Bringing Sexuality to the Table
Language, Gender and Power in Seven Lesbian Families
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v4i1.33Keywords:
family interaction, lesbian, conversation analysis, powerAbstract
In their 1995 study, “The ‘Father Knows Best’ Dynamic in Dinnertime Narratives,” Ochs and Taylor observed patterns of male dominance in conversations between heterosexual parents of nuclear families. The playing out of these imbalanced gender roles, the researchers cautioned, has a socializing effect that can be seen in the behavior of their young children. The paper presented here reexamines these power dynamics through an analysis of the discourse between lesbian parents with children. The author examines the linguistic tools used in the negotiation of power, both in comparison to Ochs and Taylor’s findings and for their own unique characteristics. This analysis reveals that in these seven families, like those in Ochs and Taylor’s research, one parent evaluates others’ speech and actions considerably more often than the other. However, the parents did not occupy the other roles examined in the original study in the same way. In particular, the role of primary recipient seems to be less powerful here than in the original study, while the role of elicitor appears to allow women a more effective means by which to attain and maintain control. A high incidence of joint elicitation and narration by the parents, and an active attempt to include children in the conversations were also found. These findings point to two conclusions: (1) the use of evaluative comments is not necessarily a gendered power tactic; (2) a high level of conscious decision making by lesbian parents seems to explain some of these differences in form. Future research should examine the influence of power rather than gender differences in speech acts. In so doing, we might more fully understand the nature of powerful language and which speech groups have access to that means of discourse.
References
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Canary, Daniel J., Emmers-Sommer, Tara M. and Faulkner, Sandra (1997) Sex and Gender Differences in Personal Relationships. New York: The Guilford Press.
Carrington, Christopher (1999) No Place Like Home: Relationships and Family Life Among Lesbians and Gay Men. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chesebro, J.W. (1994) Reflections of gay and lesbian rhetoric. In R.J. Ringer (ed.) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality 77–90. New York: New York University Press.
Coates, Jennifer (1998) Gossip revisited: Language in all-female groups. In Jennifer Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader 226–253. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Coates, Jennifer and Cameron, Deborah (eds) (1989) Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex. New York: Longman.
Dew, Brian J. and Myers, Jane E. (2000) Gay and lesbian parents: No longer a paradox. Adultspan Journal 2: 44–58.
DuBois, John W. (2007) The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.) Stance in Discourse: Subjectivity in Interaction 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dundas, Susan and Kaufman, Miriam (2000) The Toronto lesbian family study. Journal of Homosexuality 40(2): 65–80.
Dunne, Gillian A. (1999) The different dimensions of gay fatherhood: Exploding the myths. Gender Institute Discussion Paper LSE Gender Institute, LSE 8.
Eckert, Penelope and McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992) Communities of practice: Where language, gender and power all live. In Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz and Birch Moonwomon (eds) Locating Power 89–99. Proceedings of the 1992 Berkeley Women and Language Conference. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
Falbo, Toni and Peplau, Letitia A. (1980) Power strategies in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38(4): 618–628.
Fitzpatrick, Mary Anne, Jandt, Fred E., Myrick, Fred L. and Edgar, Timothy (1994) Gay and lesbian couple relationships. In Ronald J. Ringer (ed.) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality. New York: New York University Press.
Freed, Alice (1996) Language and gender research in an experimental setting. In Victoria L. Bergvall, J. M. Bing and Alice F. Freed (eds) Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice 54–76. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Limited.
Freed, Alice and Greenwood, Alice (1996) Women, men, and type of talk: What makes the difference? Language in Society 25: 1–26.
Gates, Gary and Jason Ost (2004) The Gay and Lesbian Atlas. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press.
Hall, Kira and Bucholtz, Mary (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self. New York: Routledge.
Harry, Joseph (1983) Gay male and lesbian relationships. In Eleanor Macklin and Roger Rubin (eds) Contemporary Families and Alternative Lifestyles 216–234. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Henley, Nancy (1975) Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. In Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 184–202. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publisher, Inc.
Kitzinger, Celia (2005) Speaking as a heterosexual: (How) does sexuality matter for talkin-interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(3): 221–265.
Kollock, Peter, Blumenstein, Philip and Schwartz, Pepper (1985) Sex and power in interaction: Conversational privileges and duties. American Sociological Review 50: 24–46.
Kramarae, Cheris (1981) Women and Men Speaking: Frameworks for Analysis. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, Inc.
