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    1

    Discourse, Discourse Analysis


    and Gender

    This chapter discusses the two key concepts of the book: discourse and
    gender. This is not an easy task, partly because different approaches theo-
    rize these concepts, and the relationship between them, differently; partly
    because of the rapid development in and increasing sophistication of these
    fields. Because I find it difficult to talk about gender without talking about
    discourse, I start by looking at discourse and discourse analysis, move on to
    gender, then look at these together (‘Gender and discourse/Gendered
    discourse/Gendering discourse’). I conclude the chapter by looking briefly
    at four other concepts: construction and performance, representation and
    indexing. Relevant to the study of gender and discourse, these are used in
    and outside this book, and will hopefully be useful analytical concepts for
    those embarking on their own analyses of gendered discourses.

    Discourse and discourse analysis

    Discourse is omnipresent and enduringly fluid, and there is no shortage


    of discourse to analyse. This is especially true as modes of communica-
    tions expand, exponentially more texts are published year on year, more
    information of different sorts becomes available, and discourses take on
    characteristics of each other, combine and recombine (see below; see also
    Chapter 2). In particular, as Cameron notes, ‘Men and women … are
    members of cultures in which a large amount of discourse about gender
    is constantly circulating’ (1997a: 60). The number and diversity of dis-
    cursively gendered sites and topics is equally vast.1 Discourse analysis is
    also a broad concept encompassing, inter alia, classroom discourse analy-
    sis, critical discourse analysis (CDA), critical classroom discourse analysis
    (Kumaravadivelu, 1999), (feminist) post-structuralist discourse analysis
    ( (F)PDA) (Baxter, 2002a,b, 2003) and conversation analysis (CA).

    5
    J. Sunderland, Gendered Discourses
    © Jane Sunderland 2004
    6 Gendered Discourses

    Discourse has a variety of meanings, these varying not only with


    discipline but also with intellectual persuasion. ‘Linguistic’ meanings
    include, first, the broad stretch of written or spoken language and, second,
    the more specific ‘linguistic, and accompanying paralinguistic, interac-
    tion between people in a specific context’ (from Talbot, 1995a: 43), for
    example, ‘Classroom discourse’. I refer to these as ‘descriptive discourses’.
    Though at times I also use discourse in these two, descriptive senses, in
    this book the primary meaning of discourses is equivalent to broad consti-
    tutive systems of meaning (from post-structuralism) and to ‘knowledge and
    practices generally associated with a particular institution or group of
    institutions’ (Talbot, 1995a: 43) or ‘different ways of structuring areas of
    knowledge and social practice’ (Fairclough, 1992: 3) (from critical social
    theory). I refer to these as ‘interpretive discourses’. Discourse(s) in this
    third sense is (are) at times used indistinguishably from ideology – Eckert
    and McConnell-Ginet gloss this ‘shared’ use as ‘projections of the inter-
    ests of people in a particular social location’, a useful reminder that we
    are not simply talking about ‘perspectives’ (2003: 412). Ideology can, in
    fact, be seen as the cultural materialist antecedent of the post-structuralist
    use of discourse, and, for both post-structuralism and CDA, discourse can
    be seen as carrying ideology (see also Mills, 1997; van Dijk, 1998).
    Foucault’s major contribution to post-structuralism has been crucial here
    (though see e.g. Fairclough, 1992).
    Discourse is, however, sometimes used ‘in an unreflecting way’
    (Wodak, 1997: 4; see also Mills, 1997; Weiss and Wodak, 2003), which
    can verge on vagueness. To quote from Popper:

    We are always conscious that our terms are a little vague (since we
    have learned to use them only in practical applications) and we reach
    precision not by reducing their penumbra of vagueness, but rather by
    keeping well within it, by carefully phrasing our sentences in such a
    way that the possible shades of meaning of our terms do not matter.
    This is how we avoid quarreling about words. (1966: 19)

    Whereas this can, I think, apply to discourse (in the descriptive sense) it
    applies less satisfactorily to interpretive discourses.
    A useful and provisional starting point in the study of discourse in the
    interpretive sense is to see discourses as ways of seeing the world, often
    with reference to relations of power and domination (Fairclough, 2003).
    Language users however also use discourses, ‘drawing on’, ‘invoking’,
    ‘producing’, ‘reproducing’ and even ‘inserting themselves’ within dis-
    courses (this last from Foucault, 1981). Although in this book I largely

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