Lynn H. Turner

An Investigation of Female/Male Verbal Behaviors in Same-Sex and Mixed-Sex Conversations.

This paper examines 11 variables commonly believed to discriminate between the verbal behavior of males and females. The analysis uses the Kraemer‐Jacklin (1979) statistic to isolate and test the effects of sex of subject, sex of partner, and their interaction while controlling for between partner correlation. Results indicate that women use more justifiers, intensifiers and agreement whereas men exhibit more vocalized pauses. Men also receive more vocalized pauses. The conversations of mixed‐sex dyads contained more overlaps and, marginally, more interruptions than conversations of same‐sex dyads. However, interruptions and overlaps were not performed more frequently by men (or women).

African American and European American Women in the Workplace: Perceptions of Conflict Communication

This investigation combined qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine African American and European American womens perceptions of workplace conflict. Findings indicated that European American women are seen by others as more conflict avoidant than African American women. Professional women of both races see themselves and others of their own race as choosing to reduce conflict in the workplace. However, this perception is not shared by those of the other race. Further, some evidence suggests that African American professional women see directness as a means of conflict reduction, whereas European American professional women believe less direct approaches reduce workplace conflict.

Colonizing Family: A Feminist Critique of Family Management Texts

There is a long tradition of applying managerial techniques and principles to more efficiently manage domestic and familial responsibilities. We argue that such appropriations of corporate practices, language, and thinking not only obscure distinctions between home and work but also integrate work values, patterns, and perspectives into everyday constructions of family life so thoroughly as to bring into question what a family is and what values, practices, and relationships make family life different from the corporate world. Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, we analyze three texts illustrating the insinuation of managerialism into popular family management prescriptions. We conclude by critically examining four discursive strategies in these texts: (a) moral dichotomies; (b) managerial metaphors; (c) coopted concepts; and (d) emphasis on individualized choice. Our critique highlights the ironies that open these strategies to contestation and alternatives.

African American and European American Women's Visions of Workplace Conflict: A Metaphorical Analysis

This study continues a research program focusing on the intersections of race and gender in the context of workplace conflict (R. Shuter & L. H. Turner, 1997). The current investigation examined African American (AA) and European American (EA) womens perceptions of workplace conflict. Results from this exploratory study indicate that although all womens attitudes toward workplace conflict, as measured by their metaphors for it, were predominately negative, AA womens were more negative, more passive, and less focused on resolution than were EA womens. AA womens metaphoric language was also more intense than EA womens. These findings strengthen our argument for the use of examining organizational communication through the prism of race and gender.

Sex Role Socialization: Children's Enactments of Their Parents' Behaviors in a Regulative and Interpersonal Context.

The purpose of this study was to examine the differential effects of regulative and interpersonal contexts, together with the sex of the parent, on the perceptions and role playing responses of boys and girls. One hundred and six kindergarten children described and role‐played a series of four pictures constructed to place a mother and father figure with a child in a regulative and interpersonal context as defined by Bernstein. We found sex‐of‐subject‐by‐context and sex‐of‐parent‐by‐context interaction effects for length of utterance when children role‐played the parent figure in the pictures. When subjects also role‐played the child in the picture, we found two main effects for utterance length: one for sex of parent, and one for critical context. The children indicated that mothers would mention more specific punishments than fathers, and that the child in the pictures would counter the responsibility for his/her actions more with the mother figure than with the father figure. Taken together, these resu...

Influence Attempts in Organizational Conflict The Effects of Biological Sex, Psychological Gender, and Power Position

This research examines relationships among biological sex, psychological gender, and power position in a hypothetical superior-subordinate conflict in an organizational setting. The study is an attempt to resolve the equivocal findings regarding the effects of biological and psychological gender on conflict-management behavior. Further, the research goes beyond self-report methodology and examines actual influence attempts that males and females use in both upward and downward message construction. Analysis revealed a significant three-way interaction among biological sex, power position, and sex of partner, but provided no support for the psychological gender construct.

The Zoe Baird Spectacle: Silences, Sins, and Status.

Trontos (1993) theory of moral boundaries provides a framework for analyzing the rhetoric of a patriarchal ideology that privileges men and marginalizes women. These moral boundaries, as enacted rhetorically, privilege reason over emotion, universal rules over situational ones, and public issues over private concerns. Specifically, the rhetoric of moral boundaries defines care‐giving as peripheral to political decision‐making. A case study of Zoe Baird, President William Jefferson Clintons initial, unsuccessful nominee for U.S. Attorney General, illustrates how women lose a public voice when the moral boundaries are invoked rhetorically. Bairds case, viewed through the critical lens of Trontos moral boundaries, has implications for women who enter political life and for rhetorical critics who study their discourse.