Gender Matters; Sara Mills - Equinox Publishing

Sara Mills [+–]

Sheffield Hallam University

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Sara Mills is a Research Professor in Linguistics at Sheffield Hallam University. Her most recent publications include Gender and Colonial Space (2005, Manchester University Press), Michel Foucault (Critical Thinkers Series, 2003, Routledge), Feminist Post-Colonial Theory: An Anthology (edited with Reina Lewis, 2003, Edinburgh University Press) and Gender and Politeness (2003, Cambridge University Press).

Gender Matters presents a feminist linguistic analysis of texts – literature, media and lyrics – and conversation. It explores how gender relates to and shapes our understanding of sexism, reading and writing, politeness and public speaking.

The essays in the book examine a range of questions: why is it necessary for feminists to analyse or comment on sexism when sexism is widely regarded as an anachronistic concern? How can feminists describe the effect of gender on the experience of literature? Why are women considered more capable of private rather than public speech? What is the relation between gender and politeness and are women more polite than men? In analysing these themes, Gender Matters highlights the insights and strengths of both second and third wave feminist analysis for linguistics.

Prelims

Acknowledgements [+–] vii – viii

Gender Matters presents a feminist linguistic analysis of texts – literature, media and lyrics – and conversation. It explores how gender relates to and shapes our understanding of sexism, reading and writing, politeness and public speaking. The essays in the book examine a range of questions: why is it necessary for feminists to analyse or comment on sexism when sexism is widely regarded as an anachronistic concern? How can feminists describe the effect of gender on the experience of literature? Why are women considered more capable of private rather than public speech? What is the relation between gender and politeness and are women more polite than men? In analysing these themes, Gender Matters highlights the insights and strengths of both second and third wave feminist analysis for linguistics.

Introduction

Introduction: why gender matters [+–] 1 – 14

Introduction

Part 1: Gender and reading/writing

1. Analysing women’s writing [+–] 15 – 36

It was an attempt to question some of the assumptions prevalent at the time within both the French feminist theory of theorists such as Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray (influential at that time), and also the views of British and American gender and language theorists Jennifer Coates and Deborah Tannen that women’s language and writing were somehow essentially different to men’s. Within gender and language theorising of the time, this difference was either something which was to be criticised as politically damaging for women or something to be re-valued since feminine qualities were seen to be of positive value. I argue here that we cannot assume that women’s language and writing are necessarily different from men’s but that what is different is the way that they are judged.

2. Gender and reading [+–] 37 – 54

This essay was written as an introduction to a collection of essays entitled Gendering the Reader , whose aim was to question the simple assumption that women read as or like women. As a group of feminists, we were concerned to produce essays which engaged in some of the debates about reading as a gendered activity, but we wanted to trouble some of the simple dichotomies which assumed that women all read in one particular way. We wished to show the complexity of women’s reception and interpretation of texts and we also wanted to show that analysing the process of reading, and commenting on it in relation to gender, was a complex procedure.

Part 2: analysing sexism

3. Sexism and poetry [+–] 55 – 77

This essay attempts to develop a Marxist feminist contextualised stylistics. For this purpose I shall be drawing on the distinctly unfashionable work of Louis Althusser, a Marxist literary theorist, together with feminist stylistics and literary theory (Althusser, 1984; see also Burton, 1982; Threadgold 1988a,b). It may be argued that the combination of Marxism, feminism and stylistics is indeed a heady brew, but it is a necessary combination in order to overcome some of the problems encountered both in traditional stylistic analysis and in Marxist analyses. These theoretical positions can be combined to produce an analysis which is theoretically rigorous, and which at the same time, enables the reader to a engage with a text.

4. Post-feminist text analysis [+–] 78 – 96

This essay argues that there is a need for a new form of feminist text analysis which takes account of the changes that have occurred in feminist theory, linguistic theory, Critical Text Analysis and in sexism itself. Rather than relying on relatively simple models of interpretation, this new form of analysis– postfeminist text analysis – demonstrates awareness of the complexity and contextspecific nature of the meanings of words within texts. It is also aware of the necessity to develop new models of analysis for sexism and gender relations. In the analysis of a British advertisement for a dating agency, following this discussion I indicate directions this form of analysis might take.

5. Transitivity analysis [+–] 97 – 114

The aim of this essay is to evaluate critically a form of close feminist textual analysis – the analysis of transitivity choices, that is, who does what to whom in a text. Following Deirdre Burton’s influential essay on transitivity, this chapter sets this type of analysis within a wider framework of feminist textual analysis and considers some of the advantages of a close textual analysis in general for feminist work (Burton, 1982). It also considers some of the difficulties which this type of work engenders, and proposes a model of feminist analysis prepared to acknowledge some of the difficulties of attributing straightforward meanings to sets of language items.

