Theorising the Female Voice in Public Contexts

Abstract

This chapter considers the female voice in public contexts as a theoretical issue: it asks whether and how women’s relationship to public discourse may be accounted for in general terms. That question might seem to go against the grain of recent, ‘third wave’ language and gender scholarship with its emphasis on ‘looking locally’ (see Editor’s Introduction). Researchers have become wary of generalizing about the linguistic position of women, and sceptical about the universalizing ‘grand narratives’ produced by some of their predecessors. The following discussion will reflect that scepticism, in that generalizations about gender will be examined critically, and attention will be given to the ‘local’ conditions affecting women’s public utterance in different times, places and social groups. Yet at the same time, for both empirical and political reasons, I do not want to discount a priori the possibility of ‘thinking globally’ about the status of the female voice in public contexts.