A Discourse Analysis of the Talk of Older Single Women

‘Ms-Understandings’?: A Discourse Analysis of the Talk of Older Single Women

Rona Mary Macdonald

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Rehabilitation Sciences Institute University of Toronto

‘Ms-Understandings’? : A Discourse Analysis of the Talk of Older Single Women Rona Mary Macdonald Doctor of Philosophy Rehabilitation Sciences Institute University of Toronto 2018 Abstract Older ‘never married’ women are often identified as a ‘problem group’. Frequently characterized in stereotypically negative terms as loneliness, risk, and vulnerability, singleness is often considered ‘bad’ for health, especially for women who remain single.

From a critical perspective, the implications of this for occupational therapy (OT) are multi- dimensional. Where marriage and motherhood are taken-for-granted life trajectories, older single women are marginalized, which affects assessments, interactions, and outcomes of care. By theorizing singleness from a social constructionist perspective, by attending closely to language and issues of identity, and by tracing out the connections between women’s accounts and broader social and cultural beliefs and values, this thesis contributes to a

‘critical OT’.

Drawing on a theoretical blend of constructionist thinking established in social psychology, the talk of lifelong single women is considered from the critical/discursive psychological perspective. Employing interpretive repertoires, subject positions, and ideological dilemmas as analytical tools, the question explored by this thesis is ‘What interpretive repertoires do the speakers draw upon, and what strategies do they use to negotiate their identities?’

The available speaking resources were found to be strongly polarized into two repertoires: ‘singleness as deficit’ and ‘singleness as freedom’. The identity negotiation strategies employed by the participants included anticipating criticisms and objections to

iii mild positive claims about the freedoms of singleness, rhetorically distancing themselves from damaging associations generated from the deficit repertoire, and troubling the applicability of the category ‘single’, which involves implementing discursive ‘tricks’ to close down conversations.

In order to improve the quality of care for older single women, the profession of OT needs to recognize how socio/cultural discourses about singleness significantly shape research, theory, and practice. This thesis thus has important implications for critical OT, OT policies and norms of professionalism, and to the micro-politics of everyday OT practice.

Acknowledgements

I would first like to acknowledge and thank my committee members:

Dr. Pia Kontos for her unstinting and sustained support and guidance during the process of researching and writing, and for sticking with me for the long haul.

Dr. Michael Iwama for his encouragement, vision, and insights into culture and social constructionism, and for his belief in OT.

Dr. Kathryn Morgan who opened the feminist door that now illuminates the world in invaluable ways.

Dr. Rebecca Renwick for her solidarity and encouragement.

Without the participants who volunteered to talk to me and share some of their stories, there would be no thesis. Thank you to Marilyn and Eva for the interview practice, to the study participants for their willingness and generosity in sharing their life experiences, and to all the women I met during the course of this research who were interested in having conversations about singleness.

My gratitude to Joan Bottorff, Wendy Hall, Maria Mayan, Joan Eakin, Arthur Frank, Jennifer Poole, and Marlene Goldman for sowing the thinking seeds. Thank you to Dr. Dina Brooks and Loida Ares for your unwavering departmental support, and Julia, Alisa, Romeo, and Ghislain for their support during the practice FOE. To Brenda Beagan, External Examiner, for her comments and observations.

Finally, to my wonderful cheering section: Sharon, Ginger, Kirsten, Pam, Carlos, Tamara, Bob, Rick, Frances, Fiona H, Fiona Mc, Sue, Susan H, Shirley, Nicole, Brian, Kevin, Elizabeth, Izy, Ali M, Pete, Fergus, Rory, David, Siobhán, Annette, Michelle, Mairi, Gunash, Ali, Alban, Carrie, Sue P, Steve P, Cayley, Kaitlyn, Michelle, Nimmy, Jeanette, Harald, Barbara, Andrew, and Granny W. I couldn’t have done it without you.

In memory of my parents, and my friends Ros, Jehangir, and Mhairi.

Dedicated to Single Women Everywhere.

Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1.1 Thesis Outline ...... 7 1.2 Terms and Terminology ...... 10 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 12 2.1 Introduction ...... 12 2.2 Section One: Singleness: Quantitative Frameworks of Understanding ...... 18 2.2.1 Limitations of Positivist Approaches...... 20 2.3 Section Two: Qualitative Studies of Singleness ...... 27 2.3.1 Social constructionist studies of singleness...... 35 CHAPTER 3 THEORY/METHODOLOGY...... 42 3.1 Introduction ...... 42 3.2. Historical Background and Context ...... 44 3.3 Discursive Psychology/Critical Discursive Psychology ...... 49 3.3.1 Theoretical Amalgam and Blend ...... 49 3.3.2 Similarities to and differences from FCDA and CA...... 50 3.4 Central Theoretical Tenets of DP/CDP: Function; Variation, and Rhetoric ...... 54 3.4.1 Function...... 55 3.4.2 Variation...... 56 3.4.3 Rhetoric: What is being disputed, and what is the listener being persuaded of? ...... 57 3.5 Theoretical Implications for Constructs ...... 61 3.5.1 Persons/social subjects/self...... 61 3.5.2 Categories and categorization...... 61 3.5.3 Identity...... 62 3.5.4 Thinking and thought...... 64 3.5.5 Talk...... 64 3.6. Implications for Studying Singleness ...... 65 3.7 Analytical Tools: Interpretive Repertoires, Subject Positions, and Ideological Dilemmas .. 67 3.7.1 Interpretive repertoires...... 67 3.7.2 Subject positions...... 69 3.7.3 Ideological Dilemmas...... 70 3.8 Conclusion ...... 72 CHAPTER 4 METHODS...... 73

4.1 Introduction ...... 73 4.2 Ethics: Consultation Process and Approval ...... 73 4.3 Participant Recruitment ...... 76 4.4 Sample Selection ...... 78 4.5 ‘Data’ collection: Interviews ...... 79 4.5.1 Interview guide...... 81 4.5.2 Number of interviews...... 84 4.5.3 Interview location...... 85 4.6 Pseudonyms: What’s in a name? ...... 85 4.7. Participant Descriptions ...... 87 4.7.1 Life herstory: Jane ...... 89 4.7.2 Life herstory: Elisabeth ...... 95 4.7.3 Life herstory: Mademoiselle ...... 101 4.7.4 Participant Similarities and Differences ...... 107 4.8. Transcription ...... 108 4.9 Analytical Process: Discourse Analysis ...... 109 4.10 Attending to Reflexivity/Reflexivities...... 112 4.11 Accounting for Quality ...... 123 CHAPTER 5 NEGOTATING SINGLENESS AS AN IDENTITY: INTEPRETIVE RESOURCES ...... 129 5.1. Introduction ...... 129 5.2 Interpretive Repertoires of Singleness ...... 130 5.2.1 Interpretive Repertoire Example: ‘Times have changed: In the past, when women married, they had to give up their jobs’...... 131 5.3 Extract presentation...... 135 5.4 Summary: Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Deficit’ ...... 137 5.5 Summary: Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Freedom’ ...... 138 5.6 Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Deficit’: Talk Extracts ...... 140 5.7 Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Freedom’ ...... 154 Summary ...... 163 CHAPTER 6 NEGOTIATING SINGLENESS AS AN IDENTITY: NEGOTIATION STRATEGIES ...... 168 6.1 Introduction ...... 168 6.2 Overview ...... 168 6.3 Strategy 1. Singleness as Freedom: Anticipating Objections and Criticisms ...... 171

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6.4 Strategy 2. Singleness as Deficit: Distancing and Neutralizing ...... 190 6.4.1 Singleness and Loneliness...... 192 6.4.2 Analyzing loneliness talk...... 193 6.5 Strategy 3. Singleness as Deficit: The Running Battle ...... 205 6.6 Strategy 4. Troubling the Category Imperative ...... 211 6.6.1 “Is that Miss Ms or Mrs. Ms?” ...... 214 6.6.2 Resisting the category ‘single’ ...... 220 CHAPTER 7 DISCUSSION ...... 229 7.1. Introduction ...... 229 7.2. Part I: Contribution to Existing Discursive Studies: Resources & ‘The Little Tricks’ ...... 230 7.2.1 Analytical Summary...... 230 7.2.2 Contribution to the Discursive Study of Women’s Singleness...... 236 7.2.3 Singleness: A ‘troubled identity’ and an ‘identity of difference’...... 244 7.3 Part II: Study Limitations ...... 247 7.3.1 Interviews...... 252 7.3.2 Theory...... 254 7.4 Part III: Contributions to Occupational Therapy ...... 256 7.4.1 Implications for Critical OT (& OS)...... 256 7.4.2 Implications for OT Profession and Practice...... 268 7.4.3 Implications for Single Women ...... 273 7.4.4 Future Research: Interdisciplinary Directions ...... 274 CONCLUSION ...... 279 REFERENCES ...... 280 APPENDICES ...... 342 9.1 Appendix A: Recruitment Poster/Flyer ...... 342 9.2 Appendix B: Telephone Script ...... 343 9.3 Appendix C: Letter of Request to Participants ...... 344 9.4 Appendix D: Information Sheet/Informed Consent ...... 345 9.5 Appendix E: Background and Demographic Information Form ...... 348 9.6 Appendix F: Interview Guide ...... 350 9.7 Appendix G: Letter to Participants (re Life History)...... 352

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

[N]o union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotions, sacrifice, and family. Marriage is a keystone to our social order. –Justice A.M. Kennedy, June 27th, 2015

Welcome to the Singles Century. By 2010, almost half the population will be unmarried, and according to a recent survey, half the people still getting married are thinking about getting divorced as they sidle down the aisle. –The Observer Newspaper, November 5th, 2000

Like race, class, and sex, marital status is a fundamental category in social interaction. Like race, class, and sex, it can be the basis of unjustified discrimination. –Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing marriage 2012, p. 8

The Human Rights Act of Canada (1977) prohibits the discrimination of people on the grounds of : race; national or ethnic origin; colour; religion; age; sex; sexual orientation, marital status; family status; mental or physical disability, and pardoned conviction. Discrimination is defined as “the treatment of people differently, negatively or adversely” –Canadian Human Rights Commission, 2004

Education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance. –Will Durant. Time Magazine, 8th Oct, 1965

1.1 Single malt, single file, single lane, single-serving, and single bed; ‘single’ is a descriptor that can be applied to a variety of different objects and subjects in the world. But it is only when ‘single’ becomes attached to people, when it moves into the realm of social life, that it becomes truly controversial. The purpose of this thesis is to explore, in detail, aspects of that controversy.

According to the U.S. Census of 2000, of the 221 million Americans over the age of fifteen, 120.2 million were married, and 100.9 million were widowed, divorced, separated, or had never married. Of the 100.9 million Americans who were single, 41.0 million were

1 2 widowed, divorced, or separated, and 59.9 million were never married (Kreider &

Simmonds, 2003).1 In Canada, out of a total population of 36.7 million, 14.5 million women and men were single, 14.2 million were married, 1.8 million were widowed, 1.9 million were divorced, and 0.8 million were separated (Statistics Canada, 2017). We are living in what the

Observer newspaper has dubbed the ‘Singles Century’ (cited by Budgeon, 2008), and these statistics show that being ‘single’ is now the experience of a significant majority of

Americans and Canadians.

Being single is often considered to be a short ‘pre-marital’ ‘stage’ of life prior to marrying and settling down to have a family. As a life pattern, for many, this is taken for granted as the normal course. Singlehood can also be considered a phenomenon of later-life, especially for women. After outliving their husbands, women who are widows become

‘single again’ following the death of their spouses. As ways of framing singleness, these may be considered unremarkable, even normal. What is less obvious is how such framings of singleness are rooted in heteronormative ways of dividing up the life-course, and how, as conceptualizations, they are automatically framed in relation to marriage: singleness is constructed as a default to marriage, either pre-marital or post-marital. What such conceptualizations obscure, and what rising numbers of single people draw attention to, is the idea that marriage is far more than a simple cultural institution. More than that, marriage constitutes an ideology that is bound up in complex ways with traditional notions of family.

As a consequence of the operations of the ideology of marriage and family, single people are discoursed in ways that are challenging to negotiate. Marriage may have been normative in

1 The rise in number of single people in populations is an international phenomenon even in cultures considered strongly familistic and collectivist (See Arbiol, 2014; Berg-Cross, Scholz, Long, Grzeszcyk, & Roy, 2004; Dales 2005, 2014; Hong Fincher, 2014; To, 2015; Nakano, 2011, 2014; Lahad, 2014, 2017; Rutlinger- Reiner, 2011; Song, 2010, 2014; Jones, 2005).

3 the 1950s, but times have changed, and so have social practices. In this thesis I argue that being single, for women, is a deeply controversial and transgressive social position. I illustrate some of the dynamics that underlie the controversy by taking, as an example, the life experiences of women who occupy the most stigmatized social positions: women currently in later life who have been negotiating singleness over a lifetime.

The perpetuation of stereotypes about single women has rarely been subject to critical attention. Today, research that perpetuates stereotypical images of old people, people of color, disabled people, women, and gay people would be subject to a strong and sustained critique, and yet there has been an absence of critique about the damaging representations of single women so commonly found in the health literature. The stereotypes, the standard cultural images of women who have ‘never married’, the ‘spinsters’ and ‘old maids’ who are

‘unwanted’, living outside ‘normal’ family life, and who are ‘sad’ and ‘lonely’ as ‘failed’ women, are perhaps too familiar to even be noticed. In the absence of critique and problematization of such stereotypes as the product of cultural and interpersonal gender politics and ideology, and in the absence of alternative representations, these culturally- mediated ways of imagining single women and their lives continue to dominate. The purpose of this thesis is to call into question the taken-for-granted assumptions made about single women, and the unexamined ways of thinking about who they are individually and collectively.

The need for new ways to understand singleness is urgent in light of the rising numbers of single people across the adult life course, and the existence of a normative cultural lag where there is a growing gap in knowledge between how the lives of single people are being lived and the sociological (and health-related) knowledge that is being

4 generated to understand such lives (Byrne & Carr, 2005). Although there is a growing interdisciplinary (and international) scholarship that is exploring different perspectives on singleness (see Berg-Cross, Scholz, Long, Grzeszcyk, & Roy, 2004; Budgeon, 2008, Byrne

& Carr, 2005; Dales 2005, 2014; Fincher, 2014; 2014; Lahad, 2014, 2017; Macvarish, 2006;

Reynolds, 2004; Rutlinger-Reiner, 2011; Jones, 2005), meaningful attention to singleness in the health arena has been significantly hampered by research that has tended to reproduce and perpetuate simplistic, reductive, and damaging portrayals of the lives of single women.

Representations of single women in the literature perpetuate ‘Ms-Understandings’ and misrecognitions that have negatively shaped how their lives have been conceptualized and imagined.

In the health literature, singleness is usually coded factually, and treated statistically and reductively as a legal ‘marital status’ variable. ‘Never-married’ women, women who have remained single, are often represented in strongly negative terms as being

‘problematic’, ‘vulnerable’, ‘at risk’, and a ‘burden’ in a context of increasingly scarce health and social care resources. Qualitative studies have the potential to generate alternative discourses of singleness, but existing studies have been undertheorized and dominated by realist approaches to language that have tended to produce, and reproduce, simplified, flattened, finalized (and finalizing) accounts (Frank, 2005, 2010) of singleness and single women. Existing studies weakly challenge the pervasive stereotypes associated with single women and the complex connections between everyday accounts of singleness and the broader cultural and social beliefs and values regarding femininity and womanhood

(Wetherell, 1996a).

The field of occupational therapy (OT) is no exception, yet the implications of this are multi-dimensional. Where marriage and motherhood are taken-for-granted life trajectories, older single women are marginalized, which affects assessments, interactions, and outcomes of care. If marriage and other forms of coupledom are associated with deeply entrenched ideological and political ideas about what makes for a valuable, meaningful, and creditable life, how then do the lives of women whose lives do not conform to such arrangements fare? The absence of any critical attention to this phenomenon in OT is curious given that conversations and debates about issues discoursed as ‘diversity’, ‘difference’,

‘equity’, ‘culture’, ‘social justice’, ‘rights’, and ‘oppression’ are growing in momentum. A number of important studies are calling into question taken-for-granted assumptions about different groups of people and how these can adversely impact the recipients of OT services, as well as OT practitioners and researchers who occupy ‘minority’ social positions. Although the terms used vary, and stem from traditions of thought and critique that originate outside

OT, there is widespread consensus that the oppression and discrimination of individuals and groups of people as a consequence of group membership is unethical, requires sustained attention, and that changes are needed in professional practice and research. As Hammell argues (2006), “We need to develop an acute sensitivity to the embedded values and assumptions in society, in our profession, and cultivate an acute self-awareness of our personal values, perspectives and biases” (p. 3). Other scholars and practitioners have called for OTs to practice “critical reflexivity” and “cultural humility” 2 (Beagan & Chacala, 2012, p. 149; see also ACOTRO, 2014; Hammell & Iwama, 2011). Still others are calling for a

2 Cultural humility “demands a critical awareness of one’s own assumptions, beliefs, values, and biases; an understanding of how one’s own perspectives may differ from those of other people; and an acknowledgement of the unearned advantages, privileges, and power that derive from multiple dimensions of one’s own particular social position” (Hammell, 2013a, p. 145, citing Beagan & Chacala).

‘critical OT’. Grounded in the concerns of critical theory that connect individual subjectivity with a focus on broader social and political structures (Hammell & Iwama, 2011), critical OT is an anti-oppressive stance that calls into question cultural imperialist processes “by which a defined group is demeaned, devalued, and stereotyped by those values of the dominant culture that are established as seemingly universal norms of ‘common-sense” (Hammell,

2008, p. 62, citing Lugones & Spelman, and Young). By theorizing singleness from a social constructionist perspective, by attending closely to language and issues of identity, and by tracing out the connections between women’s own accounts of themselves and broader social and cultural beliefs and values (Wetherell, 1996a), this work contributes to a ‘critical occupational therapy’ (Hammell & Iwama, 2011).