Kramer, Cheris (1975) Women’s speech: Separate but unequal? In Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 43–56. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publisher, Inc.
Laird, Joan (ed.) (1999) Lesbians and Lesbian Families: Reflections on Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lakoff, Robin (1975) Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper and Row.
Land, Victoria and Kitzinger, Celia (2005) Speaking as a lesbian: Correcting the heterosexist presumption. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(4): 371–416.
Leap, William (ed.) (1995) Beyond the Lavender Lexicon. Newark: Gordon and Breach.
Lewin, Ellen (1993) Lesbian Mothers. New York: Cornell University Press.
Livia, Anna (1995) ‘I ought to throw a Buick at you’: Fictional representations of butch/ femme speech. In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self 245–278. New York: Routledge.
Maltz, Daniel and Borker, Ruth (1982) A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication. In John Gumperz (ed.) Language and Social Identity 196–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McElhinny, Bonnie (2002) Language, sexuality and political economy. In Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert Podesva, Sarah Roberts and Andrew Wong (eds) Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice 111–134. Palo Alto: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.
Meyerhoff, Miriam (1996) Dealing with gender identity as a sociolinguistic variable. In Victoria L. Bergvall, J. M. Bing and Alice F. Freed (eds) Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice 202–227. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Limited.
Mills, Sara (1999) Discourse competence: Or how to theorize strong women speakers. In Christina Hendricks and Kelly Oliver (eds) Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language 81–98. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Morningstar, Betty (1999) Lesbian parents: Understanding developmental pathways. In Joan Laird (ed.) Lesbians and Lesbian Families: Reflections on Theory and Practice 213–242. New York: Columbia University Press.
Munhall, Patricia and Fitzsimons, Virginia (2001) The Emergence of Family Into the 21st Century. New York: NLN Press.
Nichols, Margaret (1990) Lesbian relationships: Implications for the study of sexuality and gender. In David McWhirter, Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch (eds) Homosexuality/Heterosexuality: Concepts of Sexual Orientation 350–366. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Barr, William and Atkins, Bowman (1998) ‘Women’s language’ or ‘powerless language’? In Jennifer Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader 377–387. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Ochs, Eleanor and Taylor, Carolyn (1995) The ‘Father Knows Best’ dynamic in dinnertime narratives. In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self 97–120. New York: Routledge.
Pash, Diana (2008) Gay family values: Gay co-father families in straight communities. In Elizabeth Rudd and Lara Descartes (eds) The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Classes: Reports from the Field. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Peplau, Letitia A., Cochran, Susan, Rook, Karen and Padesky, Christine (1978) Loving women: Attachment and autonomy in lesbian relationships. Journal of Social Issues 34(3): 7–27.
Peplau, L. A. and Spalding, L. (2003) The family close relationships of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. In L. Garnets and D. Kimmel (eds) Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Experiences 449–474. New York: Columbia University Press.
Peplau, Letitia A. and Fingerhut, Adam (2007) The close relationships of lesbians and gay men. Annual Review of Psychology 58: 405–424.
Ponse, Barbara (1978) Identities in the Lesbian World: the Social Construction of Self. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Remlinger, Kathryn (1999) Widening the lens of language and gender research: Integrating critical discourse analysis and cultural practice theory. Linguistik Online 2. Retrieved on 26 February 2003 from www.linguistik-online.de/heft1_99/remlinger.htm.
Ringer, Ronald J. (ed.) (1994) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality. New York: New York University Press.
Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Jefferson, Gail (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversations. Language 50(4): 696–735.
Spender, Dale (1985) Man Made Language. (Second edition.) London: Pandora Press.
Stein, Arlene (1997) Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sullivan, Maureen (2004) The Family of Woman: Lesbian Mothers, Their Children, and the Undoing of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tannen, Deborah (1986) That’s Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations with Others. New York: Morrow.
Tannen, Deborah (1990) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Morrow.
Tasker, Fiona and Golombok, Susan (1995) Adults raised as children in lesbian families. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 65: 203–215.
Troemel-Ploetz, Senta (1998) Selling the apolitical. In Jennifer Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader 446–458. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Uchida, Aki (1992) When ‘difference’ is ‘dominance’: A critique of the ‘anti-power-based’ cultural approach to sex differences. Language in Society 2: 547–568.
