Grandmother, gran, gangsta granny
semiotic representations of grandmotherhood
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v10i3.32036Keywords:
ageism, corpus, evaluation, grandmothers, images, representationAbstract
Age as an important identity dimension has been comparatively neglected within gender studies. Our paper concerns the semiotic representation of a role performed in the main by older women: that of ‘grandmother’, a social category particularly associated with ageing. To explore this, we draw on image banks, corpus data and other texts in order to discuss images, lexical/textual labelling and their intermodal relations. We find in our visual data that grandmothers are contextualised in two ways: sharing semiotic resources of childhood or domestic contexts, or presented as transgressive actors, located in incongruous situations or performing behaviours inappropriate for their ‘age’. Our discussion of corpus data complements the multimodal analyses, providing further examples of stereotyping: while references to individual grandmothers often evaluate positively, there is also strong evidence of generic, figurative and other usages that trivialise and derogate. Our conclusions point to processes of social devaluation: ageism and sexism are the pervasive and underlining ideologies recurrent in these representations. The broader implications are particularly relevant for the present time, as new forms of grandmothering appear.
References
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Baker, P. (2014) Using Corpora to Analyze Gender. London: Bloomsbury.
Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana.
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Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. (2010) Women of a certain age: life styles, the female body and ageism. In J. Holmes and M. Marra (eds) Femininity, Feminism and Gendered Discourse 21–40. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. and Moon, R. (2010) Curvy, hunky, kinky: using corpora as tools in critical analysis. Discourse and Society 21(2): 1–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926509353843
Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. and van Leeuwen, T. (2002) Stunning, shimmering, iridescent: toys as the representation of gendered social actors. In L. Litosseliti and J. Sunderland (eds) Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis 91–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.2.05cal
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Conboy, M. (2006) Tabloid Britain. London: Routledge.
Copper, B. (1986) Voices: on becoming old women. In J. Alexander, D. Berrow, L. Domitrovich, M. Donnelly and C. McLean (eds) Women and Aging: an Anthology by Women 47–57. Corvallis, OR: Calyx Books.
Coupland, N. and Coupland, J. (1993) Discourses of ageism and anti-ageism. Journal of Aging Studies 7(3): 279–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0890-4065(93)90016-D
Coupland, N., Coupland, J. and Giles, H. (1991) Discourse, Identity and Ageing. Oxford: Blackwell.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1995) Constructing meaning, constructing selves: snapshots of language, gender and class from Belten High. In K. Hall and M. Bucholtz (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self 469–508. New York: Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203809068.ch1
Fairclough, N. (2013) Language and Power (2nd edn). London: Routledge.
Fearnly-Whittingstall, J. (2011) The Good Granny Guide. London: Short Books.
Featherstone, M. and Wernick, A. (eds) (1995) Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life. London: Routledge.
Freeman, H. (2014) Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy gives birth to new conspiracies. The Guardian (22 April). Retrieved on 14 October 2016 from www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/22/chelsea-clinton-pregancy-hillary-clinton-grandmother-conspiracies.
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Hall, S. (ed.) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage/Open University.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Hamilton, H. E. (1992) Bringing aging into the language/gender equation. In K. Hall, M. Bucholtz and B. Moonwomon (eds) Locating Power 240–49. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
Hansen, A. and Machin, D. (2008) Visually branding the environment: climate change as a marketing opportunity. Discourse Studies 10(6): 777–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445608098200
Hareven, T. K. (1995) Changing images of aging and the social construction of the life course. In M. Featherstone and A. Wernick (eds) Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life 119–34. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203397442_chapter_8
Henneberg, S. (2010) Moms do badly, but grandmas do worse: the nexus of sexism and ageism in children’s classics. Journal of Aging Studies 24: 125–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2008.10.003
Hepworth, M. (2003) Ageing bodies: aged by culture. In J. Coupland and R. Gwyn (eds.) Discourse, the Body, and Identity 89–106. Basingstoke: Palgrave. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781403918543_5
Hollis-Sawyer, L. and Cuevas, L. (2013) Mirror, mirror on the wall: ageist and sexist double jeopardy portrayals in children’s picture books. Educational Gerontology 39(12): 902–914. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03601277.2013.767650
Hurst, J. B. (1981) Images in children’s picture books. Social Education 45(2): 138–143.
