Gender, Language and Discourse

Citation

Stubbe, M. (2004), "Gender, Language and Discourse", Women in Management Review, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 123-125. https://doi.org/10.1108/09649420410525324

An enormous amount has been written on the relationship between language and gender in a wide range of academic disciplines over the past three decades. This research has been drawn on in a variety of ways by practitioners in fields as diverse as education and vocational training, counselling, psychotherapy, communication, organisational development and management studies. Ann Weatherall’s thought‐provoking book provides a fresh perspective on two topics which have proved to be hardy perennials in the field of women’s studies: sexist language and gender differences in speech style. This is the ninth book published to date in Routledge’s Women and Psychology series, each of which examines a “cutting edge” issue in this field and explores current theories and research methodologies. Gender, Language and Discourse explores the insights contributed by psychological research in general, and discursive psychology in particular, to ongoing theoretical debates in the language and gender field on key themes such as difference and dominance, language and power, and essentialism versus social constructionism.

Since the late 1990s there has been a renewed upsurge of interest in language and gender studies, with a number of books and edited collections providing overviews of previous work across a range of disciplines (e.g. Coates, 1998; Talbot, 1998) as well as showcasing new directions in this field of research (e.g. Holmes and Meyerhoff, 2002; Eckert and McConnell‐Ginet, 2003; Wodak, 1997). In particular, this more recent academic work reflects a growing interest in qualitative discursive methods of inquiry, and an increasing unease with the essentialist assumptions on which the research of the 1970s and 1980s was based (i.e. the idea that sex differences are predetermined, fixed attributes based on biology and/or social learning). This unease has been compounded by the recent proliferation of books giving advice on how to deal with supposedly “natural” miscommunication between the sexes in the self‐improvement and popular psychology genres (e.g. Elgin, 1993; Gray, 1992; Tannen, 1990), and has led to a sustained critique of the way in which the results of language and gender research have been appropriated by various interest groups outside the academy, often to the disadvantage of women (e.g. Bergvall et al., 1996).

Weatherall picks up and develops these contemporary themes from her own standpoint as a critical social psychologist. She questions the “taken‐for‐grantedness of gender”, and convincingly critiques the notion that an experimental scientific approach is the most appropriate way of producing knowledge about it (Bergvall et al., 1996, p. 36). She focuses in particular on the implications and influence of the recent “discursive turn” in the humanities and social sciences, and explores the insights which can be gained by applying a social constructionist approach to the study of language and gender. Her central argument is summarised as follows in the concluding comments to the book:

Language about women and men and the way women and men speak can be understood as part of the same discursive process, the social construction of gender. Sex/gender no longer has to be viewed as something we are. Rather it is something that we do, an interactional accomplishment that we achieve over and over again, in different ways, throughout the course of our lives (Bergvall et al., 1996, p. 156).

In developing this argument, she builds on the work of other post‐structuralist scholars in the field, including psychologists such as Mary Crawford, Celia Kitzinger and Margaret Wetherell, sociolinguists Deborah Cameron and Victoria Bergvall and feminist writer Judith Butler. These researchers all argue, like Weatherall, that much previous work on sexism and gender differences in language is based on two flawed assumptions – namely that gender is an essential, predetermined social attribute, and that language is a stable, fixed system. Much of this research fails to account for the contextually‐based variability and complexity of actual language use, and Weatherall therefore asserts that “a focus on difference is neither necessary nor sufficient for a complete understanding of how women and men speak” (Bergvall et al., 1996, p. 7). Rather, in this book she restates the alternative case that the important questions are “how gender is produced and sustained through patterns of talk, through the organisation of social interaction, through social practices and in institutional structures” (Bergvall et al., 1996, p. 7), thus challenging the positivist empirical tradition in her own discipline of psychology, which rests largely on essentialist assumptions.

This argument is woven into a very readable and useful overview and synthesis of two of the main strands of language and gender research over the years: sexism in language and gendered speech styles. Weatherall begins the book by presenting her personal credentials and philosophy as a feminist researcher, before providing a brief history of language and gender research, and social constructionist perspectives on gender, language and power. She defines feminist discursive psychology as post‐structuralist, “in the sense that it investigates language as a complex and dynamic system that produces meaning about social categories such as gender” (Bergvall et al., 1996, p. 7).