Wodak, Ruth and Benke, Gertraud (1997) Gender as a sociolinguistic variable: New perspectives on variation studies. In Florian Coulmas (ed.) The Handbook of Sociolinguistics 127–150. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Wolf, Deborah G. (1979) The Lesbian Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wood, Julia T. (1994) Gender and relationship crises: Contrasting reasons, responses, and relational orientations. In Ronald J. Ringer (ed.) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality 238–264. New York: New York University Press.
Zimmerman, Don and West, Candace (1975) Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversations. In Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 105–129. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publisher, Inc.
Barrett, Rusty (1999) Indexing polymorphous identity in the speech of African American drag queens. In Mary Bucholtz, A. C. Liang and Laurel Sutton (eds) Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse 313–331. New York: Oxford University Press.
Benkov, Laura (1994) Reinventing the Family: The Emerging Story of Lesbian and Gay Parents. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Bergvall, Victoria L. (1996) Constructing and enacting gender through discourse: Negotiating multiple roles as female engineering students. In Victoria L. Bergvall, J. M. Bing and Alice F. Freed (eds) Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice 173–201. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Limited.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Canary, Daniel J., Emmers-Sommer, Tara M. and Faulkner, Sandra (1997) Sex and Gender Differences in Personal Relationships. New York: The Guilford Press.
Carrington, Christopher (1999) No Place Like Home: Relationships and Family Life Among Lesbians and Gay Men. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chesebro, J.W. (1994) Reflections of gay and lesbian rhetoric. In R.J. Ringer (ed.) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality 77–90. New York: New York University Press.
Coates, Jennifer (1998) Gossip revisited: Language in all-female groups. In Jennifer Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader 226–253. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Coates, Jennifer and Cameron, Deborah (eds) (1989) Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex. New York: Longman.
Dew, Brian J. and Myers, Jane E. (2000) Gay and lesbian parents: No longer a paradox. Adultspan Journal 2: 44–58.
DuBois, John W. (2007) The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.) Stance in Discourse: Subjectivity in Interaction 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dundas, Susan and Kaufman, Miriam (2000) The Toronto lesbian family study. Journal of Homosexuality 40(2): 65–80.
Dunne, Gillian A. (1999) The different dimensions of gay fatherhood: Exploding the myths. Gender Institute Discussion Paper LSE Gender Institute, LSE 8.
Eckert, Penelope and McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992) Communities of practice: Where language, gender and power all live. In Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz and Birch Moonwomon (eds) Locating Power 89–99. Proceedings of the 1992 Berkeley Women and Language Conference. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
Falbo, Toni and Peplau, Letitia A. (1980) Power strategies in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38(4): 618–628.
Fitzpatrick, Mary Anne, Jandt, Fred E., Myrick, Fred L. and Edgar, Timothy (1994) Gay and lesbian couple relationships. In Ronald J. Ringer (ed.) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality. New York: New York University Press.
Freed, Alice (1996) Language and gender research in an experimental setting. In Victoria L. Bergvall, J. M. Bing and Alice F. Freed (eds) Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice 54–76. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Limited.
Freed, Alice and Greenwood, Alice (1996) Women, men, and type of talk: What makes the difference? Language in Society 25: 1–26.
Gates, Gary and Jason Ost (2004) The Gay and Lesbian Atlas. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press.
Hall, Kira and Bucholtz, Mary (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self. New York: Routledge.
Harry, Joseph (1983) Gay male and lesbian relationships. In Eleanor Macklin and Roger Rubin (eds) Contemporary Families and Alternative Lifestyles 216–234. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Henley, Nancy (1975) Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. In Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 184–202. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publisher, Inc.
Kitzinger, Celia (2005) Speaking as a heterosexual: (How) does sexuality matter for talkin-interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(3): 221–265.
Kollock, Peter, Blumenstein, Philip and Schwartz, Pepper (1985) Sex and power in interaction: Conversational privileges and duties. American Sociological Review 50: 24–46.
Kramarae, Cheris (1981) Women and Men Speaking: Frameworks for Analysis. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, Inc.
Kramer, Cheris (1975) Women’s speech: Separate but unequal? In Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 43–56. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publisher, Inc.
Laird, Joan (ed.) (1999) Lesbians and Lesbian Families: Reflections on Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lakoff, Robin (1975) Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper and Row.
Land, Victoria and Kitzinger, Celia (2005) Speaking as a lesbian: Correcting the heterosexist presumption. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(4): 371–416.
Leap, William (ed.) (1995) Beyond the Lavender Lexicon. Newark: Gordon and Breach.
Lewin, Ellen (1993) Lesbian Mothers. New York: Cornell University Press.