Given the need for a new way to think about singleness for women that is sensitive to language, yet also attends closely to experiences and the talk of single women in ways that show areas of conflict in interaction, this thesis draws on a theoretical blend of micro and macro-social constructionist thinking established in the field of social psychology. The talk of lifelong single women is considered from the critical/discursive psychological perspective.

Focusing on social interaction and language as a form of social action (Burr, 2003), a discursive psychological (DP)/critical discursive psychological (CDP) perspective (Potter &

Wetherell, 1997; Wetherell & Potter, 1992) focuses on how people use language in interaction. The interest is in both the content of talk–the interpretive resources participants draw upon in talking about singleness as an identity–and also the performative use of language in social interaction. As a theoretical approach, DP/CDP also allows for an examination of how the practices of people interacting can be intimately related to the power of ideologies in contemporary society (Burr, 2003).

The talk ‘data’ from repeat biographically-framed interviews that I conducted with four older independently-living lifelong single women were subject to discourse analysis.

Informed by three analytical tools (interpretive repertoires, subject positions, and ideological dilemma), I examined the singleness talk of the participants to understand how they talk about being single, how they negotiate their identities as single women given the resources they have available to them, and how their accounts of singleness relate to other contemporary accounts of singleness by women. I shall argue that the everyday politics of singleness reaches deep into the heart of social life, and into deeply-held and unexamined beliefs about human relationships and what makes for a ‘good’, ‘productive’, and

‘worthwhile’ life.

1.1 Thesis Outline

In addition to the Introduction (Chapter One), this thesis has six chapters and a conclusion. In Chapter Two, the ‘health’ literature is selectively reviewed in order to examine how singleness and single women have been discoursed, and what has been taken as self-evident. Coded factually as a legally-defined marital status variable, ‘never married’ is discoursed in terms of being a risk factor for poor health, social isolation/loneliness, and early institutional care. Set in categorical opposition to ‘married’, never-married people are commonly assumed to be relationally deficient, in poor health, and to have compromised levels of ‘well-being’. Older single women especially are considered a ‘problem group’. In addition to constructing who single women are in terms of being relationally-compromised and burdensome to the state, the literature also routinely references negative cultural stereotypes associated with unmarried women and employs terms that are value-laden and often derogatory. Qualitative health studies have acknowledged that women who have remained single are a stigmatized group, but existing studies are undertheorized and

8 decontextualized. Women’s accounts of singleness are taken at face-value, and cast within a realist framework of language, where thematic content analysis tends to produce mundane and formulaic accounts of singleness.

Social constructionist studies of singleness locate the ‘problem’ of singleness in the social realm. Recognizing that single women are living lives that run counter to public understandings of what constitutes a normal and proper life for women, social constructionist studies foreground the ideological and political dimensions of singleness as an identity.

Through the use of discourse analysis, I examine how women talk about singleness and the nature of the interpretive resources that are available to them. Existing studies have focused exclusively on the talk of young to mid-adult women, but the talk and unique perspectives of older single women have yet to be explored. Older single women may have been born at a time when singleness was less common, but this makes their individual perspectives even more valuable for what it can teach us about the contemporary landscape of singleness.

Chapter Three describes the theoretical terrain of discursive psychology/ critical discursive psychology (DP/CDP). The context and historical development of DP/CDP within the discipline of social psychology is outlined, and I identify how DP/CDP both overlaps with and is distinct from the two most commonly-used forms of discourse analysis in OT: conversation analysis and Foucauldian discourse analysis. I then identify the central theoretical tenets of DP/CDP and briefly describe the implications for concepts such as person, self, identity, and talk. Chapter Three closes with the identification and description of the three analytical tools associated with DP/CDP, specifically ‘interpretive repertoires’,

‘subject positions’, and ‘ideological dilemmas’.

Flowing from DP/CDP theorization, Chapter Four provides a detailed description of the methods I used in the study. Beginning with the university ethics application process, and the concerns identified in relation to the study group that illustrate common institutional understandings (and constructions) of single women, I describe recruitment and ‘data’ collection processes. A description of the participants is provided, and this is supplemented by participant-approved life histories/herstories that have been constructed out of the interview materials. The process and style of transcription are described, followed by an account of the process of analysis. After addressing issues related to reflexivity/reflexivities,

Chapter Four concludes with an account of how issues related to quality in the study are addressed.

Chapter Five and Chapter Six both focus on the analysis of singleness discourse.

Chapter Five identifies the nature of the interpretive repertoires that are drawn upon by the study participants. The repertoires are illustrated using extracts of talk from the interviews conducted with the participants. Chapter Six moves away from a consideration of the content of talk in order to examine different kinds of identity negotiation strategies employed by the participants. Interview extracts are analyzed in more detail for the action orientation of talk.

Chapter Seven, the discussion section, is divided into three parts. Part One discusses how the analysis builds on the existing literature, and what it adds. Part Two considers the limitations of the study, and Part Three discusses the implications of the study for critical OT, OT policies and norms of professionalism, and to the micro-politics of everyday OT practice. I conclude with some suggestions about how research on singleness could be further developed.

Before turning to review the literature, it is necessary to first clarify the terms and terminology used in the thesis.

1.2 Terms and Terminology

The approach taken in this thesis requires that close attention is paid to language and issues of language, specifically how words, terms, and terminology have constructive effects on people and their identities. The standard terminology used to describe and to identify single women in the literature is problematic in several ways. To refer to single women as

‘unmarried’, ‘never married’, ‘unwed’, ‘unattached’, ‘uncoupled’, ‘un-partnered’, and

‘unwed’ is to construct their identities in negative terms, in terms of lack or deficiency, and in terms of not being something (not married/coupled/partnered). The terminology in the literature is also often inconsistent (Simpson, 2006; Reynolds, 2008). ‘Single’ may refer collectively to single people, and may encompass those who are ‘widowed’, ‘divorced’, separated’, ‘never married’, or to a specific group of ‘single’ people. ‘Single’ can refer to partnership status, social status, sense of self and identity, but also legal status, and the more experiential sense of being outside a specific form of partnership (Jamieson & Simpson,

2013). But being single can also be confused with ‘living singly’ or ‘solo living’, which can refer either to living alone, or to living life as a single person (Klinenberg, 2012). To confuse matters even further, people can be legally ‘single’, but ‘socially’ partnered, and people who live alone and are single cannot be assumed to live “without love or outside of couple relationships” (Jamieson & Simpson, 2013, p. 31). Yet as Jamieson and Simpson (2013) observe, ‘solo-living’ can also be confusing, because ‘going solo’ can mean leaving a partner or living without a partner. People can ‘solo-live’ and be single, but they can also ‘solo-live’ and be partnered.

Rather than referring to women in the negative (e.g., as never-married), which constructs marriage as the norm and single as the default position, the term I use is ‘single people’ or ‘single women’. As the focus is on a specific group of single women, and as these women cannot refer to themselves as ‘widowed’, ‘divorced’, or ‘separated’, the terms

‘always-single’, ‘lifelong single’ or ‘ever-single’ are used interchangeably, but they should not be considered to be in any way absolute. They are used because they point to singleness being (more or less) an ongoing feature of the woman’s life, but this does not mean that the women have not had partnerships or intimate relationships in the past and may do so again in the future. As descriptors, ‘always’ or ‘ever-single’ women should also not be considered

‘more’ single than people who are ‘divorced’, ‘widowed’, or ‘separated’, as they are just

‘differently’ single. The exception to this general guideline is when citing the literature. The terms that are used here are consistent with those used in the source material, and this also goes for the terms used by the study participants. However, given that my chosen methodology is discourse analysis that seeks to problematize common-sense understandings of singleness and single women by attending closely to language terms and language usage, liberal use is made throughout the thesis of scare quotes (‘ ’).

Finally, although being single and living alone (solo living) are often conflated in the literature, in this thesis it is assumed that they are quite different and distinct phenomena.

When being single and living alone occur together, as is the situation of the participants of this study, it is assumed that the two discourses can intersect in interesting and informative ways.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

In the old epidemiological studies, single people were considered inadequate to begin with. Those were the days when everyone who was anyone gets married. If you didn’t, it was because you were an emotional isolate, or you were in poor health. The single people were the leftovers, the ones who couldn’t marry. –Hamburger, cited by Shostak, 1987, p. 358-359

The never married may… be less happy because of the considerable difficulties of being single in a society where being paired is widely regarded as the only natural, sane, healthy and proper way to be. –Edwards & Hoover, 1974, p. 11

Are never married women destined because of singleness to experience something less than full human development? –Baker, 1968, p. 473

I imagined myself as a middle aged spinster. By the time I was forty, I would be ugly and dried up, and alone, alone, alone, marked forever as a freak and a failure. I could only save myself by an effort to end my loneliness. I had to find a man, a man I could marry. –‘Lynn’ quoted by Peterson, 1982, p. 52

How dare I fail to marry? How peculiar. How brazen. How sad. Or so many believe… Were I weak in the knees, I might believe that too. But, fortunately, my knees are steady and hold me up fine when people give me these patronizing looks and commiserating tones. –‘July’ quoted by Simon, 1987, p.1 2.1 Introduction

The above epigraphs offer a preliminary glimpse into the discursive terrain of singleness. Whatever frameworks of understanding are being brought to bear, the emotive descriptions and language terms signal that singleness is a controversial social position, and especially so for women. As “inadequate” “emotional isolates” who “couldn’t marry”, people who do not marry are considered by default to be (un)natural, (in)sane, (un)healthy, and

(im)proper (Edwards & Hoover, 1974). ‘Single’ and ‘married’ are simply assumed to be binary categorizations; people are either ‘married’ or ‘single’ (or ‘not married’ or ‘never- married’). To be single is to have failed to marry.

12 13

In a context where anybody who was “anyone gets married”, those who remain single are assumed to be in some way faulty or pathological (Edwards & Hoover, 1974). Singleness is explained causally: single people are single because… of a flaw or problem/s located in the individual, which, it is implied, applies to all who belong to the category. People are expected to marry, and those do not are assumed to be “inadequate” or insufficient in meeting the expectations of society.

Shostak (1987) draws attention to the way epidemiological data about single people has been inflected by cultural assumptions and negative biases. If being coupled (“paired”) is regarded as “the only natural, sane, healthy and proper way to be” (Edwards & Hoover,

1974), then not to be coupled or married is to be cast as ‘Other’, as being unnatural and unhealthy. Other explanations are also evident. Single people are unmarried “because” they are “emotional isolates” or “in poor health”, and so they can be considered cultural

“leftovers”, an unwanted and unhealthy remnant of society. Whether privileged through marriage or another form of coupledom, the implications of not being married or coupled are thus far reaching for people negotiating their identities as single people. Echoing older discourses about other marginalized and stigmatized groups (e.g., people of color, those who are disabled), Baker (1968) contends that women who do not marry are destined to fall short of becoming fully-recognized human beings.

Rather than taking such authoritative examples at face-value by assuming that they point to some universal ‘truths’ about single people/women, or who they ‘really’ are, instead the epigraphs are presented here to : 1) problematize the terms in which single women have often been made knowable in the academic literature; 2) show how the images about single people mirror familiar and strongly derogatory cultural stereotypes; and 3) suggest that the

14 nature of the language used, the use of such strongly derogatory terms, points to women’s singleness being a rich and important area for study, especially in a context of rising numbers of single women across the life-course not just in Canada, but internationally (Berg-Cross,

Scholtz, Long, Grzeszcyk, & Roy, 2004; Lahad, 2013, 2014; Song, 2014; Hong Fincher,

2014). In fact, I would argue that it is the very nature of the language used to describe single people that signals how deeply transgressive singleness is to the social order. What it is about single persons and single women that could provoke the production of such strongly negative and morally condemnatory representations still found in today’s academic literature? If these were portrayals of people of color or disabled people, cries of discrimination and charges of racism or ableism would be anticipated, as well as the elicitation of a sustained academic critique. But ‘singlism’, the widespread stereotyping and discrimination of single people, has long gone unrecognized, unnamed, and unchallenged (DePaulo & Morris, 2005a; DePaulo &

Morris, 2006; Kaiser & Kashy, 2005; Morris, Sinclair, & DePaulo, 2007).

The last two epigraphs, drawn from qualitative studies, show the speakers, ‘Lynn’ and ‘July’, offering two very different characterizations of what it can mean to be single and how women may come to view their lives and their identities. ‘Lynn’ is a younger woman imagining her future single-self at age forty. Prospectively constructing her identity as a

“middle aged spinster”, the images and terms are startlingly pejorative. Assuming that the speaker was not being ironic, her (imagined) future self is described as being an “ugly” and

“dried up” “spinster”, lacking in any significant social connections; she anticipated being a woman who is entirely “alone” and lonely. In anticipation of being “marked forever” as a

“freak” and “a failure”, the salvific path and the means of escape from such a terrible fate was to “find a man” and to “marry”. In the final epigraph, ‘July’, an older single woman,

15 speaks about how her life situation is viewed by others. ‘July’ can be ‘read’ as resisting or

‘speaking back’ to discourse (hooks, 1988). She defies and holds steady against the other peoples’ negative inferences, evaluations, and judgements about who she is and what her life is like. Instead of believing what others expect her to be, ‘July’ is (rhetorically) defiant in the face of being assumed by others to be ‘peculiar’, ‘brazen’, or ‘sad’, and she stands tall and strong in the face of interactions where she is patronized and pitied.

Rather than assuming that all of the epigraphs offer a clear window into who single people really are and how singleness is actually experienced by women, when viewed as

‘texts’, the epigraphs function as collective way-markers, in the complex and shifting discursive terrain that surrounds women’s singleness, and from this perspective, they reflect different ‘regimes’ of talking about singleness (Roseneil, 2006; see also Bowker & Star,

1999). Viewed through the lens of ‘identity’, it is only when people are seen to breach rules and norms of society that those rules and norms can be seen most clearly (Lawler, 2014, p.2, citing Garfinkel).

Singleness is an ambiguous social space for women. From a gendered perspective, singleness could be interpreted as a form of gender ‘atypicality’, an example of gender non- conformity, or a breach of gender normality. By not marrying or by remaining uncoupled long-term, singlehood could be understood as symbolic breach of traditional expectations of gender roles and behavior that have been associated with assumptions and expressions of what is means to be a ‘real’ woman. Marriage equality is now legally assured in the U.S., but just how free are people not to marry (Parsons, 2008)? As Parson(citing Danuta Walters) observed: “like its partner in crime, heterosexuality, marriage is largely compulsory: if the

16 economic benefits don’t get you, the social ones surely will” (2008, p. 400; see also Rich,

1988).3

As a consequence of the ideology that surrounds marriage, by remaining single when they are supposed to marry, single women inadvertently bear the consequences of breaching the assumed and unquestioned rules and norms. It is not what they have actually done, what their behaviors or their actions are, although these can also be subject to scrutiny, it is paradoxically what they have failed to do that leads to them being judged and condemned as being deviant and unacceptable. Single women are disciplined because they have failed to couple and marry and create ‘families’ and reproduce. As Simpson (2015) put it, singleness for women is considered anomalous because normative femininity has for so long been bound up in complex ways with coupledom/marriage and motherhood. Central to a consideration of women’s singleness and the discourses associated with single women is the issue of non-compliance to normative gender identities (Simpson, 2015).

Bearing in mind the claim that “the things we take for granted as being obvious, are often the most interesting aspects of the social world” (Billig, 2013, p.75), the following review adopts a critical stance towards what has been assumed to be obvious about singleness and single women. As Bourdieu (1996) stated, “words make things, because they make the consensus on the existence and meaning of things, the common sense, the doxa accepted by all as self-evident” (p. 21). Although the term ‘critical’ may mean very different things (see Billig, 2000), the problem with doxa, as Bauman and Yakimova (2002) observed, is that it consists of “knowledge we think with, but not about” (p.1). A critical stance towards the obvious will therefore trouble much that has been accepted as self-evident in the health

3 Brake (2012) identified that marriage triggers 1100 rights, benefits, and privileges under U.S. federal law.

17 literature, and the aim is to think about such knowledge, rather than simply accepting it at face-value.

In Occupational Therapy (OT), the theoretical underpinnings of knowledge that shapes how phenomena are understood is not always acknowledged (Molke & Laliberte

Rudman, 2009; Iwama, 2004; 2006), and so the following review will attend to the kinds of theoretical frameworks that have created different kinds of knowledge about singleness, single people, and especially single women. Because OTs work in health systems that privilege positivist ways of knowing, they will be briefly examined and critiqued. Rather than evaluating in detail the findings of realist informed studies on their own terms, the aim first is to: 1) point to the main meanings that have coalesced around women’s singleness in the realist-oriented quantitative and qualitative literature; 2) identify the constraints and limitations of such approaches; and 3) to propose an alternative framework of understanding that would point to the complexity of knowledge about singleness and single women in OT and open up new ways of thinking about this phenomenon.

The literature is divided into two diverse approaches to this phenomenon. The first focuses on quantitative approaches to singleness. The second section focuses on qualitative understandings of singleness, particularly the perspectives of women who have remained single over the life-course and who have received the least research attention and yet are arguably the most frequently stigmatized. The qualitative literature includes studies that have adopted a realist orientation to language, and social constructionist studies that have assumed that ‘experience’ (as in ‘experiences of singleness’) is a signifier (see Allen & Cloyes, 2005;

Allen & Hardin, 2001; Silverman, 2004) and talk is best understood in terms of ‘discourses’

(Potter & Wetherell, 2001).

2.2 Section One: Singleness: Quantitative Frameworks of Understanding

In the medical and rehabilitation science literature, singleness has most commonly been conceptualized as a legally-defined, objective, neutral category, variable related to marital status. As such, the umbrella category ‘single’ (widowed/divorced/separated/never- married) can be considered a legally-determined technical specification (Bowker & Star,

2000; Bailey, 1994). Quantitative studies focusing on marital status have traditionally collapsed the distinctions between different groups of single people: the widowed, divorced, and never-married have been considered as one group.

Singleness in later life is generally correlated with poor outcomes, such as poorer evaluations of well-being, social isolation, and loneliness compared to being older and married, (Braito & Anderson, 1983; Cwikel, Gramatov, & Lee, 2006; Dalton, 1992; Holden,

2005; Newtson & Keith, 1997; Pudrovska, Schieman & Carr, 2006; Ward, 1979). In studies that did differentiate between groups of single people, however, the worst health outcomes have been attributed to those who have ‘never-married’, which have included social isolation, poorer mental health, and limited social and economic resources (Braito & Anderson, 1981;

Newtson & Keith, 1997; Ron, 2009).

