Strong female speakers
The resistant discourse of tennis players
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v7i3.303Keywords:
offensive/defensive rhetoric, public speaking, gender and silence, subjectivityAbstract
The paper examines the resistant patterns of the discourse of female tennis players in the institutional setting of a post-match press conference from the perspective of discursive psychology. The saliently non-conventional discourse of female representatives of tennis is juxtaposed against the ideological representations of gendered models of public speaking with their attendant stereotypes of powerless femininity and powerful masculinity. It is posited that the media performances of female tennis players are neither oriented to canonical femininity nor canonical masculinity. Their dominant identity construction is that of an athlete preoccupied with norms of professional efficiency, which is projected through their marked use of patterns of offensive and defensive rhetoric (Potter 1996). Tennis players’ subjectivity management rests on resisting media versions of their subject sides (Edwards 2005a, 2007) which either attend to stereotypical notions of gendered identities or detract from their status as efficient professionals.
References
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Benwell, B. and Stokoe, E. (2006) Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burton, D. and Weiss, C. (2008) The fundamental goal concept: The path to process and performance success. In T. S. Horn (ed.) Advances in Sport Psychology 339–374. Third edn. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.
Cameron, D. (1985) Feminism and Linguistic Theory. London: Macmillan.
Cameron, D. (ed.) (1990) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge.
Cameron, D. (2003) Gender and language ideologies. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 447–467. Oxford: Blackwell.
Choi, P. Y. L. (2000) Femininity and the Physically Active Woman. London and New York: Routledge.
Clayman, S. E. (2001) Answers and evasions. Language in Society 30(3): 403–442.
Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1988) Complainable matters: The use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems 35(4): 398–417. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/800594
Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1995) Idiomatic expressions and their role in the organization of topic transition in conversation. In M. Everaert, E.-J. van den Linden, A. Schenk and R. Schreuder (eds) Idioms, Structural and Psychological Perspectives 117–32. Jillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1998) Figures of speech: Figurative expressions and the management of topic transition in conversation. Language in Society 27(4): 495–522.
Eckert, P. (2000) Gender and linguistic variation. In J. Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Edwards, D. (2000) Extreme case formulations: Softeners, investment and doing nonliteral. Research on Language and Social Interaction 33(4): 347–373. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1207/S15327973RLSI3304_01
Edwards, D. (2003) Analyzing racial discourse: The discursive psychology of mind-world relationships. In H. van den Berg, M. Wetherell and H. Houtkoop-Steenstra (eds) Analyzing Race Talk: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Interview 31–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Edwards, D. (2007) Managing subjectivity in talk. In A. Hepburn and S. Wiggins (eds) Discursive Research in Practice: New Approaches to Psychology and Interaction 31–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, D. and Fasulo, A. (2006) ‘To be honest’: Sequential uses of honesty phrases in talk-in-interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 39(4): 343–376. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3904_1
Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (1999) Social representations and discursive psychology: From cognition to action. Culture and Psychology 5(4): 447–458. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/1354067X9954004
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Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (2005) Discursive psychology, mental states and descriptions. In H. Te Molder and J. Potter (eds) Conversation and Cognition 241–259. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fitzsimons, A. (2002) Gender as a Verb: Gender Segregation at Work. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hepburn, A. and Potter, J. (2007) Crying receipts: Time, empathy and institutional practice. Research on Language and Social Interaction 40: 89–116. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1080/08351810701331299
Holmes, J. (2005) Power and discourse at work: Is gender relevant? In M. M. Lazar (ed) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse 31–61. London: Palgrave.
Holmes, J. and Stubbe, M. (2003) Feminine workplaces: Stereotype and reality. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 573–599. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jefferson, G. (2004) Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation 131–167. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Jenkins, M. and Kramarae, C. (1981) A thief in the house: The case of women and language. In D. Spender (ed.) Men’s Studies Modified. Oxford: Pergamon.
