Gendering selves, gendering others – in (Greek) interaction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v9i1.19377Keywords:
conversation analysis, gendering, Greek, indexicality, person reference, talk-in-interactionAbstract
Until quite recently, research on gender and interaction revolved primarily around the use of gendered categories and third person reference in the English language. Based on data from Greek talk-in-interaction, the aim of this paper is to point to some non-referential aspects of gendering. More specifically, adopting a conversation analytic perspective, instances of collective and individual self-reference – in itself not gendered in Greek – are analysed and shown to acquire gendered meanings in the specific context, without the deployment of terms or categories marked by grammatical or lexical gender. Such self-genderings impact on the gendering of recipients via the reflexivity of participants’ roles in interaction. Gendering oneself and others thus emerges as a dynamic process that fully exploits the inherent features of interaction, in interplay with the specific means that a language makes available to its users.
References
Alvanoudi, A. (2015) The routine achievement of gender in Greek conversation. Gender and Language 9(1): 11–31.
Austin J. L. ([1962]1975) How to Do Things with Words (2nd edn; ed. M. Sbisà and J. O. Urmson). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baron, B. and Kotthoff, H. (eds) (2001) Gender in Interaction: Perspectives on Femininity and Masculinity in Ethnography and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Beach, W. A. and Glenn, P. (2011) Bids and responses to intimacy as ‘gendered’ enactments. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 210–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032.011
Benveniste, ?. ([1966]1971) Problems in General Linguistics (trans. M. E. Meek). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.
Bucholtz, M., Liang, A. C., and Sutton, L. A. (eds) (1999) Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Butler, J. (1988) Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal 40(4): 519–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3207893
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992) Think practically and look locally: language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002333
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1999) New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society 28: 185–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404599002031
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003) Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791147
Eglin, P. (2002) Members’ gendering work: ‘women’, ‘feminists’ and membership categorization analysis. Discourse and Society 13(6): 819–926. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926502013006759
Enfield, N. J. and Stivers, T. (2007) Person reference in interaction. In N. J. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural, and Social Perspectives 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Francis, S. and Hester, D. (2004) An Invitation to Ethnomethodology: Language, Society and Social Interaction. London: Sage.
Goodwin, M. H. (1980) He-said-she-said: formal cultural procedures for the construction of gossip dispute activity. American Ethnologist 7(4): 674–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.1980.7.4.02a00050
Goodwin, M. H. (1982) ‘Instigating’: story-telling as social process. American Ethnologist 9(4): 799–819. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.1982.9.4.02a00110
Goodwin, M. H. (2011) Engendering children’s play: person reference in children’s conflictual interaction. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 250–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032.013
Hacohen, G. and Schegloff, E. A. (2006) On the preference for minimization in referring to persons: evidence from Hebrew conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 38(8): 1305–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.04.004
Hellinger, M. and Bussmann, H. (eds) (2001–3) Gender across Languages, 3 vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Holmes, J. (2007) Social constructionism, postmodernism and feminist sociolinguistics. Gender and Language 1(1): 51–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.2007.1.1.51
Hopper, R. (2003) Gendering Talk. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Hopper, R. and LeBaron, C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 31(3): 59–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3101_4
Jackson, C. (2011) The gendered ‘I’. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 31–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kitzinger, C. (2005) ‘Speaking as a heterosexual’: (how) does sexuality matter for talk-in-interaction? Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(3): 221–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3803_2
Kitzinger, C. (2007) Is ‘woman’ always relevantly gendered? Gender and Language 1(1): 39–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.2007.1.1.39
Kitzinger, C. (2013) Repair. In J. Sidnell and T. Stivers (eds) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis 229–56. Chisteter: Wiley-Blackwell.
Klein, N. L. (2011) Doing gender categorization: non-recognitional person reference and the omnirelevance of gender. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 64–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kotthoff, H. and Wodak, R. (eds) (1997) Communicating Gender in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.42
Land, V. and Kitzinger, C. (2011) Categories in talk-in-interaction: gendering speaker and recipient. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 48–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003) “What’s in a name?” Social labelling and gender practices. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 69–97. Oxford: Blackwell.
