Legal discourse and the cultural intelligiblity of gendered meanings1

Abstract

This paper considers the methodological challenges that ‘post‐modern’ approaches to gender (Cameron 2005) pose for the field of language and gender. If we assume that gender cannot be ‘read off’ the identities of speakers, but rather is a social process by which individuals come to make cultural sense, then how do we best investigate this process? AsStokoe (2005)andStokoe and Smithson (2002)have argued, it is problematic within such frameworks to conduct research that pre‐categorizes individuals as women and men, since it is individuals'constitutionas women or men that should be the issue under investigation. Indeed, forButler(1990: 145), to understand ‘identity as apractice … is to understand culturally intelligible subjects as the resulting effects of a rule‐bound discourse’ (emphasis in original). This suggests that we attend to cultural norms of intelligibility (i.e. the ‘rule‐bound discourse’) and their effects. FollowingBlommaert (2005)andWoolard (forthcoming), in this paper I investigate a speech event, a courtroom trial dealing with sexual assault, where understandings of social identities and categories (i.e. ‘norms of intelligibility’) are not only evident in the local talk of speakers and hearers, but also in the recontextualizations of this local talk by powerful institutional representatives (i.e. judges). By examining such recontextualizations of courtroom talk, gender is not ‘read off’ the identities of individuals (i.e. courtroom participants) but rather investigated as it appears in the cultural sense‐making frameworks of judges. Moreover, given that judges are the ultimate interpreters of the linguistic representations of courtroom talk, this paper also demonstrates some of the social consequences associated with the performance of culturally intelligible and unintelligible gendered identities.