Kitzinger, C. (2000) Doing feminist conversation analysis. Feminism and Psychology 10(2): 163–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353500010002001
Klein, M.-L. (1988) Women in the discourse of sport reports. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 23(2): 139–152. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10126902880230 0205
Korobov, N. (2010) A discursive psychological approach to positioning. Qualitative Research in Psychology 7: 263–277. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14780880902822321
Kramarae, C. (1981) Women and Men Speaking: Frameworks for Analysis. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Kristeva, J. (1981) Women’s time. Signs 7(1): 13–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/493855
Lakoff, R. (1975) Language and Women’s Place. New York: Harper and Row.
Leech, G. N. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Leet-Pellegrini, H. M. (1980) Conversational dominance as a function of gender and expertise. In H. Giles, William P. Robinson and P. M. Smith (eds) Language and Social Psychological Perspectives 97–104. New York: Pergamon.
Litosseliti, L. (2006) Constructing gender in public arguments: The female voice as emotional voice. In J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts 40–58. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Martin Rojo, L. M. and Gomez-Esteban, C. (2005) The gender of power: The female style in labour organizations. In M. M. Lazar (ed.) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse 61–90. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
McConnell-Ginet, S. and Eckert, P. (2003) Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McElhinny, B. (1997) Ideologies of private and public language in sociolinguistics. In R. Wodak (ed.) Gender and Discourse 106–139. London: SAGE Publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230592902
Mills, S. (1999) Discourse competence; or how to theorise strong women speakers. In C. Hendricks and K. Oliver (eds) Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy and Language 81–90. New York: State of New York University Press.
Mills, S. (2006) Gender and performance anxiety at academic conferences. In J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts 61–80. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mullany, L. (2007) Gendered Discourse in the Professional Workplace. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pomerantz, A. (1984) Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. Maxwell Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Potter, J. (1996) Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London: Sage.
Potter, J. (2003) Discourse analysis and discursive psychology. In P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes and L. Yardley (eds) Qualitative Research in Psychology: Expanding Perspectives in Methodology and Design 73–94. Washington: American Psychological Association.
Potter, J. (2006) Cognition and conversation. Discourse Studies 8(1): 131–140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445606059562
Sherzer, J. (1987) A diversity of voices: Women’s and men’s speech in ethnographic perspective. In S. U. Philips, S. Steele and C. Tanz (eds) Language, Gender and Sex in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621918.006
Speer, S. (2005) Gender Talk: Feminism, Discourse and Conversation Analysis. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203321447
Speer, S. and Stokoe, E. (eds) (2011) Conversation and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032
Spender, D. (1980) Man-made Language. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Stokoe, E. (2003) Doing gender, doing categorization: Recent developments in gender and language research. International Sociolinguistics 2(1). www.crisaps.org/newsletter/backissue/stokoe_back.pdf
Stokoe, E. (2007) Talking about gender: The conversational construction of gender categories in academic discourse. In J. Potter (ed.) Discourse and Psychology 374–396. London: SAGE.
Stokoe, E. (2012) The systematics of social interaction. Inaugural lecture presented at Loughborough University, 21st March (http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssehs/Talks% 20and%20workshops1.htm) (date of access: 04 July 2012).
Stokoe, E. and Weatherall, A. (2002) Gender, language, conversation analysis and feminism. Discourse Studies 4(4): 429–453.
Tannen, D. (1990) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: William Morrow.
Wagner, I. and Wodak, R. (2006) Performing success: Identifying strategies of self-presentation in women's autobiographical narratives. Discourse & Society 3: 385–412. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926506060251
Weatherall, A. (2002) Gender, Language and Discourse. London: Routledge.
