scholarly journals Sexism in Language and Talk-in-Interaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Weatherall
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Sexist Language ◽  
Sexism In Language ◽  
Gender Trouble ◽  
Language Issues

© 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. Feminists have long recognised important relationships between language and a gendered social order that disadvantages women. At the establishment of gender and language as a field of academic inquiry, work documented sexism in language—the ways words were used to ignore, narrowly define, or demean women. Using feminist conversation analysis, this article further develops that early work by considering recorded instances of gender and sexism in talk. A broad notion of “gender trouble” was used to identify 50 relevant cases from everyday interactions. Two sexist language issues that were evident in the collection are presented in this article—the derogation of women and participants’ orientations to gender inclusiveness. The analysis contributes to a better understanding of sexism in language by examining how instances of it unfold over turns of talk. The study is discussed with respect to the methodological tensions inherent in feminist conversation analysis.

scholarly journals Sexism in Language and Talk-in-Interaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Weatherall
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Sexist Language ◽  
Sexism In Language ◽  
Gender Trouble ◽  
Language Issues

© 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. Feminists have long recognised important relationships between language and a gendered social order that disadvantages women. At the establishment of gender and language as a field of academic inquiry, work documented sexism in language—the ways words were used to ignore, narrowly define, or demean women. Using feminist conversation analysis, this article further develops that early work by considering recorded instances of gender and sexism in talk. A broad notion of “gender trouble” was used to identify 50 relevant cases from everyday interactions. Two sexist language issues that were evident in the collection are presented in this article—the derogation of women and participants’ orientations to gender inclusiveness. The analysis contributes to a better understanding of sexism in language by examining how instances of it unfold over turns of talk. The study is discussed with respect to the methodological tensions inherent in feminist conversation analysis.

Empire Unmanned: Gender Trouble and Genoese Gold in Cervantes's “The Two Damsels”

PMLA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-299
Author(s):  
Barbara Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Old World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Gender Trouble

This reevaluation of Cervantes's novella “The Two Damsels” argues that the generic hallmarks of romance disguise a minute engagement with pressing social and political concerns. The cross-dressed damsels' search for their truant love, significantly named Marco Antonio, evinces the fraught connection between the vagaries of masculinity in Spain and the potency of Spain's empire. Transformed from romance pageboys to epic Amazons, the damsels champion domestic commitments over imperial concerns, even as they impersonate masculinity. Yet their profound disruption of the gendered social order and the text's insistent references to the literal bankruptcy of Spain's Old World empire cannot be contained by a successful romance resolution, even if Marco Antonio is successfully diverted from his imperial excursion.

Changing the Sexist Language: The Theory Behind the Practice

1978 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maija S. Blaubergs
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Sexist Language ◽  
Frequent Response ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Sexism In Language

The existence of sexism in the structure and usage of the English language has recently been extensively documented by linguists, psychologists, feminists, publishers, and others. This awareness of sexism in language has led to numerous suggestions for change, but their implementation has been difficult for the following reasons: (1) alternative proposals were frequently made (e.g., at least 10 alternatives to the use of the masculine pronouns as generics have been proposed); (2) some suggestions contradict each other (e.g., chairman may be retained and contrasted with chairwoman, or chairman may be eliminated from usage and chairperson used for both sexes); (3) misunderstanding of some of the suggestions has occurred (e.g., chairperson has been used in reference to only females, while chairman has been retained for males); (4) a frequent response to some of the suggestions for change has been ridicule, often in the form of overextensions of the original suggestions (e.g., woperson). In this paper, as a first step toward clarifying the inconsistencies, identifying the problems in implementation, and undermining the basis for continued misunderstanding and ridicule, I have categorized the various suggestions regarding changing sexist language according to their underlying rationale. I have identified the following alternative approaches: (1) indirect change, (2) change via circumvention, and (3) change via emphasis on feminine terms. Within these approaches, various alternative strategies for implementation are discussed, and the arguments and research supportive of and critical of the underlying rationales are identified and evaluated. The paper concludes with a recommendation of changes in usage that are suggested by the latter two approaches. The need for further research on the differing psychological effects of those alternatives is noted.

