Susan Ehrlich

Gender-Based Language Reform and the Social Construction of Meaning:

In this article we consider the implications of the social construction of meaning for the possibility of language reform. Since meanings are socially determined and since the dominant culture is sexist, it is not surprising that womens meanings are often appropriated by that culture and that gender-based language reform is not always successful. Based on an analysis of attempts at gender-based language reform in Canada and in particular at York University, we consider relative success in terms of the support they have received in a given speech community. In so doing, we identify those factors which promote (e.g. being situated as part of a larger sociopolitical goal such as the achievement of employment equity) as opposed to those which hinder (e.g. being left to the discretion of individuals within an organization) language change.

Feminist meanings and the (de)politicization of the lexicon

In arguing for the necessity of gender-based language reform, feminist theorists have generally assumed that language is not a neutral and transparent means of representing reality. Rather, language is assumed to codify an androcentric worldview. While sexist language clearly reflects sexist social practices, the continuing existence of such practices throws into question the possibility of successful language reform. Because linguistic meanings are, to a large extent, socially constructed and constituted, terms initially introduced to be nonsexist and neutral may lose their neutrality in the mouths of a sexist speech community and/or culture. In this article we first examine the way in which nonsexist innovations have been appropriated by a sexist speech community. More specifically, we examine uses of neutral generics such as chairperson, spokesperson; singular they; he or she; and neutral titles such as Ms.; and we demonstrate that these terms are often not used nor interpreted in their intended (neutral) way. Rather, they are used in ways that maintain sexist stereotypes and distinctions. Then we examine the use of feminist linguistic innovations as they appear in the print media. We demonstrate the extent to which such terms get redefined and depoliticized by a speech community that is not predominantly feminist and is often sexist. (Language and gender, language and race, nonsexist language, gender-based language reform, neutral generics, discourse analysis)*

Discourse Structure and the Negotiation of Comprehensible Input

This article examines the role of negotiations of meaning in providing comprehensible input for NNS learners. We report on an experiment conducted with NS–NNS and NS–NS pairs involving a picture-drawing task, where one member of each pair instructed the other in the drawing of simple objects. The results of the experiment suggest that the success or failure of meaning negotiations in providing comprehensible input depends on the point in the discourse at which they occur. We therefore question a prevailing assumption in the second language acquisition literature that the mere quantity of meaning negotiations within a discourse is an accurate predictor of the quantity of comprehensible input that results. We propose that meaning negotiations should be analyzed within a discourse framework to explain their role in creating comprehensible input.

Trial Discourse and Judicial Decision-Making: Constraining the Boundaries of Gendered Identities

Recent formulations of the relationship between language and gender, following Butler (1990), have emphasized the performative aspect of gender. Under this account, language is one important means by which gender—an ongoing social process—is enacted or constituted; gender is something individuals do—in part through linguistic choices—as opposed to something individuals are or have (West and Zimmerman, 1987). While the theorizing of gender as ‘performative’ has encouraged language and gender researchers to focus on the agency and creativity of social actors in the constitution of gender, to my mind there has been less emphasis placed on another aspect of Butler’s framework—the ‘rigid regulatory frame’ (Butler, 1990) within which gendered identities are produced—that is, the limits and constraints on speakers’ agency in constructing such identities. This emphasis on the ‘performative’ aspect of Butler’s work, rather than on her discussions of the regulatory norms that define and police normative constructions of gender, may arise because, as Cameron (1997) suggests, philosophical accounts of Butler’s ‘rigid regulatory frame’ often remain very abstract. For Cameron (1997: 31), too often in feminist philosophical discussions, ‘gender… floats free of the social contexts and activities in which it will always be… embedded,’ obscuring the fact that the routine enactment of gender is often, perhaps always, subject to what she calls the ‘institutional coerciveness’ of social situations.

Referential linking and the interpretation of tense

Abstract This paper investigates the way in which discourse context is relevant to the interpretation of tense in English narrative discourse. I demonstrate that the specific readings available to the simple past tense can be explained, in part, by considering units larger than the sentence along with the grammatical signals which serve to sustain and delimit these units. More specifically, the cohesive device of referential linking between sentences is shown to play an important role in the interpretation of tense.

Discourse, Gender and Sexual Violence

practices has often been counterposed with a focus on material realities. Barrett (1992: 201), for example, points to a central issue evident in feminist scholarship that sets the valuing of ‘words’ against that of ‘things’: ‘many feminists . . . have traditionally tended to see “things” – be they low pay, rape or female foeticide – as more significant than, for example, the discursive construction of marginality in a text or document.’ I want to suggest that a simple dichotomizing of ‘the discursive’ and ‘the material’ does little to illuminate the intersection of the two, that is, the way that discursive practices can have material effects. Indeed, a work like Estrich’s (1987) Real Rape, although not articulated in the language of ‘discourse’ and ‘discursive practices’, is suggestive of the social control and regulation exercised by ‘discourses’ of the legal system in relation to perpetrators and victims of male violence against women. (For an extended version of this argument, see Ehrlich, 2001.) The question Estrich explores in her book is why many cases of rape that meet the statutory definition (in the US) are not considered as such by police, prosecutors, judges and juries. That is, Estrich argues that the law differentially prosecutes perpetrators and differentially protects the interests of victims. And, paradoxically, it is the cases of rape that are least frequent that the law treats most aggressively. (Much research has demonstrated that women are much more likely to be raped by husbands, lovers and dates than by strangers.) In cases of ‘stranger rape’ – what Estrich calls ‘real rape’ – when the perpetrator is an armed stranger ‘jumping from behind the bushes’ and, in particular, a Black stranger attacking a white woman, Estrich argues, the law is likely to arrest, prosecute and convict the perpetrator. By contrast, in cases of what Estrich calls ‘simple rape’, that is, when a woman is forced to engage in sex with a date, an acquaintance, her boss, or a man she met at a bar, when no weapon is involved and when there is no overt G U E S T E D I T O R I A L 5

Normative Discourses and Representations of Coerced Sex

Recent formulations of the relationship between language and identity, following Butler (1990), have emphasised the performative aspect of identity. Under this account, language is one important means by which identities are enacted or constituted; identities are something individuals do — in part through linguistic choices — as opposed to something individuals are or have (West and Zimmerman, 1987). While the theorising of identity as ‘performative’ has encouraged language and identity researchers to focus on the agency and creativity of social actors in the constitution of gender, race, ethnicity, and so on, there has been less emphasis placed on another aspect of Butler’s framework — the ‘rigid regulatory frame’ (Butler, 1990) within which such identities are produced. That is, what has been emphasised in recent work on language and identity is the linguistic and interactional agency of speakers in constructing different kinds of identities. What has received less attention, to my mind, are the limits and constraints on speakers’ agency in constructing these identities.

Point of View: A Linguistic Analysis of Literary Style

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1. Sentence-Based Approaches to Point of View 2. Cohesion, Coherence, and Episodes 3. Referential and Semantic Connector Linking 4. Temporal Linking 5. Aspect, Coherence, and Point of View 6. Conclusions 7. Implications: The Foreground/Background Distinction Notes References Subject Index Author Index