Article

EJ WS
European Journal of Womens Studies 18(3) 243264 The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1350506811405817 ejw.sagepub.com

Regulating girlhood: Evaluative language, discourses of gender socialization and relational aggression
Antonio Garca-Gmez
Universidad de Alcal de Henares, Spain

Abstract Placing the discursive psychological analysis of sexuality at its centre, this article considers a number of overlapping fields of linguistics: womens language, construction of gender identities and language and sexuality. By encompassing these fields, in spite of potential differences in terms of theoretical stance and foci of analysis, the present study suggests a wider stance in the analysis of language, gender and sexuality. The study considers two important post-structuralist concepts: performativity and heteronormativity. More precisely, the analysis shows how the sexual identities of British heterosexual female teenagers are discursively constructed and regulated via language use when aggressively relating to other girls in Facebook. The analysis is based on the assumption that sexuality is but one aspect of identity. Although on the surface these British teenagers constructions present masculine negative mean girls, a closer analysis reveals that more subversive and challenging interpretations can be applied. Keywords evaluative language, gender studies, relational aggression, sexual identity, social networking, teenage girls

Introduction
Among the different tools available, social networking sites (SNSs) have become very popular as they represent a space for people to express their thoughts and feelings (Blood, 2002) with very little knowledge of computer and internet skills (Huffaker and Calvert, 2005). Owing to the popularity of these SNSs among teenagers, researchers
Corresponding author: Antonio Garca-Gmez, Departamento de Filologa Moderna, Facultad de Filosofa y Letras, Edificio Caracciolos, Universidad de Alcal de Henares, c/ Trinidad, 3. 28801 - Alcal de Henares, Madrid, Spain. Email: antonio.garciag@uah.es

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from different fields have attempted to throw light on the types of things teenagers can do online (Anderson, 2002; boyd, 2008; Lenhart et al., 2005; Livingstone and Bober, 2005; Rainie and Hitlin, 2005, among others). In particular, social psychologists, educators and discourse analysts have become increasingly concerned to understand the types of practices, implications and meaning of social networking sites for the so-called Net generation (boyd and Ellison, 2007). Given the fact that young people usually communicate with their friends online (boyd, 2008; Livingstone, 2008), recent leading-edge research has explored the interpersonal dimensions that characterize these peer networks (Brown, 2004; Kumar et al., 2005; Nurmi, 2004) and analysed how teenage girls both perform and negotiate their sexual identity on personal blogs (Garca-Gmez, 2010a, 2010b) and on Bebo (Ringrose, 2010). In addressing the construction of girls digital sexual identity, these explorations focus on potential impacts of the internet on teenagers development of gender roles and socialization (Galambos, 2004; Garca-Gmez, 2009), the dissonance between their virtual and non-virtual selves (Livingstone, 2008) and the offline problems that can occur when the online identity usurps the real identity (Thomas-Jones, 2010). With regard to these potential impacts, both popular media and academic research have pointed to the alarming and significant increase in one of the most common destructive social practices in any so-called civilized society: (cyber-)bullying (Hinduja and Patchin, 2008; Katzer et al., 2009). Although aggressive behavioural practices in general and bullying in particular have traditionally been associated with masculinity (Dorias, 2004; Kimmel and Mahler, 2003; Myrttinen, 2003), a growing body of work points to evidence of a ladette culture that is on the increase in the classroom, where girls are gradually adopting laddish behaviour (Jackson, 2006). Such sensationalized attention surrounding girls relational aggression reveals that female teenagers seem to have found in this laddish behaviour their own code of communication, socialization and maintenance of social hierarchies. As Ringrose (2006: 405) suggests:
Through broadsheet papers, magazines, television, radio, movies and new research findings, we are increasingly told a new creature has been unleashed in our homes, schools, neighbourhoods the mean girl who bullies, is aggressive and potentially violent.

Feminist psychologists have started to realize that feminist claims, in search of gender equality, have, over the years placed an excessive burden on women to demonstrate that they can perform as well as men can (Ringrose, 2006, 2007). The present article suggests that this gender equivalence-seeking has led to a poor understanding of three key aspects: femininity, doing girlhood and girls relational aggression. I use both a quantitative and a qualitative method to examine in detail the pragmatic-discursive strategies employed by British female teenagers to evaluate and regulate social behaviour in episodes of (virtual) relational aggression. In spite of the regulative heterosexual matrix present within neoliberal post-feminist times (Gill, 2007), my data suggest that young women exploit a number of linguistic strategies, mainly based on a process of lexical creativity and social evaluation, aiming to exert their power by attacking and humiliating one another. In order to explore these discursive strategies, I build on Ringroses (2008: 34) claim about the contradictions existing in the understanding and construction of the

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contemporary representational terrain of girlhood and I develop her argument that girls aggression constitutes a complex, confusing and sometimes contradictory representational ground. As Ringrose and Walkerdine (2008: 241) suggest, femininity is constructed as a site of limitless possibility for transformation and reinvention.

