

Le Master, Barbara, Chris Trueblood & Rezenet Moges (University of Long Beach, USA) – ctrueblo@csulb.edu, lemaster@csulb.edu, cappucheeno@

‘Gendered Phonology in Irish Sign Language’

With National Science Foundation support, 12 months of research was conducted on a rare and dying form of gendered Irish Sign Language (ISL) used in Dublin, Ireland. In one segment of the Dublin deaf community in the Republic of Ireland the native vocabularies for women (born before 1929) and men (born before 1944) are so different that they can impair communication on the most mundane of topics. For example, men and women have completely different signs for simple everyday terms such as 'cat,' 'Monday,' 'night,' 'red,' 'carry,' and so on. These varieties emerged from sex-segregated education at two

residential deaf schools in Dublin, Ireland. Clearly signers left with different vocabularies. What is not yet known, however, is whether these gendered language differences are also expressed in phonological, morphological or in any other grammatical system. This poster will report on the preliminary findings of the NSF-supported research project that show gender differences in the phonology of this sign language.

Maduka-Durunze, Omen N. (Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria) – omendurunze@

‘Linguistic Aspects of Sexism: Performative Rights, and Lexical and Grammatical Encoding of Gender Prejudices’

Murdock (1978:321) distinguishes between CUSTOMS "readily observable modes of behaviour as etiquette, ceremonial, and the techniques of manipulating material objects" and COLLECTIVE IDEAS: "[not directly] observable aspects of culture such as practical knowledge, religious beliefs, social values," the latter which he claims "must be inferred from their expression in language and other overt behaviour." Sexism -- the symbolic codification of gender-based prejudices -- has its audible realization

in language and its practical, observable realization in customs. Both realizations are mutually self-reinforcing. Since most linguistic anthropologists claim that lexical domains constitute the "sites of symbolic accumulation," (see Manfredi, 1989), we should thus expect collective ideas and cultural history to reside and be potentially discoverable in the lexicon. Therefore, we should expect to locate sexism principally in the lexicon of a language. Yet, we discover that in addition to lexical codification sexism is also encoded grammatically -- in combinational possibilities – in language. Lexically, sexism is encoded mostly by means of connotational rather than denotational meaning of words, and in terms of relative semantic neutrality of male-related terms. Grammatically, sexism manifests in terms of preference norms in the word order of so-called binomial constructions. In African languages it also shows up in proverbs and in meaning and derivation of names (which are always reduced sentences). Sexism also shows up in the performative rights and rituals of naming. This paper explores the range of possibilities mentioned above.

Martínez, Stella (University of California, Davis, USA) – smmartinez@ucdavis.edu

‘Language, politics, gender and identity in Quebec: A sociolinguistic investigation of language reform in two communities of practice’

Since 1979, the Office Québecois de la Langue Française, a governmental institution, which defines and applies Quebec's linguistic policies, has advocated the use of feminine forms of occupational titles out of concern about gender bias in language use and in linguistic practices. My project will use the community of practice theory and ethnographic research methods to frame the analysis of current linguistic practices in male-dominated and female-dominated workplaces in Quebec, Canada in order to evaluate the usefulness of language planning in addressing the concerns of feminists and linguists. Analysis of field research data highlighting patterns of language use, for example speech acts, topics of conversation, jokes or interruptions in these two settings allows for a comparison: how do women and men either accommodate to or resist the gender roles and discourse of the androcentric profession compared to a traditionally female-dominated occupation? After twenty-seven years did modifications to the French language dictate the ways in which one talks and thinks about women or is language reform only a superficial solution to the deeper problem of achieving gender equality? Some findings from a pilot study in Northern California will serve as a comparison with American English’s gender-neutral language reform and linguistic practices in male-dominated and female-dominated workplaces in the United States.