Morgan, M. H. (1991) Indirectness and interpretation in African American women’s discourse. Pragmatics 1(4): 421–51.
Ochs, E. (1992) Indexing gender. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2003) Women, gender and Modern Greek. In M. Hellinger and H. Bussmann (eds) Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men, vol. 3, 175–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/impact.11.11pav
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2008) ????? ??? ? ?????????? (???????) ??????????????. [We and the construction of (gendered) collectivities.] In M. Theodoropoulou (ed.) ????? ??? ???: ????????????? ????? ??? ????? ??? ?.-?. ???????? [Light and Warmth: In Memory of A.-P. Christidis] 437–53. Thessaloniki: Center for the Greek Language.
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2011) Gender and interaction. In R. Wodak, B. Johnstone and P. Kerswill (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics 412–27. London: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957.n29
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2012) Collective aspects of subjectivity: the subject pronoun ????? (‘we’) in Modern Greek. In N. Baumgarten, J. House and I. Du Bois (eds) Subjectivity in Language and in Discourse 33–65. Bingley: Emerald.
Pavlidou, T.-S. and Karafoti, E. (2014) Ways of disagreeing: ‘why’-interrogatives in Greek conversations. Paper presented at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA14), Los Angeles, 25–29 June.
Pavlidou, T.-S., Alvanoudi, A. and Karafoti, E. (2004) ?????????? ????? ??? ????????? ???????????: ?????????????? ???????????? ??? ?? ?????????? ???????????? ??? ?????. [Grammatical gender and semantic content: preliminary remarks on the lexical representation of social gender.] Studies in Greek Linguistics 24: 543–53.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation, vols 1 and 2 (ed. G. Jefferson, intro. E. A. Schegloff). Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, H. and Schegloff, E. A. (1979) Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology 15–21. New York: Irvington.
Schegloff, E. A. (1996) Some practices for referring to persons in talk-in interaction: a partial sketch of a systematics. In B. Fox (ed.) Studies in Anaphora 437–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/tsl.33.14sch
Schegloff, E. A. (2007a) A tutorial in membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39(3): 462–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.007
Schegloff, E. A. (2007c) Categories in action: person-reference and membership categorization. Discourse Studies 9(4):433–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445607079162
Shuman, A. (1992) ‘Get outa my face’: entitlement and authoritative discourse. In J. H. Hill and J. T. Irvine (eds) Responsibiliy and Evidence in Oral Discourse 135–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sidnell, J. (2011) ‘D’you understand that honey?’ Gender and participation in conversation. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 183–209. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silverstein, M. (1976) Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. In K. H. Basso and H. A. Selby (eds) Meaning in Anthropology 11–55. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico.
Speer, S. A. (2005) The interactional organization of the gender attribution process. Sociology 39(1): 67–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038505049002
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. H. (2011a) An introduction to conversation and gender. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 1–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. H. (eds) (2011b) Conversation and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032
Stockill, C. and Kitzinger, C. (2007) Gendered people: how linguistically non-gendered terms can have gendered interactional relevance. Feminism and Psychology 17(2): 224–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353507076555
Stokoe, E. H. (2010) ‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: conversation analysis, membership categorization and men’s denials of violence. Discourse and Society 21(1): 59–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926509345072
Stokoe, E. H. (2012) Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: methods for systematics analysis. Disccourse Studies 14(3): 277–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445612441534
Stokoe, E. H. and Smithson, J. (2001) Making gender relevant: conversation analysis and gender categories in interaction. Discourse and Society 12(2): 217–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926501012002005
Talbot, M. (2003) Gender stereotypes: reproduction and challenge. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 468–86. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch20
Thorne, B. and Henley, N. M. (eds) (1975) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Thorne, B., Kramarae, C. and Henley, N. M. (eds) (1983) Language, Gender and Society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Trömel-Plötz, S. (ed.) (1996) Frauengespräche: Sprache der Verständigung. Frankfurt: Fischer.
