‘His belly dancer’
young women’s interactional negotiation of sexual bodies and desire at a Baptist university
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v9i2.18356Keywords:
Christianity, sexuality, taboo, interaction, strategic ambiguityAbstract
While spirituality and sexuality are often dichotomised as oppositional, they are in fact socially constructed in complex ways in everyday practice. This article investigates the ways in which a group of young women at a Baptist university in Texas interactionally negotiate the cultural construct of a ‘belly dancer’ and its perceived sexualised associations in relation to the moral codes and principles of their religious community of practice. The analysis examines the ways in which the participants take both positive and negative stances toward belly dancing through strategic ambiguity, which is the process whereby participants juxtapose seemingly incongruous elements in order to try out different identities and ideologies while maintaining a certain degree of deniability. In the four examples I analyse, I show how the participants achieve strategic ambiguity through the use of categorisation devices, interactional framing, hyperbolic parallelism, and stance alternation. Given that the participants’ Christian community of practice promotes – and to a certain extent requires – sexual integrity and modesty from its members, strategic ambiguity is a valuable interactional resource for negotiating the taboo topic of belly dancing and its perceived sexual associations.
References
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Baylor University (1996) Stop the presses! Dance fever to hit Baylor April 18. Retrieved on 16 March 2011 from www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=1052.
Baylor University (2007) Student policies & procedures. Retrieved on 28 November 2011 from www.baylor.edu/student_policies/index.php?id=22170.
Boyce, D. (2009) Where a good Baylor student looks when watching a belly dancer. Quick BIC (Baylor Interdisciplinary Core Student Newsletter). Retrieved on 14 March 2011 from www.baylor.edu/content/services/documents.php/86916.pdf.
Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2005) Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7: 585–614. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445605054407
Bufe, C. (undated) 20 reasons to abandon Christianity. Retrieved on 16 August 2013 from www.seesharppress.com/20reasons.html.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Charles, T. (2011) Almost everyone’s doing it. Relevant Magazine 53 (September–October). Retrieved on 22 August 2013 from www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/almost-everyones-doing-it.
Cherry, N. (2012) Christians desire to be like Jesus – which makes us heteronormative. Engage Family Blog. Retrieved on 16 August 2013 from http://engagefamilyminute.com/2012/10/christians-desire-to-be-like-jesus-which-makes-us-heteronormative.
Cochran, J. and Beeghley, L. (1991) The influence of religion on attitudes toward nonmarital sexuality: A preliminary assessment of reference group theory. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30(1): 45–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1387148
Crowley, K. (2012) Secularity. In C. Orr, A. Braithwaite and D. Lichtenstein (eds), Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies 240–57. New York: Routledge.
Du Bois, J. (2007) The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (ed) Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction 139–82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.164.07du
Du Bois, J. (2010) Representing discourse. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Santa Barbara.
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
Edger, K. (2012) Evangelicalism, sexual morality, and sexual addiction: opposing views and continued conflicts. Journal of Religious Health 51: 162–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-010-9338-7
Edwards, L., Fehring, R., Jarrett, K. and Haglund, K. (2008) The influence of religiosity, gender, and language preference acculturation on sexual activity among Latino/a adolescents. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 30: 447–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0739986308322912
Gagnon, J. and Simon, W. (1973) Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality. Chicago, IL: Aldine Press.
Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis. New York: Harper & Row.
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Higgins, C. (2009) English as a Local Language: Post-Colonial Identities and Multilingual Practices. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Hollway, W. (1984) Women’s power in heterosexual sex. Women’s Studies International Forum 7(1): 63–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(84)90085-2
Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M. (1999) The community of practice: theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society 28: 173–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S004740459900202X
Jule, A. (ed.) (2005) Gender and the Language of Religion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230523494
Jule, A. (ed.) (2007) Language and Religious Identity: Women in Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230210943
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355
Mahoney, A. (2008) Is it possible for Christian women to be sexual? Women and Therapy 31(1): 89–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/02703140802145250
McGowen, M. (2005) Dress code, fashion differences make changing times visible. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 9 December 2011 from www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=37570.
Mendoza-Denton, N. (2002) Language and identity. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes (eds) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change 475–99. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mey, J. (2002) Context and (dis)ambiguity: a pragmatic view. Journal of Pragmatics 35: 331–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00139-X
New York Times (1989) Baylor; suit attacks a ban on single students who are pregnant. New York Times (17 September). Retrieved on 16 March 2011 from www.nytimes.com/1989/09/17/style/campus-life-baylor-suit-attacks-a-ban-on-single-students-who-are-pregnant.html?src=pm.
Parker, J. (2003) The sex lives of Christian teens. Retrieved on 16 August 2013. www.crosswalk.com/11622481/?p=5.
Parrinder, G. (1980) Sexual Morality in the World’s Religions. Rockport, MA: Oneworld Publications.
