Susan Gal

The Politics of Gender after Socialism

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Peasant men can't get wives: language change and sex roles in a bilingual community'

Language shift from German-Hungarian bilingualism to the exclusive use of German is occurring in the community discussed. Young women are further along in the direction of this change than older people and young men. The linguistic contrast between German and Hungarian is shown to represent the social dichotomy between a newly available worker status and traditional peasant status; thus the choice of language in interaction is part of a speakers presentation of self. Young womens stated preferences concerning this social dichotomy and their changing marriage strategies indicate that their greater use of German in interaction is one aspect of their general preference for the workers way of life it symbolizes. Rather than simply isolating a linguistic correlate of sex, the present study suggests that womens speech choices must be explained within the context of their social position, their strategic life choices and the symbolic values of the available linguistic alternatives (language and sex roles; interactional analysis; social determinants of language shift; European bilingualism).

Diversity and contestation in linguistic ideologies: German speakers in Hungary

The classic sociolinguistic opposition between status and solidarity as organizing principles of linguistic variation is currently being integrated with broader social theories of symbolic domination and resistance. However, not enough attention has yet been paid to the multiplicity and fluidity of both dominant and oppositional linguistic ideologies within a single social order. Changing elite conceptions about the links between language and social group vie with each other for supremacy, and are in turn contested by various forms of resistance among linguistic minorities. Debates surrounding the linguistic census in 19th and 20th century Hungary are used here as evidence about diverse dominant ideologies, to show how German-Hungarians have responded by producing multiple, competing, and ambiguous oppositional conceptions and linguistic practices. (Linguistic ideologies, forms of resistance, politics of language, minority languages, German speakers in Hungary).

Gender in the Post-socialist Transition: the Abortion Debate in Hungary

The construction of Hungarys abortion debate provides a case study of a struggle for control of the principles of political rule in post-socialist Eastern Europe. In the mid-1980s, a campaign to force women to leave the labor force to end overemployment was implemented by means of a media effort to blame working women for the problems of children and social measures such as subsidies for women who remained home to care for children and the aged. Populist writers and Christian professionals equated the liberal abortion policy of the Communist state with mass murder, anti-nationalism, and moral decline. Couples who chose not to give birth because of financial instability or a lack of housing were labelled materialistic and unwilling to contribute to the survival of Hungarian society. Women were portrayed in the debate as ignorant dupes of the Communist system incapable of making an informed decision on the abortion issue. In contrast, the liberal opposition advocated minimalist state intervention in private life, including individual moral judgments about abortion. On both sides of the debate, historical precedent was used for political legitimation. In the battle for discursive hegemony, Hungarian women have been largely silent. However, polls indicate that the majority of women are convinced that abortion must remain legal, given its tradition as the major source of birth control. There is no room, on either side of the debate, for assertions of womens rights to choose. For populists, this would represent a throwback to the rhetoric of state socialism; for the opposition, it would undermine the sanctity of the family. Overall, the Hungarian abortion debate is less about sexuality and womens rights than about questions regarding national identify and the shaping of a new politic. Through the debate, various political coalitions and elites have located an area for vying for power during the present period of societal restratification.

Tastes of Talk: Qualia and the moral flavor of signs

This essay explores the semiotic processes by which speakers attribute sensuous qualities – e.g. lightness, dryness, straightness and others – to speech registers. Language ideologies create indexical relations linking linguistic forms to typical personae, activities and values in social life; they also construct other semiotic relations that enable speakers to attribute taste, texture, smell, sound, or shape to speech. Such extended, cross-modal, sensuous metaphors are taken up as lived experience, as part of larger frameworks of cultural value. By extending several Peircean concepts, the essay shows how speakers become persuaded that such sensuous properties of speech are existentially real. Two pedagogical genres from 19th and 20th century Hungary illustrate how properties of speech are reproduced, either via explicit instruction or as displayed in the parallelism of narrative. Both genres construct speech qualia as constitutive moves in moral and political projects that become more persuasive through the display of valued qualia.

Language Change and Sex Roles in a Bilingual Community

Linguistic differences between men and women can appear at various levels of grammar: in phonology, in syntax and pragmatics, in choice of lexical items, in choice of language by bilinguals, as well as in patterns of conversational interaction.

Language and political economy: An afterword

This brief commentary sketches some of the historical context and motivations of the writings on language and political economy in the 1980s–90s, comparing and highlighting the distinctly different contributions of this special issue. Included are observations made at the roundtable discussion that closed the conference at which the papers in this special section were first presented.

Qualia as Value and Knowledge: Histories of European Porcelain

Porcelain is, today, a familiar material of dishes, figurines, vases, and tiles. As commodities, they are enregistered social indexicals, so that the aphorism fits: you are what you drink, eat, or in this case eat on—or know how to admire as collector or connoisseur. This does not yet tell us, however, what qualities are picked out as shared by object and user, on what axis of social distinction. I argue that this everyday material, exactly because of the varied qualities it has been presumed to embody, has been swept up in changing regimes of knowledge, in economic strategies, and in making political and ethical discourses persuasive. In European history over the last few centuries, it has been embedded in diverse axes of differentiation, enlisted and changed not only as sign but also as material in strikingly different ontological projects.

Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism@@@The Politics of Gender after Socialism

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION Susan Gal and Gail Kligman 3 PART ONE: REPRODUCTION AS POLITICS 21 CHAPTER 1 Between Ideology, Politics, and Common Sense: The Discourse of Reproductive Rights in Poland - Eleonora Zielinska 23 CHAPTER 2 Reproductive Policies in the Czech and Slovak Republics - Sharon L. Wolchik 58 CHAPTER 3 Talking about Women and Wombs: The Discourse of Abortion and Reproductive Rights in the G.D.R. during and after the Wende - Eva Maleck-Lewy and Myra Marx Ferree 92 CHAPTER 4 Birth Strike in the New Federal States: Is Sterilization an Act of Resistance? - Irene Dolling, Daphne Hahn, and Sylka Scholz 118 PART TWO: GENDER RELATIONS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 149 CHAPTER 5 Changing Images of Identity in Poland: From the Self-Sacrificing to the Self-Investing Woman? - Mira Marody andAnna Giza-Poleszczuk 151 CHAPTER 6 Womens Life Trajectories and Class Formation in Hungary - Katalin Kovacs and Monika Varadi 176 CHAPTER 7 From Informal Labor to Paid Occupations: Marketization from below in Hungarian Womens Work - Julia Szalai 200 CHAPTER 8 Womens Sexuality and Reproductive Behavior in Post-Ceausescu Romania: A Psychological Approach - Adriana Baban 225 PART THREE: ARENAS OF POLITICAL ACTION: STRUGGLES FOR REPRESENTATION 257 CHAPTER 9 New Gender Relations in Poland in the 1990s - Malgorzata Fuszara 259 CHAPTER 10 New Parliament, Old Discourse? The Parental Leave Debate in Hungary - Joanna Goven 286 CHAPTER 11 Womens NGOs in Romania - Laura Grunberg 307 CHAPTER 12 Womens Problems, Womens Discourses in Bulgaria - Krassimira Daskalova 370 CHAPTER 13 Belgrades SOS Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence: A Report - Zorica Mrsevic 370 CHAPTER 14 Media Representations of Men and Women in Times of War and Crisis: The Case of Serbia - Jasmina Lukic 393 CONCLUSION Susan Gal and Gail Kligman 424 CONTRIBUTORS 427 INDEX 429