Chapter 1 provides an accessible entry point to the main business of the book with a discussion of sexist language, and the troubling of gender boundaries which takes place when sexism in language is challenged. The following two chapters explore the main themes in the longstanding debate around issues of gender differences in language use, and the more recent controversy as to whether this research is in fact addressing the right questions in the first place. In chapter 2, Weatherall exemplifies her argument with an in‐depth summary of research into sex differences in verbal ability and voice, drawing in part on psychological research not usually canvassed in any detail in sociolinguistic treatments of language and gender. She then goes on in the next chapter to challenge essentialist notions of “women’s language” and gendered speech styles by exploring why definitive answers to questions of difference have proved elusive, and to review the evidence that deterministic constructions of gender in fact function to disadvantage women rather than furthering feminist objectives.

Chapter 4, “The discursive turn”, is where Weatherall begins to examine in detail what is entailed in a social constructionist approach, and how the “discursive turn” has impacted on the field of language and gender. She points out how a growing realisation that the traditional boundaries between “language use by” and “language about” women and men has shifted the focus of language and gender research to discourse rather than language itself as the main site “for the construction and contesting of gendered and sexist meanings” (Bergvall et al., 1996, p. 75). Discursive psychology is one approach that has been developed as a way of examining the social construction of gender. (It is worth noting that this shift is mirrored in the discursive turn in the field of organisational communication and management over the last two decades, which has also highlighted the discursive processes by which organisations and their members come to be constituted.) A social constructionist definition of gender as discourse “offers a radical critique not only of biological determinism but also of the sex/gender distinction” (Bergvall et al., 1996, p. 81). This point is developed further in the subsequent chapter which focuses on the investigation of gender and language using ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA). As with discursive psychology, these frameworks represent a shift away from studying how language reflects and maintains gender differences to a different methodological approach, where language and discourse themselves become the object of study (Bergvall et al., 1996, pp. 96‐7).

In chapter 6, Weatherall turns to a consideration of the relationships between language, discourse and gender identity, an issue which cuts across the different theoretical approaches discussed up to this point in the book. This chapter provides a useful overview of traditional social psychological and sociolinguistic perspectives on the relationship between language, discourse and identity (which are based on the assumption that language is the site where pre‐existing elements of identity are expressed and reflected), and contrasts these with a discursive conversation analytic approach from psychology which instead focuses on how and why identity categories are used and made relevant in social interaction. Weatherall gives the most positive evaluation to a style of discursive psychology advocated by Wetherell (1998), which integrates elements of the way discursive practice is theorised in the CA approach, in the community of practice framework and in post‐structural theories of discourse. No reference is made however to two further theoretical approaches, critical discourse analysis and interactional sociolinguistics, which are more linguistic in focus, but have much in common otherwise with the underlying principles of discursive psychology. Chapters 4 and 5 included some interesting examples and illustrative analyses from Weatherall’s own research – I would have liked to see more of this kind of material in this chapter as well, both as a means of further exemplifying the approaches being discussed, and as a way of making the subject matter more approachable. The concluding chapter of the book, “Following the discursive turn” provides a review of the key themes and issues covered in the book, together with an evaluation of theory and research “before and after” the “discursive turn” in psychology.

In summary, Weatherall’s concise but comprehensive summary of the key findings and theoretical issues from a range of different disciplines and theoretical frameworks will provide newcomers to the field with a helpful introduction to the main questions that have engaged research on language and gender over the years. Most previous books in this area have been written from a sociolinguistic perspective, so even those readers who are already familiar with the main findings and issues will nevertheless find that this book adds a useful overview of theoretical developments and empirical work carried out within both traditional and discursive psychology frameworks. Although the book is aimed primarily at academic audiences, in particular students and researchers in social psychology, cultural studies, education, linguistic anthropology and women’s studies, it will certainly be of interest also to academic readers in fields like organisational communication and other management disciplines. It is written in a very “user‐friendly” and readable style, with excellent signposting and meticulous referencing, and is complete with a comprehensive index and bibliography. Key concepts are also clearly explained, and discipline‐specific “jargon” is kept to a minimum, all of which makes this an excellent inter‐disciplinary resource for teaching and research purposes. This does mean the book is likely to be somewhat less accessible and/or directly useful for practitioners and others without an academic background in this or a related field. Nevertheless, Gender, Language and Discourse will definitely repay the effort put in by any reader who is genuinely interested in the issues canvassed.