Although there is some debate in the literature about the empirical validity of such findings (see Cwikel, Gramatov, & Lee, 2006; Pudrovska et al., 2006), older never-married women (who commonly do not have children) are predominantly characterized as heavy users of health and social services, having increasingly unviable lifestyles due to the negative effects of aging (Ron, 2009; Cwikel et al, 2006; Ward, 1979), and in need of early institutional care (Aykan, 2003; Connidis & McMullin, 1994; Ward 1979; Wu & Pollard,

1998). As Wells and Freer observed, “older single women are often assumed to be in poor emotional health, and a social burden and drain on public resources” (cited by Cwikel et al.,

2006, p. 1999).4 As lonely, impoverished, and high users of social and health services, older never-married women without children are often assumed to be “a social burden” or a

“problem’ group” (Cwikel et al., 2006, p. 1999).

In the health arena, this is reflected in the Social Determinants of Health literature, which grew out of a need for researchers to try to understand the mechanisms through which certain groups of people experienced various degrees of health and illness (Raphael, 2006).

Wilkinson (2005), a leading social determinants of health researcher, characterized the most “critical” social determinants in terms of being “intensely social risk factors” (p.

25), two of which relate to being single. The first “risk factor” identified by Wilkinson was

“low social status”. According to Wilkinson, “low social status” is “less a matter of low material living standards themselves, than of their social consequences, such as feeling looked down upon, having an inferior position in the social hierarchy, and subordination”.

The second equally salient “risk factor” was identified to be “poor affiliations of all kinds”

(p. 25), and “being single” was identified to be emblematic of being poorly-affiliated.

Through the social determinants of health framework, singleness is understood in terms of

“risk factors”, and by virtue of being ‘poorly affiliated’ and of low social status, ‘being single’ is viewed negatively as a position of lack and vulnerability, and associated with poor health. Following the logic of the social determinants of health framework, the situation of single people collectively is considered antithetical to ‘well-being’, and of being more

4 In health settings, through objectivist ways of knowing, ‘a problem’ is viewed to be “the existence of an objectively-given, concretely real, damaging or threatening condition” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2009, p. 150). Determined by “the expert” armed with scientific insight and empirical evidence, in the objectivist school of thought (a variant of the functionalist paradigm), “social problems are those social conditions identified by scientific inquiry and values as detrimental to human well-being” (citing Manis). Groups that are identified as “social problems”, are thus viewed to be “largely a product of dysfunctions, social disorganization, role and value conflicts, and violation of norms” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2009, p. 150).

20 conducive to ‘ill-being’ and poor health. Being single is thus collectively viewed as a position of risk and vulnerability.5

2.2.1 Limitations of Positivist Approaches.

Theoretical and methodological commitments to positivism shape and limit claims made in this body of literature. Positivist ways of knowing require categories like ‘single’ to be instrumentally-defined, distinct, stable, universal, and objective (Bailey, 1994; Bowker &

Star, 2000). For groups to be compared, group consensus or within-group sameness is problematically assumed. As research findings are applicable to one hundred percent of a specified group, positivist ways of knowing do not account for the influence of context on experience or within group variation. Conceptualized as a marital status categorical ‘fact’, positivist-informed research about singleness is assumed to be unmediated by the research subject, researcher, or the research context, and issues of complexity related to difference, diversity, or lived experience are not attended to.

To be coded in terms of ‘marital status’ is also not conceptually or methodologically neutral. Historically, the term ‘marital’ comes from the Latin marītālis, which means

“conjugal, nuptial, of a married woman, of or belonging to a husband” (Oxford English

Dictionary, 2000), and so the term is neither ahistorical, apolitical, or gender neutral. Viewed conceptually as an interpretive ‘schema’ (Bowker & Star, 2000; see also Foucault, 1991), being ‘married’ becomes the default and privileged status, against which all other ‘status’ categories are measured or marked.6 As Stein (1981) put it, “It is a testament to the

5 When presenting early versions of this research to OTs, when the research group was identified to be ‘older single women’, the research was assumed to be salient on the grounds that older single women were ‘at risk’ and a ‘vulnerable’ group. 6 Brake (2012) critiqued the disproportionate focus on amorous romantic love and marital relationships by coining the term “amatonormativity” (p. 88). ‘Amatonormativity’, modelled on the term ‘heteronormativity’, is “the assumption that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universal

21 imperialism of marriage that singles are regarded as a residual category” (p. 9, italics added).

Furthermore, as a residual category to marriage, ‘single’ becomes consequentially defined in negative terms (i.e., as ‘never-married’, ‘un-married, or ‘not or never legally married’) (Lewis, 1994). As Hertel, Schütz, DePaulo, Morris, and Stucke (2007) observed, when ‘being married’ is the assumed privileged status or self-evident norm, this in turn means that those who are ‘un-married’ become “defined in terms of what they are not, or what they do not have” (p. 140). Viewed not as a taken-for-granted fact, but as an interpretive schema, ‘marital status’ valorizes marriage, and sets ‘single’ up in value-laden terms as being outside the norm, or as something “inadequate’, missing, incomplete or damaged” (Bell & Yans, 2008, p. 10).7

Categories are the principal building blocks in many areas of health research, and as

Potter and Wetherell (2003) stated, people are taken to be members of relatively enduring social categories and by virtue of their category membership, inferences are made from the attributes of individuals to the attributes of the rest of the category. Categories can come to represent people. If older single women are collectively understood to be lonely, sad, failures, and an ‘at risk’ and ‘vulnerable’ ‘problem group’, this will be assumed of all single women. In other words, there is a close and deeply problematic relationship between categories and identities, between the category labels that are attached to people, and who

goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types” (pp. 88–89). 7 Research studies involving human subjects rely on categories and category membership, and ‘marital status’ as a schema involves categories that are naturalized (Bowker & Starr, 1999; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Billig, 1999; Shoebridge, 2012a). Applying what Billig referred to as the “bureaucratic model of thought” (1987, p.158), categories are conceptually and theoretically never neutral, although they may be ‘invisible’ because they are thought to be ‘natural’ (Bowker & Starr, 2000). In the demographic and quantitative research literature, ‘marital status’ categories are canonized as facts (Bowker & Starr, 2000), or as unquestioned self- evident doxa (Bourdieu, 1996).

22 they then are assumed to be, which create conflicts of different kinds.8 Individuals will be assumed to be representative members of the category ‘single women’, and will be viewed and treated accordingly (as suggested in epigraph 5).

For people who are identified (or identify themselves) as ‘single’, whether ‘never married’, ‘divorced’, ‘separated’, or ‘widowed’, categories are never just mere facts. As

Bowker & Star (1999) suggested, schemas (and categories) are entities that have consequences in the social world (such as being seen as ‘inadequate’ or ‘abnormal). Schemas such as ‘marital status’, and categories such as ‘single’ or ‘never-married’ thus have consequences that people have to manage, negotiate, and experience all at once (Bowker &

Star, 2000). As the speaker ‘Lynn’ showed in epigraph 4, classifications (and categories) have their ‘dark side’, and as people can “socialize themselves to the attributes of the category” (Bowker & Star, 2000, p. 230), classification can impose a great deal of suffering.

As an example of a ‘power technology’ (Foucault, 1991), ‘marital status’ thus has an effect in constructing a particular social and moral order (Bowker & Star, 2000), and one that inherently privileges marriage.

As a schema, ‘marital status’ creates a kind of hierarchy between women, which positions those who have ‘never-married’ with the least or lowest privilege or status

(DePaulo, 2006; see also Wilkinson, 2005).9 Indeed, the terms ‘widowed’, ‘divorced’, and

8 Conflicts are created when category associations are imposed on people, which creates dilemmas in how people respond. As Burr (2003, citing Potter & Wetherell) stated, “ the kinds of ways we have available for talking about ourselves gives rise to our experience of ourselves as human beings” (p. 138). 9 The term ‘status’ can also be considered a schema. Legally, ‘status’ means “[t]he fact or position of belonging to a group which is subject to certain legal rights or limitations; the legal classification corresponding to this; a person's legal condition with regard to freedom of movement or action, citizenship, the age of majority, etc.” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2012), but as the social determinants of health literature above illustrated, ‘status’ also refers to a person’s “[s]ocial or professional rank, position, or standing; a person's relative importance” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2012). To be ‘single’ is therefore to occupy a lower position

‘separated’ can be thought of as being post-marital categories. However, while women who are widowed, divorced, and separated may have ‘failed’ to remain married, as signifiers, the terms themselves signal that they had been married at one time, which offers a degree of protection from the most potentially damaging negative stereotypes attached to women who have never married

The positivist literature is also problematic because there is often a reification of cultural stereotypes about single women. Unmarried women are referred to as ‘anomalous’,

‘stigmatized’, and ‘deviant’ (Cwikel, et al, 2006; Braito & Anderson, 1983; Newtson &

Keith, 1997). They are referenced in derogatory terms such as ‘spinsters’ and ‘old maids’ and

‘lonely losers’ (Newtson & Keith, 1997; Stein, 1975, 1976). Pudrovska et al. (2006) noted that “lifelong singleness represents a failure to achieve the highest goal to which women should aspire” (2006, p.S320), and in a gerontology textbook by Aiken, traditional stereotypes of the “elderly spinster” were noted to be “that of a lonesome, ego-centric, neurotic, irresponsible, or immoral deviant” (1995, p.117).

The persistent referencing of largely derogatory (and often strongly derogatory) socio-cultural stereotypes of single women in positivist-informed studies calls into question assumptions that positivist research is value free, objective (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), and stands apart from the influence of cultural norms (Denzin, 2001). As the epigraphs and the quote from Aiken illustrate, the danger of universalizing and of instrumentalizing the category ‘single’ is in how such approaches can perpetuate reductive and insulting portrayals of single women. Presented authoritatively as objective ‘truths’, such representations are far from being ideologically neutral, and they have powerful effects in terms of knowledge about of importance than those who are married, but the ‘never-married’ can be considered the lowest rank, position, or standing.

24 singleness and how single women are understood and then treated. Furthermore, because marriage and the nuclear family have tended to dominate research on adults, as DePaulo,

Moran, and Trimberger (2007) claimed, women who are single are either greatly underrepresented, or misrepresented in scholarship and in public policy (see also Roseneil,

2006; Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004; Simpson, 2006; Trimberger, 2005; Wilkinson, 2012,

2013).

A final example will help to illustrate this point further. Chandler (1991) identified that single women are viewed as non-participants in family life. But what is ‘family’?

Associated with a constellation of words such as ‘household’ or ‘home’, as Bourdieu observed, the usual definition of “the family” is “a set of related individuals linked either by alliance (marriage) or filiation” (1996, p.19), and although single people have affiliations to

‘families’ of origin, they do not have ‘family’ through marriage.10 Yet notions of family remain tightly bound to notions of marriage (or marriage-like relationships). The landmark

U.S. Supreme Court ruling that brought marriage equality to fifty states made this abundantly clear: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotions, sacrifice and family” (III), and “Marriage is a keystone to our social order” (Kennedy, 2015, III, italics added). Although equality rights between different people are certainly to be applauded, ‘marriage equality’ still disadvantages people who do not couple or marry, who are positioned outside the bounds of family and thus are perceived to be a potential threat to the kind of social order Kennedy was referring to.11 In social

10 See Roseneil & Budgeon (2004) for a critique of traditional heteronormative understandings of ‘the nuclear family’ in light of far-reaching social change in contemporary cultures of intimacy and care in the early 21st Century. 11 See Hancock (2017) and DePaulo (2006, 2011) for a ‘singlist’ critique of the privileging of legal, housing, workplace benefits to those who are married, and Brake (2012).

25 determinants of health language, single people are seen as “poorly affiliated” because they are viewed as lacking the kinds of affiliations that count (i.e., affiliations that are assumed to be associated with marriage and/or having children).12 What becomes of people (including single people) whose “cultures of intimacy and care” (Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004), p. 135) may be centered around friendship and social networks, rather than traditional notions of coupledom and family forms which are based on sexual intimacy and co-habitation (see also

Brake, 2012; Jamieson, 1998; Lewis, 2001; Macklin, 1987; McDill, Hall, & Turell, 2006)?

As Wilkinson (2012) critiqued, governments recognize (and encourage) certain kinds of intimate relationships over others (see also Moran, 2004)

In the arena of health care, ‘family’ is a highly important classificatory concept.

Services are identified as ‘family-centered’, there is an emphasis on ‘family’ caregivers, and later life and institutional care are expected to be supported by ‘family’ members. But as

Bourdieu (1996) noted, the term ‘family’ is both a description and a prescription. To either have a ‘family’ or not have a family is taken to mean certain things. Despite dramatic changes in recent years in how ‘families’ are configured (Lahad & Hazan, 2014), and the growing recognition of diverse ‘family forms’ (Allen, 2000; Beck-Gernsheim, 1998;

Budgeon, 2008; Jamieson & Simpson, 2013; Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004; Simpson, 2003,

2006; Taylor, 2011, A. Taylor, 2012; Wilkinson, 2012, 2013), and that people can have

‘families’ and not just one kin-related ‘family’ (Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004; see also Riggs &

Peel, 2016, and Kroløkke, Myong, Adrian, Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, 2016), irrespective of diverse social practices, single people are still often considered ‘un-familied’. This is, in-part, perhaps due to historical legacy.

12 Having children today no longer requires marriage or coupledom (see Chambers, 2006; Stokoe, 2003; Naidoo, 1998).

One dictionary definition of ‘single’ (as a noun) is “an unmarried or unaccompanied man or woman; a person living alone”, and ‘singleness’ is “the state or condition of being unmarried, or of not marrying again; celibacy” (Single., 1989, italics added). ‘Singleness’ is also “the quality of being single; the fact of consisting of one in number or kind; oneness”

(Singleness.,1989, italics added), and so the association between single people, solitariness, separateness, and aloneness is suggested by historical constructions relating to acceptable societal organization and structure. Single people today are often framed as ‘isolates’, who are devoid of social connection, rather than being framed in a different way, as potentially negotiating different kinds of social contracts with others (see Cagen, 2006; Brake, 2012;

Notkins, 2008, 2014; Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004;Watters, 2003).13

There is therefore a need to question traditional understandings of what singleness means and who single people are, and to ‘denaturalize’ the idea that older single women are collectively a ‘vulnerable’ and ‘at risk’ group. An expanded ‘grammar’ around singleness and single people needs to be developed. This grammar needs to be informed by alternative theorizations, and by applying alternative theorization to subjective understandings of singleness, or how singleness is ‘experienced’ by people.14

In contrast to positivist-informed research, qualitative studies, which are framed by a naturalistic paradigm, have explored singleness as a set of experiences in context and with reference to “meanings and purposes attached by human actors to their activities” (Guba &

Lincoln, 1994, p.106). Qualitative research is epistemologically and methodologically distinct from epidemiological and other kinds of quantitative research (Eakin &

13 The social network literature identifies that many single women have rich and varied sets of social connections (see Connidis, 2010; Connidis & McMullin, 1994). 14 What ‘experience’ is assumed to mean is subject to theoretical interpretation (see Silverman, 2004; Allen & Cloyes, 2005).

Mykhalovskiy, 2003). Through a focus on language-based ‘data’ (Eakin & Mykhalovskiy,

2003), qualitative studies champion the ‘subjects’ point of view (Silverman, 2004).

Qualitative research also has the potential to be a morally and politically transformative way to explore diverse meanings and experiences (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005), which, given the ideological politics that surround women’s singleness, offers a promising alternative. It is to this literature that I turn to next.

2.3 Section Two: Qualitative Studies of Singleness

Broadly speaking, there have been two main approaches to the qualitative study of singleness. One approach has collapsed distinctions between the experience of singleness across groups (i.e., no distinctions are made between the experiences of widows, women who are divorced, and those who have never married) (Lewis & Moon, 1997; Reynolds, 2004,

2008; Sandfield, 2003, Sandfield, & Percy, 2003; Shepel, 2008; Zajicek & Koski, 2003). The second approach considers the experiences of each group to be qualitatively and situationally distinct and separate (Allen, 1989; Allen & Pickett, 1984, 1987; Baumbusch, 2004; Dalton,

1992; Evertsson & Nyman, 2013; Ferguson, 2000; Macvarish, 2006; O’Brien, 1987,1991;

Sharp & Ganong, 2007; Simpson, 2003, 2006). For widows and women who become divorced, for example, singleness can be considered a state that is ‘transitioned’ into following the end of marriage (Martin Matthews, 1991; Van den Hoonaard, 2001). In contrast, life-long single women are the least researched and yet perhaps most consistently stigmatized (Allen, 1989; Barak, 2014; Byrne, 2008; Collins, 2009, 2011; Holden, 2005;

Lahad, 2013, 2014, 2017; Shoebridge, 2012a, 2012b; Shepel, 2008, 2009; Simpson, 2003,

2006; Timonen & Doyle, 2013). Although such women negotiate singleness on an ongoing basis over a lifetime, the absence of a marked transition into singleness may paradoxically

28 render the experience the least visible. As Allen (1989) stated, “there are no rites of passage for never married women” (p. 13) (see also Lewis, 1994).

Singleness has yet to be explored qualitatively in occupational therapy15, but a search of the interdisciplinary literature located eight publications exploring various aspects of lifelong singleness in later life. All used interviews, and most focused exclusively on the experiences of white heterosexual urban women (Allen, 1989; Allen & Pickett, 1987;

Baumbusch, 2004; O’Brien, 1991; Rubinstein, Alexander, Goodman & Luborsky, 1991;

Simon, 1997). The most frequently-cited study was conducted by Gubrium (1975), who controversially proposed that single elders fall into a certain social ‘type’. Single elders

(gender unspecified) were proposed by Gubrium to have a distinct type of social personality generating routines (also unspecified) in everyday life that were distinct from other older people, including those married, widowed, and divorced. Gubrium proposed lifelong singleness in older age as a kind of ‘premium’ in that single elders did not experience major disruptions to routine and lifestyle following spousal death or marital dissolution. As a

‘social type’, Gubrium claimed that single elders were most likely to be ‘lifelong isolates’ who did not commonly identify themselves as being lonely, but highly valued the independence of being single.