Girls relational aggression on the blogosphere: Some theoretical remarks

Relational aggression in general and girls relational aggression in particular can be understood as an evolution of certain bullying behaviours harboured by the liberty teenagers have to expose, freely but without awareness of the potential dangers, their private lives on the blogosphere (Tokunaga, 2010). At this point, one may wonder why gender matters in aggressive behaviours, but the intriguing question is surely why it has not been a matter of study. Research examining the persistent gender-blindness in bullying draws a mixed picture regarding conflict management reasons on the one hand and more feminism-related reasons on the other (Bernstein and Reimann, 2001). In recent years, a new and increasingly dominant generation of sociobiological and developmental psychologists has been trying to depict gender differences in aggression (Moretti et al., 2004; Putallaz and Bierman, 2004). These studies present this social phenomenon from different, and sometimes opposing, angles. In particular, most studies purporting to identify the origin of girls increasing indirect aggression describe the problem from an educational perspective, and offer a solution that considers the need for behavioural management and an anti-bullying policy (Woods and Wolke, 2003, among others). The limitations of these studies lie in the fact that gender is conceptualized as a binary system and girls relational aggression is regarded as a developmental problem, a mechanism to express their opinion and channel their emotions in a direct way. Contrary to this assumption, Ringrose (2006, 2007) has introduced an innovative and critical approach to girls relational aggression. She argues persuasively that girl power and girl aggression should be understood as regulative strategies to manage girls, to manipulate and present them as mean. In her own words:
Widespread claims of girls newfound successes at school (presumptive claims of success that are themselves part of a reactive, post-feminist discourse of boys failure in school) are rapidly pathologized through this discourse the new girl power becomes synonymous with girl meanness. (Ringrose, 2006: 414)

In addition to Ringroses approach, the studies of Paasonen et al. (2007), Atwood (2009) and Evans et al. (2010) are of relevance here since they delve into the sexualization of culture and, more precisely, they call attention to a process of pornification which shows how depictions of pornography are gaining a presence in non-pornographic contexts. They throw further light on girls relational aggression by calling attention to the fact that girls use highly explicit, pornified language to shame/attack other girls (see also Duits and Van Zoonen, 2006). In this light, this article examines how the alarming attention media are paying to girls aggressive behaviour has contributed to a distorted view of girls at the beginning of the 21st century. In particular, the study focuses on a general

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trend of gendered sexualization and specific discourses that illustrates heteropornification by foregrounding and highlighting the discursive strategies of sexual aggression which girls use in their online conflicts on Facebook. Analysing real examples of girls relational aggression, I argue that girls increasingly aggressive behaviour presents a distorted picture of girl power, where girls laddish behaviour is not only used as evidence that womens success in the public arena is still full of contradictions but is also related to issues of interpersonal acceptance or rejection of a differentiated heteronormative set of behaviours1 (Butler, 1990). Taking seriously Ringroses (2006) discussion of the new universal mean girl, study of these female teenagers makes it possible to argue that, in spite of the social regulation behind the reactive positioning of girls relational aggression in popular culture and media, teen girls discursive construction of their identities revolves around the expected normative heterosexual femininity matrix that sociological studies proclaim. The social evaluation underlying the episodes of relational aggression not only sheds light on the process of these teenagers construction of their own identity and those of others but the discursive study of these girls strategies also offers evidence that girlhood remains carefully regulated through a heteronormative matrix which differentiates between socially acceptable normative girls and socially deviant girls.

Method Facebook sample: Selection process

Discourse analysis of evaluative language in episodes of girls relational aggression was performed on a selection of comments made by female adolescents aged between 14 and 17 and posted on their own and other friends walls in Facebook (mean age = 16.23, SD = 1.14). Initially, 10 different secondary schools were contacted and informed about the purpose of the study. Five different secondary schools located in northwest England agreed to participate and put the researcher in contact with students parents. As agreed with the school, both parents and teenagers were first told about the research objectives in simple terms, and were encouraged to take part in the study. Most parents emailed the researcher to ask questions about the procedure and discuss confidentiality. Eventually, all these questions were compiled in an organized way to write the informed consent for research. Parents and teenagers read the terms of the consent and 68 parents signed the form.2 The 68 girls Facebook pages were closely analysed on a daily basis for two months. During this time I noticed how in the first few days these girls barely wrote anything on their own or somebody elses walls; however, they gradually forgot about the research and normality was restored as time went by. In addition, it took some time to carry out a preliminary inspection of older posts in order to locate examples of girls relational aggression. After this two-month inspection of older and current posts, 50 Facebook pages were selected which met two main requirements. First, these 50 girls used Facebook regularly to communicate with their friends, posting at least five or six comments every day.3 Second, each girl had at least five Facebook friends who were also part of the research and instances of episodes of relational aggression were identified among them in older posts. In the end, this research took

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place in four secondary schools. Although the area around the school is predominantly white lower middle-class with a low socioeconomic status, most parents consider themselves white middle-class.

Facebook sample: Classification process and preliminary analysis

Following Gottman (1979), these transcripts were, on the one hand, classified by dividing each persons entry, as if they were a speaking turn, into thought units. In plain terms, a thought unit represents a pragmatic intention any speaker wishes to express and tends to occur as an independent clause. As Taylor and Donald (2003: 218) point out, coding at this level therefore comes closest to isolating single communication acts and so minimises the possibility of analysis overlooking smaller but psychologically meaningful components of dialogue. Before data selection a preliminary linguistic inspection of all the participants walls was performed. A search for examples of negative appraisals of other girls was carried out to locate potential episodes of relational aggression. This inspection was highly productive inasmuch as more than 90 percent of these negative evaluations of others and others behaviour allowed a sample containing 2527 thought units to be compiled. It is very difficult to explain how representative these pieces of the entire data set are given the fact that these girls tend to comment on their own and others walls on insignificant matters. Thus, the frequency of these brief and usually irrelevant comments makes it difficult to carry out a consistent statistical analysis but it is worth pointing out that the episodes of relational aggression selected are characterized by a significantly higher number of comments made on the same issue. Contrary to other types of comment, those on episodes of relational aggression range from 20 to 40 and are made by at least three girls. Once all the episodes were selected and all the thought units carefully examined, the latter were classified into a taxonomy of three types of communication behaviour in crisis negotiation which were adapted from Taylors (2002) classification. These behavioural types are shown in Table 1. This classification characterizes interpersonal
Table 1. Principles of classification and transcript examples Speech act category Avoidance-identity: Strategy aims to differentiate Us vs Them Avoidance-instrumental: Strategy aims to inform the other girl what the rest of the group think about her Avoidance-relational: Strategy aims to make explicit why their friendship is not possible Transcript example I am not the one who backstabbed you, You and me are very different, I know what youve done Everybody wants me to tell you this . . ., I will tell you what somebody should have told you before You have less value than a bucket of dogs vomit GET OUT OF MY LIFE, Dont think I can trust you at all

Source: Adapted from Taylors (2002) classification of interpersonal behaviour in crisis negotiation.

