Week six(7 May 09)

Questions? Tyler Schnoebelen(tylers at stanford)

Big themes

• These chapters talk a lot about “moves” and “positioning”

• This connects to the course theme about gender (and other constructs) being something we do.

• We’re walking that tightrope between agency (if you’re going to talk about “moves”, someone is making ‘em) and social structure (constraints, prior positionings)

An alternate universe

Agency

• Quick follow-up:– You can think of agency as “the ability to do things

in the world”. The important thing is that it happens relative to larger social structures.

– People (agents!) can do a lot of stuff, but social structures are everywhere, so a super-agentive theory (“Up With People”) still has to figure out what the constraints are, where they come from, how people interact with them.

Face

• Positive face:– “We”, affiliation with others – Getting approval, building “belonging”– (We like each other)

• Negative face:– “I”, a separate individual – Carving out a space– (I deserve respect, you shouldn’t impose too

much, I have needs)

Caring

• Brown and Levinson—the big names of this chapter—suspect that people have a better chance of promoting their own face if they attend to others’.

• That is, seeming to care is important. – But there are obviously big consequences if you’re

putting on a show of caring and that insincerity gets detected. Is that worse than being seen not to care?

– How does gender play into this?

Politeness

• Positive politeness:– Showing you like or empathize with someone– “We”!– Admiration, playfulness, familiar terms of address

• Negative politeness:– Showing respect/deference (not quite the same)– Apologies, thanking, formal terms of address

Methodology break-out!

• Whenever you’re reading a study, look to see how the researcher has operationalized what they’re studying.

• That is, what’s their coding scheme?• Does it make sense?• (We keep seeing this as a trouble zone in

language and gender research.)

Tag questions

• Epistemic modal (uncertainty)– “She was behind the 2-meter line, wasn’t she?”

• Facilitative– “That was amazing acting, wasn’t it?”

• Softening– “You didn’t have right of way, did you?”

• Challenging– “You designed this software for you not your users,

didn’t you?”

Tag question questions

• Which ones of those are actually “weak”?• What else do they do?• Is it gender? Powerlessness?• Do you create weakness for yourself? Can you

really be more assertive?

Hedges and discourse particles

• Hedges: “Probably”, “sorta”• Discourse particles: “You know”, “of course”• These aren’t really about content, but

“positioning”. • (Things are very rarely “empty”, as we keep

seeing.)

Intersections

• Okay, we’ve got the following things in the mix (and a lot more). How do they interact with the idea of “politeness”?– Gender– Social class– Culture

Other stuff

Typology of speech acts

• Know about performative speech acts– “I now declare you man and wife.”

• But probably worry less about the others– Locutionary acts• “Normal” speech/writing

– Illocutionary acts• Promise, invite, praise

– Perlocutionary acts• Persuade, frighten, comfort, impress

Affective/instrumental speech

• Affective:– “How sad”, “Damn it”, “What ___ they are”

• Instrumental:– “The hippo is the most dangerous mammal in

Africa”

• But really, all speech is both

Chapter 5 examples

• All of these mark relationships between speakers. What are the similarities and differences in how they work?

• Terms of address (boy, miss, Dr.)• French tu/vous • Japanese honorifics (verb forms, o- suffix,

wa/zo particles)

Other themes

• Intimacy• Autonomy• Hall of mirrors• Subject positioning vs. idea positioning