Gubrium’s characterization of single elders in terms of social type is consistent with research trends of the 1970’s. Single people (like disabled people and people of color) were often viewed in terms of attributes associated with their ‘essential nature’. However, as a research position, essentialism has been strongly critiqued for producing representations that trap people inside limiting and pathologizing descriptions (Burr, 2003), which in turn

15 A few studies focused on issues of occupation in relation to ‘marital status’ (see McIntyre & Howie, 2002; Ludwig, 1998; Singleton & Harvey, 1995).

29 perpetuates and reifies existing stereotypes. Essentialist approaches also serve to confirm

(rather than challenge) conventional understandings of those sitting outside mainstream society, and do not allow for alternative views of the world (Hammersley, 2008). Although

Gubrium’s study has remained influential, the typification of single elders was directly contested by Rubinstein (1987). Rubinstein’s research substantively challenged Gubrium’s claims that single elders were lifelong isolates, who were rarely lonely because they had not undergone the experience of significant losses and bereavement in later life. Rubinstein expressed concern that essentialist research approaches were not consistent with the broader goal of gerontology to “counter myths and unsubstantiated generalizations about the elderly”

(p. 108). He also identified that the perpetuation of unsubstantiated generalizations was an especially important issue for single older people because they were “not only subject to the common stereotypes of old age per se, but may also be subject to a special class of negative images associated with singlehood” (p.108). Given the impact that negative stereotypes have on people’s lives, Rubinstein called for gerontological researchers and practitioners to be especially sensitive to the differences and multiple factors shaping the lives and identities of single elders.

Despite the important strengths of Rubinstein’s research, he shares with Gubrium a topical approach to interviewing single elders. The focus was pre-determined, and based on presumed key features of a single life in old age (i.e., social isolation, loneliness, and the effects of loss and bereavement). In and of themselves, the studies could not open up different understandings because they are framed around previously assumed norms or conventional wisdom, rather than from the interpretive perspective of single elders themselves. Other qualitative studies have, however, taken a broad and more inclusive

30 approach, drawing on retrospective experiences of singleness over the life course (Allen,

1989; Allen & Pickett, 1987; Baumbusch, 2004, O’Brien, 1991; Simon, 1987). Simon (1987) for example, took a biographical approach, and presented study findings organized under general chapter themes such as family of origin, childhood, friends, work life, retirement, and attitudes to marriage and singleness. Allen (1989) and Allen and Pickett (1984, 1987) also undertook life history interviews. They interviewed thirty widowed and never-married older working class American white women. Using family life course theory, they found interesting variations and similarities in the lives of both groups of women.

Although broadly focused, a life history approach did (on the whole) generate richer and more complex accounts of singleness, especially when women’s lives were framed in relation to a combination of local, cultural, historical, and economic contexts.16 The studies did, to some extent, identify how events and social norms of the past shaped the present day circumstances of the participants (e.g., the impact the Great Depression on single women’s lives, how women were legally obligated to give up careers when they married, and expected to be parental and family caregivers).

Life histories/life story narratives also have the potential to emphasize the cumulative nature of human experience by establishing links between biography and history (Allen,

1989; Allen & Pickett, 1984, 1987) in order to facilitate different and more complex understandings about the lives of single women, especially as the historical conditions and societal constraints on single women in the past may be unknown and largely unimaginable today. But, qualitative studies have been broadly focused with scant descriptions of participants or the context in which they lived, and little specific detail or in-depth

16 By their nature, interviews are retrospective, and is it not always practical or feasible to restrict or contain the focus of accounts to a particular age or specified time period.

31 explorations of individual life histories or, importantly, a focus on the language they used to talk about their lives.

While life history methodology allows for a more complex reading of the lives of single women, the studies have nevertheless been limited by an epistemological commitment to realism. Qualitative interviews are assumed to be a neutral method of data collection offering unmediated access into how life ‘really is’ for older single women. Interview questions are understood as passive filters towards some collective truth (Silverman, 1993) about single seniors, and studies implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) have sought causal explanations for why women remained single. Participant quotes are viewed as being self- explanatory, and the meaning of ‘single’ as a construct is taken to be unitary, constant, and self-evident. By theorizing interview data in terms of a resource that offered direct insight into subjectivity and lived experience (Silverman, 1993), alternative interactional dimensions to interviews have not been considered. For example, following the ‘linguistic turn’, interviews can be viewed as negotiated social encounters and as local and collaborative constructed ventures (Rapley, 2007; Silverman, 1993, 2000; Fontana & Frey, 2005, citing

Cicourel).

With the exception of Allen (1989), Allen and Pickett (1987), Rubinstein, Alexander,

Goodman, and Luborsky (1991), and Baumbusch (2004), the studies have largely been uninformed by theory, and are largely descriptive. Research representations also tend to default to rather mundane, narrowly-scripted, formulaic accounts of single women’s lives organized around pre-set themes, and rely on rather clichéd or morally-laden representations.

For example, single women are represented as ‘unclaimed treasures’ (Baumbusch, 2004),

‘rebels’ (Simon, 1987), or ‘social types’ (Gubrium, 1975). Although the studies have

32 generated a number of valuable insights into different dimensions of singleness, especially where the relationship between life histories has been linked to contextual features, overall, the tendency has been to default to culturally standard negative assumptions about singleness in later life, and claims around group sameness tend to overshadow issues of diversity and difference.

Furthermore, questions about singleness tend to be framed in terms of binaries (i.e., the benefits and challenges of singleness), which perpetuate images and narratives of singleness in terms of being ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The recognition of positive aspects complicates predominantly negative understandings, but any corrective potential is undermined by characterizations of the futures of older single women as unmitigated decline. By assuming an ‘age as decline narrative’ (Gullette, 2004) and the need for future professional care (see

O’Brien, 1991; Baumbusch, 2004), there has been little exploration of what singleness means to participants, what is important to them, or how they navigate and negotiate their lives as single women.

Although the studies were intended to challenge the reproduction and perpetuation of negative stereotypes of single women, the challenge could have been stronger. For example, if participant views and experiences diverged from stereotypical expectations, this was taken to be evidence or proof of the ‘untruth’ of stereotypes (O’Brien, 1991; Baumbusch, 2004). In other words, the positivist assumption that stereotypes represent a truth about people was imported, unquestioned, into qualitative studies and interpretations. In the studies informed by theory, however, alternative views of singleness were generated. For example, although it was a comparative study, Allen (1989) and Allen and Pickett (1984, 1987) drew on life- course theory to strongly reframe singleness as an ‘alternate stream’ rather than as deviance

33 in relation to the family life-course. Rubinstein et al. (1991) also pointed out the limitations of cultural ideologies of kinship that placed single women in a restricted position to negotiate for potential future informal care support in later life. Using American kinship theory, the key relationships of single women were re-conceptualized to include kin and non-kin, thus strongly challenging the assumption that single women in older age were bereft of significant relationships or family.

Finally, because of a realist orientation, questions were assumed to be routes to factual information about experience. But, even simple preliminary questions about singleness can be deeply problematic. In a number of qualitative studies, it has been standard practice to ask single women ‘Why’ they never married. Aside from the problem of researching an ‘in-action’ (the not-being-married), why-formatted interrogatives display a challenging stance towards being single as the accountable event (Bolden & Robinson,

2011). The question inadvertently reinforces the presumption that marriage is normal and that being single is abnormal. Respondents are required to select a socially acceptable response couched in terms of justifiable ‘reasons’. As Budgeon (2008) noted, “Individuals who are not conventionally coupled often find themselves having to account for their status as though being uncoupled was a deeply problematic condition” (p. 208). As DePaulo and

Morris (2005a) claimed, married people are not challenged to account for their status as ‘un- single’ because they are not “in violation of a taken-for-granted norm” (Budgeon, 2008, p.

308). In other words, the question is neither ideologically neutral, nor “innocent” (Steensig &

Drew, 2008, p.7; see also Butler, 2004).

Realist analyses take questions and responses to questions at face value, but what this approach fails to consider is the highly problematic challenge of women being able to

34 account positively about being single (see Reynolds, 2004; Reynolds, Wetherell & Taylor,

2007). As Budgeon (2008) observed, “there are very few positive representations of uncoupled lifestyles available as resources for people to draw upon in constructing a positive identity” (p. 209). If this is the case for single women in mid-adulthood (Budgeon, 2008), then how would this affect the resources that older single women could draw upon in order to tell their life (her)stories of singleness to OTs ?17 Modernist qualitative studies assume that questions and answers are value free, but as Lincoln and Guba (1985) noted, all research is value-laden, “facts are facts only within some theoretical framework” (p. 107), and some identities are more highly valued than others.

Social constructionist informed studies about singleness have importantly challenged established understandings of singleness, generating alternative narratives (Denzin &

Lincoln, 2005). Rather than assuming that single women are a ‘social problem’, and especially so in later life due to the expected absence of adult children and other ‘family’ to care for them as they age, a social constructionist approach reframes the ‘problem’ of singleness in terms of discourse and social construction (Macvarish, 2006). As Macvarish clarified, in much of the recent sociological literature, the ‘problem’ of the single woman is seen to reside “in her social construction; her stigmatization and marginalization as an

‘other’, relative to the norms of heterosexual partnership and motherhood” (Macvarish, 2006, p 1). As Lai, Lim, and Higgins (2015) have argued, “the marginalization of singleness as a troubled cultural category” is one “in which single individuals are stigmatized as the abject other as a consequence of their lack of conformity to “dominant heterogender arrangements”

(p. 15). To date, social constructionist studies have largely focused on exploring the

17 Mattingly (1998) stated that an awareness of a person’s life history is essential to the OT therapeutic process.

35 experiences of present day young to middle-aged single women. Aside from the restricted age focus, and a lack of differentiation between groups of single women, these studies offer a theoretically rich, and methodologically novel ways of approaching singleness research. It is to this body of research that I turn to next.

2.3.1 Social constructionist studies of singleness.

Reflecting increasing research attention on the international rise in numbers of single people living alone (Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, n.d.; Chandler,

Williams, Maconachie, Collett, & Dodgeon, 2004; Christiansen, 2009; Gove & Hughes,

1980; Gustavson & Lee, 2004; Jamieson & Simpson, 2013; Klinenberg, 2012; Macvarish,

2006; Ogg, 2003; Simpson, 2003,), an extensive body of interdisciplinary research has explored singleness experience in early to middle adulthood (Barack, 2014; Lahad, 2012,

2013, 2014, 2016, 2017; Simpson, 2015; Sandfield, 2003; Sandfield & Percy, 2003;

Shoebridge, 2012 a & b).18 Within this larger body of work, one collection of publications stands out. This research is framed by a relatively new constructionist theoretical

/methodological approach called ‘discursive (social) psychology’ (DP) or ‘critical discursive psychology’ (CDP) (Edley, 2001; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Wetherell, 1998). DP/CDP was developed by UK theorists Margaret Wetherell and Jonathan Potter (see Wetherell 1998;

Wetherell & Potter, 1988, 1992). According to Reynolds (2004, 2008), who pioneered the application of DP/CDP to the study of women’s singleness, critical discursive psychology offers an eclectic and inclusive approach to discourse analysis, blending theoretical ideas

18 Most studies have focused on the experiences of largely ‘white’ heterosexual middle-class single women. See Staples (1981), for early exploration of “The World of Black Singles”, Van den Hoonaard (2010) for older men’s experiences of widowerhood. Singlehood for men has been explored by Bourdieu (2008); Cobb (2007, 2012); de Jong Gierveld, 2003; Lawton & Callister, 2010; Reed (2016); Scheper-Hughes, 1979; and Waehler (1996). See Hostetler (2001, 2004, 2009) on the experiences of single gay men, and Hostetler & Cohler (1997) on partnership and singlehood in the lesbian and gay life-course.

36 from speech act theory, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis. Informed by critical theory, these studies challenge established understandings of singleness, and by taking a novel and sophisticated approach to data analysis, new and important insights can be generated into the challenges faced by people in talking about or negotiating their identities

(Edley, 2001; Reynolds, 2004; Taylor, 2001).

Following the social constructionist ‘turn to language’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), discourse analysis (of the kind informed by a discursive social psychological framework) focuses on both textual content (i.e., the specifics of what is said) and on contextual issues

(e.g., what kinds of questions are being asked, what is the social setting, who is participating). Analytic attention is thus paid to the particularities of discourse, the set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements, clusters of terms, descriptions, and figures of speech (Burr, 2003; Potter & Wetherell, 1987) associated with a topic, an especially important feature given the historical stigmatization of women’s singleness but also the interpretive context of talk. DP/CDP is thus a flexible theoretical framework that facilitates an appreciation of micro-perspectives, for example, individual life histories viewed from a narrative discursive perspective (see Reynolds & Taylor, 2004;

Reynolds, et al., 2007)19, in relation to larger macro-contextual features, such as specifics within the social, historical, cultural, and economic context. In addition, being grounded in critical theory, DP/CDP is a framework that invites critical and reflective thought on the part of the researcher, as well as a theoretical openness towards understandings of the category

‘single’.

19 Life histories or narratives are considered to be a socially-situated action and identity performances.

Attending to the ‘function of language’ (Potter, Wetherell, Gill, & Edwards, 1990), the “action-orientation of language” (Burr, 2003, p. 61), and to what can be viewed as the

‘work’ being done in interview talk rather than viewing what people say as directly representing the truth of experience, is a significant departure from how interview material is commonly considered in qualitative OT studies. Although Frank and Polkinghorne (2010) called for OTs to attend to the ‘language turn’ in order to generate more sophisticated and nuanced studies that point to complexity, and OTs and other rehabilitation practitioners are drawing on an ever increasing range of theories and methodologies ( including discourse analysis) (see Ballinger & Payne, 2000; Carpenter & Suto, 2008; Cook, 2001; Finlay &

Ballinger, 2006; Hammell & Carpenter, 2004; Hammell, Carpenter, & Dyck, 2000; Nayar &

Stanley, 2015; see also Nicholls, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, and Gibson, 2015), realist frameworks of understandings still tend to dominate. But DP/CDP informed studies by

Reynolds (2004, 2008), Reynolds and Wetherell (2003), Reynolds et al. (2007), and Moore and Radke (2005) demonstrate what realist studies of singleness cannot; the kinds of identity negotiations undertaken by single women when talking about singleness.

By attending to language and discourse using a DP/CDP framework, Reynolds and others were able to offer a radically different and exciting new way of thinking about and researching singleness. If singleness in the lives of more than just older women is to be explored and better understood in OT then following Reynolds’ work, it is critical that issues of language–especially the resources constraints and management associated with ‘singleness talk’–need to be taken into account.

While DP/CDP-informed studies offer a theoretically rich way of researching singleness, existing studies are nevertheless limited. The experiences of different groups of

38 single women are often not distinguished from one another, and there has been an exclusive focus on younger to mid-adult singlehood. For a woman to be a single at twenty, forty, and eighty years of age is not the same, and to be single at twenty or eighty in 2018 is not the same as being twenty or eighty in 1950. Yet ‘age’ as an important experiential and existential parameter has been left unanalyzed, and has been conceptualized narrowly in terms of additional chronological years and not as a social construction (Hazan, 1994), or, as feminist gerontologists would argue, a unique social location (Calasanti & Slevin, 2006). Existing studies acknowledge that the meanings and experiences of singleness change over the life course, and that age-related expectations are powerful determinants of how individuals perceive themselves and each other (Davies, 2003; Dalton, 1992). However, the social landscape in which young/middle aged women have experienced singleness has been assumed and largely unarticulated, although there is acknowledgement that the present day is a time of significant social change where the landscape and cultures of intimacy and care

(Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004) are in flux. For example, unlike today, in the 1950s, when present-day seniors were in young adulthood, single women were unlikely to be mothers, unlikely to be financially independent of their families, less likely to own property, and less likely to live alone (Fraser, 2001).

Singleness is recognized to matter in an age-related way (Reynolds, 2004), but an exclusive focus on early or mid-adulthood singleness in the context of post-modern socio- cultural contexts leaves out the perspective of single elders who have lived through decades of social and political change. Although the perspectives of older single women today would in all likelihood be different from young or adult single women, older women are still as much a part of contemporary society as the young. Phenomena like ‘urban tribes’ (Watters,

2003), and ‘quirkyalones’ (Cagan, 2006) may be on the cutting edge of social change and experimentation, but patterns of social change do not suddenly occur; they build up over time. Single women who have negotiated their lives post-WWII, and through the 1950’s and the post-war backlash that followed (Faludi, 1992), and through the changing opportunities brought about by the civil rights movement and the feminist revolution in the 1960’s, in many ways have a unique perspective on singleness. As single ‘elders’, they can be considered ‘pioneers’ of singleness for women today, and thus their perspectives could offer a sense of context, change, and development that is currently missing from the young/mid- adult singleness scholarship.20

Returning to the context of OT, what would the significance be of a DP/CDP- informed study of singleness? In recent years, there have been calls by some OT scholars to question the privileging of biomedical ways of knowing within the profession (Hammell,

2004; Iwama, 2004, 2006; Kinsella & Whiteford, 2008; Molke & Laliberte Rudman, 2009;

Phelan & Kinsella, 2009) and to develop ‘critical’ approaches to practice (Hammell &

Iwama, 2011). Critical OT, a term used in a seminal paper by Hammell and Iwama (2011), draws on established ideas and ways of thinking within the social sciences in order to recognize and confront societal injustices and inequalities. While OT is a profession committed to equitable inclusive practice and the recognition of diversity (ACOTRO, 2014;

20 There is a burgeoning Social History literature on women’s singleness which offers valuable and fascinating insights into how single women have been viewed and discussed in different time periods. For Canadian sources see: Chamber, 2006, 2007; Campbell, 2009; Glew, 2017; Macdonald, 2013; Pedersen, 1996; Stairs, 2004; Strange, 1995; and Tallentire, 2006, 2008. Other valuable sources include: Anderson, 1984; Beattie, 2007, 2008; Bennett and Froide, 1999; Bijsterveld, Horstman, and Mesman, 2000; Chambers-Schiller, 1984; Coontz, 2004, 2005; Cornel, 1984; Davidoff, Doolittle, Fink, and Holden, 1999; Dollard, 2012; Froide, 1999, 2001, 2005; Gottard, 2001; Glew 2016; Hill, 2001, 2014; Holden, 2005, 2008; Holden, Froide and Hannam, 2008; Hufton, 1984; Israel, 2002; Jeffries, 1985; Karras, 1999; Lanser, 1999; Levitan, 2008; Moss, 1988; Oram, 1992; Primo, 1990; Rosenthal, 2002; Seal, 2009; Shoebridge, 2012b; Thane & Evans, 2012; Vicinus, 1985; and Watkins, 1984.