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behaviour during conflict and identifies the three main motivational goals that people can pursue during a negotiation. Indebted to Donohue (1998), Hammer (2001) and Taylor and Donald (2003), I classified interpersonal behaviour in terms of relational aggression as Identity, Instrumental, or Relational depending on the degree of affiliation or independence the Facebookers displayed in their online conversation. Each category is further explained as the analysis unfolds. In order to avoid any possible inconsistencies in the classification of thought units, all the utterances were classified to take into account their beginning and end (Olekalns and Smith, 2000). This means the analysis could reveal not only the way these female Facebookers organize their own comments but also the degree of (in-) dependence they display in the interaction. More specifically, and by analysing the first thought unit, it is possible to consider first behaviour as key to understanding an utterance, with subsequent behaviours working only to elaborate and refine the message provided in the first unit (Taylor and Donald, 2003: 220). Furthermore, the analysis of the final thought unit was understood as these teenagers cue for the other party. The intercoder reliability was based throughout the compilation process on over 10 percent (n = 21) of randomly selected items from the sample. Intercoder reliability was tested using the following variables: Avoidance-identity (.98); Avoidance-instrumental (.99); and Avoidancerelational (.98). Finally, it must be added that the episodes chosen to illustrate the analysis in the present article were further analysed by the teenage girls who actually wrote those comments being asked to explain the meanings they themselves give to these examples of hypersexualized language. Analytically speaking, this kind of approach proved very useful in identifying the best way to interpret the tone of the hyperbolic dysphemistic expressions these girls use. All in all, it made it possible to explore further the meaning of what the girls were saying and how their statements were intended and received by the other girls.

Analytical and ethical position: Disclosure of personal information

In line with DiMaggio at al. (2001), Meyer (2003) and Sveningsson Elm (2009), my focus is on social networks implications for social change. Even though any social network is an opportunity for reflection and for identity work, I decided to adopt a social constructionist orientation. Consistent with this orientation, comments selected and analysed provide a context in which to engage in relationship talk, and tell us something about the cultural norms, and possibly the community of practice norms, which are observed or challenged (Garca-Gmez, 2009). In addition, a careful examination of the amount of personal information posted was done. The study guarantees the privacy of their writers as the analysis does not reveal any personal detail. After a thorough analysis of the topics female teenagers discussed on their Facebook walls (see Table 2), comments were selected in terms of three main content areas: school, family and friend relationships, the interrater reliability of which was 89 percent, 78 percent and 94 percent respectively. Table 2 shows the mean number of topics discussed by these female teenagers. The analysis of the topics discussed shows that there are different degrees of self-involvement

Garca-Gmez
Table 2. Topics discussed by female teenagers in the corpus of data Topics Love relationships Experiences at school with a classmate Expression of feelings and thoughts Gossip/rumour spreading Friendship discussion Experiences at home with relatives Experiences at school with a teacher Interests/hobbies Blogging/technology Other issues

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All items (N = 387) 93.1% 87.9% 85.6% 76.2% 65.2% 61.6% 34.9% 25.7% 13.5% 11.8%

that are connected with the nature of the topics posted on their Facebook walls. As can be seen in the data, female teenagers focus on the personal and the private rather than on the global and the public (Eggins and Slade, 1997). With regard to the treatment of information, detailed analysis shows a tendency, in almost any topic, to find a pejorative judgement of an absent other who was not supposed to read the contents of the comment. In addition, these female teenagers write extensively about personal matters and feelings. Interestingly, great attention is paid to love relationships and narrations of conversations held at school with other classmates. For current purposes, three main content areas were selected for analysis of girls relational aggression: experiences at school, experiences at home and friendship relationships. These three content areas share the following characteristic: participants are defined as holding the same power. Initially, none of them is expected to exert power over the other or is allowed to impose a particular course of action unless an instance of verbal abuse is activated. This gives strong support to the hypothesized connection between female self-presentation strategies and whether relational aggression is the result of purely individual motivation and/or generated by a particular social configuration of girlhood.

Heteronormative feminine sexuality: Regulating girlhood

As Sunderland (2004: 6) points out, there is little doubt that language is used to construct discourses, to depict the world in different ways all of which are intrinsically connected with relations of power. In what follows, I examine the ways in which these British teenagers relate in episodes of relational aggression. Analysis of the data makes it possible to argue that the expression of assertivity has to do with the explicit use of sexual terms that are used to evaluate others socially. More precisely, these teenagers use (dysphemistic) sexual expressions that seem to be connected with a linguistic strategy to threaten, exert their power and impose a particular course of action on other in-group members and, eventually, evaluate others behaviour as either socially acceptable or socially deviant. Interestingly, these teenagers disclosure of their sexual identity achieves an evaluative function insofar as they attempt to regulate others by establishing normative behaviour.