scholarly journals On Sexism in Language and Language Change – The Case of Peninsular Spanish

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedicta Adokarley Lomotey
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Language Reform ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Sexist Language ◽  
Sexism In Language ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
The Impact

The Spanish language has been described as a sexist language due to the peculiar characteris-tics of its gender morphology. It is indicated by the o ('masculine') and a ('feminine') gender morphemes which generally represent male and female respectively. This has led to an appar-ent confusion between grammatical gender and biological sex. Against this background, this paper attempts to discover the impact of anti-sexist language proposals on the Spanish language by analyzing sample Spanish newspapers. Of the 40 articles analysed from 20 representative newspapers, findings suggest that although some anti-sexist language elements have been adopted, their usage is erratic and the masculine generics are still used extensively. The results suggest that despite the challenges facing language reform at-tempts, the reinforcement of positive language policies is possible.

scholarly journals Pranking in children's helpline calls

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Weatherall ◽  
S Danby ◽  
K Osvaldsson ◽  
J Cromdal ◽  
M Emmison
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Institutional Interaction ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
Counselling Services

© 2016 The Australian Linguistics Society. Pranking can be understood as challenging a normative social order. One environment where pranking occurs is in institutional interaction. The present study examines a sample of pranking calls to telephone helplines for children and young people. Some cases had been posted on YouTube by the person doing the pranking; others were from a subcollection of possible pranks, extracted from a larger corpus of Australian children's counselling helpline calls. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis we aim to understand the inferential and sequential resources involved in pranking within telephone-mediated counselling services for children and youth. Our analysis shows pranksters know the norms of counselling helplines by their practices employed for subverting them. YouTube pranksters exploit next turns of talk to retrospectively cast what the counsellor has just said as a possible challenge to the perception of the call as a normal counselling one. One practice evident in both sources was the setting up of provocative traps to break a linguistic taboo. This detailed study of pranking in interaction provides documentary evidence of its idiosyncratic yet patterned local accomplishment in telephone-mediated counselling services aimed at children and youth.

scholarly journals Sexism in Language: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-203
Author(s):  
Mary Muindi
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Sexist Language ◽  
Sexism In Language

Language plays a crucial role in perpetuating sexism and gender inequality. The research draws on the Critical Discourse Analysis, an Interdisciplinary Approach to the study of discourse that views language as a social practice, to explore the existence and nature of sexist language in Kamba Popular Songs. Specifically, this study anchored itself on Grice’s Second Theory of Conversational Implicature (1991). The research had two objectives: to investigate sexist implicatures in Kamba Popular Songs and describe sexist inferences in the lyrics. The study used the descriptive research design and purposively sampled eight songs from the ten most popular Kamba bands with the youths. Besides, the research used content analysis to identify the possible sexist expressions classified into implicatures and inferences. Further, the researcher categorized the two linguistic items into negative and positive sexism, and the number of each type was counted up and described. The study concludes that popular Kamba songs project a sexist perception of women. This research recommends eliminating sexist language in both written and spoken discourse because it contains a lexicon and grammatical structure that trivializes and perpetrates biases against women.

Situated Learning and Interacting With/Through Technologies

2011 ◽  
pp. 155-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirkko Raudaskoski
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Situated Learning ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Interaction Analysis ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Interdisciplinary Interaction

There is a growing interest within social and humanistic sciences towards understanding practice both theoretically and analytically. Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept, “situated learning,” describes the process of newcomers moving toward full participation in a community. Wenger later refined his approach in his book Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Situated learning is equalled with social order: instead of understanding learning as a separate practice from everyday life, learning is seen as a more mundane phenomenon. It is sometimes difficult to operationalize Lave and Wenger’s concepts in data analysis. Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (CA) find that social order is created continuously by its members in their interactions. As ethnomethodology and CA base their findings on rigorous data analysis, they are extremely useful in analysing situated learning in everyday practices. The interdisciplinary interaction analysis (IA) is suggested as the best way to study the various aspects of situated learning in technology-intensive interactions.

