Gendered work Discourse and identity in managerial interaction

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Gendered work?Discourse and identity in
managerial interaction
Dr. Louise Mullany University of Nottingham 4th
November 2004
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Introduction

• Language and gender studies
• Formal, institutional settings professional
  communication
• Gender differences in speech
• Workplace language under-investigated
• Dramatic increase in women entering managerial
  positions since 1970s, but still have glass
  ceiling in 21st century

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Background

• Previous studies on language and gender in the
  workplace have found
• Men tend to get and keep the floor more often
  than women
• Men tend to talk for longer
• Men tend to interrupt more
• Men use strategies that challenge, create and
  maintain status distinctions
• Females use strategies that are supportive,
  encourage collaboration and minimise status
  differences
• Masculine speech norms in workplace due to
  tradition as a male-dominated arena (Coates 1995,
  Kendall and Tannen 1997)
• Female co-operativeness versus male
  competitiveness
• Previous studies have now been critiqued for
  over-generalising and maintaining gender
  stereotypes

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Aims approaches

• To investigate gender identity and discourse in
  professional communication corporate businesses
• Is the language that women are using in the
  workplace contributing to preventing them from
  breaking through the glass ceiling?
• Multidisciplinarity
• Theoretical framework of Critical feminist
  sociolinguistics
• Performativity (Butler 1990)
• Communities of practice (Eckert McConnell-Ginet
  1992)
• Critical discourse analysis
• A dual definition of discourse
• Language above the level of the sentence
• Discourse as social practice (Foucault 1972)
  discursive frameworks of femininity and
  masculinity (Mills 1997, Coates 1997,
  McConnell-Ginet 2000)

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Methodology

• Ethnographic case studies My position as
  academic/fieldworker
• Practical relevance/questions of access
• Retail and manufacturing companies based in
  England
• Multi-method approach meetings, interviews,
  shadowing, informal talk, document analysis
• Observers paradox

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The data
Meeting data middle-management level
meetings 45 speakers, 22 female, 23 male 8
hours continuous recording 6 meetings, 3 retail
(Company A, 10 males, 9 females) 3 manufacturing
(Company B, 13 males and 13 females) Aged 29-42
average age in Company A 33.7
Company B 33.1 All white, middle-class Sample
of 110,000 words
Interview data 23 interviewees 10 from Company
A (8 female, 2 male) 13 from Company B (11
female, 2 male)
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Linguistic variables

• Distribution of talking time
• Speech acts directives - mitigated v
  unmitigated (West 1995, Holmes 1995)
• Repressive versus oppressive discourse
  (Pateman 1980, Fairclough 1992)
• Mitigated fall-rise intonation, tag
  questions and modal verbs, lexical items such
  as perhaps and conceivable, and pragmatic
  particles such as sort of and I think
  (Holmes 1995 74-75) Goodwin (1980)lets we,
  humour

Humour females lack a sense of humour - a
folklinguistic belief Adapted from Holmes (2000),
also includes unintentional and unsuccessful
humour Humour is defined as instances where
participant(s) signal amusement to one another,
based on the analysts assessment of
paralinguistic, prosodic and discoursal clues.
These instances can be classified as either
successful or unsuccessful according to
addressees reactions. Humour can be a result of
either intentional or unintentional humorous
behaviour from participants.
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Analysis of interviews

• Gender discourses
• Dominant discourses of femininity
• Dominant discourses of masculinity
• Masculinity in crisis?
• Resistant discourses Discourse of equal
  opportunityFeminist discourses

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Discussion IMeeting data

• Traditional patterns of co-operativeness and
  competitiveness and differences between female
  and male speech styles are not found A range of
  contextual factors including professional role
  and status are more salient than gender on
  occasions
• Directives mitigated, repressive means of
  exercising power is dominant from both females
  and males conversationalisation of public
  discourse (Fairclough 1992)?
• Females do not lack a sense of humour in the
  public sphere Females took advantage of the
  multifunctionality and ambiguity of humour more
  than males in certain communities of practice

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Discussion II Interview data

• Distinct gender differences dominant hegemonic
  masculinist discourses result in negative
  evaluation of female identity by both males and
  females
• A clear perception of inherent biological
  difference
• Female identity is sexualised sexual predator/
  manipulator
• Women are seen as emotional and irrational at
  odds with the rational and unemotional norms of
  the workplace
• Male identity rational/efficient the victim
• Discourses of gender difference and scientific
  modernism are dominant (Brewis 2001)

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Conclusions

• Dominant discourse of hegemonic masculinity
  reinforces and reproduces the discourse of gender
  difference, works against women in the workplace
• The double bind
• The search for legitimate social identities
  mother role/ modern career woman - cant deviate
  too far from the traditional view of femininity
  associated with sexual attractiveness and
  family orientation (Alvesson and Billing 1997
  98)
• Beyond the glass ceiling? Work-home balance
• Think beyond the dichotomous, homogeneous
  boundaries Attitudinal and social change
  stereotypical gender identities maintained by
  gender ideologies are contributing to the problem
  of trying to break through the glass ceiling

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References

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References continued

• Kendall, S. D. Tannen (1997) Gender and
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