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In what follows, I discuss how girlhood is regulated by either endorsing or challenging heterosexualized performativity.

Endorsing heteronormative feminine sexuality in online discourse

Face-to-face interpersonal interaction in our daily life is interpreted by embodied characteristics which are culture- and gender-sensitive (i.e. interactants physical features, behaviour and body language). Such embodied characteristics are therefore socially constructed gender categories which show that gender is not only a characteristic of the flesh but it is also a figment of the mind (Boudourides and Drakou, 2000). As I have argued elsewhere, this combination of mind and body becomes particularly relevant in computermediated communication (CMC) because entering into dialogue with other people in cyberspace is characterized by a process of disembodiment or dislocation of the self (Boudourides and Drakou, 2000; Garca-Gmez, 2010a). Cyber-communication in interpersonal relationships constitutes an example of the disembodied practice of social talk in the early 21st century insofar as the body, the most natural location of the self, becomes irrelevant. If we leave the body aside, it is then the mind and how we encode our reality that matter. Floating free of corporeal experience in the examples here analysed of online girls relational aggression, this aggressive and hypersexual speech found in the data seems to relate to online talk. This idea was confirmed when participants were asked about the language they used and most of them confessed they felt embarrassed when they read what they themselves had written. Interestingly, they felt the need to justify their behaviour, even though this was not intended on the part of the analyst. Inspection of the data provides evidence that these female teenagers endorse heteronormative feminine sexuality when being relationally aggressive. This endorsement can be regarded as an attempt to evaluate in-group and out-group behaviour by enhancing the positivity of self-concept. This, in turn, regulates appropriate formations of performing girlhood. In particular, I suggest that these instances of heteronormative feminine sexuality, understood as an expression of assertivity, fulfils two important evaluative functions in discourse. First, these teenagers, contrary to the common belief that young women repress their anger and they express it indirectly, have their say and express their emotions (i.e. anger) with aggressive revenge by threatening others physically. Second, these explicit sexual expressions establish the norms of the group and differentiate in-group members (i.e. those teenagers who act in the same way and, therefore, live up to these social expectations) from out-group members (i.e. those teenagers who act differently). As the quantitative analysis shows, the underlying social evaluation in these episodes of relational aggression is mainly built up by means of two different types of evaluative discourse in terms of the function each type fulfils (see Table 3): 1. Avoidance-identity. These utterances are mainly informatives4 which aim to differentiate Us (i.e. the girl who usually initiates the relational aggression) vs Them (i.e. the girl(s) who are aggressed). These informatives can be grouped into: (i) (in-)direct positive appraisal of the speaker and explicit contrast between speaker and other(s) (e.g. Im better than you are); and (ii) direct negative

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appraisal of the other girl(s) past action(s) (e.g. Youre a whore. You did John and Andrew and many more). 2. Avoidance-relational. These utterances aim to make explicit why the friendship is not possible any more. This particular type of informative evaluates negatively the other girls behaviour (e.g. You know you do things with boys) and/or physical appearance (e.g. Youre so ugly, you stuck your head out of the car window and got arrested for mooning). These female teenagers self-enhance and criticize others past actions directly. Consequently, this involves a contrast between the speaker (and her in-group) and the other(s) (i.e. the out-group) to argue that they are different. In addition, it is common to find insults and swear words (e.g. You bitch, leave me alone). Both insults and swear words are used as an attempt to be more aggressive and impose on others. Table 3 shows the linguistic realizations and frequency of each pragmatic meaning of utterances. As the following example illustrates, heteronormative feminine sexuality is carefully policed in the comments these female teenagers posted on their walls. These girls adopt a particularly masculinized subject position which allows them not only to express their anger but also to compare their own and these other girls skills to satisfy boys sexual desire. In doing so, they evaluate others in a negative way and present themselves as desirable girls who can please and, therefore, are preferred by boys.
Table 3. Evaluative language in regulating girlhood: endorsing heteronormative feminine sexuality discourse British corpus Frequency Avoidance-identity: Strategy aims to differentiate Us vs Them (In-)direct positive appraisal of the speaker and explicit contrast between speaker and other(s) Direct negative appraisal of the other girl(s) past action(s) Total Avoidance-relational: Strategy aims to make explicit why the friendship is not possible Negative appraisal of the other girls behaviour and/or physical appearance Use of insults and swear words Total Avoidance-instrumental: Strategy aims to inform the other girl what the rest of the group think about her Imposition of a course of action for the speakers benefit Suggestions of actions for the speakers benefit Total Ratio

397 119 516

76.93 23.06

307 446 753

40.77 59.22

27 12 39

69.23 30.76

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European Journal of Womens Studies 18(3)