Iedema, R. (2003) Multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication 2(1): 29–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470357203002001751
Iversen, S. M. (2015) ‘Not without my kitties’: the old woman in casual games. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Retrieved on 10 September 2016 from www.fdg2015.org/papers/fdg2015_paper_44.pdf.
Keyworth, F. (1982) Invisible struggles: the politics of ageing. In R. Brunt and C. Rowan (eds.) Feminism, Culture and Politics 131–142. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
King, J. (2013) Discourses of Ageing in Fiction and Feminism: The Invisible Woman. Basingstoke: Palgrave. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137292278
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.
Lessing, D. ([1973]2009) The Summer before the Dark. New York: Vintage Books.
Lindquist, H. (2009) Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Machin, D. (2004) Building the world’s visual language: the increasing global importance of image banks in corporate media. Visual Communication 3(3): 316–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470357204045785
Machin, D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analyis. London: Hodder Arnold.
Machin, D. and van Leeuwen, T. (2007) Global Media Discourse. London: Routledge.
Martin, J. R. and White, P. R. R. (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230511910
Mautner, G. (2007) Mining large corpora for social information: the case of elderly. Language in Society 36: 51–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404507070030
Moon, R. (2014) From gorgeous to grumpy: adjectives, age and gender. Gender and Language 8(1): 5–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.v8i1.5
Newman, N. (1983) My Granny (illustrations by B. Cook). London: Collins.
Norris, S. (2013) What is a mode? Smell, olfactory perception, and the notion of mode in multimodal mediated theory. Multimodal Communication 2(2): 155–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/mc-2013-0008
Pearce, M. (2008) Investigating the collocational behaviour of MAN and WOMAN in the BNC using Sketch Engine. Corpora 3(1): 1–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/E174950320800004X
Romaine, S. (2000) Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2nd edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schulz, M. R. (1975) The semantic derogation of woman. In B. Thorne and N. Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 57–63. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Sigley, R. and Holmes, J. (2002) Looking at girls in corpora of English. Journal of English Linguistics 30(2): 138–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/007242030002004
Storey, D. C. (1977) Gray power: an endangered species? Ageism as portrayed in children’s books. Social Education 41(6): 528–33.
Stubbs, M. (1996) Text and Corpus Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tahmaseb-McConatha, J. (2013) Learning to be a grandmother. Retrieved on 3 June 2016 from www.psychologytoday.com/blog/live-long-and-prosper/201311/learning-be-grandmother.
Thompson, M. (2016) What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? London: St Martin’s Press.
Twigg, J. (2013) Fashion and Age: Dress, the Body and Later Life. London: Bloomsbury. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/9781474290340
Van Leeuwen, T. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195323306.001.0001
Van Leeuwen, T. (2011) The Language of Colour: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.
Walliams, D. (2011) Gangsta Granny (illustrations by T. Ross). London: HarperCollins.
Watts, J. and Bowater, D. (2016) Brazil president Dilma Rousseff comes out fighting in impeachment trial. The Guardian (29 August). Retrieved on 21 October 2016 from www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/brazil-president-dilma-rousseff-impeachment-trial.
White, P. R. R. (2001) Appraisal: an overview. Retrieved on 2 June 2009 from www.grammatics.com/appraisal/index.html.
Woodward, K. (1995) Psychoanalysis, feminism, and ageism. In M. Featherstone and A. Wernick (eds) Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life 79–96. London: Routledge.
Armstrong, S. L., Gleitman, L. R. and Gleitman, H. (1983) What some concepts might not be. Cognition 13: 263–308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(83)90012-4
Baker, P. (2006) Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.