Key words: gender, workplace ethnography, language planning, Community of practice

Martínez, Stella (University of California, Davis, USA) – smmartinez@ucdavis.edu

‘Work and Work-Related Identities in Gendered Professions: Analysis of an interview with a Trauma Surgery Nurse Practitioner’

Much ethnographic research in education has been concerned with how institutions uphold and perpetuate the status quo and much feminist research in education has been concerned with how institutions attribute high cultural value to a masculine hetero-normative model. I am concerned with the possible effects of these larger structures on people’s actions--how people’s internalization of these cultural norms are manifested and, in a cyclical way, reproduced through discourse. More specifically I am concerned with how gender ideologies are reflected and reproduced through discursive practices of people’s interpretations and perspectives about work. I have selected as my example an interview of a nurse practitioner working in a trauma surgery unit.

This paper focuses on an interview with a nurse practitioner and considers the relations between language, gender and social status and how they work together to create images of women and men’s work. Through detailed analysis of an interview I observe that my informant is “reflecting and reproducing cultural ideologies and creating identities consistent with those ideologies” (Kiesling 1996: 365). She draws on cultural gender ideologies to frame her work-identity thus reproducing stereotypical and hierarchal gender norms; her discourse also reveals that hierarchal gender norms in the form of gendered workplaces still thrive. However she additionally draws on her own agency of having extensive, holistic knowledge and experience to frame her work-identity. Thus her work identity is created through a blend of the positive aspects of gender stereotyping (caring, mothering), the struggles that arise when trying to work within and around the rigid gendered structures that make up the medical workplace and the purposeful choices she makes in the face of the limitations imposed on her by social structures with an emphasis on her ability to provide care to patients in unique and multiple contexts.

Key words: language, gender, work identity, discourse analysis

Monros-Gaspar, Laura (Universitat de València) – laura.monros@uv.es

‘Cassandra Unveiled: Discursive Unsubmissiveness in Florence Nightingale’s Cassandra’

Florence Nightingale wrote Cassandra in 1852, when a number of different voices met to give shape to new concepts of womanhood and femininity in Nineteenth century England. In an attempt to give back to women the status of fully-developed social and human beings, Nightingale both searches and represents in this essay the voice of Cassandra; the voice of the female sage, the ‘female saviour’ that will free women from the social constraints imposed on them by Victorian morale.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine Nightingale’s essay in the realms of the transmission of this classical figure in Nineteenth century England, as a prelude to the consideration of the heroine by the contemporary female reimagination of cultural mythologies. Hence, I will first examine the mechanisms that distance Nightingale’s Cassandra from the discourse of the silenced prophetess depicted by Victorian mainstream artists and writers, and configure the myth as a model to the vindication of the rights of women. To this purpose, I will bring to discussion particular works by William Rathbone Greg, D.G. Rossetti, Robert Reece, Evelyn de Morgan and George Meredith. Considering Nightingale’s revision of the myth, the second part of the paper will be devoted to explore issues regarding modern constructions of Cassandra as an archetype of the reappropriation of the patriarchal discourse by gender minorities.

Key words: Voice, Cultural Mythologies, Cassandra, Victorian Literature

Moore, Ekaterina (California State University Long Beach, USA) – emoore2@csulb.edu

‘Gender Representation in Russian EFL Textbooks’

The study explores gender representation in modern EFL textbooks used in Russian public schools. It examines two textbooks used in the fifth grade of a public school in Western Russia. The fifth grade is the first year of compulsory second language education, the first time the majority of Russian children are exposed to a different language and a different culture. The following four aspects are analyzed in the textbooks: topics, gender assignment to roles, linguistic text, and dialogues meant for conversational practice. Quantitative analysis is done to see the ratio of male vs. female –oriented texts. Whether the topics are male or female is determined by the children who use the textbooks. The analysis of linguistic text (content-free) is done using the methodology introduced by Lesikin (Lesikin, J. (1998). Determining social prominence: A methodology for uncovering gender bias in ESL textbooks. College ESL, 8 (1), 83-97). The frequency of gender assignment to particular roles is examined, exploring the children’s perception of these roles. The following aspects are discussed in the analysis of dialogues meant for conversational practice: initiations and the last word in dialogues, linguistic space, and topics of conversations.