A (17 years old): SOOOO happy! B (16 years old): Cool! Why? J C (17 years old): hey girl! Did he phone you? D (16 years old): who? B: did u date him A:  w were chattin and hes so HOT. Read this . . . this is what he wants to do with me . . mmmmm yeah! [NOTE: cut and pasted from a previous conversation with this new boy]  I gently remove ur panties and begin to massage your thighs. You get all juicy thinking about my tongue brushing up against them. I softly begin to tongue ur wet pussy. I run my tongue up an down ur smooth clit. E: u r bitch! U r an ugly filthy bitch. Hes my boyfriend. U FUCKING BITCH. B: take a hike! C: yeah stop bullshitting her! E:  He writes to u but Im in bed with him. U whore. I eat his cock EVERYDAY. . u r bitch but u dont know how to make him cum. I was with him yesterday and he fucked ME . . . so hard, so hot, so suckable. I went on him and he puts his hands on the back of my head, bucking his hips, and really getting into watching me deep throat his cock all the way without gaggin. Can u do that? You wish! A: u r the bitch E:  hes mine. I do him what he wants me to. I want u out of his side or else! Leaving aside the scary fact that teenagers tend to accept people they know little or nothing about, teenager E happens to be this boys girlfriend and has her say on As wall. It can be seen how these teenagers construct their identity as women in terms of their ability to get their boys contented in bed. Teenager A has posted a comment that makes her other friends curious. A fifth teenager reads the comments, which drive her up the wall, and expresses her anger by attacking (A) directly. In relation to this data extract, teenager E commented herself: I couldnt believe my eyes when she posted what she wanted my boyfriend to do to her. I told Ginny [a friend both of them have in common] he was really good in bed and she must have told her. She was lying. My boyfriend would never ever touch that [referring to teenager A] and I wanted everybody to know why Andy is my boy. She [referring to teenage A] wouldnt even know what to do or say to turn him on. As this extract shows, the strategy employed reveals two key aspects. One might think that this is an in-group strategy to establish boundaries and normative behaviour (i.e. ingroup vs out-group) but the meaning attached to her words by teenager E makes it possible to argue that there is an obvious process of self-categorization (Turner et al., 1987) that leads to the construction of both the social identity and group behaviour of these teenagers. Interestingly enough, this particular process of categorization produces

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in-group normative behaviour (i.e. girls who can satisfy their sexual needs) but, at the same time, it is clearly connected with a process of deindividuation (Hogg and Vaughan, 2002: 415) and self-awareness which causes behaviour to become impulsive, irrational, regressive and uninhibited because it is not under the usual social and personal control. When being relationally aggressive, these teenagers exploit the avoidance-identity strategy insofar as they seem to establish clear boundaries between themselves and others. As teenager E comments on her own lines, I wanted everybody to know why Andy is my boy. She (referring to teenage A) wouldnt even know what to do or say to turn him on. The inner characteristics of this avoidance-identity strategy do not allow any other member to be part of the group as the effectiveness of this evaluative behaviour is based on the claim that I am the one who can satisfy him and Nobody like me can do this stuff. In addition, these teenagers also rely on the avoidance-relational strategy as they insult the others to strengthen their independence and show their lack of connection. In addition to this, the principle that governs the construction of this particular social identity salience hinges on these teenagers motivation to reduce uncertainty about themselves and feel positive about themselves. The success of these strategies is twofold. On the one hand, Facebooker E attempts to persuade others that she is competent insofar as she explains in detail all the stuff she does with her boyfriend. On the other hand, E presents a distorted picture of femininity and feminine desire. She not only relegates her own desire to enslavement by the phallus (Irigaray, 1985) but also describes a relationship in terms of sexual performance only and reduces any other qualities and needs her boyfriend may have to the demands of his penis. Extracts 2 and 3 illustrate this point: Extract 2 A (15 years old): (writes this comment on Bs wall) U little filthy worm! B: (16 years old): leave me alone A: U wont have him B:  I already did. U were not lying when u say he has a fucking gift! hahahaha A: Slut! B:  How dare u! U know what. He told me when I was licking his cock u never did get a full load in your mouth from him. And I DID! He fingered me with three of his fingers and I hit the most powerful orgasm of my life. It was so INTENSE. I moaned and moaned and moaned. Yes, I am a slut and I love it!!! Extract 3 A (15 years old): I love you! B: (17 years old. Boyfriend): luv u 2 C (15 years old): Congratulations D (16 years old): u dated him? A: yeah D: wow! U r lucky girl

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E (15 years old):  Lucky? You r a girl with g-string hanging out. U r a slapper, u dumb thing, hes with u because he thinks u do good stuff. I hate u, I hate ur short short skirt and ur low cut top. U r a slapper thats what u r C: Dont bother her cos u r jellous. U filthy whore E:  jellous? Of what? U ugly cunt! I find girls lk u pathetic. U dont know what a man cos uve never been with 1 and whats worse ull never be with 1. I hate when you come in every morning. U ugly cunt! U cant have a man cos u wont know what to do with his cock. U r useless! U wouldnt know how 2 lick his cock till he shoots in ur mouth A: dont know who the slapper is E:  U shut up! I can have ur boyfriend this instant the guys I blow just love it when I swallow their cum loads. I have a real taste for cock Both teenager B (extract 2) and teenager E (extract 3) had a strikingly similar response when they were asked to comment on their lines. Teenager B said My friends are ashamed of admitting they enjoy oral sex, but all my boyfriends were obsessed with the idea of me sucking their erm, you know. Teenager E said likewise: Im fed up with these girls who say no, I dont do that stuff but they fuck every other boy in the toilets. They are such liars. I cant put up with people not saying what they actually do. These comments show the complex choices girls make in order to construct their sexual digital identity (Ringrose, 2010). These comments have to do with these girls double social standard (i.e. admitting the importance of oral sex in a relationship but denying they all practise it). All in all, these comments show how these two girls constitute and negotiate the subject position of slut and slapper. In line with previous research (Ringrose, 2008; Walkerdine, 1991), there seems to be a fine line between popular girls (i.e. girls who have a good reputation) and too known girls (i.e. girls who have a bad reputation because they do things with boys). Interestingly, the terms slut and slapper are not associated here with the negative traditional connotation of inappropriate feminine conduct (Weekes, 2006), but this teenager inverts the code of sexual respectability. In fact, the terms slut and slapper are used in a positive light as it is the other girl who seems to be in need of regulation because of her inability to satisfy the sexual needs of the boy they are referring to. By making explicit their sex skills these two girls attempt not only to humiliate the other girl publicly but also to differentiate themselves from others (avoidance-identity) and state the impossibility of relating to each other (avoidance-relational). What emerged from the analysis of these extracts was a remarkable set of girls consistent habits of describing themselves in terms of their abilities to satisfy mens sexual needs. As both the extracts show and the girls comments underline, it can be claimed that these girls adopt a masculinized subject position; in other words, they enact a highly masculinized, sexual subjectivity in order to attack and humiliate one another. As