6. Third Wave feminist text analysis [+–] 115 – 130

In this essay, I contrast Second and Third Wave feminist linguistics. Broadly speaking, Second Wave feminism focuses on the language of women as a subordinated group and Third Wave feminism challenges the homogeneity of women as a group and focuses instead on localised studies. I challenge the notion that these forms of analysis are simply chronological so that Third Wave feminism supersedes and supplants Second Wave feminism. I argue that Third Wave feminism is best seen as a development from Second Wave feminism which nevertheless depends on the basic framework of Second Wave feminism for its theoretical integrity. 1 In order to contrast the way in which these two approaches work and to demonstrate that each can be put to work in particular contexts, I examine the difficulties for each approach in the analysis of sexism.

7. Feminism and naming [+–] 131 – 157

The essay discusses the relationship between several potentially conflicting discourses: sexism, anti-sexism and “political correctness”. In order to analyse the way that the hypothesised relationship between these discourses is played out within people’s discursive practices, I have tried to elicit, through the distribution of a questionnaire, feminist professional women’s views on their choices about their surnames and titles, since this seems to be a key discursive site of struggle where these antagonistic discourses are seen to exert some force.

8. Sexism and racism in music [+–] 158 – 172

This essay aims to examine the debates around the issues of sexism, particularly as they relate to the interpretation of misogynist lyrics in rap and hip hop. The lyrics of these songs are offensive to many women because of their use of terms like ‘ho’ and ‘bitch’ to refer to women, but it is important to try to analyse these lyrics in context, since there have been a number of campaigns within the right wing press and by politicians which have centred on the offensiveness of the lyrics of these songs. These attacks have bordered on racism and it is therefore important for feminists to consider very carefully their analysis of hip hop and rap, so that they understand the conditions of their production and the range of interpretations which are possible.

Part 3: Gender and politeness

9. Gender and politeness [+–] 173 – 199

In this essay I propose a way of analysing gender which does not focus overly on individuals as the determinants of meaning or language choices, but rather examines the way that gender impinges on individuals in the range of choices which are available to them. Politeness is already gendered institutionally, and therefore this gendering has an impact on individuals when they choose the level of politeness or impoliteness they consider to be appropriate.

10. Gender and impoliteness [+–] 200 – 213

This essay analyses the complex relationship between gender and impoliteness. Rather than assuming that gender and impoliteness are concrete entities which can be traced in conversation, I argue that gender and impoliteness are elements which are worked out within the course of interaction. Despite the fact that much current research seems to focus on women’s interactional competitiveness (which challenges the notion that women are, on the whole, ‘nicer’ than men in interaction), I argue that women’s assertiveness is often judged to be impolite.

11. Class, gender and politeness [+–] 214 -228

This essay challenges the assumption that politeness is the same for all groups within society. Politeness is associated with the linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour of certain class and gender groups in Britain at a stereotypical level, so that middle-class white women are considered to be more polite than men (even though this only refers to negative politeness behaviour, such as deference and apologising). However, rather than assuming that negative politeness is somehow better than any other forms of politeness, as some linguists have, we need to question the perspective from which linguists analyse politeness, which is often a firmly middle-class one. Working-class people often find these negative politeness norms distancing and do not value them. This is not to suggest that each class only uses one type of politeness (negative for middle classes, positive for working classes) but rather to suggest that there might be different associations and different evaluations of certain politeness forms and that these depend on how one locates oneself in relation to class, gender and race. Furthermore, politeness should be seen as playing a crucial role in the maintenance of class and other distinctions.

Part 4: strong women speakers

12. Discourse competence: how to theorise strong women speakers [+–] 229 – 240

The aims of this essay are twofold: to contest some of the theoretical and empirical work undertaken on women’s language that has portrayed women as disabled in speech and to describe how it is possible for women to be strong, competent speakers despite social and discursive constraints. Rather than assuming that strong women speakers are in some ways interacting according to masculine norms, I propose to use the term ‘discourse competence’ to describe speech that is both assertive (concerned with speaker needs) and co-operative (concerned with group needs. In this way, it is possible to theorise strong women speakers without reference to a system of masculine/feminine opposition.

13. Gender and performance anxiety [+–] 241 – 258

This essay aims to analyse the factors which lead to some women experiencing ‘stage fright’ when speaking in public, particularly when presenting papers at academic conferences.

Bibliography

Bibliography [+–] 259 – 274

Bibliography

Index

Index [+–] 275 – 280

Index

Reviews

Sara Mills is one of the pre-eminent contemporary feminist linguists, and this volume allows the reader to appreciate the breadth and depth of topics and range of methods she has employed in her work over a quarter of a century of scholarship.
Journal of Language and Politics

This book is a good reference for faculty and students in the field of language and gender and for anyone interested in the relation between language and gender.
Discourse Studies

Gender Matters is a useful survey of some of the key debates in feminist linguistics that will be of interest to students of both linguistics and literary studies, and is a refreshing alternative to the traditional ‘dominance; difference; dynamic/diversity’ themes usually imposed on accounts of language and gender research.
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Gender Matters

Feminist Linguistic Analysis

Sara Mills [+–]

Sheffield Hallam University

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