Kirsh, Trentham, & Cole, 2006), ‘diversity’ as a construct can be conceptualized in different ways. In OT, understandings of diversity have been limited to issues of culture, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and class (Kirsh, et al., 2006). By reconceptualizing singleness in terms of ‘identity’, an identity informed by both gender and age (and other social locations), and by attending to the meanings and experiences of a previously unrecognized and stigmatized group of women, this research would contribute to the modest but growing body of critical work in OT. It would also build on the work by Reynolds

(2004), which to date is by far the most insightful, nuanced and complex analysis of the subjective experiences of singleness found in the research literature. There is a complex relationship between issues of health, well-being, and identity, and by attending to the way single women navigate this discursive terrain, and by exploring the relationship between singleness, well-being, and daily life, new understandings of singleness will be generated.

Therapists are both subject to, and are creators of, cultural context (Reynolds, 2002).

Only by recognizing differences between groups of women, and by understanding how different identities are enacted by different groups of people will OT’s commitment to acknowledge diversity be honored (ACOTRO, 2014). Furthermore, it is only by foregrounding the social and cultural experience of singleness in the lives of women, that it can be recognized that persons are shaped by more than their institutional and physical environment (ACOTRO, 2014). This research will not only problematize current conceptualizations of singleness by including gendered subjective experience, but will address the current invisibility of singleness in the rehabilitation science and OT research landscape. This research is intended to put singleness on the OT map. In the context of rising numbers of single people, alongside the developing identity politics that surround

41 singlehood, there is now a pressing need to open up a new and critical line of inquiry about singleness in OT, and to open up a new critical space for research and dialogue about issues related to diversity and difference, and how as a profession we can practice in ways that do not oppress or harm the people we are mandated to provide care to.

CHAPTER 3 THEORY/METHODOLOGY

In my interdisciplinary experience, choosing between theory and methodology, and treating them as distinct, or touting one as better that the others is absurd and says more about how disciplines discipline themselves than it does about qualitative inquiry. –Maria Mayan, 2009, p. 33

…every theory provides both a way of seeing and a way of not seeing. Conceptual frameworks operate like lenses, bringing into focus certain aspects of …experience but blurring others. –Ruth Ray, 1996, p. 674 (citing Stoller)

…the main commitment of discursive psychology is to study talk in interaction. –Margaret Wetherell, 2007, p. 665 We live in discourse as fish swim in water. –David Lodge, Deaf Sentence, 2008 p. 29

3.1 Introduction

In the previous chapter, I identified the need for a critical approach to understanding singleness, and following Reynolds (2004), Discursive Psychology (DP) or Critical

Discursive Psychology (CDP) as it is sometimes referred to, DP/CDP for short, was identified as the theory/methodology (or theoretical position or perspective) I selected for the study. As the second epigraph (above) suggests, the division and the nature of the relationship between theory, methodology, and methods has been a subject of debate in qualitative inquiry, and the demarcation lines of where theory and methodology begin and end, and where methodology blends into methods, have been disputed. Following Mayan

(2009), who argues that “method exists within methodology” (p. 31), in this chapter I focus on outlining DP/CDP as a theoretical framework/perspective, whereas the following chapter titled ‘Methods’, will describe the research strategies (such as data collection and sampling) that were used to implement the study.

42 43

Whether identified as method, methodology, or theory/methodology, discourse analysis as a qualitative approach to research is relatively uncommon in OT. The first general introductory review of discourse analysis in OT was published by Ballinger and Payne

(2000) (see also Cheek, 2004), and although the number of discourse analytic studies has continued to grow, the most commonly used approaches in OT and in Physiotherapy from

1997-2010 were conversation analysis (CA) and Foucauldian discourse analysis (FCDA)

(Macdonald, 2011).21 Although discursive approaches have been applied to a wide variety of

‘health’ and health-related topics such as cancer (Potter & Wetherell, 1994; Rennoldson,

Brennan, Tolosa, & Ismail, 2013), approaches to care (Forbat, 2005), illness narratives

(Horton-Salway, 2001; Rennoldson, Brennan, Tolosa, & Ismail, 2013), mental health

(Geogaca & Avdi, 2011), fat studies (Wetherell, 1996a), health professional communication

(Kvarnstrom & Cedersund, 2006), and health-care utilization by men (Noone & Stephens,

2008), DP/CDP is a new and novel discourse analysis approach in OT.22 As with other kinds of analyses of discourse, DP/CDP is an approach that requires a radical epistemological shift

(Gill, 2000; Finlay & Ballinger, 2006) away from positivist ways of knowing.

Discourse analysis comes in a wide variety of forms. Of the fifty-seven different varieties proposed by Gill (2000), each takes up slightly different theoretical positions and stances. Although the primary focus of attention is on language or ‘discourse’, the label

‘discourse analysis’ can be applied in many different ways (Potter & Wetherell, 1994), and there is no simple or easy way to define or understand the term ‘discourse’ or methodologies

21 A scoping study mapped the uptake of discourse analysis as a ‘method/methodology’ of research in rehabilitation science. Between 1997 and 2010, fifty-three discourse analysis articles were published, most in non- OT/PT journals, and the majority of studies were conducted (and published) in Europe (not in the U.S or Canada) (Macdonald, 2011). 22 To my knowledge, the only other DP/CDP-informed (Master’s thesis) study in OT was conducted by Dixon (2013), who examined the discursive accounts of British OTs about issues related to professional identity.

44 commonly referred to as ‘discourse analysis’ (Edley, 2001). Consequently, ‘discourse analysis’ is best understood as an umbrella term for a wide variety of analytical principles and practices that are themselves underwritten by a multiplicity of different (and often contradictory) theoretical ideas and arguments (Edley, 2001).

With this in mind, and in order to lay the groundwork for the methods and analysis chapters that follow, the aim of this chapter is to map out the main theoretical commitments of DP/CDP. I will begin by briefly describing the context and history of the development of

DP/CDP and its disciplinary roots, followed by the identification of where DP/CDP overlaps, and is distinct from, the two related discursive traditions, namely FCDA and CA. Narrowing the field further, I will then lay out the key or central tenets of the theoretical/methodological landscape of DP/CDP. The implications for how important concepts such as ‘person/social subject/self’, ‘categories and categorization’, ‘identity’, ‘thinking and thought’, and finally

‘talk’ are understood will then be briefly discussed. Given the centrality of notions around

‘identity’ in this thesis, the implications for how identity is understood in DP/CDP are fleshed out in more detail. Following Reynolds (2004), a summary of how the theoretical commitments cash out in relation to the substantive topic of singleness is then provided, and, finally, the three analytical concepts or ‘tools’ in DP/CDP that flow from the theory will be identified and described. First, however, it is important to consider the background context out of which DP/CDP emerged.

3.2. Historical Background and Context

Discursive psychology (DP) or critical discursive psychology (CDP), as distinct from critical discourse analysis (CDA), is a theory/methodology that was developed in the field of

Social Psychology in the late 1980s, by Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell (Potter,

1988, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c,1996d, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c; Potter &

Wetherell, 1987, 1988, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2003; Wetherell, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2001a,

2001b, 2001c, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009a, 2009b; Wetherell & Potter, 1992, 1998). As a manifestation of the ‘turn to language’, ‘discourse’, and ‘culture’ across the social sciences

(Wetherell, 2007), DP/CDP was reinforced by the social constructionist movement in social, feminist and critical psychology. Following social constructionist thought, DP/CDP views knowledge as socially-constructed and interpretivist. The implications for Social Psychology were far-reaching. DP/CDP necessitated a radical re-visioning of many taken-for-granted

(psychological) constructs such as memory, attitudes, opinions, categories, social representations (Billig, 1991; Edwards 1991; Potter, 1996a), health support (Seymour-Smith,

2013) ; prejudice and stereotypes (Billig, 2009; Wetherell & Potter, 1992), and most importantly, identity (Reynolds, 2004; Taylor, 2005a, 2005b, 2010a, 2010b, 2013; Taylor &

Littleton, 2006; Tuffin, 2005a, 2005b; Wetherell, 1996a, 1996b, 2011).

DP/CDP developed in reaction to (and against) the dominance of ‘realist’-oriented approaches in psychology, specifically ‘cognitivism’ (see Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter &

Wetherell, 1987; Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002). 23 In simplified terms, cognitivism (and cognitivist approaches to language) are where “written and spoken language are seen as a reflection of an external world or the product of underlying mental representations of this world”, whereas “discursive psychology treats written and spoken language as constructions of the world oriented towards social action” (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 96). In DP/CDP,

‘talk’ about a phenomena (being ‘single’ for instance) is therefore viewed from a social constructionist perspective and not from a realist ontological or positivist perspective, which

23 The cognitivist paradigm has predominantly used experimental methods to examine cognitive processes such as perception, thinking, reasoning, and memory, which are assumed to be universal (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002).

46 is often the default and unrecognized norm in OT. There is a rejection of language as transparent, non-intrusive, neutral, and a reflection of activity rather an activity in its own right (Wetherell, 2007), or as Edwards described it, language being viewed as a “do-nothing domain” (cited by Wetherell, 2007, p. 663). Rather than being a ‘do-nothing domain’, the primary interest in DP/CDP is in the function or action of language-in-interaction

(Wetherell, 2007, italics added).

Because the key elements or components of discourse as it has been taken up in

DP/CDP flow from social constructionist theorizing, it is important to briefly identify the main features or tenets of social constructionist thinking. Following Burr (2003), who drew on the work of Gergen (1985), there are four key features of a social constructionist perspective. These are identified as follows:

1. Taking a critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge, combined with a

skepticism towards the view that observations of the world un-problematically yield

its true nature.

2. A recognition that the ways in which we commonly understand the world are

historically and culturally specific, and hence relative.

3. A conviction that knowledge is socially-constructed, which means that the current

ways of understanding the world are determined by social processes and not by the

nature of the world itself.

4. A commitment to exploring the ways that knowledges (i.e., the social construction

of problems, people, and phenomena) are linked to actions/practices.

The metaphor of ‘construction’ in relation to language does important ‘work’ in

DP/CDP (Potter & Wetherell, 1987; 2001). “In addition to stressing that accounts themselves

47 are manufactured, the metaphor of construction emphasizes the role of discourse in constructing objects and subjects” (Wetherell & Potter, 1992, p. 94). In the same sort of way that a house is ‘constructed’ from bricks and beams (or rebar and concrete), language (talk and text) as ‘discourse’ is understood to be built up or manufactured out of pre-existing linguistic resources (Potter & Wetherell, 2001; Gill, 2000). As Potter et al. (1990) elegantly described, “language and linguistic practices offer a sediment of systems of terms, narrative forms, metaphors, and commonplaces from which a particular account can be assembled” (p.

207). Second, as a metaphor, ‘construction’ signals the idea that there is “active selection” of resources by people (Potter et al., 1990, p.199) – some resources are included, and others are omitted. Even the simplest phenomenon can be described in many different ways (Gill,

2000), but the description, or what is specifically picked out in talk, depends on the orientation and interest of the speaker (Potter et al., 1990, p. 207). The speaker’s interests being referred to here, however, are not those that stem from a cognitivist-informed interest in internally-driven motivations or intentionality (Potter & Wetherell, 2001); in DP/CDP, motivations and intentionality are psychologically bracketed off as being unknowable. In terms of construction and constructive processes, however, construction is thus seen to emerge in the process of making sense of a phenomenon, or engaging in what Potter and

Wetherell et al. (1990) refer to as “unselfconscious social activities” (p. 199, italics added), rather than as self-conscious, intentional or deliberate acts.

Variation in description (which includes and encompasses contradictions in talk) also refers to the third dimension of ‘construction’ as a metaphor; the idea that accounts are variable because different forms of descriptions may be right for different occasions. In

DP/CDP, stress is laid on common-sense aspects of talk. People in social situations are

48 considered to be “doing what comes naturally”, rather than intentionally deciding that one particular form of language over another would be appropriate (Potter et al., 1990, p.199). As

Potter and Wetherell (2001) stated, every-day talk is more ‘commonsensical’ than intentional, and, importantly, even talk that seems merely descriptive (including words and short phrases) is constructive. In other words: “All language, even language which passes as simple description, is constructive and consequential for the discourse analyst” (Potter &

Wetherell, 2001, p. 200). As a metaphor then, the term ‘construction’ in DP/CDP points to the idea that people use language (talk and text) to construct versions of the social world

(Potter & Wetherell, 2001). Their accounts will vary because people use language to do different things in talk including: to persuade, to argue, to accuse, to order, to request etc.

Variation in language, including the thorny issue of contradictions, is thus not seen to be problematic but rather a reflection of different actions which have different constructive effects.

From a DP/CDP perspective, contradictions are expected in talk, because people are using language to ‘do’ different things. It is in this sense then that language is seen to be action-oriented; people use language to do different kinds of ‘work’ for them, and this emphasis underscores “the potent, consequential nature of accounts” (Potter & Wetherell,

1987, p. 34, italics added). As much of daily life involves social interactions that only involve language and different linguistic versions, accounts are potent and consequential because “in a profound sense, accounts construct reality” (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 34; see also Scott

& Lyman, 1968). For instance, during a visit to a family doctor, a person may walk in having one sense of who they are as a person, but they may walk out with a very different sense of themselves, perhaps as a set of risk factors for assorted diseases. Medical accounts, and by

49 extension OT accounts, are thus especially potent and consequential because during (and perhaps after the interaction), they can construct and reconstruct a person’s view of reality

(and self) simply through the use of language. I will return to the idea that language is oriented to function again shortly, but first I will consider the theoretical lineage of DP/CDP.

3.3 Discursive Psychology/Critical Discursive Psychology

3.3.1 Theoretical Amalgam and Blend

DP/CDP does not draw on just one set of intellectual resources, but many. It draws on a complex blend or eclectic amalgam of a variety of different theoretical traditions (Potter et al., 1990) that include: speech act theory (Austin, 1962, 1979); Wittgenstein’s philosophy

(1953); ethnomethodology and the conversation analysis (Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984;

Sacks, Shegloff & Jefferson, 1974); sociology of science (Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984); social interactionism (Blumer, 1969); rhetoric ( Billig, 1991, 1996); Foucault, (1971); semiology

(Saussure, 2012); and positioning theory (Davies & Harré, 1990). More recently, discursive psychologists have expanded their interests even further, by additionally drawing on

‘narrative analysis’ and ‘psychoanalysis’ (see Wetherell, 2007).

The blending of traditions and the amalgam of different theoretical underpinnings and commitments makes DP/CDP a particularly challenging form of discourse analysis to understand and work with (Seymour-Smith, 2015). The theoretical tenability (or otherwise) of blending such diverse traditions has stimulated some heated theoretical debates in social psychology.24 In order to lay out the groundwork for the description of DP/CDP, a few key aspects of the debate will be selectively drawn upon in order to clarify the overlap and points of distinction between DP/CDP and the two better-known varieties of discourse analysis that

24 The debate details are not of concern here, but see exchanges between Parker (1990) and Potter et al. (1990), and Schegloff (1997) and Wetherell (1998).

DP/CDP sought to blend; namely Foucauldian discourse analysis (FCDA) and conversation analysis (CA).

3.3.2 Similarities to and differences from FCDA and CA.

Leading DP/CDP scholars acknowledge that the DP/CDP and Foucauldian discourse analytical (FCDA) approaches share both a focus and concern with language and the assumption that language holds repositories of meaning that are generated by culture (Edley,

2001). In other words, there are: 1) distinctive ways of talking about objects/events in the world that are recognized to shift and change over time, and in different contexts; and 2) people are “enticed or encultured” (Edley, 2001, p. 202) by those repositories into particular ways of understanding the world. But DP/CDP can be distinguished from FCDA in other important ways listed below:

1. In DP/CDP, issues of power are acknowledged (and critiqued), but this is not the

central overriding concern of the analysis.

2. In DP/CDP, there is an explicit focus on the micro agentive subject and on the detail

of the particular discursive practices employed by speakers. Words and language and

everyday talk are seen as very lively places of action, and words are not just words

but a primary site where the social world is constructed. As Wetherell (1998) argued,

it is by attending to micro-practices on the grounds, and in the context of everyday

life that makes DP/CDP an especially productive and in-depth form of analysis.

Compared to FCDA, the conceptual and methodological focus in DP/CDP is on the

more fine-grained and detailed particulars of speakers’ discourse/talk (Edley, 2001),

and there is also a stronger emphasis placed on human agency within the flexible

deployment of language. In other words, in DP/CDP, people are not just seem as

conducted or ruled by discourse, but as being both ‘masters’ and ‘slaves’ of

discourse (Edley, 2001).

3. When people talk about who they are (i.e., talk about ‘identity’) in DP/CDP, as

previously identified, it is understood that they draw on the broader cultural

resources or repertoires that are already provided by culture. But, it is also

recognized that people in their talk practices can creatively and flexibly work with

those resources in a variety of different ways. As Potter (1996b) stated, “Discourse

analysis studies how people use discourse and how discourse uses people” (p. 213).

In DP/CDP there is no attempt to derive what could be considered dominant ‘Discourses’ from a set of materials, and there is no attempt to see how discourses work together and against one another in the abstract (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). The focus instead is on how discourses, which in this tradition are often referred to as Interpretive Repertoires, are implemented in actual settings (i.e., on the ground and in talk and interactive conversation).