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Garca-Gmez (2010a: 150) suggests, the use of dysphemism with explicit language to refer to the more taboo parts of the body or bodily processes makes this self-attribution process a tantalising technique, on the assumption that much explicitness sounds much more assertive. In addition, there is evidence to support the claim that sexuality and gender should not be conflated in order to appear indistinguishable as is commonly done in the literature. These female heterosexual teenagers impression management and impression motivation in relational aggression episodes make it possible to argue that gender and sexuality should be framed as separate and independent. The examples found blur the hard boundaries between hegemonic in-group and the subordinate and marginalised out-groups (Baker, 2008: 407).

Failing attempts to resist heteronormative feminine sexuality

It was Butler (1990) herself who conceptualized identities as performative and consequently inherently unstable. In addition, Butler establishes a clear connection between the term gender and normative femininity insofar as gender is a citational practice actualized through (and thus an effect of) a series of repetitive performances that constitute the illusion of a proper, pure and fixed gender (Renold and Ringrose, 2008: 339). In this section, I attempt to answer Butlers (2006: 533) recent question about what qualifies as a strike or blow against heteronormative practices by adducing evidence of how these British heterosexuals fail to challenge or resist the phallogocentricism of the heterosexual matrix. Analysis of the data makes it possible to identify the presence of recurrent and consistent patterns whereby these female teenagers clumsily attempt to challenge heteronormative feminine sexuality when being relationally aggressive. Therefore, this analysis not only supports Butlers (2006) claim that coercion and flight are the key to resisting gender-normative practices, but it also fills the gap which Renold and Ringrose (2008: 339) identified in the literature about the need to look for the possibilities that exceed the binary framework of gender and dichotomies of entrapment. I abandon, however, their philosophical and sociological framework for mapping subversive movements and attempt to shed further light on these aspects by providing evidence from a discursive psychological perspective. As the quantitative analysis shows, the underlying social evaluation in these challenges to heterosexualized performativity is mainly built up by means of two different types of evaluative discourse in terms of the function each type fulfils (see Table 4): 1. Avoidance-relational. These utterances are mainly informative and aim to express the speakers anger by stating how much they dislike other girls behaviour or presence. Contrary to the aforementioned avoidance-relational strategy, this involves a contrast between the speaker who self-presents as affected by what the others say and/or do and the others as the agents of sexual acts which spawn their annoyance and anger (e.g. You are licking my cunt and I hate you). This reveals a culture-specific conceptualization of assertiveness and can be understood as these young womens attempts to transform existing power relations.

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2. Avoidance-instrumental. These utterances are mainly directives5 which aim to inform the other girl(s) what the rest of the group think about her (them). A course of action is usually imposed (e.g. Everybody knows youre a pain. Stop calling me) or suggested (e.g. If I were you, I wldnt call Mary anymore. She says you bore her to death). Table 4 shows the linguistic realizations and frequency of each pragmatic meaning of these utterances. In spite of post-feminist discourses, these young women still show confusion when relating aggressively with others. As Frosh et al. (2002: 756) suggest, hegemonic masculinity or the dominant mode of being a man is commonly related to heterosexuality, toughness, power and authority. Evidence found in the data underlines the idea of understanding gender as a hierarchy, with hegemonic masculinity having dominance over femininities and over non-hegemonic masculinities (Baker, 2008). The data here analysed account for an important process of feminine subjectivity, one that provides a dialogue between the existing tension between masculine and feminine identifications and the linguistic strategies by which relational aggression is organized and articulated. Furthermore, the comments made later on by these teenagers about the hypersexualized language used help to explain what it means for these girls to take up their own position in relation to femininity. These pornified discourses entail turning
Table 4. Evaluative language in regulating girlhood: resisting heteronormative feminine sexuality discourse British corpus Avoidance-identity: Strategy aims to differentiate Us vs Them (In-)direct positive appraisal of the speaker and explicit contrast between speaker and other(s) Direct negative appraisal of the other girl(s) past action(s) Total Avoidance-relational: Strategy aims to make explicit why the friendship is not possible Negative appraisal of the other girl(s) behaviour Negative appraisal of the other girl(s) physical appearance Use of insults and swear words Total Avoidance-instrumental Strategy aims to inform the other girl what the rest of the group think about her Imposition of a course of action for the speakers benefit Suggestions of actions for the speakers benefit Total

