‘I’m just imitating the idiot’
Exclusionary acts of status degradation through embodied stance-taking and category work in boys’ game performances
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rcsi.23561Keywords:
boys' games, multimodal interactional analysis, status degradation, embodied stance-taking, membership categorization, indexing genderAbstract
This study examines how exclusionary acts of status degradation are performed through embodied stances and pejorative category ascriptions in the midst of a situated game activity where two boys align in mockful stances and stylized enactments towards a targeted boy. Drawing on a multimodal interactional approach to stance and membership categorization combined with sociolinguistic work on indexicality and identity, it shows how the cumulative patterning of derogatory stances index a deviant gender identity for the targeted boy. While the target is repeatedly cast as ‘abnormal’ and an ‘outsider’ by attributing (non-)boyhood features as ‘incompetence’ and ‘cowardness’, the two boys’ elevate own positions and display shared commitments to themselves as ‘real (warrior) boys’.
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