Pajupuu, Hille, Rene Altrov & Krista Kerge (Tallinn University, Estonia) - hille.pajupuu@eki.ee, rene.altrov@mebius.ee, krista.kerge@tlu.ee

‘Gender differences in contextuality of oral and written communication’

Any communication is more or less contextual. Contextuality of linguistic expression depends on genre, situational and personality variables. As to Nowson 2006, Mulac et al. 2005, Haylighen & Dewale 2002 etc., women display a preference to a more contextual styles, implied by wider use of pronouns, adverbs, interjections, whereas men tend to use, to a greater extent the nouns, adjectives, articles and prepositions. Raising contextuality of a text, making it more dependant on the parts surrounding a passage that can throw light on its meaning, may therefore incidentally lead to ambiguity.

Conceivably, more attention should be bestowed on relation between the contextuality-phenomenon and the cultural differences: individualistic cultures tend to use low-context communication, while collectivistic cultures opt for high-context communication (see e.g. Gudykunst & Ting-Toomy 1988). Cultural differences may affect also the gender-dependent contextuality.

There is a unique opportunity in Estonia to test the aforementioned hypothesis. In this country, side by side with Estonians there live quite a lot of ethnic Russians, communicating in Estonian at work. Estonian and Russian cultures differ on the dimension of individualism–collectivism (Hofstede 2003): Estonians are more individualistic and their communication is lower-contextual. Using Heylighen and Dewale (2002) F-measure modified for Estonian[1], the contextuality of communication in Estonian maintained by Estonian and Russian men and women was determined.

The following research questions were put forth:

(1) Does contextuality show a difference marked by gender in the group of native and non-native speakers of Estonian, and (2) does it depend on the text type (written essay, oral presentation, and conversation)? (3) What has a larger impact on contextuality: gender or culture?

The results of the pilot study will be presented.

Key words: gender, contextuality, communication, culture

References:

Gudykunst, William & Stella Ting-Toomy. (1988) Culture and interpersonal communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Heylighen, Francis & Jean-Marc Dewale. (2002) Variation in the contextuality of language: An empirical measure. Foundations of Science 7: 293–340.

Hofstede, Geert. (2003) Culture’s consequences. Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations. Second edition. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Mulac, Anthony; James J. Bradac & Pamela Gibbons. (2005) Empirical support for the gender-as-culture hypothesis. An intercultural analysis of male/female language differences. Human Communication Research, 27, 121–52.

Nowson, Scott. (2006) The language of weblogs: A sudy of genre and individual differences. Doctoral Thesis. University of Edinburgh.

Roberts, Andrea (University of South Australia, Australia) – robga004@students.unisa.edu.au

‘Linking the dominant discourse around menopause with women in leadership positions’

This paper highlights the dominance of dysfunction as a dominant discourse around menopause. The medicalisation of menopause from the time of definition is established. The paper demonstrates the continuing dominance of research into menopause emanating from the fields of medicine, gerontology and psychology. Figures of the predominance of research into Hormone Replacement Therapy are provided. The need for therapy, by definition, reinforces dysfunction, material from the British Medical Journal are used to comment on this phenomena as it relates to menopause .

The paper notes the extremely limited research into the portrayal of menopausal women in the media and quotes from the only two such Australian studies found.

The Foucaultian notion of a dominant discourse shaping and constraining our understanding of a social issue is raised. The paper asks how the current discourse might affect a senior professional woman in her career. It laments the lack of research into the possible effects on authority and promotion produced if negative connotations concerning mental reasoning and emotional balance are generally held by society at large and the work colleagues of menopausal women.

The theme of the paper is that the dominant discourse concerning menopause is constraining our knowledge and understanding of this period of a career woman’s life.