Pirtle, K. (2011) Traces of 151-year-long ban no longer affect students. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 9 December 2011 from http://baylorlariat.com/2011/11/15/traces-of-151-year-long-ban-no-longer-affect-students.
Prasad, S. (2007) Bearobics Bash to raise heart health awareness. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 16 March 2014 from www.baylor.edu/lariatarchives/news.php?action=story&story=45355.
Ramshaw, G. (1995) God Beyond Gender: Feminist Christian God-Language. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Riley, N. S. (2004) At Baylor University, a struggle over mind and soul. New York Times (8 September). Retrieved on 28 September 2012 from www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/education/08baylor.html?_r=0.
Rivenburg, R. (1996) Baylor University’s decision to end its ban on dancing has the faithful wondering whether they can prevent church-affiliated schools from … losing their religion. Los Angeles Times (13 March). Retrieved on 16 March 2011 from articles.latimes.com/1996-03-13/news/ls-46610_1.
Sacks, H. (1972) On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication 325–45. New York: Rinehart & Winston.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4): 696–735. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010
Schegloff, E. (2001) Getting serious: joking -> serious ‘no’. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1947–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00073-4
Shaw, S. (2008) Gracious submission: South Baptist fundamentalists and women. NWSA Journal 20(1): 51–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813124766.003.0007
Shoaps, R. (2007) ‘Moral irony’: modal particles, moral persons and indirect stance-taking in Sakapultek discourse. Pragmatics 17(2): 297–335. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.17.2.05sho
Short, P. (2008) Baylor 2012 should not come at cost of integrity. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 9 December 2011 from www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=53834.
Silverman, D. and Peräkylä, A. (1990) AIDS counselling: the interactional organisation of talk about ‘delicate’ issues. Sociology of Health and Illness 12: 293–318. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11347251
Skapoulli, E. (2009) Transforming the label of ‘whore’: teenage girls’ negotiation of local and global gender ideologies of Cyprus. Pragmatics 19(1): 85–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.19.1.05ska
Smith, F. L. (1993) The pulpit and woman’s place: gender and the framing of the ‘exegetical self’ in sermon performances. In D. Tannen (ed) Framing in Discourse 146–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stivers, T. (2007) Alternative recognitionals in person reference. In N. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural, and Social Perspectives 73–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Takanashi, H. (2011) Complementary stylistic resonance in Japanese play framing. Pragmatics 21(2): 231–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.2.04tak
Wagner, A. (1997) Adversaries of Dance: From the Puritans to the Present. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Warner-Garcia, S. (2014) Laughing when nothing’s funny: the pragmatic use of coping laughter in the negotiation of conversational disagreement. Pragmatics 24(1): 157–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.24.1.07war
Weatherall, A., Stubbe, M., Sutherland, J. and Baxter, J. (2010) Conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis in language and gender research: approaches in dialogue. In J. Holmes and M. Marra (eds) Femininity, Feminism and Gendered Discourse 217–47. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Weeks, J. (1985) Sexuality and Its Discontents. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203407462
Baylor University (1996) Stop the presses! Dance fever to hit Baylor April 18. Retrieved on 16 March 2011 from www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=1052.
Baylor University (2007) Student policies & procedures. Retrieved on 28 November 2011 from www.baylor.edu/student_policies/index.php?id=22170.
Boyce, D. (2009) Where a good Baylor student looks when watching a belly dancer. Quick BIC (Baylor Interdisciplinary Core Student Newsletter). Retrieved on 14 March 2011 from www.baylor.edu/content/services/documents.php/86916.pdf.
Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2005) Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7: 585–614. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445605054407
Bufe, C. (undated) 20 reasons to abandon Christianity. Retrieved on 16 August 2013 from www.seesharppress.com/20reasons.html.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Charles, T. (2011) Almost everyone’s doing it. Relevant Magazine 53 (September–October). Retrieved on 22 August 2013 from www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/almost-everyones-doing-it.
Cherry, N. (2012) Christians desire to be like Jesus – which makes us heteronormative. Engage Family Blog. Retrieved on 16 August 2013 from http://engagefamilyminute.com/2012/10/christians-desire-to-be-like-jesus-which-makes-us-heteronormative.
Cochran, J. and Beeghley, L. (1991) The influence of religion on attitudes toward nonmarital sexuality: A preliminary assessment of reference group theory. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30(1): 45–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1387148
Crowley, K. (2012) Secularity. In C. Orr, A. Braithwaite and D. Lichtenstein (eds), Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies 240–57. New York: Routledge.
Du Bois, J. (2007) The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (ed) Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction 139–82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.164.07du
Du Bois, J. (2010) Representing discourse. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Santa Barbara.
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
Edger, K. (2012) Evangelicalism, sexual morality, and sexual addiction: opposing views and continued conflicts. Journal of Religious Health 51: 162–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-010-9338-7
Edwards, L., Fehring, R., Jarrett, K. and Haglund, K. (2008) The influence of religiosity, gender, and language preference acculturation on sexual activity among Latino/a adolescents. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 30: 447–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0739986308322912
Gagnon, J. and Simon, W. (1973) Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality. Chicago, IL: Aldine Press.
Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis. New York: Harper & Row.
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Higgins, C. (2009) English as a Local Language: Post-Colonial Identities and Multilingual Practices. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Hollway, W. (1984) Women’s power in heterosexual sex. Women’s Studies International Forum 7(1): 63–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(84)90085-2
Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M. (1999) The community of practice: theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society 28: 173–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S004740459900202X
Jule, A. (ed.) (2005) Gender and the Language of Religion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230523494
Jule, A. (ed.) (2007) Language and Religious Identity: Women in Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230210943
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355
Mahoney, A. (2008) Is it possible for Christian women to be sexual? Women and Therapy 31(1): 89–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/02703140802145250
McGowen, M. (2005) Dress code, fashion differences make changing times visible. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 9 December 2011 from www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=37570.
Mendoza-Denton, N. (2002) Language and identity. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes (eds) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change 475–99. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mey, J. (2002) Context and (dis)ambiguity: a pragmatic view. Journal of Pragmatics 35: 331–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00139-X
New York Times (1989) Baylor; suit attacks a ban on single students who are pregnant. New York Times (17 September). Retrieved on 16 March 2011 from www.nytimes.com/1989/09/17/style/campus-life-baylor-suit-attacks-a-ban-on-single-students-who-are-pregnant.html?src=pm.
Parker, J. (2003) The sex lives of Christian teens. Retrieved on 16 August 2013. www.crosswalk.com/11622481/?p=5.
Parrinder, G. (1980) Sexual Morality in the World’s Religions. Rockport, MA: Oneworld Publications.
Pirtle, K. (2011) Traces of 151-year-long ban no longer affect students. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 9 December 2011 from http://baylorlariat.com/2011/11/15/traces-of-151-year-long-ban-no-longer-affect-students.
Prasad, S. (2007) Bearobics Bash to raise heart health awareness. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 16 March 2014 from www.baylor.edu/lariatarchives/news.php?action=story&story=45355.
Ramshaw, G. (1995) God Beyond Gender: Feminist Christian God-Language. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Riley, N. S. (2004) At Baylor University, a struggle over mind and soul. New York Times (8 September). Retrieved on 28 September 2012 from www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/education/08baylor.html?_r=0.
Rivenburg, R. (1996) Baylor University’s decision to end its ban on dancing has the faithful wondering whether they can prevent church-affiliated schools from … losing their religion. Los Angeles Times (13 March). Retrieved on 16 March 2011 from articles.latimes.com/1996-03-13/news/ls-46610_1.
Sacks, H. (1972) On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication 325–45. New York: Rinehart & Winston.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4): 696–735. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010
Schegloff, E. (2001) Getting serious: joking -> serious ‘no’. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1947–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00073-4
Shaw, S. (2008) Gracious submission: South Baptist fundamentalists and women. NWSA Journal 20(1): 51–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813124766.003.0007
Shoaps, R. (2007) ‘Moral irony’: modal particles, moral persons and indirect stance-taking in Sakapultek discourse. Pragmatics 17(2): 297–335. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.17.2.05sho
Short, P. (2008) Baylor 2012 should not come at cost of integrity. Baylor Lariat. Retrieved on 9 December 2011 from www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=53834.
Silverman, D. and Peräkylä, A. (1990) AIDS counselling: the interactional organisation of talk about ‘delicate’ issues. Sociology of Health and Illness 12: 293–318. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11347251
Skapoulli, E. (2009) Transforming the label of ‘whore’: teenage girls’ negotiation of local and global gender ideologies of Cyprus. Pragmatics 19(1): 85–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.19.1.05ska
Smith, F. L. (1993) The pulpit and woman’s place: gender and the framing of the ‘exegetical self’ in sermon performances. In D. Tannen (ed) Framing in Discourse 146–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stivers, T. (2007) Alternative recognitionals in person reference. In N. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural, and Social Perspectives 73–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Takanashi, H. (2011) Complementary stylistic resonance in Japanese play framing. Pragmatics 21(2): 231–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.2.04tak
Wagner, A. (1997) Adversaries of Dance: From the Puritans to the Present. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Warner-Garcia, S. (2014) Laughing when nothing’s funny: the pragmatic use of coping laughter in the negotiation of conversational disagreement. Pragmatics 24(1): 157–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.24.1.07war
Weatherall, A., Stubbe, M., Sutherland, J. and Baxter, J. (2010) Conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis in language and gender research: approaches in dialogue. In J. Holmes and M. Marra (eds) Femininity, Feminism and Gendered Discourse 217–47. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Weeks, J. (1985) Sexuality and Its Discontents. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203407462
Published
2015-08-05
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Warner-Garcia, S. (2015). ‘His belly dancer’: young women’s interactional negotiation of sexual bodies and desire at a Baptist university. Gender and Language, 9(2), 255–277. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v9i2.18356
