Gender and Presented by

Interpersonal FATMI Abderrahim

Pragmatics
Outline

• Theoretical Approaches

• Gender and Sexualities

• Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class

• Conclusion: The Current State of The Field

 Early works:
• The Deficit Approach argues that women’s language is deficient in comparison
with men’s language.

• The Dominance Approach argues that women have an inferior social

position in society and that men dominate women socially & linguistically.

• The Difference Approach argues AGAINST the assumption that women are
socially inferior to men.

• It states that the different conversational styles of women and men are the
result of socialization processes during which girls and boys learn to use
language in different ways.
 Early works: Robin Lakoff
• Women are more linguistically polite than men and that women
use “super-polite” forms such as euphemisms.

• She was criticized for focusing on making anecdotal observations

and focusing mainly on white middle-class American women and
failing to pay attention to the form and function of linguistic
features in context.
 Early works: Penelope Brown
• she focused on the analysis of politeness among a Mayan
community

• She argued that women in general used more of the politeness

features than men.
 Early works: Janet Holmes
• Investigated gender and politeness

• She concluded that women were more polite than men in a wide
of different contexts in New Zealand.

• “women tend to be more verbally polite than New Zealand men”.

• In general, “women are more oriented to affective, interpersonal

meanings than men”.
Common ideas
• Take the search for gender difference as the starting
point of their research
• Consequently, they have been critiqued for assuming
that gender differences pre-exist.
 Gender identities and
performativity 1
• The term "gender performativity" was first coined by American philosopher
and gender theorist Judith Butler in her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity.

• The crucial principle behind Butler’s conceptualization of gender as a performative

social construct is that gender is something that we do as opposed to something that
we are or have.

• She maintained that gender identities are not created in isolation.

• Therefore, gender is something that we actively do/perform when we are engaged in

interactional activities with fellow interactants in specific contexts.
 Gender identities and
performativity 2
• Butler was criticized for putting too much emphasis on individual
agency and neglecting the powerful role of societal forces in governing
our interpersonal interactional strategies.

• In her later work, she acknowledged that a “rigid regulatory frame” or

regulatory powers exist which regulate our behaviour and that, if we
are to step outside the dictated gender norms, we may be subject to
negative consequences.
Gendered discourses and
gender ideologies 1
• Systems which regulate gendered norms and conventions
which govern our judgements and evaluations of one
another’s behaviour.

• The boundaries of social practice through which appropriate

gendered behaviour is regulated.
 Gendered discourses and
gender ideologies 2
• It is noted that gendered discourses are maintained and
reproduced by gender ideologies.

• It is obvious then that discourses are linked to the notion of

ideologies.

• it may be said that the most powerful gendered discourse that

exists is the discourse of gender difference.
 Gendered discourses and
gender ideologies 3
• Gender difference means that women and men are inherently
different due to biological sex differences that exist between
them and that this difference dictates our social, gendered
behaviour.

• Consequently, men and women are stereotypically thought to

have inherently different interactional speech styles due to
biological differences
 Gendered discourses and
gender ideologies 4
• this idea, however, is completely lacking in empirical evidence
and is clearly an ideological notion which has resulted from
the dominant gendered language ideologies (Cameron).

• According to Cameron, men and women’s difference in

interactional styles are not due to biological differences but
are associated with motivation.
 Gendered discourses and
gender ideologies 5
• Cameron draws the example from Brown’s study of the Mayan
community, where women were observed to more polite than men.

• Brown’s argument was never that men in the Mayan community

could not use pragmatic particles associated with politeness due to
biological hardwiring; in fact, men could and did use pragmatic
particles associated with politeness, but they used them less
frequently than women.
 Gendered discourses and
gender ideologies 6
• In sum, Cameron argues that it is the role of language and gender
researchers to dispel such myths (gender ideologies) in disciplines
outside of linguistics in order to stop the prevalence of these opinions
in popular culture and wider society more generally.
Gender and Sexualities 1

• The author argues that gender and sexuality should be

viewed in conjunction with one another,

• because when we make statements and observations about

sexuality we are also commenting on gender, and it is
impossible to completely separate them in linguistic analysis.
 Gender and Sexualities 2
• According to Butler’s performativity work, the notions of gendered
discourses of heterosexual masculinity and femininity are
hegemonic,

• It is through these dominant hegemonic discourses that our

performances of gender identities are assessed and encoded.

• Sauntson 2008, observes that heterosexuality is a key form of

constraint and regulation which is “challenged by homosexuality
and certain forms of non-normative gendered behaviour”.
 Gender, Race, Ethnicity And
Class
• Gender should be viewed alongside race, class and ethnicity.

• As miller maintained, politeness is already raced, classed and gendered

• Similarly, Morgan maintains that investigating gender and race can and
have the potential to move African American women and other women
of colour to the centre of language and gender studies.

• Investigation of languages other than English and sub-varieties of English

will enrich the field of interpersonal pragmatics.
 The Current State of The Field 1
• In Early works, gender was viewed as fixed and static identity

• Shift from linguistic to of social constructionism approach resulted in:

• Gender being perceived as a dynamic, fluid notion in language and gender research

• Judith Butler’s conceptualization of gender as a performative social

construct has contributed to:

• A deeper understanding of the connection between interpersonal

pragmatics and the negotiation and performance of gender identities
within interaction
 The Current State of The Field 2
• gender is to be viewed alongside: Ethnicity, Class, Sexuality and Age.

• Gender studies and interpersonal pragmatics have been dominated by

a focus on the interpersonal communication of white middle-class
western heterosexual women.

• However, for a comprehensive understanding of gender and

interpersonal pragmatics, researchers, since the 90s have taken
interest in interpersonal pragmatic interactions of men as well.
Thank you