Key words: women, leadership, discourse, menopause

Rodrigues da Silva, Luzia (Universidade de Brasília, Brazil) – luzro7@.br

‘Las prácticas discursivas y las identidades de género’

Basando en la perspectiva de que lenguaje es práctica social, desarrollo, en este trabajo, la posición de que las prácticas discursivas, en el contexto escolar, constituyen las relaciones de género social. Así, examino tales prácticas, demostrando sus implicaciones con la constitución de las identidades femeninas. Como apoyo teórico y metodológico, recorro al Análisis Crítico del Discurso, usando, principalmente, los trabajos de Chouliaraki y Fairclough (1999) y de Fairclough (1992 y 2003). Con relación al género social, dialogo con estudios de Talbot (1998), Magalhães (2005), Cameron (1992 y 1999) y Lazar (comp. 2005). Presento una mirada crítica sobre las relaciones asimétricas entre los géneros sociales y sobre el papel del lenguaje en la construcción de esas relaciones, tanto en términos de su reproducción como de su transformación. Trato del lenguaje relacionado a la ideología, al poder, pudiendo ser usada para mantener el status quo o para combatirlo. A través de transcripciones de grabaciones de clases, exploro acciones, sentimientos y valores subyacentes a las elecciones léxico-gramaticales presentes en la composición del discurso, que constituye las identidades y la realidad social. Interpreto aspectos ideológicos, identificando como las relaciones sociales son representadas en el discurso y de qué manera las identidades femeninas se posicionan y son posicionadas. De esa forma, el análisis demuestra que: a) relaciones de poder e ideologías atraviesan los discursos del aula de clase, cambiando las posiciones de las identidades, que son constituidas en la interacción, incluso en el contexto escolar, espacio donde se realizan prácticas socioculturales; b) identidades femeninas conviven con dos discursos: el de la emancipación y el de la dominación, lo que atribuye a estas identidades un sentido híbrido; c) el discurso del aula de clase revela, en gran parte, la naturalización de prácticas hegemónicas de prejuicio y discriminación con relación a las mujeres.

Palabras-clave: discurso, identidades femeninas, contexto escolar

Romero Ruiz, Mª Isabel (Universidad de Málaga) – mirr@uma.es

‘Female sexuality and Language in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure’

The aim of this paper is to show how Hardy, in his last novel, Jude the Obscure, begins to write openly about female sexuality at a time when social conventions were very strict and women were supposed to be mothers and wives. He tries to present a literary and social stereotype of the last decades of the nineteenth-century, the new woman, using a vocabulary that reflects the main characteristics of this new type of woman.

The new woman was the kind of woman that supposed a threat to the social restrictions of Victorianism: she demanded the right of women to escape the slavery of the home, to work, to have an education, and to be economically and socially independent. The new woman also questions the institution of marriage and the traditional roles of women.

But Sue, Hardy’s main character does not entirely behave according to this new stereotype, since if it is true that at first she refuses all the sexual taboos of the time, in the end she accepts all the Victorian conventions about marriage and sexuality, and tries to lead a life which conforms with the social and moral roles of women as mothers and wives. Therefore, I believe that Hardy was not successful in achieving to depict a female character that was a complete woman.

There is however in the novel a particular use of the language and a set of words and expressions that give shape to the main traits of this literary and social type, and this body of words and expressions proves, in my opinion, that Hardy’s ideas in this novel are somewhere between the concept of the new woman and the traditional social conventions, all too valid in that decadent Victorian society.