31 6 37

83.78 16.21

326 253 195 774

42.11 32.68 25.19

293 115 408

71.81 28.18

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away from cataloguing the representations of sexual differences as fixed and polarized, for such catalogues pin down the feminine to an orthodoxy within which no struggle can be articulated. The following examples illustrate this point: Extract 4 A (17 years old): pub tonight B: (16 years old): if you show up, be careful! A: leave me alone! Hes not seeing u anymore B:  dont care! Just seeing your fucking ugly face fucks my cunt, you whore C: block this wicked bitch! Youre a FUCKing arsehole Extract 5 A (17 years old): cul(r B: (16 years old): U coming? C: (17 years old): Fucking whores are not welcome. My friends wont let you in B: Leave us alone u filthy ugly black worm C:  Cant stand u anymore! Hate the way you shake your boobs and you makem look bigger. Stop boning me or Ill kick your arse. U make me sick! A: You wish! C: Fuckin idiot. U had no bone of your own. The instances of pornified discourses in these extracts reveal how the instabilities caused by female subjectivitys different structure of identification can be used to disorganize the conventional ordering of sexual difference as fundamental to identity. This hypersexualized language is connected with the notion of the constitutive embodiment of sexed subjects, which shows that identification for these female subjects is circumscribed by an identification with an inscribed sexed body that defines them as female or male. In particular, the dysphemistic expressions employed can be understood as a way to reference the girls as a dick (e.g. Your ugly face fucks my cunt, stop boning me, u have no bone of your own). Interestingly, the effectiveness of the strategies lies in the fact that these girls use expressions that are usually connected with sexual pleasure in order to express their anger and annoyance. It is also common to find instances in the data such as the one in extract 5 (Stop boning me or Ill kick your arse), which can be understood as a threat: you know how to make me angry and if you keep behaving like that I will + negative action that this teenager is determined to do against the other. This interpretation was underlined by teenager Cs comment in extract 5: She takes little things and twists them into something awful and crazy and that becomes the truth in her coke fucking little brain. Someone must put her in her place and I did. Similarly, teenager B said about extract 4: I hate her. Shes a fucking idiot. Cant even bear seeing her ugly face. I was so pissed off. I just felt like shouting FUCK OFF LEAVE ME aLONE! Do my life a favour . . . FUCK OFF OUTTA IT! I was done with her shitty talks. I want her outta my life. Everything she does makes me puke. It can therefore be

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argued that these expressions not only involve a socially negative evaluation of the other girls behaviour but also a threat which aims to regulate behaviour. Discursively speaking, this particular sexualized subject position aims to devalue the servicing of girls and womens sexual pleasure. These female teenagers rely on an avoidance-relational strategy in order to address the other girl(s) directly and use the second-person pronoun you. The bad relationship between these girls leads to teenager A (extract 4) and teenager B (extract 5) expressing their negative attitude towards these other girls by insulting them (e.g. you whore, fuckin idiot), threatening them (e.g. . . . or Ill kick your arse) and expressing violent emotions (e.g. U make me sick). Interestingly enough, inspection of the data gives consistent evidence that, apart from presenting others as masculine agents (i.e. a girl as a dick), these girls also attempt to regulate others behaviour by presenting them as lesbians and evaluating them as deviant transgressors, going against the traditional heteronormative sexual norms. Without actually using the word lesbian or gay, these teenagers use a wide range of alternatives to refer to lesbian sex and anal sex practices. See the following examples: Extract 6 A (17 years old):  U r a FUCKING ARSOLE. Stop licking my arse. Cant put up with you. I bet your a right twat bandit!6 . . . Leave us the hell alone Extract 7 C (16 years old): block this wicked bitch! Youre a FUCKing arsehole B (17 years old):  U r an eat cunt.7 Im telling you dont tongue my wet pussy or else. Im fed up with u and ur stupid friends. Get out of my sight. Youre a shame for your family, bitch. I swear that, if I see you. I will hit your ugly face! Extract 8 A: (15 years old): Im out of it! B (16 years old): Everybody know youre a carpet muncher8 Inspection of the data offers evidence that the explicit references to transgressions of heteronormative sexuality (i.e. homosexuality and lesbian practices) are intended to attack, blame and/or undervalue others in an attempt to regulate their behaviour. These acts of transgression treat homosexuality as problematic. Even though these teenagers overuse of dysphemistic expressions shows that they openly speak about sex and they make explicit that are not ashamed of their sexuality (Baker, 2005; Chirrey, 2003), the negative social evaluation underlying the strategy suggests a homophobic stance. On the one hand, the avoidance-relational strategy is based on the explicit references to anal sex and the resulting annoyance that makes it impossible to get along with each other. On the other hand, the avoidance-instrumental strategy can be seen in the use of directives

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which impose a course of action on the other (e.g. leave us the hell alone). As the following extracts show, these girls either show a biased attitude or they openly state that there is something wrong about being homosexual: Extract 9 A (15 years old): dont ever talk to me again (writes on Bs wall) B: (16 years old): u wish A:  You know how to eat pussy and if you go on u had me in orgasm in a minute. Believe me, you dont want that! B: leave me alone A:  U r pinching me clit girl and if u make me cum, believe me you dont want to see me when Im angry . . . Hey arsehole, youre licking me . . . so dont suck me off Extract 10 A: (15 years old): London night! Cant wait. Got a dress! B: (15 years old): cant believe u r goin A: why not? B:  u r such a scattered brain. Youre SO . . . gosh! Stop slipping a finger in my ass or Ill kick ur face. H8u, H8u . . . Get a hike you idiot Extract 11 A (16 years old): Cant wait to see you, love u B: (17 years old): Nobody wants you there A: ???????????????????????????? B:  dont pound my tight ass or Ill tell everybody. Telling you dont fuck my arse . . . . You know what John said this morning . . . Oh shit, that FUGL9 Susan is approaching Discursively speaking, the dysphemistic expressions connected with these girls sexualized subject position are clearly related to masculinized porno scripts (e.g. stop slipping a finger in my ass and dont pound my tight ass). As a result, there is a negative evaluation involved which prevents both girls belonging to the same group and goes hand in hand with the avoidance-instrumental strategy insofar as these negative evaluations correlate with imperative structures intended to threaten these other girls. The following quotes throw further light on how these pornified discourses are mobilized. Teenager A commented about extract 9: I cant stand her anymore. I simply cant. I just let her know how fucking annoying she is. I would never have sex with a woman but Id prefer having NO SEX at all rather than letting her touch me or anything. Similarly, teenager B commented on extract 10: Shes a real pain. I cant imagine anything worse than having her slipping a finger in my ass. I know it sounds rude but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Teenager B said likewise (extract 11): She is a fucking

