Sex, Talk and Making Bodies in the Science Lab.

Abstract

The role of language, especially in the form of everyday talk, has been relatively neglected in work on the (re)production of embodied social identities. For instance in work on gender and everyday organizational life, linguistic interactions are often treated simply as the expressions of embodied social relations. Particular features of the way people talk to each other as gendered beings tend to be regarded as merely indexical of visibly, physically embodied gender and its associated power relations. The gendered identities and roles of interactants in conversations, therefore, tend to be regarded as fixed and static, as derived entirely elsewhere, as possessions brought to everyday interactions. However, recent work on language as social practice suggests that it is a prime means through which separate and collective notions of gendered and sexualized identities are routinely and continually constructed, ascribed and may be resisted/contested. This approach treats gendered and sexualized identities and power relations as fluid processes that are continually (re)constituted through conversational behaviours rather than being more rigidly held possessions. This distinction matters because it seems to offer a fresh and productive way of addressing forms of routine, everyday oppression based on gender and sexuality. Furthermore, in the work of Judith Butler (1990, 1993) linguistic acts are implicated at the heart of the (re)constitution of gendered bodies.KeywordsPersonal InformationGender IdentitySocial CompetenceVerbal PerformanceEveryday InteractionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.