Safiyiddeen, Suha (Haigazian University, Beirut, Lebanon) – suha_saf@

‘Gender and the relationship between language attitude and language behavior of bilinguals’

Baker, 1992; King, 2000; Lyon and Elis, 1991; Paulston, 1994 have found that there are differences in the findings of studies examining the connection between attitude and behavior, especially in multilingual societies. The present study examines the language attitudes of 223 male and 183 female secondary school students who are enrolled in five schools of different cultures but are all located in the capital Beirut. The 'direct' way of measuring attitudes is used. The participants completed a questionnaire used by Baker. The questionnaire includes a set of questions that reflect students' attitudes towards English and Arabic and their linguistic behavior in the two languages. Statistical analysis is used. In this context the study asks the following question: Does gender impact the relationship between language attitude and language behavior of bilinguals (English/ Arabic) living in their multicultural, multilingual native country. The paper will discuss the study findings and their implications.

Samada Guerra, Mayra C. & Nérida E. Puentes Álvarez (Instituto Cubano de la Radio y la TV / Instituto de Cultura, Cuba) – freddys@iniec.cu, nerida@iscf.cu

‘La cortesía verbal en la radio cubana’

El objetivo de la presente comunicación está enmarcado en los estudios que tratan de describir en los estudios que tratan de describir la manera en que las formas lingüísticas cumplen con objetivos comunicaciones en determinadas situaciones.

Desde esta óptica, nuestro propósito específico es el de analizar los factores de riesgos de la Cortesía Verbal de los locutores radiales en situaciones dialogadas.

Otro objetivo es el de orientación de los locutores hacia una reflexión sobre las estrategias discursivas, más precisamente argumentativas y su funcionamiento desde el punto de vista de la producción por parte del oyente(alocutario)

Queremos en resumen determinar si en algún punto del encuentro dialogado aparecen elementos verbales discursivos que “marcan” de alguna forma la imagen del locutor y la imagen del alocutario e oposición. Por otra parte, el estudio del comportamiento argumentativo de los locutores radiales y la generalización que logremos establecer constituyen un modelo de dicho comportamiento lingüístico aún cuando este modelo sea tratado para definir un dominio o campo de utilización donde se puedan seleccionar formas a enseñar.

El dominar estas estrategias por parte de los locutores será de gran utilidad en su competencia profesional que estaría en condiciones de llevar las riendas de la situación.

Esta investigación constituye un primer acercamiento al tema en nuestro país, por lo que puede servir de base teórica para profundizar en la temática género-cortesía.

Palabras Claves: Cortesía Verbal / Factores de riesgos / Competencia discursiva / Estrategia de discurso / Modelo discursivo

Sankar, Lokasundari Vijaya (Taylor’s College, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia) – vijayasankar100@

‘Cultural norms that govern mother-daughter-in-law interactions’

This paper looks at the socio-cultural practices that govern interactions between mothers and daughters in law in the Malaysian Indian context. Information derived from observation of family interaction, audio-taped conversations that involved mothers and daughters in law were studied to obtain insights into mother-daughter in law discourse so that cultural elements (if any) that ruled such discourse could be studied. Qualitative research techniques were employed to analyze the dynamics of language use among the subjects, so that the process of language use and the maintenance of cultural norms can be understood. This type of information was obtained through interviews, personal observations and audio-taped conversations of authentic situations.

From early researchers such as Hymes (1977) to more modern ones such as Wierbicka (2005), there is agreement that communities often work on a kind of semantic metalanguage that governs their behaviour thus generating cultural norms of behaviour. Previous research has shown normative behaviour such as the avoidance of direct conflict among the Vakinatra of Madagascar (Keenan, 1974), the Icelandic custom of checking on neighbours daily (Coulthard, 1985) etc.

For the purposes of this paper, the discourse in families that included a mother and daughter in law were studied using Hymes’ Ethnography of Communication and the SPEAKING grid (Hymes, 1977; Schiffrin, 1994). The conversations were then analyzed for information leading to speaker norms of interaction that were evident in the conversations.

Key words: cultural norms; speaker norms; politeness strategies

Stevens, James & Amy Sheldon (University of Minnesota, USA) – steve125@umn.edu, asheldon@umn.edu

‘Preschoolers’ discourse coherence is sensitive to the gender normativity of their activity’

This study tests and extends the Two Systems of Mutual Engagement Hypothesis (Sheldon & Engstrom, 2005). TSMEH claims that features of girls’ and boys’ conversations index interactional differences and their adherence to gender norms.

