I had an interesting interaction on a friend’s blog today that led to an impromptu conversational analysis using various discourse theories. I’m including the interaction below in the off chance that someone might find it interesting.
In concluding his post, my friend writes:
But that’s what I believe……what do you believe?
Do you believe its time for us boys to become men and grow a spine! And that the girls need to step up and become ladies and give the men a kick in the rear when they need it!
Or do you believe that men should still hide behind their wives and be cowards?!? Or that men should continue being like dogs, just doing their business and leaving the women to fend for themselves and raise the kids by them selves and work and pay bills and be the spiritual leader……
Do you believe its time for men and women to become so in touch with God that they lead their children in the right way? That maybe its time for parents to care about being a parent?
Or do you believe that parents should just be friends with their kids and not care what they do?? Let them run around and have sex and drink and encourage that????
What do you believe?
Boys become Men and be the leader you were supposed to be
Girls become Ladies and be the leader you were supposed to be
To which I reply:
I believe that gender is a social construct and an unnecessary dichotomy.
A third writer responds later:
Brandon… please explain how gender is a social construct – and use small words, as I am old & tire easily of looking up AcademicSpeak. It’s so much easier if we just talk to each other like people.
The following is my post in response. I hope you will find it an enjoyable use of discourse analysis to expose the latent aspiration to prestige and power struggle in the dialog.
Philosophy makes a distinction between sex, which is a biological reality, and gender, which is a social construct. The difference is easily illustrated in this.
Sex- Most women are capable of conceiving and bearing children during their life span.
Gender- Women are to conceive and bear children.Because it is biologically true that many women are incapable of conceiving and bearing children, we can conclusively say that the maxim “Women are to conceive and bear children” is an element owing to culturally specific gender prescriptives and not biology.
So, truly biological distinctions fall into the category “sex.” Meanwhile, the distinctions we make in behaviors and dispositions appropriate for a certain sex (i.e. men don’t cry, women don’t wear pants, etc.) fall into the category “gender.” Only the former is a biological reality, while the latter is often touted as biological though being wholly social.
This is where I turn to analyzing his previous post.
On an unrelated note, I wasn’t aware that I was using AcademicSpeak. In truth, I simply said the first thing that came to mind. I suppose that I did so because this medium mimics spoken discourse and, therefore, favors features more closely related to that mode (in this case brevity). The way I phrased my statement was concise.
As an exercise of AcademicSpeak, I will now do a linguistic analysis of your reply.
“Brandon…” – A general turn-taking maneuver and highly common in group situations. It is, however, an indication of relative power in conversational settings since the speaker can assign directed conversation to another communicant.
“please explain how gender is a social construct” – A direct imperative speech act indicating that the speaker either senses a minimal face threat, seeing no need to mitigate it with indirectness, or that the speaker is unaware of or apathetic to the face threat. It should be noted that this direct act is hedged with the discourse marker “please,” indicating some degree of face threat awareness.
“and use small words” – This is another direct imperative speech act. Demands are an indication of relational power conversationally. The speaker here begins to demonstrate an awareness of register variation in the form of a demand to adjust the register. The demand coupled with the aim of shifting registers indicates an overt power play conversationally.
“as I am old & tire easily of looking up AcademicSpeak.” – This clause is humorous because it employs two archaisms (the archaic resultative use of “as” and the archaic use of “tire” without it’s semi-modal “to get” or “to be”). The humor in this lies in the fact that the speaker appeals to a refrain from a register perceived to be prestigious while appealing to archaisms, a move that when perpetrated is an indication of an attempt at prestige. The speaker argues against prestige forms while using them!
“It’s so much easier if we just talk to each other like people.” – Here again the speaker makes a distinction between registers. This distinction implicitly creates a distinction between those speaking AcademicSpeak and those not. We’re no longer in the realm of categorizing and analyzing ideas because we’ve entered the realm of categorizing and analyzing people. It’s now “us” vs. “them.”
Well, I think that some gender distinctions are helpful for most people in order to situate themselves in society (although I completely disagree with the ways which this “friend” of yours is using them). Plus, I like that I’m feminine and am not required or expected to lift heavy things. Or for Mr. 3rd speaker- being a girl or boy can be good and bad sometimes. Haha!
Wow… and I mean wow… Your breakdown of the third writer’s comment is both fascinating and incredibly intimidating. Are you able to analyze conversation in this detail during an impromptu conversation as well? I am afraid to submit this comment for fear of the exposure of elements embedded in my conversation of which I am completely unaware.
Don’t misunderstand – I am quite jealous of your vast vocabulary base and ability to dissect statements. I have been making an effort over the last couple years to improve my English and expand my vocabulary for the purpose of being able to create more concise statements for use in debate. After reading your blog entry, I see that I still have quite a bit of expanding to do! Well done, I look forward to reading more posts like this one.
It was more of a mental exercise than anything else. The point was to expose how his accusation that I was causing division in my original statement really masked a power struggle in the conversation and his own attempt to cause further division to hedge his power position. I especially found his archaisms humorous because there has been a lot of research on how the use of archaisms are an attempt at prestige, which he explicitly claims to be trying to avoid.
Fascinating. Any good books to recommend on the subject of discourse analysis?
I’ve listed two texts that I would suggest below. The first is a strong introduction suitable for an undergraduate course in Discourse Analysis. The second is probably more appropriate for graduate coursework.
These two are obviously quite general because there are many subfields that fall under Discourse Analysis, but they are a great introduction to the discipline in theory and practice.
-Johnstone, Barbara. Discourse Analysis. Malden: Blackwell, 2002.
-Widdowson, H.G. Text, Context, Pretext. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.