1. Performing Gender Identity:
Young Men’s Talk and the
Construction of Heterosexual
Masculinity
Deborah Cameron 1998
Part IV - Same-Sex Talk
Language and Gender: A Reader
Ping-Hsuan Wang
Intro to Sociolinguistics
Nov. 18 (Week 11)
2. Outline
• Introduction
• Data & Method
• The Antithesis of Man
• Cooperation
• Competition
• Deconstructing Oppositions
• Conclusion
• Q&A/ Discussion
3. Introduction
Generalizations about men’s talk:
Competitive
Hierarchically organized
Centers on impersonal topics
Exchange of information
Speech genres: joking, trading insults and sports statistics
4. Introduction
• “As active producers rather than passive
reproducers of gendered behaviour, men and
women may use their awareness of the
gendered meanings that attach to particular
ways of speaking and acting to produce a
variety of effects (272).”
MEN WOMEN
Competitive
Report talk
Cooperative
Rapport talk
5. Data & Method
• Al, Bryan, Carl, Danny, and Ed
• White, middle-class American suburbanites,
aged 21, same university, same social network
• Watching sports at home on TV
• Conversation analysis
6. The Antithesis of Man
• Bryan: uh you know that really gay guy in our Age
of Revolution class who sits in front of us? He wore
shorts again, by the way, it’s like 42 degrees out, he
wore shorts again [laughter]
• Ed: [that guy]
• Bryan: it’s like a speedo, he wears a speedo to class
(.) He’s got incredibly skinny legs you know=
• Ed: [it’s worse] =you know
like those shorts women volleyball players wear? It’s
like those (.) it’s like
7. The Antithesis of Man
• Establishing shared views: categorizing people
as gay
→participation framework (C. Goodwin 1986)
• Resembling ‘women’s talk’
• Gossip: “affirming the solidarity of an in-group
by constructing absent others as an out-group
(276).”
8. Cooperation
• Ed: he’s I mean he’s like a real artsy fartsy fag he’s
like (indeciph) he’s so gay he’s got this like really
high voice and wire rim glasses and he sits next to
the ugliest-ass bitch in the history of the world.
• Ed: [and
• Bryan: [and they’re all hitting on her too, like four
• Ed: [I know it’s like four homos hitting on
her
• Bryan: guys [hitting on her
9. Cooperation
• Markers ‘like’ ‘you know’
• Latching and simultaneous speech
→joint production of discourse (cooperation)
10. Competition
• Ed & Bryan: dominant speakers
• Al & Carl: fewer and shorter turns
• Danny: variable
• Ed introduced the topic, attempted to keep
‘ownership’
• Danny interrupted, contradicted; began the
gossip
• “even if the speakers… compete, they are
basically engaged in a collaborative and solidary
enterprise (279).”
11. Competition
• A different analysis:
→verbal duelling
• How do we decide?
→the problem with ‘competitive’ vs. ‘cooperative’
12. Deconstructing Oppositions
• “Conversation can and usually does contain both
cooperative and competitive elements (279).”
• Agreement, respect, and support→cooperation?
• Women’s talk
• “It is gender-stereotyping that causes us to miss or
minimize the status-seeking element in women
friends’ talk, and the connection-making dimension
of men’s (280).”
13. Conclusion
• ‘performative gender work’
• “Men and women do not live on different planets,
but are members of cultures in which a large
amount of discourse about gender is constantly
circulating (280).” →Gender Knot (Johnson 1997)
• Gender is a relational term
• “In these speakers’ understanding of gender, gay
men, like women, provide a contrast group
against whom masculinity can be defined (281).”
14. Conclusion
• “It is impossible to ‘transcend’ ideology, but it is
not impossible for language and gender scholars
to be reflexive about the cultural resources that
have shaped their own understandings, as well
as the understandings of the people whose
language use they study (Cameron 2003:465,
emphasis in original).”
15. Q&A/ Discussion
• How might the results of analysis turn out
differently if we observe different data?
• What if we use quantitative approach to examine
our conversation? What would be your focus?
• Think about all the ‘a-ha moments.’ What
exactly do they reveal (ideologically)?
• Can we venture into ‘linguistic relativity’ in
terms of gender? (Deutscher 2013: 209-232)
Fully aware; what it means to do this, what it means to do that; choosing some linguistic features or strategies over others in accordance to their expected gender roles
What caught her attention in the first place was this. She found that besides the common themes (sports, women, wine) they were talking about…
Establishing mutual knowledge about sth that all the listeners can relate to involves them into the talk. Failure to make such alignment or contribution not ratified exclude the person
Like you’re talking, I’m talking, and we just build up on each other; one point to cooperation
Do all these point to cooperation? Is women’s talk all about cooperation? Building good relationship with each other. Gain status by display the above, if you watch Scream Queens as I do lol
Present themselves as gendered beings, behaviors or speech should be appropriate to their sex. Consider other settings, influence how they perform gender AND how we see their performance; they’re not talking about women and there are no women so they orient toward sth else; contrast meet the standards, reinforce their own masculine image; different when it comes to their favorite basketball playerss