Empire Unmanned: Gender Trouble and Genoese Gold in Cervantes's “The Two Damsels”

PMLA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-299
Author(s):  
Barbara Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Old World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Gender Trouble

This reevaluation of Cervantes's novella “The Two Damsels” argues that the generic hallmarks of romance disguise a minute engagement with pressing social and political concerns. The cross-dressed damsels' search for their truant love, significantly named Marco Antonio, evinces the fraught connection between the vagaries of masculinity in Spain and the potency of Spain's empire. Transformed from romance pageboys to epic Amazons, the damsels champion domestic commitments over imperial concerns, even as they impersonate masculinity. Yet their profound disruption of the gendered social order and the text's insistent references to the literal bankruptcy of Spain's Old World empire cannot be contained by a successful romance resolution, even if Marco Antonio is successfully diverted from his imperial excursion.

scholarly journals What is language for sociolinguists? The variationist, ethnographic, and conversation-analytic ontologies of language

2017 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Vázquez Carranza
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Ethnography Of Communication ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
The Relationship

The present investigation explores the language definitions (i. e. the language ontologies) that have emerged in the field of sociolinguistics. In general, it examines three types of sociolin-guistic studies: Labovian sociolinguistics (Labov 1972), the Ethnography of Communication (Gumperz/Hymes 1964) and Conversation Analysis (Sacks 1992). Firstly, it offers an account on the ontology of language developed by Chomskyian linguistics (1986) which is used as a starting point to contrast the three sociolinguistics’ language ontologies. Then, the paper pre-sents Labov’s ontology of language (Labov 1977), the criticism that it has faced and examines proposals that aim to integrate social facts and linguistic structure. With regard to the Ethnog-raphy of Communication, accounts about its ontology of language (Hymes 1974, 1986) and its ontology of culture (Sapir 1921; Hymes 1972) are presented and a possible explanation about the relationship between language and culture is offered. With respect to Conversation Analysis, its ontology of language is presented (Ochs et al. 1996) as well as its analytic in-sight and an account about grammar as an interactional resource is given. The final section proposes that, for these three types of sociolinguistics, “language” is a social, functional and behavioural entity which is socially and behaviourally structured. “Language” transmits social meanings, reflects the social order and expresses the identity of its speakers.

scholarly journals The Problem of Context in the Analysis of Social Action: The Case of Implicit Whiteness in Post-apartheid South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-313
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Ambiguous Case ◽  
A Site

While the specification of situating context(s) is commonly treated as an indispensable part of social scientific research, the choices this involves are rarely directly explicated. An exception is conversation analysis (CA), which differs from many other approaches in its privileging of participants’ orientations as a basis for empirically grounding analytic specifications of context. In this article, I demonstrate how this approach to context, along with CA methods and findings, can be employed in addressing challenges associated with identifying and analyzing (possible) instances of the implicit relevance of racial categories in everyday social interaction. Using the case of implicit whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa as a site for considering these challenges, I examine a collection of interactions in which race becomes (possibly) relevant during the course of complaints about violent crime. I begin with an ambiguous case of a speaker’s possible implicit orientation to whiteness, demonstrating the use of CA for the close examination of available evidence for this orientation. I then describe how an approach based on a collection of cases, constituted by similar sequential and action environments to those that characterize the ambiguous case, can be employed to strengthen the analysis of the ambiguous case. The analysis thereby demonstrates the powerful resources CA offers for addressing ambiguity with respect to social categories and the value of detailed examinations of interactional practices for documenting how participants manage and thereby reproduce the consequentiality of their position in a racialized social order.

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