Compared to ‘Discourses’, interpretive repertoires are considered to be less monolithic, much smaller and more fragmented, and to offer speakers a whole range of different rhetorical opportunities (Edley, 2001).25 Although the concept of interpretive repertoires was developed to do some of the same explanatory work as post-structuralist conceptualization of

‘Discourses’, the term ‘interpretive repertoire’ in DP/CDP was used to explicitly signal or signpost the taking up of different conceptual and methodological positions from other forms of discourse analysis (Potter & Wetherell, 1995).

25 Interpretive repertoires will be described in more detail towards the end of this chapter, along with the other ‘tools’ or key analytical concepts used in DP/CDP to organize discursive material: Subject Positions, and Ideological Dilemmas.

So far, I have illustrated how DP/CDP both overlaps with, and in some respects is also distinct from FCDA which was characterized by Edley and Wetherell (1997) as a ‘top- down’ approach to discourse. But DP/CDP also draws on techniques from conversation analysis (CA), characterized by Edley and Wetherell (1997) as a ‘bottom-up’ approach. In

CA, the analytical focus is on the fine-grained action orientation of peoples’ discourse

(Potter & Wetherell, 1987). DP/CDP is influenced by conversation analysis in its focus on everyday discourse and close attention to the micro-context (i.e., everyday interactions and conversations, how people talk and argue about a topic). In CA, the ‘social’ is investigated by focusing on the minutiae (e.g., micro-pauses, intonation, intakes of breath, hesitations, and laughter) of talk/discourse, and attention to the specific linguistic features and the rhetorical devices of talk in order to examine the repeated properties of phenomena such as how people

‘do’ actions (such as accusations, criticisms or mitigations) in talk (Edley & Wetherell,

1997). The overall interest is in the structure of conversations, for example, the repair of difficulties in speaking/hearing and understanding talk (Reynolds, 2008, citing Heritage), and on the range and sequence of responses. In CA, the focus is on the constructed and relative nature of talk, and how versions of events are built up and worked to become factual, persuasive, and presented as ‘just the way the world is’ (Edley & Wetherell, 1997).

Conversation analysts study “the way in which social organization is accomplished in talk” (Wetherell, 1998, p. 391) through the examination of how participants employ general, abstract procedures to build the local particulars of the event they are engaged in (Wetherell,

1998, citing Duranti & Goodwin). CA is thus a technical analysis of talk that focuses on the specifics of linguistic resources as they are employed by the speakers. As Jørgensen and

Phillips (2002) put it, the focus of analysis is on “people’s conversations as manifestations of a world that the participants create themselves” (p. 105).

The focus on participants is important, as “the aim of the researcher is to keep his/her own theoretical perspective out of the analysis” (p. 105). In CA, the application of frames of understanding and explanation that are not raised by the participants themselves is considered

“an assault on the empirical material” (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 105), thus the analyst is precluded from imposing their own frames of reference onto the work (Wetherell, 1998). As researchers who follow the ‘bottom-up’ tradition of discourse analysis, conversation analysts

“emphasize people’s activities, highlighting the remarkable subtleness and sophistication of ordinary people’s talk and its designed features” (Edley & Wetherell, 1997, p. 205). This is distinct from the ‘top-down’ (Foucauldian) approach to discourse analysis where the focus is much more global and on “the imbrication of discourse, power, and subjectification”

(Wetherell, 1998, p. 388). By examining only macro dimensions of discourse, the analyst misses how identity emerges in interaction (Potter, et al., 1990), but from a CA perspective, identity is seen to be unfixed, as something to be worked up and constructed through the specifics of talk in conversation. What a CA approach to identity overlooks, however, is how culturally available discourses or resources work to constrain the working up of identity in talk. So what does this mean for DP/CDP?

As a tradition that blends both bottom-up and top-down approaches, DP/CDP has a strong focus on individual agency (people as active users of discourse), but there is also the recognition that people are constrained by the cultural resources they have available to them in talking about their identities (Potter et al., 1990). Rather than attempting to resolve the tension between the two positions, Wetherell and Potter argue that the tension between the

54 two perspectives is productive, and it is because DP/CDP is a “stance that reads one in terms of the other” that it offers a dynamic and “productive basis for discourse work in social psychology” (Wetherell, 1998, p. 388).

Having described the background and the development of DP/CDP within social psychology and the blended theoretical terrain that the approach sought to explore, DP/CDP can be understood as a complex theoretical ‘package’ that aims to combine “some meta- theoretical notions about knowledge and objectivity with theoretical ideas about discourse and action” (Potter & Wetherell, 1995, p. 83). Having specified the theoretical terrain in more detail, the central tenets of DP/CDP can now be summarized.

3.4 Central Theoretical Tenets of DP/CDP: Function; Variation, and Rhetoric

Potter and Wetherell (1994) identified three main practice features of discourse analysis:

 Discourse analysis is concerned “with talk and texts as social practices” (p. 48).

This means that close attention is paid to linguistic content (such as meanings

and topics) and form. “Content is seen to develop out of formal features of

discourse, and vice versa” (p. 48).

 “Discourse analysis has a triple concern with action, construction, and

variability.” People are seen to “perform actions of different kinds through their

talk and their writing, and they accomplish the nature of these actions partly

through constructing their discourse out of a range of styles, linguistic resources

and rhetorical devices.” (p. 48). Attention is thus paid to variation in description.

 Following Billig (1991), discourse analysis is concerned with “the rhetorical or

argumentative organization of talk and texts”. The analysis of rhetoric highlights

the way in which “discursive versions are designed to counter real or potential

alternatives” (Potter & Wetherell, 1994, p. 48). Rather than asking how versions

relate to “some putative reality”, the question instead becomes how a particular

version is designed to “successfully compete with an alternative” (p. 48).

DP/CDP offers two broadly complementary emphases in analysis: 1) an emphasis on

“the general resources that are used to construct discourse and enable the performance of particular actions” (Potter & Wetherell, 1994, p. 49) in the form of interpretive repertoires that can be mapped (see Chapter 5); and 2) “the detailed procedures through which versions are constructed and made to appear factual” (p. 49) (see Chapter 6).

The notion of construction (already mentioned) emphasizes the action orientation of discourse and its practical effects and consequences (Wetherell & Potter, 1988). As

Wetherell and Potter (1998) observed, much of social life depends on dealing with people and events that are experienced only in terms of specific linguistic versions, and so “[i]n a profound sense… discourse can be said to ‘construct’ our lived reality” (p. 172, citing Potter,

Stringer, & Wetherell). Related to this idea of language or discourse being constructive are three other elements or dimensions of discourse analysis that remain to be highlighted. These are issues related to: 1) function; 2) variation and variability; and 3) rhetoric, which will now be considered in turn.

3.4.1 Function.

As has already been stated, the stress in CA is on language as a medium that is oriented to action, and the interest is on the variety of actions that are being accomplished in talk (Edley & Wetherell, 1997). For example, people use language (or utterances) to ask questions, justify oversights, make accusations, criticisms, and offer excuses or mitigations, etc. A concern with the functional orientation of language is therefore one that is finely tuned

56 to action, and “emphasizes the action and outcome oriented nature of descriptive discourse”, rather than an emphasis on language as an abstract referential system (Potter et al., 1990, p.

207). As a consequence, what people say, the descriptions, justifications, and statements of attitude or belief, are not taken at face-value. They are examined for the persuasive work they do, or the function of the words. But the function of language is not assumed to be straight forward, explicit, or mechanical. 26 Meanings have to be viewed in the specific context that they are produced (Potter & Wetherell, 2001).

Discourse analysis cannot analyze function in a straightforward way “because functions are not directly available for study” (Wetherell & Potter, 1988, p. 170), and so analysis inevitably involves interpretation and “the elucidation of function is one of the endpoints of discourse analysis” (Wetherell & Potter, 1988, p. 170). Functions in this sense are the ‘findings’ of analysis and not the raw data. But in order to reveal functions from a study of discourse, it is necessary to study variation.

3.4.2 Variation.

As has already been stated, variation in talk about a phenomenon (including contradictions) is an important focus of DP/CDP because participants are anticipated to be performing different kinds of actions at different moments in an interaction (Potter 1998).

Variation is thus considered both an index of function and an index of the different ways in which accounts can be manufactured (Wetherell & Potter, 1988). The appearance of variation signals points of tension or conflict in talk, and thus the presence of variation is seen to act as

26 For example, abstracted from context, the utterance ‘My car has broken down’ sounds like a factual, neutral, and a straightforward description. But depending on the interpretive context, the meaning changes dramatically. Said to a friend on leaving a meeting, it may be an implicit request for a lift home. If said to the person who sold you the car two days earlier, it could be an accusation or action of blaming. If said by a student to a lecturer on being half an hour late for a class, it may be offered as an excuse or as a statement about mitigating circumstances (See Gill, 2000).

57 a kind of lever for the analysis of discourse (Potter & Wetherell, 1994). Fortunately, spotting contradiction and other kinds of variation (e.g., a change of words) is a relatively straightforward task, and it is from here that the analyst can work towards an understanding of function (Wetherell & Potter, 1988).

When considering issues related to identity in this thesis, particularly singleness as an identity, a consideration of variation is extremely helpful, especially in terms of how a specific identity is being ‘worked up’ (or ‘worked down’ for that matter) through language practices during an interaction. I will return to the topic of identity and how this is understood from a DP/CDP perspective shortly.

The final aspect of the DP/CDP blend that is emphasized is the attention to rhetoric.

3.4.3 Rhetoric: What is being disputed, and what is the listener being persuaded of?

The rhetorical dimensions of discourse are central to analysis in DP/CDP. Discourse is understood to be organized rhetorically (Billig, 1987; 1988), which means that

“discourse…is argumentative and…seeks to persuade” (Billig, 1987, p. 214). To attend to rhetorical aspects of talk therefore requires tuning into the kinds of persuasive work being done in utterances (such as complaining, criticizing, refuting, justifying, and excusing)

(Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Arguments are read in terms of ‘versions’, where one argument is set against another opposing argument that may not have even been stated. Versions of argument are designed to successfully compete with another alternative ‘version’, and often in a highly inexplicit manner (Billig, 1991).

For instance, a woman’s statement “I have never wanted to marry” can be ‘read’ rhetorically as a response to an unstated expectation about the relationship of women to marriage. Women are expected to want to marry, and so the statement rhetorically counters and undermines an already-established and dominant view (Billig, 1991). Taken at face

58 value, the claim seems straightforward enough, but from a rhetorical perspective the statement is designed to provide an alternative argument that works to undermine that which is dominant and established.27 As an argument, the utterance does work for the speaker, and shows them taking up a position in talk, even though the topic of marriage, intentions towards marriage, or even marriage as a topic of conversation, may not previously have been made explicit. The significance of rhetoric in the analysis of discourse is therefore a way to tune in to or closely attend to the argumentative conflicts in discourse. In this example, the conflict seems to be about the orientation and desire whether or not to marry.

It is tuning into the argumentative dimension of talk, where utterances are seeking to persuade the listener of one argument over another, that allows the analyst to gain a sense of the kinds of conflicts that the speaker is addressing. As Gill (1996) observed, whole swathes of social life are characterized by conflicts of different kinds, and “much discourse is involved in establishing one version of the world in the face of competing versions” (p. 143).

It is thus by tuning into rhetoric, and to rhetorical devices in speech, that the background

(cultural) arguments that are shaping the speakers’ responses are discerned. In any instance or sequence of talk, the rhetorical dimensions can be examined by asking ‘What version or argumentative strand is being drawn on by the speaker in talk?’ and ‘What does such a version or argumentative strand work or seek to accomplish?’

Furthermore, because the speaker can only use terms that are culturally, historically, and ideologically available, each utterance carries a particular ideological history (Billig,

2001). A focus on the arguments, and what they are designed to accomplish, allows the

27 A concern with rhetoric also encompass instances and/or sequences of talk that are systematically vague, as vagueness can be a powerful rhetorical defense strategy or maneuver (see Gill, 1996; 2000; Drew & Holt, 1989; and Edwards & Potter, 1992).

59 researcher to tune into the world of social conflict, but also ideology (Billig, 1991). Unlike classical Marxist understandings of ideology which are seen as “integrated and coherent sets of ideas that served to represent the domination of the ruling classes as natural and inevitable” (Edley, 2001, p. 202), the understanding of ideology that is taken-up in DP/CDP is that of ‘lived ideology’, proposed by Billig et al. (1988) in the book titled “Ideological

Dilemmas”. Classical understandings of ideology are acknowledged, but ‘lived ideologies” are a society’s “common sense” and “way of life” (Edley, 2001, p. 203). In other words

‘lived ideologies’ are composed of the beliefs, values and practices of a given society or culture, and are comprised of “the ways of thinking and behaving within a given society which makes the ways of that society seem ‘natural’ or unquestioned to its members” (Billig,

2001, p. 217, citing Eagleton). They are not fixed, determined, or ‘monolithic’, but instead, they are inconsistent, fragmented and contradictory (Edley, 2001).

In the example above, the claim “I have never wanted to marry” could allude to the common-sense cultural belief, value and practice that speaks to the ideologically-mediated relationship of women to marriage. The (lived) ‘ideology of marriage and family’ is one that proposes marriage and traditional notions of family to be the central route to happiness and fulfillment for women (see DePaulo & Morris, 2005a, 2006). But the lived ideology associated with individualism, in combination with Western liberal feminist thought, also proposes that women have the right to self-determination, and to choose how they live their lives. In the example above, the speaker is discursively framing not wanting to marry, i.e., remaining single as ‘a choice’.

The utterances of ideology are therefore not straightforward, but are instead

‘dilemmatic’ (Billig et al., 1988). In talk and discussions, people can be heard jostling with

60 the contrary themes of common-sense, and particularly so when the topics are explicitly ideological (Billig, 2001). The aim of analysis in DP/CDP is thus not to describe the attitudes of speakers, but “to see how the themes of ideology are instantiated in ordinary talk, and how the speakers are part of, and are continuing, the ideological history of the discursive theme which they are using” (Billig, 2001, p. 218). Lived ideologies are therefore seen to create dilemmas and different sets of opposing arguments that speakers respond to and work through in their talk, but it is also recognized that talk about an object/subject (such as singleness and marriage) “develop together as opposing positions in an unfolding history of argumentative exchange” (Billig et al., 1988, p. 204). By directing attention to the function, or action orientation of language (Potter et al., 1990; Burr, 2003), identity ‘work’ is being done in talk, and an examination of the rhetorical moves in talk (or text) both foregrounds the content of what people say as well as “what language users are doing in a particular discursive context” (Billig, 2009, p. 2, italics added).

Having sketched out the complex and interwoven central theoretical/ methodological elements of discourse analysis from a DP/CDP perspective that flow from a social constructionist theorization (i.e., construction, function, variation, and rhetoric), it is now time to narrow the frame further by briefly tracing a few of the theoretical implications for constructs such as persons/social subjects/self, categories, identity, thinking, thought, and how talk is understood.

3.5 Theoretical Implications for Constructs

3.5.1 Persons/social subjects/self. 28

In DP/CDP, the relational view of persons is privileged. Persons are not viewed as isolable phenomena that stand apart from other people, but rather as “a function of our relation with others” (Burr, 2003, p. 140). Selves are viewed to be constructed in dialogue

(Burr, 2003). People in interaction are viewed in terms of being in a dance, where “they are constantly moving together, subtly responding to each other’s rhythm and posture” (Burr,

2003, p. 140, citing Shotter). The ‘self’ is thus viewed as a complex product of collective past and present relations (Burr, 2003). People are viewed as having a multiplicity of selves that are “each called forth or conjured by our immersion in discourse and in the processes of social interaction” (Burr, 2003, p. 141).

3.5.2 Categories and categorization.

Categories such as ‘single’ and ‘woman’ are not taken-for-granted, or assumed to be universal a priori ‘facts’ or objects. Through social constructionism, categories are viewed as being constructed in talk. People are also not assumed to be members of relatively enduring social categories, where, by virtue of category membership, “inferences are made from the attributes of individuals to the attributes of the rest of the category” (Potter & Wetherell,

2003, p. 62-3). In fact, DP/CDP calls into question such assumptions (Potter & Wetherell,

1987; 2003; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). As Reynolds (2004) notes, categories and categorization processes are assumed to be a discursive (not a cognitive) practice, and also, importantly, a potentially flexible resource to be drawn upon in constructing identity

28 Through social constructionism, traditional hierarchical views of what constitutes the social realm (such as individuals, groups, institutions, and society) are dissolved, to be replaced with a view of the social realm that is created between people through language use and interactive exchanges (Burr, 2003).

62 positions in talk.29 In analysis, one potential area of analytical interest can be how participants orient to, and work with, particular identity categories in talk, which can include how (and when) categories are claimed, disavowed, or downgraded in significance and saliency.

3.5.3 Identity.

Whether or not it is recognized by the speaker, “To talk at all is to construct an identity” (Wetherell, 1996b, p.224). In DP/CDP, identity is not understood as something that people have or are, but instead as something done or achieved through talk (Tuffin, 2005b).

Through social constructionism, traditional notions of identity as “an object or a distinctive fixed essence which a person, place or group could possess” (Wetherell & Mohanty, 2010, p.5), or alternatively, as an intrinsically attached “enduring dispositional, characteristic of persons” (Rapley, Kiernan, & Antaki, 1998, p. 825), are radically reworked. Instead, identity is understood to be fluid and ever- changing. Identity is considered to be emergent and dynamic and always in the making (Burr, 2003; Lawler, 2014; Wetherell, 1996b; 2009;

Wetherell & Mohanty, 2010), rather than being viewed as the property of someone, or something stable, attached, determined (and determinable). Through social constructionism, identity thus becomes dynamic, and something that is negotiated and interactionally managed

(Rapley et al., 1998). There are a few other implications that flow from this theorization of identity:

1. Traditional divisions between ‘personal’ and ‘social’, and ‘public’ and ‘private’

identities break down.

29 DP/CDP approaches do, however, recognize that social categories often come weighed down with a cultural ‘baggage’ of thoughts, beliefs, and value judgments about people who belong to such categories (see for example, Wetherell & Potter, 1992). For example,‘stereotypes’ are an example of where the cultural ‘baggage’ of thoughts, beliefs and value judgements are assigned to social groups (Potter & Wetherell, 1992).

