Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics
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Browsing Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics by Subject "Research Subject Categories::INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AREAS::Gender studies"
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Item Open Access The Dance of Conversation: Gender and Language in Metaphors for West Coast Swing Partnership(Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Conference, 2021-06-07) O'Neill, BrittneySocial partner dance communities have traditionally constrained participation by gender, permitting only men to lead and only women to follow. However, West Coast Swing (WCS), a modern swing dance, is currently in the midst of degendering the roles of leader and follower, and the gendered terms traditionally used to refer to them, such that all dancers may participate in their preferred role regardless of their gender. In some ways, degendering is an extension of WCS’s relatively egalitarian partnership structure. Unlike in many partner dances, in WCS both the leader and the follower can influence movement choices for the couple. One of the most prevalent metaphors for conveying this conception of partnership is that of a conversation. This metaphor is typically understood as liberatory, suggesting an open exchange of ideas between leader and follower (e.g. Callahan, 2005; Cox, 2012), one that is broadly in line with the egalitarian motives of the degendering movement overall. However, in practice the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor often reveals criteria for appropriate “talk” that differ significantly by role and, in doing so, continues to draw on gendered social expectations. Using Koller’s (2004) Critical Cognitive Framework, this project investigates the use of the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor in an episode of The Naked Truth, a podcast made by and for the WCS community. The 92 minute episode, “Leading and Following” (2019), presents a discussion of WCS partnership dynamics featuring a male-identifying host who publicly endorses degendering and a female-identifying host who appears ambivalent about the issue. During the episode, the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor is frequently invoked and often co-constructed by the speakers. In the hosts’ deployments of the metaphor, the only way leaders were found to be at fault was if they “talked” constantly and never gave the follower room to contribute: “[they] should not be dictating…a hundred percent…of the dance”. In contrast, followers’ behaviour was much more heavily policed. They were cautioned against “interrupting” or “ignor[ing the leader’s] intent” as well as being too much of a “straight follower” (i.e. not offering movement ideas to the partnership), while being encouraged to “support the leader”, “pay[] attention and listen[]”, and only “contribute” in response to the leader or when the leader offers an opportunity. This dynamic strongly resembles accounts of actual conversations between middle class, white, North American men and women, in which men have been found to hold the floor for a greater percentage of the time and interrupt more, while women talk less, interrupt less, use more supportive strategies (James & Drakich, 1993; Kendall & Tannen, 1997; Lee & Mccabe, 2020; Zimmerman & West, 1975) and, despite this, are still often perceived as more interruptive (Orcutt & Mennella, 1995). Though not universally representative of conversation dynamics between men and women, the salience of these same patterns in the way the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor is mobilized, reveals underlying heteronormative and essentialized gender ideologies and conceptual models of WCS partnership. These ideologies and conceptions may continue to implicitly tie following to femininity and leading to masculinity, despite the extensive work being done to avoid explicitly gendered language. This analysis demonstrates the role of shared metaphor use in the persistence of gendered language and ideologies, even amongst speakers and communities that are committed to gender equality and degendering. It further asks: if WCS partnership dynamics give followers more say than other dances, but are nonetheless described through metaphor use that invokes hegemonic masculine conversational norms, can partner dance ever be truly degendered or is the legacy of gendering so pervasive that the mere act of leading or following is inherently situated within hegemonic gender norms? References: Callahan, J. L. (2005). ‘Speaking a secret language’: West Coast Swing as a community of practice of informal and incidental learners. Research in Dance Education, 6(1–2), 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/14617890500372974 Cox, N. (2012). A Skillful Breaking of Expectations: Embodied Knowledge, Communication, and Connection in West Coast Swing Dance. Bryn Mawr. James, D., & Drakich, J. (1993). Understanding gender differences in amount of talk: A critical review of research. In Gender and conversational interaction. (pp. 281–312). Oxford University Press. Kendall, S., & Tannen, D. (1997). Gender and language in the workplace. In R. Wodak (Ed.), Gender and Discourse (pp. 81–105). Sage Publications Ltd. Koller, V. (2004). Metaphor and gender in business media discourse: A critical cognitive study. Palgrave Macmillan. Lee, J. J., & Mccabe, J. M. (2020). Who speaks and who listens: Revisiting the chilly climate in college classrooms. Gender and Society, 35(1), 32–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243220977141 Orcutt, J. D., & Mennella, D. L. (1995). Gender and Perceptions of Interruption as Intrusive Talk: An Experimental Analysis and Reply to Criticism. Symbolic Interaction, 18(1), 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1995.18.1.59 Zimmerman, D. H., & West, C. (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation. In B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.), Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (pp. 105–129). Newberry House. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.125.12zimItem Open Access Talking dance, doing gender: Gendered language use in a podcast made by and for the West Coast Swing dance community(International Gender and Language Association (IGALA 11), 2021-07-08) O'Neill, BrittneyTraditionally, social partner dance communities have constrained participation by gender, permitting only men to lead and only women to follow. More recently, however, emerging degendering movements have sought to enable all dancers to participate in their preferred role regardless of gender. Like much feminist and queer activism (e.g. Ehrlich & King, 1994; Moulton, Robinson, & Elias, 1978; Zimman, 2017), these degendering movements have also called for language reform, specifically focussing on the use of gender neutral terms in generic reference to dance roles. West Coast Swing (WCS), an increasingly global dance community which originated in the USA, is currently in the midst of such a change, seemingly headed towards complete degendering. WCS, then, presents a unique opportunity to explore the language use of those for, against, and ambivalent towards the degendering movement as it unfolds in public discourse. Using The Naked Truth, a podcast made by and for the WCS community, as a case study, this project analyses the use of gendered versus degendered language in generic reference to dance roles in the context of ongoing social and linguistic activism in the WCS community. “Leading and Following” (February 2019, 92 minutes), the episode used for analysis, features conversations between a male-identifying dancer who publicly endorses degendering, and a female-identifying top-tier professional dancer who, while endorsing freedom to dance in one’s preferred role, publicly resists allowing same gendered couples to compete against mixed gender couples. Despite the two speakers differing in rates of and strategies for degendered language use roughly in accordance with their alignment to the degendering movement, both appear to be aware of and to attempt degendered language use to at least some extent. However, a lack of other-initiated repair and the presence of symmetrical accommodation both to gendered and degendered language suggest that smooth conversational flow was privileged over any activist goals which may have motivated the speakers’ own language choices. Gendered language was particularly common in contexts where generics were linked to specific real-world situations, known individuals, or to an already gendered generic partner. For example, when referring generically to leaders dancing with a specific female-identifying follower, only male reference was used. Similarly, where referring generically to types of conversation experienced with real students, traditionally-gendered reference was more frequent. These patterns suggest that, at least for these two speakers, language change remains relatively superficial. Their mental models of the gender/role dynamic seem to be strongly shaped by exemplars based in existing statistical distributions and by heteronormativity, rather than by their goals for linguistic and social change. Thus, while language reform may play a role in making non-traditional-role dancers feel more welcome in the community, it does not yet appear to be impacting the underlying expectations of these two heavily-involved members of the community. This work provides specific evidence of the need for language reform to be accompanied by continued social and institutional change in order to create meaningful transformations of gendered conceptual categories, even amongst those who explicitly support reform.