We assessed discourse coherence in spontaneous single-sex pretend play by identifying the degree to which a “center” of attention is maintained or shifted across discourse, according to the Centering Theory framework (Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein, 1995). It measures the degree to which speakers “talk about the same entity or switch to another… and the inference load imposed on the hearer” (Di Eugenio, 1990).

There were no gender differences in the frequency of transitions between centers of attention during gender-normative pretend play. A significant difference occurred between discourse during non-normative boys’ play and during normative girl’s play. Boys expressed the most “shifts” in attention during non-normative play, fewer in normative play; the least shifts occurred in girls’ normative play. A

significant difference occurred in the frequencies of shifted centers vs. non-shifted centers.

Overall, boys and girls maintained a “center” of attention at approximately the same frequency, indicating no difference in coherence by that measure. However, boys produced significantly more non-overt continuing referents (e.g. pro-drop) than girls, which allows for greater referential ambiguity. Girls marked their continuing referents more overtly, often identifying addressees by name, thus expressing the expectation of getting an interactant’s response.

These data support the claim that children’s discourse coherence is sensitive to the gender-normativity of their activity. Girls constructed more coherence in gender-normative activity through talk (and action) than did boys in either normative or non-normative activities. Discourse coherence in boys’ and girls’ normative play does not differ significantly. The least coherent discourse occurred when boys tried to coordinate in a non-normative activity. We will discuss the relation of cognitive schemas to these findings.

Key words: Children, discourse coherence, referring expressions

Stommel, Wyke (Universität Frankfurt, Germany) – wykestommel@

‘”Mein Nick bin ich“; identity construction through nicknames in an online forum on eating disorders’

From a social constructivist perspective, my paper will argue that the nicknames in an online forum for eating disorders are identity constructions that constitute participants as online subjects. The means that are used to do this 'identity work' are heterogeneous. The types of gender in language (lexical, grammatical, social and referential gender), as proposed by Hellinger and Bußmann (2001), are helpful categories for discerning gender in these pseudonyms. I distinguish five ways of 'doing gender' through nicknames.

The first is through commonly known proper names that are lexically [female] or [male] (e.g. Gwen). Second, there are newly created fantasy nicknames that are not derived from common nouns, but are phonologically marked (e.g. Lupasimo) and thereby associated with female or male gender. The third type of nicknames are compilations of numbers and/or letters (e.g. RA). Purely on the basis of these nicknames, it is impossible to identify a female or male gender. This is remarkable, since originally proper names are always either female or male or both.

The fourth category are nicknames derived from personal nouns (e.g. Green Guy). The fifth type are newly created names derived from common nouns (e.g. Butterfly). According to Sonderegger (2004), all commonly known proper names have their origin in common nouns, but most people are not aware of this meaning (e.g. Peter = rock). This is different for the newly formed nicknames. Considering them as common nouns, they potentially have grammatical, lexical and social gender, but functioning as proper names they do a lot more identity work, namely through a metaphorical operation. A nickname such as Butterfly (= vehicle) constitutes a participant (= topic) as light, small, cheerful, beautiful, etc. Analysing nicknames as metaphors for identity is not only a linguistic activity, but also conducted by participants in the forum as an 'identity game'.

