Gender and Spoken Interaction

Gender and Spoken Interaction presents a diverse collection of language and gender research with an exclusive focus on spoken interaction. The volume explores how gender is accomplished and reflected in spoken interaction, in relation to other situational and larger-scale sociocultural practices, identities and structures. Contributors present a wide range of lively data from private as well as institutional contexts, produced by speakers across all life stages and from a number of different ethnic, social, national and linguistic backgrounds.

Questions examined in the volume include:

‧ How does gender interact with sexuality, social class, ethnicity, life-stage in private and institutional talk?

‧ What is the relationship between local interactional practices or identity positions, and larger-scale structures like ideologies or national employment statistics?

‧ Which methodological and analytical frameworks can be employed for the exploration of gender and spoken interaction?

‧ How can the analysis of spoken interaction contribute to traditional feminist debates about gender inequality?

These questions will be explored on the basis of spoken interactional data from British school children; adolescents from working and middle-class backgrounds; London private school girls; British Asian university students; UK and New Zealand company directors and employees; male-identified Hindi-English speaking women in New Delhi; and Austrian Jewish refugees.