West, C. and Zimmerman, D. ([1987]2002) Doing gender. In S. Fenstermaker and C. West (eds) Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change 3–23. London: Routledge.
Austin J. L. ([1962]1975) How to Do Things with Words (2nd edn; ed. M. Sbisà and J. O. Urmson). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baron, B. and Kotthoff, H. (eds) (2001) Gender in Interaction: Perspectives on Femininity and Masculinity in Ethnography and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Beach, W. A. and Glenn, P. (2011) Bids and responses to intimacy as ‘gendered’ enactments. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 210–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032.011
Benveniste, ?. ([1966]1971) Problems in General Linguistics (trans. M. E. Meek). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.
Bucholtz, M., Liang, A. C., and Sutton, L. A. (eds) (1999) Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Butler, J. (1988) Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal 40(4): 519–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3207893
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992) Think practically and look locally: language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002333
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1999) New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society 28: 185–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404599002031
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003) Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791147
Eglin, P. (2002) Members’ gendering work: ‘women’, ‘feminists’ and membership categorization analysis. Discourse and Society 13(6): 819–926. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926502013006759
Enfield, N. J. and Stivers, T. (2007) Person reference in interaction. In N. J. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural, and Social Perspectives 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Francis, S. and Hester, D. (2004) An Invitation to Ethnomethodology: Language, Society and Social Interaction. London: Sage.
Goodwin, M. H. (1980) He-said-she-said: formal cultural procedures for the construction of gossip dispute activity. American Ethnologist 7(4): 674–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.1980.7.4.02a00050
Goodwin, M. H. (1982) ‘Instigating’: story-telling as social process. American Ethnologist 9(4): 799–819. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.1982.9.4.02a00110
Goodwin, M. H. (2011) Engendering children’s play: person reference in children’s conflictual interaction. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 250–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032.013
Hacohen, G. and Schegloff, E. A. (2006) On the preference for minimization in referring to persons: evidence from Hebrew conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 38(8): 1305–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.04.004
Hellinger, M. and Bussmann, H. (eds) (2001–3) Gender across Languages, 3 vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Holmes, J. (2007) Social constructionism, postmodernism and feminist sociolinguistics. Gender and Language 1(1): 51–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.2007.1.1.51
Hopper, R. (2003) Gendering Talk. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Hopper, R. and LeBaron, C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 31(3): 59–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3101_4
Jackson, C. (2011) The gendered ‘I’. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 31–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kitzinger, C. (2005) ‘Speaking as a heterosexual’: (how) does sexuality matter for talk-in-interaction? Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(3): 221–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3803_2
Kitzinger, C. (2007) Is ‘woman’ always relevantly gendered? Gender and Language 1(1): 39–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.2007.1.1.39
Kitzinger, C. (2013) Repair. In J. Sidnell and T. Stivers (eds) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis 229–56. Chisteter: Wiley-Blackwell.
Klein, N. L. (2011) Doing gender categorization: non-recognitional person reference and the omnirelevance of gender. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 64–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kotthoff, H. and Wodak, R. (eds) (1997) Communicating Gender in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.42
Land, V. and Kitzinger, C. (2011) Categories in talk-in-interaction: gendering speaker and recipient. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 48–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003) “What’s in a name?” Social labelling and gender practices. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 69–97. Oxford: Blackwell.
Morgan, M. H. (1991) Indirectness and interpretation in African American women’s discourse. Pragmatics 1(4): 421–51.
Ochs, E. (1992) Indexing gender. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2003) Women, gender and Modern Greek. In M. Hellinger and H. Bussmann (eds) Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men, vol. 3, 175–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/impact.11.11pav
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2008) ????? ??? ? ?????????? (???????) ??????????????. [We and the construction of (gendered) collectivities.] In M. Theodoropoulou (ed.) ????? ??? ???: ????????????? ????? ??? ????? ??? ?.-?. ???????? [Light and Warmth: In Memory of A.-P. Christidis] 437–53. Thessaloniki: Center for the Greek Language.