Key words: identity – nicknames – eating disorders – social constructivism

Tang, Ya-Ting & Amy Kyratzis (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) – ytang@education.ucsb.edu, kyratzis@education.ucsb.edu

‘Gender Repositioning in the Process of Second Language Learning and Acculturation’

Recently, researchers have become interested in “the interaction between second language learning, internalization of new gender ideologies and discourses, and one’s structuring and performance of gender” (Pavlenko 1998: 439), that is, the “ transformations of gender performance” (Pavlenko, 2001: 133) that second language learners undergo as a result of learning and using a second language. In this paper, we examine the gender identity repositioning experienced by two Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese female graduate students learning and using English as a second language in the United States. These females lived together with their male partners. A triangulation of data sources was collected for each participant: 1) in-depth semi-structured interviews with each of two participants; 2) audio-recorded couples conversations during mealtime events; and 3) proxy acculturation questionnaires (Kim, 2005) completed by the couples. The present report presents the results of the semi-structured interviews with the two women. The results are presented in relation to analyses of gender role inequities embedded in Chinese culture and language that have been reported in the literature, such as “man rules the outside and woman rules the inside” (Farris, 1997: 15), use of “sajiao” register by females in certain contexts (Farris, 1995), and reported uses of the Chinese character “fu” signifying women’s duty to do housework (Fan, 1996). The women reported that what changed about how they spoke and conducted themselves included experiencing greater freedom to express themselves and their opinions and greater freedom to discuss sexual topics with friends when they spoke both English and Mandarin. They also reported a change toward greater use of assertive language at home with their significant others in certain contexts, although this mainly occurred in Mandarin. These results suggest that the women underwent significant gender identity repositioning as a result of living in the United States and using English (Pavlenko 1998).

Xiaoping, Yan (Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong) – 04416112@hkbu.edu.hk

‘A Study of Language and Gender in Chinese TV Talk-show Therapy’

Conversation is a primary medium through which social interaction takes place. Therefore, it is a rich source where social variables can be examined through the medium of talking. Using talk-show therapy as a testing arena, this paper explores the properties of language and gender in a specific institutional setting. This empirical study focuses on a linguistic dimension and is conducted in an interdisciplinary framework. The objective of this study aims to investigate whether people’s linguistic behavior are affected by gender when they are positioned in similar power relations and social categories within specific social-cultural contexts. The research focuses on both micro and macro levels. The so-called macro level will view talk-show therapy in its larger socio-cultural context in the framework of CDA while the so-called micro level focus on the interaction between participants in such a new hybrid discourse. Specific linguistic features are scrutinized along the line of discursive structures and discourse devices and linguistic realizations of moves and acts in light of genre directed study and SFL approach. Realization of politeness strategies, and indirectness displayed in therapeutic discourse will be particularly addressed.

This study hopes to offer insights into the broader inter-relationship in terms of power, gender and linguistic behaviors in comparable situations and contexts in a Chinese social cultural world. Findings drawn from this research can be compared with those conducted in the Anglo-American cultural world from a cross-cultural perspective.

Abstracts – Workshops

Workshop:

Facilitators:

Barbara LeMaster (California State University, Long Beach, US) lemaster@csulb.edu

Amy Sheldon (University of Minnesota, US) asheldon@umn.edu

Two main issues will be addressed in the workshop:

1. Course design issues

The field of language and gender and associated areas such as feminist studies, have been developing rapidly. Our goal in this part of the workshop is to consider issues in ourse design. Participants will discuss the following: approaches to the design of syllabi (e.g. topical and/or historical), choice of topics to cover, data-driven activities, finding relevant audio-visual materials, and, possibly, activities that assess and enhance students' learning.

2. Assignments

In this section of the workshop you will have an opportunity to create, evaluate and work through a few assignments. Our goal is for you to come away with at least one idea for an assignment for your course.

Suggestions of other issues to discuss are welcome.

Workshop:

Panel Organizer: Allyson Jule (University of Glamorgan, UK) ajule@glam.ac.uk

This panel of five short papers (10 minutes each) is focused on understanding the complex relationship of religion and gender alongside language use. The intention of this panel is to put forward five studies in the field of linguistics and to present them together so that the link of gender, language and religion can be further considered. The papers are as follows:

Allyson Jule (University of Glamorgan, UK)

‘Masculinity as Public Performance: Gendered Language Patterns and Religious Identity in a College Classroom’

This paper reflects on the male-dominated teaching discourse (lecturing) as used at a religious post-graduate college in Canada and the linguistic demands such a method seems to create among male participants. Lacan’s (168) theory of intersubjectivity is uniquely helpful in understanding the position of men as male/masculine linguistic participants. The study suggests that lecturing is a powerful tool of gender performance and that it is of particular power in propelling male learners into masculine performance of public speech. Lecturing is understood as a specific speech act, creating a stylized celebrative occasion of knowledge and knowing. In this study, the gendered speech performances set up a hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995; Swain, 2003).

