This document provides an overview of discourse and gendered identities. It discusses how gender is produced through discourse in dynamic and context-specific ways. Discourse is defined in various ways across disciplines but generally refers to patterns of language use and social interaction. Gender identities are discursively constructed through recognizable discourses around masculinity and femininity. These discourses can support and conflict with each other, represent ways of thinking and doing, and enact social power dynamics. Feminist approaches to discourse analysis examine how gender ideology and power relations are reproduced and contested in representations and social relationships.
the shift to discourse the discursive construction of gendered identities
1. PRESENTED TO MA’AM RAHAT CH.
SUBJECT : LANGUAGE AND GENDER
CHAPTER NO : 03
The Shift to discourse: the discursive
construction of gendered identities
Presented by
Abdul Rehman
2. (GEE 1989:6-7)
What is important not language and surely not grammar,
but saying –(writing)- doing- being valuing- believing-
combinations
3. DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSES
Gender is produced in discourse , in variable ,dynamic
and context situated ways
The way in which people and group are represented
may not be all obvious
The term discourse is used in different ways across
academic disciplines and is often left undefined vague
or confusing
4. 1-Basic level: connected sentence or
utterances
2-Linguistically : Patterns and rules of
coherence
3-Sociologically: Interaction with certain
social function
4-Social and critical theory perspective :
Cultural ways of thinking and doing
7. 2- DISCOURSES CAN BE SUPPORTING AS WELL AS
COMPETING OR CONFLICTING
Some discourses are mutually supporting
For example : heterosexuality
Mother’s Positive and pride feeling for their
children
Some discourses are conflicting as well
Mother’s negative feelings about their children
8. 3- DISCOURSES REPRESENT AND CONSTITUTE WAYS OF
THINKING AND DOING
How we see the world
Process of Changing perception of experience
Changing of roles and identities
9. 4- DISCOURSES ARE IDEOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL POWER IS ACTED OUT
THROUGH THEM
Inherently ideological
certain view points and values of others
construct position of power and powerlessness for
participant
Marginalization Of women’s writing
Discourse of Female emotionality helps construct position
for women in term of limiting their access to public
debates and decisions that matter most
10. 5- DISCOURSES EXIST IN RELATION TO OTHER DISCOURSES
Feminist discourses exist in relation to discourses about
patriarchy, Men’s domination of public life,domestic
violence and many more
Interdiscursivity/Multivoicedness/heteroglossia/polyphon
y( discourses appearing within discourses and mixing
together of discourses)
Part of network as part- time father supported by father
as baby entertainer , father as mother bumbling assistant
and father as line manager
11. WHETHER AND HOW ,WE CAN IDENTIFY DISCOURSES?
Sunderland claims that discourses are discribable
and nameable through a process of identifying
their traces discourse cues and linguistic features
First traces content of spoken or written text
Then actual interaction (interpretative)
12. ANALYSING DISCOURSE
broad term used across disciplines
Conversational Analysis (C.A) :Focuses on
interaction and social categories( man or women)
Critical Discourse Analysis( CDA): go beyond the
text( social relation of power, social issues
13. FPDA:Feminist post structuralist Discourse Analysis(
combination of analytical concepts and assumptions
shared by social constructionist feminism,post structiral
feminism and CDA
FCDA: Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis( how gender
ideology and relations of power are reproduced ,
negotiated and contested in representations of social
practices in social relationship between people and
people’s social and personal identities in text and talk
14. GENDERED DISCOURSE
That say something about women and men girls
and boys their gendered actions
Gendered social practices
Articulated by both Women and men
15. SUNDERLAND OVERVIEWS A RANGE OF
GENDERED DISCOURSES
Discourses of gender differences
heterosexuality discourses
discourses of gender and employment
opportunities
discourses of menopause
discourses of self disclosure
discourses of fatherhood
16. GENDER IDENTITIES
Who we are is neither singular nor fixed
Discursive accomplishment of gender: people with their
linguistics and non linguistics behaviour produce priori
identities as women and men in particular historical and
cultural locations.
becoming gendered and doing gender is dynamic
process that is never complete.
Accplishment helps us to see more clearly the links
between femaleness and femininity.
17. PERFORMING IDENTITY
Gender performance
Example of female sex workers in California
Example of American college students
18. FEMINIST LINGUISTICS : CURRENT TREND
GAL(1995) observes the study of language and
gender is very much enhanced by focusing on :
On every day practices
ideologies about man and woman that frame
these practices
19. The web of power relations created by ideologies
operates on Micro level and Macro level
• Macro level( with in organisation and classroom)
• Micro level(individual in specific context e.g
Managers , students and teachers)
The analysis of discourse at micro and macro levels is
based on understanding of text and meanings in
context.
20. COFP( COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Aggregate of people who come together
around mutual engagent in an endeavour.
We participate in multiple cofp’s