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2011) Gender and interaction. In R. Wodak, B. Johnstone and P. Kerswill (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics 412–27. London: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957.n29
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2012) Collective aspects of subjectivity: the subject pronoun ????? (‘we’) in Modern Greek. In N. Baumgarten, J. House and I. Du Bois (eds) Subjectivity in Language and in Discourse 33–65. Bingley: Emerald.
Pavlidou, T.-S. and Karafoti, E. (2014) Ways of disagreeing: ‘why’-interrogatives in Greek conversations. Paper presented at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA14), Los Angeles, 25–29 June.
Pavlidou, T.-S., Alvanoudi, A. and Karafoti, E. (2004) ?????????? ????? ??? ????????? ???????????: ?????????????? ???????????? ??? ?? ?????????? ???????????? ??? ?????. [Grammatical gender and semantic content: preliminary remarks on the lexical representation of social gender.] Studies in Greek Linguistics 24: 543–53.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation, vols 1 and 2 (ed. G. Jefferson, intro. E. A. Schegloff). Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, H. and Schegloff, E. A. (1979) Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology 15–21. New York: Irvington.
Schegloff, E. A. (1996) Some practices for referring to persons in talk-in interaction: a partial sketch of a systematics. In B. Fox (ed.) Studies in Anaphora 437–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/tsl.33.14sch
Schegloff, E. A. (2007a) A tutorial in membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39(3): 462–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.007
Schegloff, E. A. (2007c) Categories in action: person-reference and membership categorization. Discourse Studies 9(4):433–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445607079162
Shuman, A. (1992) ‘Get outa my face’: entitlement and authoritative discourse. In J. H. Hill and J. T. Irvine (eds) Responsibiliy and Evidence in Oral Discourse 135–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sidnell, J. (2011) ‘D’you understand that honey?’ Gender and participation in conversation. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 183–209. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silverstein, M. (1976) Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. In K. H. Basso and H. A. Selby (eds) Meaning in Anthropology 11–55. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico.
Speer, S. A. (2005) The interactional organization of the gender attribution process. Sociology 39(1): 67–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038505049002
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. H. (2011a) An introduction to conversation and gender. In S. A. Speer and E. H. Stokoe (eds) Conversation and Gender 1–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. H. (eds) (2011b) Conversation and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032
Stockill, C. and Kitzinger, C. (2007) Gendered people: how linguistically non-gendered terms can have gendered interactional relevance. Feminism and Psychology 17(2): 224–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353507076555
Stokoe, E. H. (2010) ‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: conversation analysis, membership categorization and men’s denials of violence. Discourse and Society 21(1): 59–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926509345072
Stokoe, E. H. (2012) Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: methods for systematics analysis. Disccourse Studies 14(3): 277–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445612441534
Stokoe, E. H. and Smithson, J. (2001) Making gender relevant: conversation analysis and gender categories in interaction. Discourse and Society 12(2): 217–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926501012002005
Talbot, M. (2003) Gender stereotypes: reproduction and challenge. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 468–86. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch20
Thorne, B. and Henley, N. M. (eds) (1975) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Thorne, B., Kramarae, C. and Henley, N. M. (eds) (1983) Language, Gender and Society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Trömel-Plötz, S. (ed.) (1996) Frauengespräche: Sprache der Verständigung. Frankfurt: Fischer.
West, C. and Zimmerman, D. ([1987]2002) Doing gender. In S. Fenstermaker and C. West (eds) Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change 3–23. London: Routledge.
Published
2015-03-19
Issue
Section
Special Issue Articles
How to Cite
Pavlidou, T.-S. (2015). Gendering selves, gendering others – in (Greek) interaction. Gender and Language, 9(1), 105-131. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v9i1.19377