Weatherall, A., Stubbe, M., Sunderland, 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. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Wittig, M. (1985) The mark of gender. Feminist Issues 5.2: 3–12. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/BF02685575
Baxter, J. (2008) Is it all tough at the top? A poststructuralist analysis of the construction of gendered speaker identities of British business leaders within interview narratives. Gender and Language 2(2): 196–222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.v2i2.197
Benwell, B. and Stokoe, E. (2006) Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Birrell, S. and Theberge, N. (1994) Ideological control of women in sport. In M. D. Costa and S. R. Guthrie (eds.) Women and Sport: Interdisciplinary Perspectives 341–357. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burton, D. and Weiss, C. (2008) The fundamental goal concept: The path to process and performance success. In T. S. Horn (ed.) Advances in Sport Psychology 339–374. Third edn. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.
Cameron, D. (1985) Feminism and Linguistic Theory. London: Macmillan.
Cameron, D. (ed.) (1990) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge.
Cameron, D. (2003) Gender and language ideologies. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 447–467. Oxford: Blackwell.
Choi, P. Y. L. (2000) Femininity and the Physically Active Woman. London and New York: Routledge.
Clayman, S. E. (2001) Answers and evasions. Language in Society 30(3): 403–442.
Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1988) Complainable matters: The use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems 35(4): 398–417. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/800594
Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1995) Idiomatic expressions and their role in the organization of topic transition in conversation. In M. Everaert, E.-J. van den Linden, A. Schenk and R. Schreuder (eds) Idioms, Structural and Psychological Perspectives 117–32. Jillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1998) Figures of speech: Figurative expressions and the management of topic transition in conversation. Language in Society 27(4): 495–522.
Eckert, P. (2000) Gender and linguistic variation. In J. Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Edwards, D. (2000) Extreme case formulations: Softeners, investment and doing nonliteral. Research on Language and Social Interaction 33(4): 347–373. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1207/S15327973RLSI3304_01
Edwards, D. (2003) Analyzing racial discourse: The discursive psychology of mind-world relationships. In H. van den Berg, M. Wetherell and H. Houtkoop-Steenstra (eds) Analyzing Race Talk: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Interview 31–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, D. (2005a) Moaning, whinging and laughing: The subjective side of complaints. Discourse Studies 7(1): 5–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445605048765
Edwards, D. (2005b) Discursive psychology. In K. L. Fitch and R. E. Sanders (eds) The Handbook of Language and Social Interaction 257–273. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Edwards, D. (2007) Managing subjectivity in talk. In A. Hepburn and S. Wiggins (eds) Discursive Research in Practice: New Approaches to Psychology and Interaction 31–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, D. and Fasulo, A. (2006) ‘To be honest’: Sequential uses of honesty phrases in talk-in-interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 39(4): 343–376. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3904_1
Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (1999) Social representations and discursive psychology: From cognition to action. Culture and Psychology 5(4): 447–458. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/1354067X9954004
Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (2001) Discursive social psychology. In P. W. Robinson and H. Giles (eds) The New Handbook of Language and Social Psychology 103–118. New York: Wiley.
Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (2005) Discursive psychology, mental states and descriptions. In H. Te Molder and J. Potter (eds) Conversation and Cognition 241–259. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fitzsimons, A. (2002) Gender as a Verb: Gender Segregation at Work. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hepburn, A. and Potter, J. (2007) Crying receipts: Time, empathy and institutional practice. Research on Language and Social Interaction 40: 89–116. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1080/08351810701331299
Holmes, J. (2005) Power and discourse at work: Is gender relevant? In M. M. Lazar (ed) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse 31–61. London: Palgrave.
Holmes, J. and Stubbe, M. (2003) Feminine workplaces: Stereotype and reality. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 573–599. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jefferson, G. (2004) Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation 131–167. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Jenkins, M. and Kramarae, C. (1981) A thief in the house: The case of women and language. In D. Spender (ed.) Men’s Studies Modified. Oxford: Pergamon.
