Analysing Language

Language plays a central role within feminist and gender theory, and thematic, content, conversation, and phenomenological analysis methods remain popular in modern gender studies (Cheshire & Trudgill, 1998; Holmes & Meyeroff, 2003; Lakoff, 1975; Tannen, 1994). Because discourse is often conceptualised as the medium through which the social world is created and reproduced (e.g., Foucault, 1978; Butler, 1990), gender theorists frequently turn to language and discourse to understand the social construction of gender. Within linguistics, for instance, a large body of work has explored gendered speech patterns (or “genderlects”: see Tannen, 1994), and the ways in which they may reflect communal and agentic gender roles. Studies show that, relative to men, women’s speech tends to be characterised by

more emotionality (i.e., reliant on emotional topics or inclusive of more emotional intensifiers), self-disclosure, active listening and minimal responses (e.g., “mm” or “yeah” when another person is speaking), the use of tag questions or mitigating words/sounds (e.g., “isn’t it?” or “you know?” after a question or between topics), frequent questions, and indirect phrasing (Coates, 2015; Holmes, 1992; Lakoff, 1975; Menegatti & Rubini, 2017; Tannen, 1990, 1993; West & Zimmerman, 1975). By contrast, these studies found men’s speech tends to be more direct, fact-based, focused on external rather than personal information, low in emotional content, and characterised by fewer questions, linking statements or mitigating words.

In addition to the differences in speech, feminist linguists have explored how heteronormative power dynamics may play out in conversation and social

interaction. These include naturalistic analyses of gendered verbal practices like street remarks (Gardner 1980; Kissling 1991; Kramarae, 1992), sexist slang (Grossman & Tucker, 1997), sexual or harassing language in the workplace (Holmes, 2005; Ragan et al. 1996), coaxing or coercion prior to sexual activity (Muehlenhard et al., 1991), and online abuse (Herring 1999; Herring & Stoerger, 2017), as well as male acts of “conversational dominance” (e.g., talking over

women, denigrating or making jokes about women’s issues, or a low level of uptake of women’s topics: Fishman 1983; Ochs and Taylor 1995; Spender 1985). Other laboratory studies have examined how gender expectations may bias listeners or evaluators. For example, studies show that although men are significantly more likely than women to interrupt in a dyadic or group context, women are often perceived as having interrupted more frequently and less appropriately than men (Anderson & Leaper, 1998; Robinson & Reis, 1989). Similar results have been found for volubility (or “talkativeness”) whereby women are often perceived as

having spoken more than men in mixed groups, even when they are described as having contributed an identical amount (Brescoll, 2001, 2011; Cutler & Scott, 1990). The structure of a conversation has also been shown to be influenced by the gender of the participants, and these patterns again seem to reflect broader socialisation practices. For example, men are significantly less likely than women to engage in conversational turn-taking or simultaneous speech, particularly in mixed gender dyads or groups (Coates, 2015).

Other feminist analyses have focused on the formal properties of language, exploring how the binary may be embedded in a language’s grammatical or

syntactical rules (Menegatti & Rubini, 2017). While English does not grammatically mark gender in the same way as some other languages (i.e., ascribe a gender to nouns or their dependent linguistic forms, as is done in French, Italian or German: see Braun, Irmen, & Sczesny, 2007), linguists suggest the binary is still constructed or reproduced through various grammatical norms. For example, linguistic

convention dictates that we both designate and qualify individuals according to their gender (i.e., he or she: see Wittig, 1985), and it remains rare in the English language to use the gender neutral “they” despite increased activism in this area (see Richards & Barker, 2015). Theorists have also identified other grammatical norms that may reify gender roles, including objectification language (e.g., women-object

associations in language: Kissling, 1991) and the previously discussed androcentric linguistic practices (see Bailey & LaFrance, 2018). More broadly, linguists and cultural critics have critiqued the Western tendency to frame social concepts around “binary oppositions”; that is, pair social categories together in language or thought as related, oppositional concepts (Cameron, 1997). While not a grammatical rule as such, evidence suggests people readily dichotomize and polarise many social

categories (e.g., male-female, gay-straight, mind-body, good-evil, etc.: Bing & Victoria, 1996; Utaker, 1974; Westen, 2001).

Another popular analytic method within gender studies is discourse analysis (Zimmen & Hall, 2016). Discourse may be broadly defined as language in context, and its study encompasses the analysis of discursive practices (e.g., text or

conversations) as well as the many contextual, historical, personal, or situational factors that may influence them (Fairclough, 1992; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). With regards to the construction of gender-as-binary, analyses have explored how

sex/gender categories may be framed in language (i.e., as relational opposites: see Ehrlich, Meyeroff & Holmes, 2014), as well as the extent to which gender, sex, and sexual orientation may become fused in popular discourse (e.g., “a man needs the love of a woman”: Livia & Hall, 1997). Discourse analyses have also been used to examine the construction of gender self-concept or identities. For example, studies have looked at the verbal construction of gender identities in early life (e.g., “I am a boy, and boys have short hair and like cars”: e.g., Leaper & Friedman, 2007;

Litosseliti & Sunderland, 2002), and also how prevailing cultural norms about gender may spill over into individual gender self-concepts (e.g., “Like most women, I don’t have an aptitude for science”; Bacchi, 1999).

The role of the social-relational context in gender construction has also been elucidated using discourse analyses. Analyses of conversations between male peer groups, for instance, have shown how traditional markers of masculinity (e.g., heterosexuality, sexual dominance, violence, financial success, and a rejection of emotionality) may be frequently regulated through verbal practice (Benwell, 2017; Blaise, 2005; Gilmore, 1995; Kiesling, 1997; Woodward, 2000). Similarly, studies of female conversations show that they can similarly reflect and enforce patriarchal

ideas of femininity (e.g., through frequent discussions of weight or body image, romantic relationships, and child-rearing: Cameron, 1997; Heilburn, 1988; Wilton, 1992), though they may also provide a space for consolation, intimacy, and

subversive discourse and resistance (Coates, 2015; Green, 1998). Others have examined the role of the specific social context on gendered discourse, or how gender norms and expectations may interact with other social or power structures (e.g., by comparing discourses of masculinity across racial, class, or ethnicity groups: Bucholtz, 1999; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992; Lave and Wenger 1991).