Livia, Anna (1995) ‘I ought to throw a Buick at you’: Fictional representations of butch/ femme speech. In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self 245–278. New York: Routledge.
Maltz, Daniel and Borker, Ruth (1982) A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication. In John Gumperz (ed.) Language and Social Identity 196–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McElhinny, Bonnie (2002) Language, sexuality and political economy. In Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert Podesva, Sarah Roberts and Andrew Wong (eds) Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice 111–134. Palo Alto: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.
Meyerhoff, Miriam (1996) Dealing with gender identity as a sociolinguistic variable. In Victoria L. Bergvall, J. M. Bing and Alice F. Freed (eds) Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice 202–227. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Limited.
Mills, Sara (1999) Discourse competence: Or how to theorize strong women speakers. In Christina Hendricks and Kelly Oliver (eds) Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language 81–98. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Morningstar, Betty (1999) Lesbian parents: Understanding developmental pathways. In Joan Laird (ed.) Lesbians and Lesbian Families: Reflections on Theory and Practice 213–242. New York: Columbia University Press.
Munhall, Patricia and Fitzsimons, Virginia (2001) The Emergence of Family Into the 21st Century. New York: NLN Press.
Nichols, Margaret (1990) Lesbian relationships: Implications for the study of sexuality and gender. In David McWhirter, Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch (eds) Homosexuality/Heterosexuality: Concepts of Sexual Orientation 350–366. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Barr, William and Atkins, Bowman (1998) ‘Women’s language’ or ‘powerless language’? In Jennifer Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader 377–387. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Ochs, Eleanor and Taylor, Carolyn (1995) The ‘Father Knows Best’ dynamic in dinnertime narratives. In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (eds) Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self 97–120. New York: Routledge.
Pash, Diana (2008) Gay family values: Gay co-father families in straight communities. In Elizabeth Rudd and Lara Descartes (eds) The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Classes: Reports from the Field. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Peplau, Letitia A., Cochran, Susan, Rook, Karen and Padesky, Christine (1978) Loving women: Attachment and autonomy in lesbian relationships. Journal of Social Issues 34(3): 7–27.
Peplau, L. A. and Spalding, L. (2003) The family close relationships of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. In L. Garnets and D. Kimmel (eds) Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Experiences 449–474. New York: Columbia University Press.
Peplau, Letitia A. and Fingerhut, Adam (2007) The close relationships of lesbians and gay men. Annual Review of Psychology 58: 405–424.
Ponse, Barbara (1978) Identities in the Lesbian World: the Social Construction of Self. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Remlinger, Kathryn (1999) Widening the lens of language and gender research: Integrating critical discourse analysis and cultural practice theory. Linguistik Online 2. Retrieved on 26 February 2003 from www.linguistik-online.de/heft1_99/remlinger.htm.
Ringer, Ronald J. (ed.) (1994) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality. New York: New York University Press.
Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Jefferson, Gail (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversations. Language 50(4): 696–735.
Spender, Dale (1985) Man Made Language. (Second edition.) London: Pandora Press.
Stein, Arlene (1997) Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sullivan, Maureen (2004) The Family of Woman: Lesbian Mothers, Their Children, and the Undoing of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tannen, Deborah (1986) That’s Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations with Others. New York: Morrow.
Tannen, Deborah (1990) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Morrow.
Tasker, Fiona and Golombok, Susan (1995) Adults raised as children in lesbian families. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 65: 203–215.
Troemel-Ploetz, Senta (1998) Selling the apolitical. In Jennifer Coates (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader 446–458. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Uchida, Aki (1992) When ‘difference’ is ‘dominance’: A critique of the ‘anti-power-based’ cultural approach to sex differences. Language in Society 2: 547–568.
Wodak, Ruth and Benke, Gertraud (1997) Gender as a sociolinguistic variable: New perspectives on variation studies. In Florian Coulmas (ed.) The Handbook of Sociolinguistics 127–150. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Wolf, Deborah G. (1979) The Lesbian Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wood, Julia T. (1994) Gender and relationship crises: Contrasting reasons, responses, and relational orientations. In Ronald J. Ringer (ed.) Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality 238–264. New York: New York University Press.
Zimmerman, Don and West, Candace (1975) Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversations. In Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance 105–129. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publisher, Inc.
Published
2010-11-16
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Wagner, S. N. (2010). Bringing Sexuality to the Table: Language, Gender and Power in Seven Lesbian Families. Gender and Language, 4(1), 33-72. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v4i1.33