Annabelle Mooney (Cardiff University, UK) MooneyA@Cardiff.ac.uk

‘The Children of God Who Wouldn’t But Had to’

The Children of God no longer exist as such, having been re-formed and renamed The Family (sometimes also known as The Family of Love). The question of whether this has been a change in name only is not one that will be addressed at length here. The text under examination in this paper, however, represents women (or more correctly, the gendered female) as powerful and worthy only in their giving up of self and power. They are only valid subjects if they transform agape into eros; in turn, they need to transform themselves such that this is not a contradiction. That is to say, they are recognized as subjects only when they sublimate agape into eros and love into obedience.

Tamara Warhol (University of Pennsylvania, US) warholt@dolphin.upenn.edu

‘Being Gendered and Doing Biblical Exegesis in One Seminar Group’

This paper examines the local voices that emerge in a seminar discussion group at an American divinity school. Specifically, it identifies how the local voices shape an anthropological interpretation of scripture concerning gender (1 Corinthians 11), creating a community of linguistic practice. Exegesis has been integral to the development of Christian doctrine throughout the history of the church. Different methods have been used to articulate the literal or figurative meaning of a passage. This paper looks at the discourse in such a discussion group, one offered as a Biblical interpretation seminar but one ultimately located in a specific interpretation and one embedded in a local community of practice.

Fazila Bhimji (University of Central Lancaster, UK) fbhimji@uclan.ac.uk

‘British Islamic Women Assert their Positions in Virtual Space’

This paper explores linguistic practices of second and third generation young Muslim women in a specific context: an Islamic online community based in Britain. This particular chapter is part of a larger ongoing study of British Islamic women’s identities in multiple spheres such as Islamic study circles, Islamic Magazines, Public Speech, and Television Documentaries. This study examines particular linguistic practices of Muslim women who participate in discussion threads along with Muslim young men. The study will demonstrate that these young women argue and debate with other online participants, contest mainstream notions and depictions of Islam, and display their knowledge during online discussions.

Workshop: < Graduate and Postgraduate Students’ Workshop>

Chair, Susanne Unger (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, US) sbu@umich.edu

Topic: Finding Information about Applying for External Funding, Publishing, and Applying for Academic Jobs for Junior Scholars Working on Language, Gender, and Sexuality.

Description of the workshop’s purpose and format:

The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for scholars who are in the early stages of their careers (graduate students, post-docs, and untenured junior scholars) to share information about funding opportunities, research opportunities (e.g., post-docs), and publication opportunities for graduate students, post-docs, conducting research on topics relevant to language, gender, and sexuality.

Examples could include a list of institutions that offer financial or material support for scholarship on language, gender, and sexuality in different countries, a list of essay contests for graduate students working on these research topics, or a list of listservs and journals that are relevant to scholars at the early stages of their careers and are interested in publishing their research in professional journals. Ideally, this information will not merely be limited to English-speaking institutions and/or countries, but will provide participants with a sense of useful resources available internationally.

Participants are invited to bring hard copies of relevant institutions, websites, or other sources to share with fellow participants and with the organizer, who will compile a list of resources following the workshop. This sourcebook will then be made available on the IGALA website.

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Conference co-ordinator

José Santaemilia jose.santaemilia@uv.es

Organising committee

Patricia Bou Patricia.Bou@uv.es

Sergio Maruenda sergio.maruenda@uv.es

Gora Zaragoza gora.zaragoza@uv.es

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