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hypocrite who thinks that I am her main enemy. Im a female but she treats me like a bag of shit. She thinks shes the most brilliant guy on earth who has psychic powers. She is a crock of shit who reacts to the smallest word. She accuses me of being a selfish bastard. WHAT THE FUCK??? if it bothers u so much just fucking do it yourself. My friends are fucking passive. Its like shes a fucking period, anything can trigger her shit, the bloody fucking cunt. She is a dirty dirty whore and deserves to be raped by a gang of men wearing pineapple condoms. Both the extracts and these girls comments demonstrate again how the heterosexualized and pornified male power dynamic of controlling the female anus is coming into play in mainstream teens Facebook talk. Girls are adopting these discourses and using them on other girls as the suggestion that they better not try to do something to their ass seems to be a way to stop others taking advantage of them or doing something wrong and preventing them from carrying on doing it. As teenager A made explicit: Id never let anybody fuck my ass. Im not a lesbian but I was totally pissed off with what she was doing and wanted her to know that that was the end of it.

Conclusion
Given the claims that are currently being made about young women and the accompanying negative representation of young women generally which is now widespread, the present study has attempted to study the linguistic strategies present in episodes of girls relational aggression. Analysing actual examples of girls interactions and the meanings these girls themselves give to the use of hypersexualized language, I have attempted to develop knowledge about how contemporary girlhood is constructed and experienced by girls themselves. More precisely, this article contributes to the analysis of how relational aggression among girls plays out in new ways through hypersexual speech acts online in the social networking site Facebook and sheds further light on how indirect aggression responds to, and elaborates upon, a cultural feminist theory of gender difference, using this difference as a way of re-pathologizing the feminine (Ringrose, 2006: 419). In addressing the linguistic strategies employed in instances of particular gendered discourses of aggression and violence, I have brought together Butler and Ringrose by elaborating a discursive psychological approach to the exploration of how female teenagers negotiate contemporary discourses of sexual aggression and competition by adopting sexualized subject positions intended to regulate others behaviour. In doing so, I have not only explored the themes of heterosexualized competition and aggression but have also taken a step further by analysing how these teenage girls either endorse or try to challenge heteronormative formations of performing girlhood when they take part in episodes of relational aggression. Inspection of the data has shown how these teenagers discourse presents an aggressive self who depicts an intelligent, independent and strong woman, but is the hypersexualised object of masculinized gaze of desire (Ringrose, 2008: 36). Although on the surface the strategies which appear to be operating in these British teenagers comments proclaim these girls independence, strength and ability to act upon other girls, a closer analysis has revealed that more subversive and challenging interpretations can be applied.

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In line with Gill (2007), the analysis gives evidence that post-feminist discourse is shifting to hypersexualized embodiment and self-regulation for girls. In this light, these apparently empowering strategies, far from showing womens sexual agency and subjecthood, reveal a heterosexualised competition against other (female) competitors for the sought after desires of the male (Ringrose, 2008: 36). Finally, the pornified discourses found in the data have shown the need to analyse the diverse modes of subjectivity, to analyse the ways in which we use our engagement with representational mechanisms to perform the contradictory relations of gendered identities, focusing on differences between women and within the construction of femininity. In particular, these girls sexualized subject positions seem to be based on oscillation which assumes masculine patterns of identification and desire as the norm and leaves the structure of difference between the two terms, active/passive and masculine/feminine, intact. In addition to this, it can be argued that girls and women are subject to a new discourse of compulsory sexual agency whereby they have to develop fluency in sexual knowledge and show sexual proficiency to survive (Gill, 2008, 2009). All in all, I contend that the linguistic strategies employed by these girls can be understood as a failing attempt to resist heteronormative feminine sexuality since this particular process of self and other categorization produces in-group normative behaviour and relates power to heterosexual relationships. Funding
The present study was financially supported by a grant (ID No: FFI2009-7308) from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacin. This study is part of a long-term research project: Functions of Discourse: Evaluations in Text Types.

Notes
1. Butlers theory of gender performativity is based on the idea that there being two genders was dependent on heterosexuality, and she coined the concept of a heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990: 325). 2. Once the research began, it was necessary to contact a total of seven parents to ask for permission to use the entries that their daughters had posted which were relevant to my research. It is worth mentioning that most of them already knew about the research as either their daughters or other parents had told them something about it and agreed to participate in the research. 3. Most of these female teenagers posted between 5 and 30 comments every day. 4. Informatives cover utterances which provide information and, more specifically, those which report events or states of affairs, recount personal experience, and express beliefs, evaluative judgements, feelings and thoughts (Tsui, 1994: 135). 5. Directives are acts which prospect a non-verbal action from the addressee without giving him/ her the option of non-compliance (Tsui, 1994: 116). 6. Alternative word for lesbian. 7. This seems to be an adaptation of the urban expression to eat arse. This expression has two different meanings: (a) to lick the anus of a person for the purpose of arousing them (e.g. Johns favourite part of foreplay with Anna was to eat arse); and (b) to speak ill of somebody (e.g. youre an eat-arse, you talk too much shit). 8. A derogatory term which refers to the act of oral sex between lesbians. 9. An acronym for Fat Ugly Ginger Lesbian.

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