CDA and Gender
- 3. Discourse is approached as a social practice, as the production of knowledge through language (Hall, 1992, p. 291). In this sense the concept is not referring only to linguistics, but it is language and practice (Taylor, 2001, p. 72). According to Foucault, Discourses denote ‘practices that systematically form the object of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). Discourse
- 4. Discourse, is indeed, not made of signs of simple words and is not a mere connections between reality and language, it is something ‘more’, that ‘more’ that as Foucault himself states, we want to explore.
- 5. The year 1975 was key in launching the field of language and gender. That year saw the publication of three books: 1) Robin Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place (the first part appeared in Language and Society in 1973), 2) Mary Ritchie Key’s Male/Female Language 3) Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley’s edited volume Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. These pioneering works emerged during the feminist movement of the 1970s, as scholars began to question both the identification of male norms as human norms, and the biological determination of women’s and men’s behavior. History
- 6. A conceptual split was posited between biological “sex” and sociocultural constructs of “gender.” Early language and gender research tended to focus on 1) Documenting empirical differences between women’s and men’s speech, especially in cross-sex interaction; 2) Describing women’s speech in particular; and 3) Identifying the role of language in creating and maintaining social inequality between women and men.
- 7. She posits a cycle that begins with the unequal role of women and men in society, resulting in differential gender socialization by which girls learn to use a “nonforceful style” because unassertiveness is a social norm of womanhood, given men’s role in establishing norms. The use of “women’s language,” in turn, denies women access to power, and reinforces social inequality. Lakoff’s point
- 8. Lakoff identified the linguistic forms by which “women’s language” weakens or mitigates the force of an utterance: “weaker” expletives (oh, dear versus damn); “trivializing” adjectives (divine versus great); tag questions used to express speakers’ opinions (The way prices are rising is horrendous, isn’t it?); rising intonation in declaratives (as seen in the second part of the sequence, “What’s for dinner?” “Roast beef?”); and mitigated requests (Would you please close the door? versus Close the door) (1975: 10–18). Gender and language use.
- 9. Brown (1980) examined politeness phenomena in a Mayan community. She found that women used more speech particles to strengthen or weaken an utterance, as well as strategies that were qualitatively more polite than those used by men. For example, women tended to use irony and rhetorical questions in place of direct criticism ( Just why would you know how to sew? implying Of course you wouldn’t), which both de-emphasized negative messages and emphasized in-group solidarity. Gender and language use.
- 10. Maltz and Borker (1982) surveyed research on gendered patterns of language use. example, in considering the finding that women tend to use more minimal responses (mhm, uhuh, yeah) than men, Maltz and Borker suggest that women tend to use these responses to indicate “I’m listening,” whereas men tend to use them to indicate “I agree.” The reason, then, that women tend to use more of these utterances is that they are listening more often than men are agreeing. Based primarily on Goodwin (1978, 1980a, 1980b) and Lever (1976, 1978), Maltz and Borker suggest that women and men acquire such different conversational habits during childhood and adolescence as they play in same-sex groups.