Essay #3: Project Idea/Proposal

Essay Prompt: Present a project design of your own to explore a question you have about naturally occurring conversation. The response to this question will have two sections, Introduction and Methodology. You may build on research you have done for your final project, any previous projects, or you may choose a new project. Write a one-paragraph introduction which draws upon our work in this program to explain why your project is important. End this section with a research question or hypothesis. Then explain your methodology. How will you gather data? How will you choose your participants in the study? If you will ask your participants questions, list them. If you ask participants to discuss something, provide the prompt. Will you record data at the moment or later? Will you audio tape or videotape? Be very specific. Include in your explanation of methodology the crucial explanation of why, in your view, the methodology you have chosen will provide the answer to your research question.

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3:            Introduction:

Project Description: You will be recording a meeting, transcribing a section of that recording, and analyzing the transcription. Videotape a student group meeting for at least 20 minutes. This student group should have at least five members present at the meeting (there should be men and women) and they should have a prepared agenda for their meeting with at least two topics to discuss or on which to make decisions. After the meeting, analyze your video recording carefully, and select for your transcription a discussion about one of the topics on the agenda, in which at least two members spoke. For your analysis, use both your transcription and the video recording, and answer the following question: What discourse methods, styles, and behaviors does each speaker exhibit in order to address the agenda topic and finalize the issue?

Importance to the program: I think this would be a very interesting topic, particularly because of my involvement with a student group myself. I was very careful to make this assignment different from the one we did analyzing the seminar discussion. The idea of addressing a certain topic and the pressure to come to a definitive conclusion about it is fascinating and very distinct—I don’t believe it is something that happens in a seminar. It’s one thing to sit in a seminar and be able to talk at length about a certain topic, but students don’t need to make decisions or even come to final conclusions… or at least not on behalf of anyone but themselves. So I think that to analyze students getting business done in the student group setting would be very compelling. I would also be interested in what (if any) type of government this group would use, because this will affect how each person is involved in the discussion and decision-making process. Do they have a leader who will make the ultimate decision, but not without some input of other members first? Do they need to reach a consensus? Do they take a vote?

Methodology: Though I’d love to analyze a Cooper Point Journal meeting from a linguistic standpoint, I would record the Geoduck Union for this project. I would be especially interested in stance and face-saving acts, but I would also focus on backchannelling, politeness, and hedging. These would show up in how people expressed their opinions, how they made motions about the topics at hand, and how they changed subjects. Then I would examine how effective all this was by seeing what decisions they reached, how they reached them, and the timeliness of their decision (based on their agenda).

I wouldn’t do any extra research on the Geoduck Union before going in or doing the transcription and analysis, because I would like to do the project with few preconceptions. However, maybe in the last step of my analysis, I would look up whether any members had any special roles in the Union or in that meeting to determine how they used those roles.

Essay #2: Men & Women

Essay Prompt: Do men and women talk differently? Choose a response to this yes/no question and support it with at least three studies cited in your text, Language and Gender. In your response, take into account the argument -that Eckert and McConnell-Ginet present, which is summarized in chapter 9.

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2:            To Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, the issue doesn’t seem to be whether men and women talk differently—that is a resounding “yes,” with which I agree—but rather what creates these differences. The differences don’t seem to be  distinguished by our sex, but by our gender. We indicate this with the words we use and even in our appearances. This is the concept which Eckert and McConnell-Ginet refer to as “gender performativity” (2003, p. 315). Judith Butler (1990) argues similarly that the idea of gender that influences the differences in our talk as men and women doesn’t come from being male or female (or having a “’core’ gender identity”), but rather from carrying the roles of a gender. “… It is those [gendered] activities that create the illusion of a core. … Those expressions of gender are deployments of linguistic resources” (Eckert, McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p.316).

These “gendered activities” also give us the notions of style and behavior that are specific to one gender or another. When we say that men and women talk differently, we are examining styles and behaviors and assigning them to one gender or another. To say that a woman talks like a woman, we are saying that her speech uses feminine styles and behaviors.

For instance, one style that Eckert and McConnell-Ginet say is feminine is a very forward pronunciation of the “s” phoneme, which is said right behind the upper front teeth. “The phonological system, which carrying no content in itself, is a potent resource for encoding social meanings” (Eckert, McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p. 62). Because we tend to interpret this “s” sound as prissy or feminine, we might think that men who use it are more feminine, or gay. We develop subconscious expectations about how masculine men should pronounce the /s/, even extending to  suppositions about a man’s sexual orientation. Knowing this, a man might change the way he pronounces the /s/ in order to give the right social meaning.

An even more subtle way of indexing and presenting gender through talk is facework.

“…It is in conversation that we work out who we are in relation to others, and who others will allow us to be. The individual connects to the social world at the nexus where we balance who we want to be with who others will allow us to be. … Gender ideology and assumed gender identity enter into shaping both the face individuals want to project and the face others are willing to ascribe to them” (Eckert, McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p. 59).

A major audience for our interactions is the opposite sex (and usually the opposite gender), and the idea of saving face for the other gender is very important. It is this concept that encourages women to pronounce a feminine /s/, raise the pitch of their voice, and even carry their gender through their outward appearance. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet demonstrate that gender is a fundamental shaper of discourse, whether it is subtle or overtly obvious.

Forced Constraint

I am SO TIRED. But not sleep-deprived. I am tired of doing the bare minimum, tired of having limitations. Life would be so much better if I didn’t have to conform, if I could do whatever I wanted in my writing. For examples, I should post on here my take-home exam essays–the ones I COULD have written, and the ones I actually wrote.

I have a couple friends who were in this class called Creativity and Constraint last year, and because of their experience I understand why constraints can be beneficial in writing. But I think they are more just an exercise to get creative juices flowing, not a way to actually choose to write. In other words, putting constraints on a piece of writing should be a last resort. At least, that’s the way I learn.

Even though you may have no background knowledge of linguistics, gender studies, discourse analysis, or other variables of speech, I invite you to read the essays I recently wrote on the subjects.

Using class for real-life application, take one: a face-threatening act.

I just met someone who took a class from my teacher (we’ll call her Fiskars), and thought she was talking about some elements of the class that she disliked, she wasn’t saying anything terribly negative about Fiskars, either. We agreed on most things about the class, but finally I had to say something about Fiskars.

I didn’t know the girl I was talking to at all, so I didn’t know whether she was the type who would have liked Fiskars or not. Plus, since she was talking pretty positively about the elements of the class but carefully avoiding the subject of Fiskars, I thought I had pretty good reason to believe that she might have liked Fiskars.

However, I couldn’t resist. She said something about transcriptions and I said “yeah” noncommittally, gearing up to risking my face… then I said “yeah, not a big fan.” Of course, the girl thought I was talking about transcriptions, which was my fault, so she had to say, “oh, I actually rather liked them,” and I had to say, “oh, me too… I was talking about [Fiskars].”

I was so wrapped up in being nervous about my face that I can’t even remember how she responded. I guess that means I didn’t have to save my face afterwards, though.

It was an interesting interaction. Finally, I was able to have the presence of mind to realize what was going on while it was actually happening, and to observe myself in the process.