2. Speakers are not assumed to be ‘mouth pieces’ for an over-simplified consistent

collective identity associated with categories (S.Taylor, 2012).

3. Talk in DP is “not just the expression or outward manifestation of identity, but

the site in which identities are constructed and taken up and performed” (Taylor,

2005a, p. 253).

4. In the course of talk, speakers position themselves and are positioned by other

speakers (including the researcher) (Taylor, 2005a, citing Davies & Harré).

5. A person’s identity is considered an ongoing construction that is assembled from

“the aggregate of previous positionings in various situations and interactions,

including the narratives through which the speaker has positioned herself”

(Taylor, 2005a, p. 253), or what Davies & Harré (1990) called, “the cumulative

fragments of a lived autobiography” (p. 49). Life narratives (stories or histories)

are therefore shaped by both the purposes of the current telling, what Taylor

(2005a) called a “communicative focus” (p. 253), and also by “previous tellings,

which simultaneously serve as resources for the speaker and a constraint on too

much variation” (Taylor, 2005a, p. 253, italics added).

6. The person (as a social actor) is viewed to be “struggling to represent themselves

in an acceptable way with respect to their culture’s local moral rules” (Burr,

2003, p. 134). Identities are not all equal; certain identities are subject to social

sanctioning (Burr, 2003), and people are somewhat dependent for their identity

on the willingness of others to support them in their version of events (Burr,

2003). One analytical question can therefore be how people persuasively perform

a publicly sanctioned (and sanctionable) version of themselves, and what kinds

of limitations are imposed on their capacity to accomplish this (Burr, 2003).

3.5.4 Thinking and thought.

As has previously been suggested, instead of assuming that thought (and mental life) are contained within one (solitary) person, where “thinking and feeling are treated as invisible, solitary, difficult and special activities, mysterious and ineffable” (Wetherell, 2007, p. 664), DP/CDP “puts the thinker in motion, in conversation” (p. 664), and “looks at the mundane, at interaction, talk, and collective sense-making and discovers that the psychological is noisy, dialogical, and distributed” (Wetherell, 2007, p. 664). Even when people are alone and engaged in what they may consider private rumination, the individual is

(theoretically) considered to be “in the company of others and in the company of their culture” (Wetherell, 2007, p. 664, citing Billig). In other words, thinking is considered to be

“suffused with dialogue, with the words of others, and those words bear the marks of their social contexts of use and historical struggles over meaning” (Wetherell, 2007, p. 664.).

Instead of assuming that constructs such as thought and motivation are ineffable and invisible, in DP/CDP they are instead assumed to be “built from public practices, and minds and selves are constructed from cultural, social and communal resources” (Wetherell, 2007, p. 664).

3.5.5 Talk.

In DP/CDP, language is viewed as a form of practice because words ‘do’ things (are action-oriented) in the world. Unlike a realist perspective of language that views talk

(including interviews) as a resource and a simple un-intrusive neutral reflector of real processes located inside the persons head (Wetherell & Potter 1988), in DP/CDP there is a shift in focus towards understanding language as a topic, in the recognition that what people

65 are doing in their talk is far more than simply retrieving information. Thus talk about being single (or singleness/singlehood) is therefore viewed in discursive terms (as a discourse), and an example of a social practice that has its own sets of characteristics, features, and practical consequences (Edley, 2001).

Having described how theoretical commitments of DP/CDP flow down into constructs such as categories, identity, and talk, it is now possible to articulate the theoretical implications for the study of singleness.

3.6. Implications for Studying Singleness

Bearing in mind the broad theoretical positions taken-up by the DP/CDP blend, and some of the implications for the more fine-grained constructs described above, following Reynolds

(2004), these can be applied to the study of women’s singleness as follows:

 Singleness (like marriage/coupledom) is viewed as a social construction, instead

of a static or fixed naturally-occurring fact or social arrangement, and should be

studied as a discourse.

 The meanings of singleness are built up or constructed in language (as

utterances) by people during interactions, and there is a complex interplay

between the meanings of singleness and the ways marriage and other forms of

partnership are socially understood.

 DP/CDP requires the recognition that there are shifting patterns of meaning and

different views or discourses related to singleness, which, in turn, shape how

singleness is constructed in talk. These constructions are recognized to vary in

time, and in different interactional contexts. The meanings of singleness today

are understood to be informed by the historical ideology of the past in the form

of narratives, words, images, and pictures associated with singleness. DP/CDP is

thus sensitive to the ways talking about singleness (and marriage) “develop

together as opposing positions in an unfolding history of argumentative

exchange” (Billig et al., 1988, p. 204).

 Discourses of singleness shift and change over time (and place) to form a

flexible set of resources that are available in talk. Instead of there being ‘one

truth’ about singleness for women, multiple truths are assumed.

 Categories and categorization processes are assumed to be a discursive (not

cognitive) practice, and a potential flexible resource to be drawn upon in

constructing identity positions.

 Singleness can also be studied as a set of personal narratives and subject

positions.

 Singleness is approached as a politics, or “an arena in which feminists need to

develop further strategies of resistance and develop a collective voice”

(Reynolds, 2008, p. 21).

Finally, to bring the theoretical considerations of the DP/CDP blend to a close, I will end by describing the three discourse analytical ‘tools’, or ways of examining different dimensions of talk or discourse that are associated with the tradition. Flowing from the theoretical commitments of DP/CDP already outlined, the tools are mutually informative ways of making sense of prevalent patterns in the content and the action orientation of talk in a corpus of data (Wetherell & Potter, 1988; see also Edley, 2001 for a description and the application of the tools to empirical material).

3.7 Analytical Tools: Interpretive Repertoires, Subject Positions, and Ideological Dilemmas

3.7.1 Interpretive repertoires.

As a consequence of identity being considered an emergent phenomenon that is constructed out of culturally available discourses drawn upon in communication with other people (Burr 2003), the nature of the available resources is of particular analytical interest.

Interpretive repertoires have been described as the lexicon or compendium of terms about a topic/subject that has been provided by history (Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984). Likened by Edley

(2001) to books in a public library that are always available to check out (or draw upon), interpretive repertoires are the terms, ideas, and narratives that people have available to draw upon in talking about a particular topic or phenomenon.

Interpretive Repertoires are defined as “broadly discernable clusters of terms, descriptions, and figures of speech often assembled around metaphors or vivid images”

(Wetherell & Potter, 1992, p. 90), and “a culturally familiar and habitual line of argument comprised of recognizable themes, common-places and tropes (doxa)” (Wetherell (1998, p.

400).30 As building blocks that are used in conversation, interpretive repertoires are some of the resources that people use “for making evaluations, constructing factual versions and performing particular actions” (Wetherell & Potter, 1995, p. 89). Although there can be an interest in the grammar and linguistic organization that is associated with interpretive repertoires, the primary concern in DP/CDP is “with language use, what is achieved by that use and the nature of the interpretive resources that allow that achievement” (Wetherell &

Potter, 1992, p. 90-91).

30 For instance, terms such as ‘spinster’, ‘old maid’, ‘free spirit’, ‘on the shelf’, ‘bachelorette’, and “leftover women” (Hong Fincher, 2014, p.2) are just a few of the clichés or taken-for-granted value terms used to refer to single women.

As a lexicon of terms and metaphors that are drawn upon to characterize and evaluate actions and events (Wetherell & Potter, 1988), interpretive repertoires are a relatively coherent set of building blocks of conversation or linguistic resources that can be drawn on in the course of interaction that form the basis of shared social understanding (Edley, 2001). As repositories of meaning, or distinctive ways of talking about objects and events in the world, interpretive repertoires are patterns or regularities in what is said about a topic, and they are

“preeminently a way of understanding the content of discourse and how that content is organized ” (Wetherell & Potter, 1992, p. 90, italics added).

As a patchwork or kaleidoscope of images, phrases, narratives, and associations provided by culture out of which people can fashion their identities, repertoires can appear as fragments, or be alluded to in passing, because as cultural members it is assumed that the listener will be able to supply the broader chain of associations without further elaboration being necessary (Wetherell, 1998). As a kind of culturally-generated compendium of resources drawn on by participants, interpretive repertoires can be tailored to answer a question (perhaps about images of single women from childhood), or folded into a narrative or anecdote, such as how other people view singleness (Reynolds, 2004).

As an analytical ‘tool’, interpretive repertoires are a way for an analyst to describe the explanatory resources that speakers have access to, and “to make interpretations about patterns in the content of material” (Wetherell & Potter, 1988, p. 172, italics added).

Although inconsistencies, contradictions, and differences in discourse are expected, interpretive repertoires are regularities in variation, these regularities are not ‘pinned’ at the level of the individual speaker, but instead, they are viewed as a summary unit at the level of content across the data corpus (Wetherell & Potter, 1988).

3.7.2 Subject positions.

The second analytical tool in DP/CDP is the notion of ‘subject positions’, but not as they are understood in conversation analysis or post-structuralism (Wetherell, 1998).

DP/CDP subject positions developed out of ‘Positioning Theory’ (Davies & Harré, 1990; see also Harré & Langenhove, 1999; Harré, Moghaddam, Cairinie, Rothbart, & Sabat, 2009;

Kroløkke, 2009). The concept of subject positions has been defined simply as “locations within a conversation” (Edley, 2001, p. 210). 31 Subject positions “are the identities made relevant by specific ways of talking”, and they are “the means through which interpretive repertoires become attached to the social construction of particular selves” (Edley, 2001, p.

210). As self-subjectivity (along with everything else) is considered to be produced by discourses, according to Burr (2003), subject positions are the “implied positions within a particular discourse that may be occupied or taken up by a person, that provide a basis for their identity and experience” (p. 204).

In conversations, positioning is displayed simultaneously, and at different levels, from the micro level of grammar to the interactional (meso) level of discourse (Kroløkke,

2009). As discourses are always present in some form, they are understood to work to position people in different ways. As Davies and Harré (1990) stated:

A subject position incorporates both a conceptual repertoire and a location for persons

within the structure of rights and duties for those who use that repertoire. Once

having taken up a particular position as one’s own, a person inevitably sees the world

from the vantage point of that position and in terms of the particular images,

31 Through positioning theory, the more dynamic and fluid concept of ‘position’ and ‘positioning’ replace the more static and rigid concept of ‘role’ (Davies & Harré, 1990).

metaphors, storylines and concepts which are made relevant within the particular

discursive practice in which they are positioned (p. 35).

An applied example will help to illustrate what is meant here. In health care settings, perhaps the most familiar broad subject position is that of ‘patient’ or ‘client’, which structures the rights and duties of those who are required to take up that subject position. Practicing OTs, who are taught how to see the world from the vantage point or subject position of an

‘occupational therapist’, also carry a particular set of rights and duties, and host of language terms that are made relevant as a consequence of being so positioned. In the process of analysis, one way to ‘spot’ subject positions in talk is, as Edley (2001) suggests, to “stay aware of who is implied by a particular discourse or interpretive repertoire”, and to ask “what does a given statement or set of statements say about the person who utters them?” (p. 210).

3.7.3 Ideological Dilemmas.

Ideological dilemmas are the third and final tool in the DP/CDP analytical ‘tool-kit’.

The idea of ideological dilemmas is one that flows out of the notion of ‘lived ideologies’

(Billig et al., 1988) introduced earlier. Lived ideologies refer to ‘common sense’ or ‘way of life’, or what other social theorists refer to as ‘culture’ (Edley, 2001). But the crucial feature of lived ideologies is their lack of coherence and integration; they are characterized instead by contradiction, fragmentation, and inconstancy (Edley, 2001). What is considered

‘common sense’ contains many contrary and competing arguments that tell people how to think and act. For instance, contradictory maxims and proverbs tell people that ‘many hands make light work’, but also that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. We are told to ‘look before you leap’, and also ‘s/ he who hesitates is lost’. Rather than being dismissed as unreliable and faulty, or having to be resolved into one truth or another, it is the indeterminacy of common

71 sense and lived ideologies that make them such flexible and rich resources for social interaction and everyday sense-making (Edley, 2001; Billig et al., 1988).

Common sense or lived ideologies can be considered the condensed wisdom of a given society or culture (Edley, 2001), as an “assemblage of different arguments and ideas laid down over the course of time” (Edley, 2001, p. 203). Such stocks of knowledge contain many tensions, contradictions, and contrary themes, and it is this feature of lived ideologies that is seen to be key to social dilemmas, and also to social thinking.

The very existence of opposing images, words, evaluations, maxims and so

on is crucial, in that they permit the possibility not just of social dilemmas

but of social thinking itself. Without these oppositions there would be no

way of arguing about dilemmas or understanding how opposing values can

come into collision. (Edley, 2001, p. 203-204, citing Billig et al.)

As lived ideologies are composed of the beliefs, values, and practices of a given society or culture (Edley, 2001), they mark out and refer to “the ways of thinking and behaving within a given society which make the ways of that society ‘natural’ or unquestioned to its members (Billig, 2001, p. 217, citing Eagleton). In the previous example

‘I have never wanted to get married’, it is the (lived) ‘ideology of marriage and family’ that

‘informs’ women that marrying and creating a ‘family’ is the ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ life path, creating an ideological dilemma for women who do not marry. Do they draw on one set of

‘common sense’ ideological notions that suggests that by not marrying, their lives are abnormal and unnatural, or do they draw on other available resources, such as those associated with the ideology of liberal individualism in combination with Western liberal feminist thought?

The concern with ideological dilemmas is not however on decision-making at the level of individual choice, but instead at the higher level of the “social preconditions, as revealed in common sense or in ideology (Billig et al., 1988, p. 8). In order to work with (and through) these dilemmas in conversations, people inevitably draw upon the interpretive resources (repertoires) provided by culture, and so ideological dilemmas are closely linked to interpretive repertoires (Edley, 2001). They are places in talk (or text) where participants can be observed reflecting on, thinking, solving or working out some competing value (Billig, et al., 1988).

3.8 Conclusion

The focus in this chapter has been theory/methodology. I have described the contextual background to DP/CDP, identified the points of overlap and distinction from CA and Foucauldian discourse analysis, and explicated the main theoretical commitments of

DP/CDP. The central tenets or elements of the theoretical/methodological landscape of

DP/CDP were identified as construction, function, variation, and rhetoric. I also discussed some of the implications of these tenets for concepts like person/social subjects/ self, categories and categorization, identity, thinking and thought, and talk. Following Reynolds

(2004), I provided a summary of how theoretical commitments apply to the substantive topic of singleness, and a description of the three analytical concepts or ‘tools’ in DP/CDP that are applied to empirical ‘data’. Bearing in mind the theoretical commitments of DP/CDP, the next chapter will describe the research strategies I used to implement the study.

CHAPTER 4 METHODS

Discourse analysis is not just a method, but a whole perspective on social life. –Jonathan Potter, 1996b, p. 130 Analysis is a craft that... can be thought of as the development of sensitivity to the occasioned and action-oriented, situated, and constructed nature of discourse. –Jonathan Potter, 2004, p. 17 4.1 Introduction

The previous chapter described the theory/methodology selected for the study, but how was the study conducted? The following chapter lays out the process of doing the research. As all doctoral research involving human subjects requires approval from a university research ethics board (REB), a complex institutional process that can reveal common cultural assumptions made about groups, I begin by identifying and examining two ethical ‘concerns’ about the study raised during a pre-submission consultation prior to submitting a completed application. This will be followed by a description of recruitment and data collection which included interviews and the construction of life ‘herstories’.32 I then describe the process of interview transcription and analysis. A discussion of reflexivity follows an exploration of how my own identity/identities have impacted the research. I conclude by identifying how ‘quality’ is ensured in discourse analysis.

4.2 Ethics: Consultation Process and Approval

Prior to submission of the completed protocol for the study titled ‘Stories of Singleness’, there was an opportunity to engage in a verbal pre-submission consultation, a process that can serve to flag areas of potential ethical concern. During the consultation, two concerns in

32 According to Mills (1989), a ‘herstory’ is history written from a feminist perspective, and told from a woman’s point of view. Being a neologism and pun on the word ‘history’, use of the term ‘herstory’(and not ‘history’) in this thesis reflects a feminist critique of conventional historiography, which has traditionally privileged the stories of men, told from a masculine point of view.

73 74 particular were raised that illustrate common institutional understandings (and constructions) of ‘older single women’ as a collective group. The two concerns were identified as follows:

1. How will the potential distress or sadness of the participants in talking about their

lives as lifelong single women be addressed?

2. How will capacity for consent be ensured?

At first glance, the first concern could appear to be a standard and predictable question applicable to qualitative studies about the need to safeguard the potential distress of participants as they discuss specific aspects of their lives. However, if the participants had been older married women and the study was about marriage (rather than singleness), would the same concern have been raised? Given that the status of being married in later life is not usually associated with distress and/or sadness, this seems unlikely, and so it must be something about being older and single that creates the anticipated distress or sadness. If the study involved widows, one might expect the same concern to apply, due to the assumed distress and sadness that could be expected to accompany the loss of a spouse. The same assumption could also be predicted if the study had involved divorced or separated women. It would seem reasonable that marital separation or dissolution could reasonably result in distress or sadness. But why would women who have never-married, who have not ‘lost’ a spouse or experienced marital dissolution, be expected to be sad or distressed? From the perspective of singleness discourse, the process of preparing for ethics submission resulted in elicitation of the very discourse that the thesis seeks to problematize and study.

Regarding the second concern, in the health field, later life is commonly associated with cognitive impairment and decline. Aging (geriatric) research in the health arena is often dominated by concerns related to cognitive and other declines (see Gullette, 2004). As

75 notions about the capacity for consent are mediated by cognitive functioning, which is presumed to be increasingly compromised as a person gets older, the capacity of the participants to give consent is called into question. In short, older women are often assumed to be cognitively impaired as a consequence of being older, whereas younger women, in the absence of an identified ‘disease’ process, are not.