Baker, P. (2010) Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Baker, P. (2014) Using Corpora to Analyze Gender. London: Bloomsbury.
Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana.
Beland, R. M. and Mills, T. L. (2001) Positive portrayal of grandparents in current children’s literature. Journal of Family Issues 22(5): 639–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/019251301022005006
Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. (2010) Women of a certain age: life styles, the female body and ageism. In J. Holmes and M. Marra (eds) Femininity, Feminism and Gendered Discourse 21–40. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. and Moon, R. (2010) Curvy, hunky, kinky: using corpora as tools in critical analysis. Discourse and Society 21(2): 1–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926509353843
Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. and van Leeuwen, T. (2002) Stunning, shimmering, iridescent: toys as the representation of gendered social actors. In L. Litosseliti and J. Sunderland (eds) Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis 91–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.2.05cal
Clinton, H. (2015) Hillary Clinton: ‘I’m not a scientist, I’m just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain’ – video. Retrieved on 14 October 2016 from www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/jul/28/hillary-clinton-unveils-climate-change-policy-video.
Conboy, M. (2006) Tabloid Britain. London: Routledge.
Copper, B. (1986) Voices: on becoming old women. In J. Alexander, D. Berrow, L. Domitrovich, M. Donnelly and C. McLean (eds) Women and Aging: an Anthology by Women 47–57. Corvallis, OR: Calyx Books.
Coupland, N. and Coupland, J. (1993) Discourses of ageism and anti-ageism. Journal of Aging Studies 7(3): 279–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0890-4065(93)90016-D
Coupland, N., Coupland, J. and Giles, H. (1991) Discourse, Identity and Ageing. Oxford: Blackwell.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1995) Constructing meaning, constructing selves: snapshots of language, gender and class from Belten High. In K. Hall and M. Bucholtz (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self 469–508. New York: Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203809068.ch1
Fairclough, N. (2013) Language and Power (2nd edn). London: Routledge.
Fearnly-Whittingstall, J. (2011) The Good Granny Guide. London: Short Books.
Featherstone, M. and Wernick, A. (eds) (1995) Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life. London: Routledge.
Freeman, H. (2014) Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy gives birth to new conspiracies. The Guardian (22 April). Retrieved on 14 October 2016 from www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/22/chelsea-clinton-pregancy-hillary-clinton-grandmother-conspiracies.
Garner, J. D. and Mercer, S. O. (eds) (2001) Women as they Age. London: Routledge.
Goldenberg, S. (2015) Clinton returns to smash glass ceiling, with gender at forefront of campaign. The Guardian (12 April). Retrieved on 14 October 2016 from www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/12/hillary-clinton-2016-presidential-campaign-strategy-politics.
Gransnet (2013a) The New Granny’s Survival Guide. London: Random House.
Gransnet (2013b) Ageism. Retrieved on 21 October 2016 from www.gransnet.com/forums/other_subjects/a1203153-Ageism.
Greer, G. (1991) The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause. New York: Knopf.
Gullette, M. (1997) Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
Hall, S. (ed.) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage/Open University.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Hamilton, H. E. (1992) Bringing aging into the language/gender equation. In K. Hall, M. Bucholtz and B. Moonwomon (eds) Locating Power 240–49. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
Hansen, A. and Machin, D. (2008) Visually branding the environment: climate change as a marketing opportunity. Discourse Studies 10(6): 777–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445608098200
Hareven, T. K. (1995) Changing images of aging and the social construction of the life course. In M. Featherstone and A. Wernick (eds) Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life 119–34. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203397442_chapter_8
Henneberg, S. (2010) Moms do badly, but grandmas do worse: the nexus of sexism and ageism in children’s classics. Journal of Aging Studies 24: 125–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2008.10.003
Hepworth, M. (2003) Ageing bodies: aged by culture. In J. Coupland and R. Gwyn (eds.) Discourse, the Body, and Identity 89–106. Basingstoke: Palgrave. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781403918543_5
Hollis-Sawyer, L. and Cuevas, L. (2013) Mirror, mirror on the wall: ageist and sexist double jeopardy portrayals in children’s picture books. Educational Gerontology 39(12): 902–914. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03601277.2013.767650
Hurst, J. B. (1981) Images in children’s picture books. Social Education 45(2): 138–143.
