2. Conversation analysis has
• Made a mayor contribution to discussions
about language an gender.
• With the move from the view of the role of
the language as a refection of social reality
to a view of the role of language in the
construction of social reality.
(Paltridge, 2006, p. 120)
3. Conversation analysis reveals
• How gender is constructed as a joint
activity in social interaction. (Paltridge,
2006, p. 120)
• Weatherall (In Paltridge 2006, p. 120)
discusses the concept of gender noticing
for accounting of gender when “speakers
make it explicit that is a relevant feature of
the conversational interaction”.
4. • The analysis of data from a conversation
analysis perspective can help reveal
aspects of gendered interaction.
(Paltridge, 2006, p. 120)
5. For the next example we need:
• To know what is membership
categorization
• It began with the work of Harvey Sacks
(1972, 1992) who became interested in the
way in which categorizations rely on social
categories, and how these and associated
social categories might be organized into
collections, known as membership
categorization devices.
6. • “My attention shall be limited to those
categories in the language in terms of
which persons may be classified. For
example, the categories: 'male„, …
Frequently such 'membership' categories
are organized, by persons of the society
using them, into what I shall call
'collections of membership
categories', categories that members of
society feel 'go together'.” (Sacks, 1966:
15-16; (cited by Jayyusi, 1984: 212))
7. • The central elements in the use of social
categories, according to Sacks, are
membership categorization devices and a
set of "rules of application". Rules of
application match categories from a device
to individuals or collections of individuals.
8. • Of particular interest is the "consistency
rule" and it's corollary the "hearer's
maxim". The consistency rule states,
roughly, that if a category from a MCD is
used to categorize a member of a
particular population, then all other
members may be categorized with
categories from that device.
9. • One may view the consistency rule as
applying to the production of a
categorization such that speakers may co-
select categories from within the same
device. The hearer's side of the
consistency rule is termed a "hearer's
maxim":
"if two or more categories are used to categorize two
or more members of some population, and those
categories can be heard as categories from the
same collection, then: hear them that way" (Sacks,
1992A: 221)
10. • Furthermore, such categories may provide
for inferences concerning typical
activities of their incumbents. Such
activities are referred to as being
category-bound (Sacks 1992).
11. • The classic example from Sack‟s, derived
somewhat atypically from a book of stories
by children, is how we understand the
expression
“The baby cried, the mommy picked it up”.
12. • Sack‟s contends, and the reader is
encouraged to try this on their own, that
we hear the “mommy” as the “baby’s
mommy”.
• The basic idea is that if we can hear the
rendering of the categories, mommy and
baby, as belonging to the device,
members of a family, then we hear them
that way.
13. • We may say that picking up their babies is
a category bound activity of mommies,
something mommies are expected to
do. Thus when offered a description of
some mommy picking up some baby, we
infer they are members of the same family
unless of course we know of some reason
not to do so.
14. • Jayusi (1984 &1991) brought forth the
moral and normative character of
categories and categorization. Recall from
the mommy and baby example above that
we expect mommies to pickup babies. It
is not far from that to suggest that we
expect them to do so as they should do
so, and in this way issues of normality and
morality can be seen to come into play.
16. Going back to the gender…
• „Gender relations‟ carries the potential not
just for differentiation and differential
empowerment, but also dominance,
disadvantage, and economic, educational
and political inequality. This is true
regardless of whether women and men
live, learn and work alongside each
other, or live largely parallel rather than
„integrated‟ lives. Sunderland, J. (2006,
p. 25)
17. • Potentially including relations at macro-
, institutional levels, at domestic, familial
ones, and in small-scale, brief
interactions, „gender relations‟ entails the
potential for those relations to be
maintained and perpetuated in part
through language. Sunderland, J.
(2006, p. 25)
18. • „(Male) dominance‟ entailed a focus on
actual males and females and the
„differences‟ between them. The collocates
„gender portrayals‟, „gender stereotypes‟
and „gender ideas‟ refer rather to how
gender, including alleged differences, is
talked about (and thus textually
constructed). Sunderland, J. (2006, p. 25)
19. • These suggest that the idea of gender as
a set of differences is being (at least)
supplemented by a notion of gender as a
construct, or idea, dissociated from
dimorphically sexed human beings.
Sunderland, J. (2006, p. 25)
20. References
• Jayusi, L. 1984. Categorization and the moral order. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Jayyusi, L. 1991 „Values and Moral Judgement‟, in G. Button (ed.) Ethnomethodology and
the Human Sciences, pp. 227–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Paltridge, B. (2006). Discourse Analysis: an Introduction. London: Continuum.
• Sack, H. 1972b. On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. J. Gumperz & D. Hymes
(Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of communication, pp. 325-345.
New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. (Reprinted in R. Turner (Ed.), 1974,
Ethnomethodology. Penguin).
• Sacks, H. 1966. The search for help: No-one to turn to. Unpublished PhD dissertation,
University of California at Berkeley, Department of Sociology
• Sacks, H. 1972a. An initial investigation of the usability of conversational data for doing
sociology. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction, pp.. New York: Free Press 31-
74
• Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on conversation (2 vol. ed.), Edited by G. Jefferson, introduction
by E. Schegloff. Oxford: Blackwell. [Combined vols. ed., 1995]
• Sunderland, J. (2006). Language and gender. New York: Routledge.
• Example: Sex and the City, Episode 10 Season 4.