Kitzinger, C. (2000) Doing feminist conversation analysis. Feminism and Psychology 10(2): 163–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353500010002001
Klein, M.-L. (1988) Women in the discourse of sport reports. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 23(2): 139–152. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10126902880230 0205
Korobov, N. (2010) A discursive psychological approach to positioning. Qualitative Research in Psychology 7: 263–277. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14780880902822321
Kramarae, C. (1981) Women and Men Speaking: Frameworks for Analysis. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Kristeva, J. (1981) Women’s time. Signs 7(1): 13–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/493855
Lakoff, R. (1975) Language and Women’s Place. New York: Harper and Row.
Leech, G. N. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Leet-Pellegrini, H. M. (1980) Conversational dominance as a function of gender and expertise. In H. Giles, William P. Robinson and P. M. Smith (eds) Language and Social Psychological Perspectives 97–104. New York: Pergamon.
Litosseliti, L. (2006) Constructing gender in public arguments: The female voice as emotional voice. In J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts 40–58. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Martin Rojo, L. M. and Gomez-Esteban, C. (2005) The gender of power: The female style in labour organizations. In M. M. Lazar (ed.) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis: Gender, Power and Ideology in Discourse 61–90. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
McConnell-Ginet, S. and Eckert, P. (2003) Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McElhinny, B. (1997) Ideologies of private and public language in sociolinguistics. In R. Wodak (ed.) Gender and Discourse 106–139. London: SAGE Publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230592902
Mills, S. (1999) Discourse competence; or how to theorise strong women speakers. In C. Hendricks and K. Oliver (eds) Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy and Language 81–90. New York: State of New York University Press.
Mills, S. (2006) Gender and performance anxiety at academic conferences. In J. Baxter (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts 61–80. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mullany, L. (2007) Gendered Discourse in the Professional Workplace. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pomerantz, A. (1984) Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. Maxwell Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Potter, J. (1996) Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London: Sage.
Potter, J. (2003) Discourse analysis and discursive psychology. In P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes and L. Yardley (eds) Qualitative Research in Psychology: Expanding Perspectives in Methodology and Design 73–94. Washington: American Psychological Association.
Potter, J. (2006) Cognition and conversation. Discourse Studies 8(1): 131–140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445606059562
Sherzer, J. (1987) A diversity of voices: Women’s and men’s speech in ethnographic perspective. In S. U. Philips, S. Steele and C. Tanz (eds) Language, Gender and Sex in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621918.006
Speer, S. (2005) Gender Talk: Feminism, Discourse and Conversation Analysis. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203321447
Speer, S. and Stokoe, E. (eds) (2011) Conversation and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781032
Spender, D. (1980) Man-made Language. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Stokoe, E. (2003) Doing gender, doing categorization: Recent developments in gender and language research. International Sociolinguistics 2(1). www.crisaps.org/newsletter/backissue/stokoe_back.pdf
Stokoe, E. (2007) Talking about gender: The conversational construction of gender categories in academic discourse. In J. Potter (ed.) Discourse and Psychology 374–396. London: SAGE.
Stokoe, E. (2012) The systematics of social interaction. Inaugural lecture presented at Loughborough University, 21st March (http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssehs/Talks% 20and%20workshops1.htm) (date of access: 04 July 2012).
Stokoe, E. and Weatherall, A. (2002) Gender, language, conversation analysis and feminism. Discourse Studies 4(4): 429–453.
Tannen, D. (1990) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: William Morrow.
Wagner, I. and Wodak, R. (2006) Performing success: Identifying strategies of self-presentation in women's autobiographical narratives. Discourse & Society 3: 385–412. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926506060251
Weatherall, A. (2002) Gender, Language and Discourse. London: Routledge.
Weatherall, A., Stubbe, M., Sunderland, 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. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Wittig, M. (1985) The mark of gender. Feminist Issues 5.2: 3–12. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/BF02685575
Published
2013-10-08
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Sznycer, K. (2013). Strong female speakers: The resistant discourse of tennis players. Gender and Language, 7(3), 303-332. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v7i3.303