Iedema, R. (2003) Multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication 2(1): 29–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470357203002001751
Iversen, S. M. (2015) ‘Not without my kitties’: the old woman in casual games. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Retrieved on 10 September 2016 from www.fdg2015.org/papers/fdg2015_paper_44.pdf.
Keyworth, F. (1982) Invisible struggles: the politics of ageing. In R. Brunt and C. Rowan (eds.) Feminism, Culture and Politics 131–142. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
King, J. (2013) Discourses of Ageing in Fiction and Feminism: The Invisible Woman. Basingstoke: Palgrave. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137292278
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.
Lessing, D. ([1973]2009) The Summer before the Dark. New York: Vintage Books.
Lindquist, H. (2009) Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Machin, D. (2004) Building the world’s visual language: the increasing global importance of image banks in corporate media. Visual Communication 3(3): 316–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470357204045785
Machin, D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analyis. London: Hodder Arnold.
Machin, D. and van Leeuwen, T. (2007) Global Media Discourse. London: Routledge.
Martin, J. R. and White, P. R. R. (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230511910
Mautner, G. (2007) Mining large corpora for social information: the case of elderly. Language in Society 36: 51–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404507070030
Moon, R. (2014) From gorgeous to grumpy: adjectives, age and gender. Gender and Language 8(1): 5–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.v8i1.5
Newman, N. (1983) My Granny (illustrations by B. Cook). London: Collins.
Norris, S. (2013) What is a mode? Smell, olfactory perception, and the notion of mode in multimodal mediated theory. Multimodal Communication 2(2): 155–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/mc-2013-0008
Pearce, M. (2008) Investigating the collocational behaviour of MAN and WOMAN in the BNC using Sketch Engine. Corpora 3(1): 1–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/E174950320800004X
Romaine, S. (2000) Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2nd edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schulz, M. R. (1975) The semantic derogation of woman. In B. Thorne and N. Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 57–63. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Sigley, R. and Holmes, J. (2002) Looking at girls in corpora of English. Journal of English Linguistics 30(2): 138–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/007242030002004
Storey, D. C. (1977) Gray power: an endangered species? Ageism as portrayed in children’s books. Social Education 41(6): 528–33.
Stubbs, M. (1996) Text and Corpus Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tahmaseb-McConatha, J. (2013) Learning to be a grandmother. Retrieved on 3 June 2016 from www.psychologytoday.com/blog/live-long-and-prosper/201311/learning-be-grandmother.
Thompson, M. (2016) What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? London: St Martin’s Press.
Twigg, J. (2013) Fashion and Age: Dress, the Body and Later Life. London: Bloomsbury. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/9781474290340
Van Leeuwen, T. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195323306.001.0001
Van Leeuwen, T. (2011) The Language of Colour: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.
Walliams, D. (2011) Gangsta Granny (illustrations by T. Ross). London: HarperCollins.
Watts, J. and Bowater, D. (2016) Brazil president Dilma Rousseff comes out fighting in impeachment trial. The Guardian (29 August). Retrieved on 21 October 2016 from www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/brazil-president-dilma-rousseff-impeachment-trial.
White, P. R. R. (2001) Appraisal: an overview. Retrieved on 2 June 2009 from www.grammatics.com/appraisal/index.html.
Woodward, K. (1995) Psychoanalysis, feminism, and ageism. In M. Featherstone and A. Wernick (eds) Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life 79–96. London: Routledge.
Published
2016-12-20
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Caldas-Coulthard, C. R., & Moon, R. (2016). Grandmother, gran, gangsta granny: semiotic representations of grandmotherhood. Gender and Language, 10(3), 309-339. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v10i3.32036