Ethics Boards rightly have a responsibility to safeguard participants in research studies, and the concerns are identified and discussed here because they speak to how older single women can be subject to institutional discourses. Viewed through the lens of discourse, and as constructions, the nature of the concerns could be critiqued as perpetuating reductive and (potentially) damaging images of ‘sad’ and ‘distressed’, potentially dementing, old never-married single women. Evoked simply by category identification alone, the concerns could be read as being ‘singlist’ (DePaulo & Morris, 2005a), ‘ageist’, and ‘sexist’.

The concerns are formulated as questions that are not ideologically neutral, and as constructions, they create and perpetuate stigmatizing and normalizing truths about lifelong single older women, while simultaneously appearing legitimate and reasonable. Furthermore, without addressing the concerns directly, following the same kind of institutional logic, the study would not have been approved, which in turn, tends to perpetuate the negative biases about particular groups that are built into institutional processes. By identifying the concerns and by providing a critical commentary, I seek to problematize the attribution of vulnerability assumed by standard ethics procedures, as well as the invisible effects of classifications and categorization processes (Finlay & Ballinger, 2006).

Finally, as Wetherell (2001a) observed, alongside other academic practices, ethics consultations and protocols can be considered part of the ‘machinery of representation’

76 associated with scholarship. As with other conventions, research practices can be recognized as locations of political struggle and conflict (Burr, 2003). By problematizing institutional processes, the effects can be made visible, and academic work (including the writing structure and formatting of doctoral theses and indeed ‘methods’ chapters) can be viewed as discursive practices that are bound up with procedures for legitimization (Wetherell, 2001a; see also Finlay & Ballinger, 2006). Without ethics approval I would not have been able to conduct this research; my study was approved by the Research Ethics Board of the

University of Toronto in July 2012 (Protocol Reference number: #27860).

4.3 Participant Recruitment

Sampling was purposive (or purposeful) (Patton, 1990; Polkinghorne, 2005), and recruitment was approached in two ways. First, study posters/flyers were posted at a variety of public sites (e.g., the central branch of Toronto Public Library, the Jewish Community

Centre, and a downtown Seniors’ Centre (see Appendix A: Recruitment Poster/Flyer), but this method of recruitment did not elicit any responses. As snowball sampling can be an effective way of reaching participants who do not belong to a pre-formed or pre-existing group (Reynolds, 2008), I adopted this method, which proved to be more successful. I began by emailing and talking to friends, acquaintances, family members, and fellow students about the study, and asking if they knew of anyone who might be interested in taking part. An email recruitment letter informing people about the study was forwarded to individuals requesting more information (See Appendix B: Telephone Script, and Appendix C: Letter of

Request to Participants). As recruitment got underway, it quickly became clear that

77 participants often had social networks containing other single women, and so each participant was asked if they would be willing to pass on information about the study to her friends.33 34

During the recruitment process, two interactions in particular were noteworthy. The first involved an interaction with a senior woman friend who asked me about the kind of single woman I was interested in interviewing. She made the assumption that the ‘ideal’ participant would be someone known to have led ‘an interesting life’, and would therefore be able to talk about their experiences as single women ‘positively’. The issue of having led an

‘interesting life’ was also raised by a potential participant during a preliminary information telephone exchange. In that instance, the speaker commented that she didn’t think that she had led a very interesting life, implying that she would not be a good research subject.

The issue of being evaluated by others as having led ‘an interesting life’, and to evaluate one’s own life (and identity) in negative terms (as not having had an interesting life), raises intriguing questions about who participates, and perhaps more importantly, who would be likely not to participate in a qualitative study of singleness. On the one hand, research is commonly perceived to be conducted on topics that are in some way

‘problematic’. After describing my research in a general way to members of the public, it was not unusual to hear “I have never had a problem being single”. This intrigued me since claims of not having had a problem with being single stand in opposition to the dominant assumption that there are problems associated with being single, and that only problematic phenomena merit research. Yet, as a qualitative researcher, I regarded such oppositional claims as themselves an important focus for research.

33 I had met one participant at a Senior Women’s organization several years before the study began. She had expressed an interest in potentially taking part in the study at that time, and had provided me with her contact details. 34 The fourth participant was recruited through the recommendation of the third participant.

In a discourse analytic study of women’s singleness, the statement “I don’t think I have had a very interesting life” is not taken at face-value. Rhetorically, it does persuasive work. Based on common-sense assumptions that people who have had interesting lives have a lot to say and are worth listening to, the claim works to downgrade the expectation of participation. But what kinds of lives are typically assumed to be ‘interesting’? Having composed lives outside of traditional marital and family trajectories (marriage, motherhood, and grandparenthood), as women, the participants would be unable to draw directly on what

Bruner (1990) referred to as the ‘canonical narratives’ of culture, the common-sense stories and frameworks that many women rely upon to make their lives intelligible to others. Would this not mean that there would be additional challenges for single women to narrate a life, to make such a life sound ‘interesting’? Finally, the issue raises some broader questions about the dynamics of who sees (or does not see) themselves as ‘research-worthy’.35 Do participants have to view their lives ‘positively’ in order to take part in research studies, and is there a kind of self-selection out of studies by groups of people who have been repeatedly informed, for example, that there is something wrong with them? 36

4.4 Sample Selection

In DP/CDP studies, the need to demonstrate the ‘typification’ or ‘representativeness’ of the participants selected is not theoretically warranted, but some practical working inclusion/exclusion criteria were identified. The participants were women who have a depth and richness of experience about the phenomenon of interest (Morse, 1991). As previously

35 My thanks to external examiner Dr. Brenda Beagan for flagging this question. 36 The friend assisting with recruitment was told that as long as the women wanted to talk about their lives, there was absolutely no expectation that they would had lived in any way extraordinary or especially ‘interesting’ lives, or that the women were required to have a ‘positive’ attitude to their life. The potential participant who asserted that she had not lived an interesting life was reassured that there were no special expectations that her life be ‘interesting’, and that I understood all lives to be interesting, even if the person did not necessarily view it that way. In the end, she declined to participate.

79 identified, the participants were always-single women, who self-identified as remaining single over their lives (i.e., had not married), were seventy-five years of age or older, and who lived alone and independently (i.e., not in Long Term or in Assisted Living).37 38 They were not currently in an ongoing intimate relationship or life partnership (e.g., such as in an

LAT - ‘living apart together’ - relationship). The participants were able to converse easily and clearly in English, and were interested in meeting several times to talk about their experiences.

After interest was expressed by a potential participant, they were screened over the telephone for inclusion/exclusion, and sent a stamped addressed envelope containing two copies of the consent form (see Appendix D: Information Sheet/Informed Consent, 39 the demographic form (see Appendix E: Background & Demographic Information), and a copy of the proposed interview guide (see Appendix F: Interview Guide). Once the signed consent form had been received at the Rehabilitation Sciences main office, the first meeting and interview was scheduled by phone at a place and time of the participants’ choosing.

4.5 ‘Data’ collection: Interviews

Initially, a group interview format had been considered, but as a single woman myself, I understood that even talking about being single was a sensitive issue and could be a challenging topic about which the participants could feel threatened (Reynolds, 2004). There

37 The discourses of other groups of women such as single parents, single women in religious communities (nuns or dedicated celibate laity), and women who were homeless were excluded from the study. 38 Left unspecified in order to encourage diversity were parameters such as class, ability, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. 39 Consent is considered to be ongoing. It was made clear to the participants that they were free to: decline answering questions; specify the omission of a detail or a particular topic from the transcript; and they could withdraw from the study at any time during the interview process. Over the course of the interviews (either during or after an interview) the participants indicated on a number of occasions that they preferred to omit certain details or delete a stretch of talk about a specific topic from the transcript. Such requests were complied with in full.

80 were also no social venues where there was everyday unsolicited talk about singleness. I therefore chose one-to-one interviews as the preferred method of ‘data’ generation.

Semi-structured open-ended audio recorded interviews allow for the opportunity to explore singleness talk as a resource and as a topic. In DP/CDP, the purpose of interviews is not to elicit clear and consistent responses, in order that inferences and extrapolations can be made about underlying beliefs or previous actions (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). As previously identified, interviews are conceptualized as “an arena in which one can identify and explore participants interpretive practices” (Potter, 1996, p.134). Interviews are viewed as particular social occasions or ‘discursive events’ (Wetherell, 2001b) that elicit talk about singleness

(talk as resource) that draw on a range of interpretive repertoires (Wetherell & Potter, 1992).

But interviews are also treated as pieces of social interaction in their own right (Wetherell &

Potter, 1992; Potter & Wetherell, 1995). As interactive conversational events that are shaped by the interviewer and interviewee, both speakers draw on a range of interpretive repertoires that follow their own logic, can be blended together in different ways, and have different ideological effects (talk as topic). The role of the interviewer is thus not neutral or uninvolved (Potter & Wetherell, 1987).

In DP/CDP, it is considered analytically revealing for the interviewer to take an active part in the conversation, contributing (to a greater or lesser extent) their own views and experiences.40 As informal (rather than formal) conversational exchanges are recognized as encouraging diversity of expression, variation in response is considered as important as

40 Wetherell & Potter (1992) recommended using an argumentative approach, suggesting that the interviewer offer counter-arguments and question the assumptions being made by the participants. However, they also recognized that researchers have a duty to avoid recreating wider exploitative relationships, and to avoid legitimizing and perpetuating over-simplistic and reductive assumptions about the lives of the participants. Given the sensitivity of the topic, and in face of a number of interactions that seemed at times defensive, it was a challenge to judge what was argumentative enough to elicit different view-points and a variety of discursive resources without risking conversational break-down.

81 consistency (Potter & Wetherell, 1987).41 Finally, as interactive conversational processes where cultural knowledges about singleness as a topic are being displayed, as the interviewer and also as a single woman, I brought my own ‘insider’ members’ knowledge about what it means to be single. As a member of ‘Generation X’, I had grown into adulthood being exposed to different versions of singleness discourse, and after being further intensively exposed to singleness discourses through my close examination of the academic literature, I was aware that my own sense of self, values, and place are partly constituted out of those experiences (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). I was therefore careful to interact in ways that did not perpetuate the stigmatization of participants or to (inadvertently) legitimize ‘singlist’ assumptions.

4.5.1 Interview guide.

Following Potter and Wetherell (1987, 1995), and Potter and Mulkay (1985), the guide was not viewed as an exact script to be followed and repeated, but a broad structure that facilitated a relatively standard set of topics to be explored (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). It was organized into three sections and structured chronologically (see Appendix F: Interview

Guide).42 Topics ranged from asking about the stories and images of single women in childhood, family views of unmarried women, and specific life ‘turning points’ (Holstein,

1995), 43 life events and other circumstances, other people’s ideas about singleness, and

41 Because of my training as an OT clinician, I was used to conducting ‘clinical’ interviews, thus the study required a shift in interview style towards the more conversational and informal. 42 As a novice qualitative interviewer, I conducted informal but recorded practice interviews with two volunteers. These data were not included in the study, but it was helpful to have practice using the interview guide, and to work through how best to ask questions in a way that opened up the conversation about being single. 43 Bearing in mind that the ‘rites of passage’ for life-long single women are not marked in the ‘standard’ way (Allen, 1989), and that what is commonly naturalized in life histories follows “a standard developmentalist logic”, where people “grow up, get married, and have children” (Riggs & Peel, 2016, p. 3), Holstein’s notion of ‘turning points’ (1995) was a useful and inclusionary way of opening up conversations about the lives of the participants.

82 working life and retirement. The questions also extended into the ‘imagined future’, what the participants anticipated was going to be important to them and how they anticipated life was going to continue to unfold for them. Towards the end of the last interview, each participant was asked if they had any advice to offer younger single women.

Rather than narrowly focusing on a specific time period in the participants life (e.g., being single in later life or after retirement), as the participants had a wealth of experience to draw upon, and all interviews are inevitably retrospective, the interviews were broadly structured around different time periods in the life-course (from childhood, adulthood, later adulthood, and into the imagined future). Participants were invited to draw on a range of experiences that reflected the particularity of their life-course and social positioning, while also allowing for the identification of points of overlap. It was assumed that some participants would have more to say about being single than others, that even a small number of instances of discourse in an interview or with a particular participant can be analytically revealing, and that both the presence and absence of talk about a topic can be of interest.

The formulation of questions for the guide was an important process (Phillips &

Jorgensen, 2002), especially as questions are never neutral (Billig, 1999). As previously identified, it was important to recognize that talking about singleness could be a sensitive topic (Reynolds, 2004), and I did not want to put my participants on the spot and to ‘trap’ them by asking ideologically-laden questions like “Why did you never marry?” 44 The questions were also framed in such a way to reflect neither an explicitly ‘pro-single’ or ‘anti- single’ stance, and a balance was sought between asking about the ‘positive’ and affirming

44 See Butler (2004) for a parallel critique about similar interrogative questions as they apply to gay marriage.

83 aspects of being single, as well as about some of the challenging aspects of being single. 45

Within the inevitable constraints imposed by the character of the interactions being ‘research interviews’, the interviews were kept as conversational as possible.

Qualitative research interviews, whether structured by a guide or not, are frequently open-ended. Questions are expected to change and develop over time, and topics can be introduced in different ways and in a different order (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). After one participant produced a book of cultural commentary that spoke to a number of arguments she had made in a previous interview about the divisions and tensions in the 1960s between single and married women, I began to selectively introduce written materials about single women into the interview process as an additional resource and stimulus for conversation

(e.g., an article from a national newspaper running a week-long segment on ‘The Single

Life’, a book by Sheila Jeffries (1985) with the provocative title “The spinster and her enemies”, and an academic paper by Sharp and Ganong (2011) with the title “I’m a loser, I’m not married, let’s just all look at me”(p. 831).

Qualitative interviewing is recognized as an ‘art’ (Potter & Wetherell, 1995). It was a challenge to facilitate the conversation and keep it flowing smoothly, while following the interview guide and identifying interesting lines of inquiry as they emerged (Potter &

Wetherell, 1995). As a novice qualitative researcher and interviewer, it was helpful for me to review the Interview Guide, the already transcribed interview/s, the compiled field notes

(taken before and after each interview), and follow-up questions from the previous interview.

I kept a study log to organize interview dates, telephone calls, communications with potential

45 One participant stated that some of the questions in the guide were especially useful in helping to frame her reflections about her experiences, but another participant objected to the initial question: “How do you usually introduce yourself to people?” commenting that it was “off-putting” and “a university question”.

84 new participants, and general progress notes prior to each interview. In practice, much of the first interview with every participant was spent going through the signed consent form and the demographic form and answering questions.

4.5.2 Number of interviews.

The participants were women with a life-time’s worth of experience about singleness to draw upon, and one interview was judged to be insufficient (Polkinghorne, 2005). Repeat interviews with the same person can: 1) build on previous interactions; 2) facilitate the return to unanticipated topics introduced by participants; 3) facilitate a broader and deeper appreciation of the variety of interpretive resources available to participants as they moved through the life-course; and 4) potentially facilitate a deeper understanding of changes in the discursive landscape of singleness over (historical) time. A number of repeat interviews (up to four) were conducted with each participant.46

As previously stated, the focus of interest in discourse analytic studies is on language use, rather than language users (Potter & Wetherell, 1994). The number of texts analyzed for a study can vary. Some rely on small numbers of texts generated from a limited number of participants (Georgaca & Avdi, 2011; Phillips & Jorgensen, 2002; Potter & Wetherell, 1987), while other studies analyze one text containing a range of language instances (Woods &

Kroger; 2000), as even small amounts of material can provide the basis for useful research

(Kent & Potter, 2014). ‘More’ data does not necessarily equate ‘better’ data, but I followed the general guideline offered by Potter and Wetherell (1987), who suggested that about ten texts can be sufficient for a discourse analysis. In total, fourteen in-depth interviews with four

46 One of the advantages of repeat interviews and immediate transcription was that new topics could be identified early and incorporated into subsequent interviews. For example, the first participant identified the importance to her of the shift in title from ‘Miss’ to ‘Ms.’, which became a topic of interest in subsequent interviews and with subsequent participants.

85 participants were conducted, each lasting sixty to ninety minutes. The interviews generated approximately 1260 minutes of recorded conversation, and 451 pages of transcript. After fourteen interviews with four participants, the decision was made to stop recruitment in order to review the corpus as a whole. As there were sufficiently large numbers of instances of singleness discourse within the different interview texts and between the participants, it was judged that there was sufficient material for discourse analysis. As Taylor (2001a) observed, discourse data is “rich” (p. 39), meaning that there are many different avenues that can be explored with a (relatively) small volume of material.

4.5.3 Interview location.

The participants elected to be interviewed in a variety of settings. Seven interviews took place with two participants in their homes, but if interviewing at home was not an option, effort was made to find several alternative and convenient venues. The venues included a bookable (and quiet) university library space, a lounge bar in a pub close to a participant’s home, and a quiet function room in a restaurant that was both familiar to the participant and close to her home.47

4.6 Pseudonyms: What’s in a name?

Names (and other points of reference) matter (Thwaites, 2013; Billig, 1999), and viewed as a specific research practice, the selection of names used in research studies is far from neutral (Billig, 1999). Names, being named, and naming processes are intrinsically connected to social organization and positioning, and are integral to how people come to understand themselves and social relationships with others (Thwaites, 2013). In many qualitative studies, participant pseudonyms are simply assigned post hoc by the researcher.

47 Three of the participants stressed the importance of having a private space in which to be interviewed.

For example, Taylor (2010a), a discourse analyst, prefers to use a minimal form of reference

(e.g., P1, P2, P3 etc.) on the grounds that pseudonyms carry implicit associations related to age, class, and ethnicity. But Reynolds (2004) advocated for the use of participant-selected pseudonyms. The selection by participants of pseudonyms can offer a degree of additional participation in a study, and also a (small) degree of control over how they would like to be referred to in academic texts. As a symbolic gesture towards power sharing (Reynolds,

2004), the self-selection of a name in a piece of research can be a means of recognizing that

“the participants as persons” have “their own narratives and personal histories” (Reynolds,

2008, p.162), and as an additional form of recognition, personal narratives are a reminder that it is ‘real lives’ (flesh and blood) that are impacted by discourses. The use of personally- selected names in this study can therefore be seen as a way to symbolically ‘speak back’ to one of the identified dangers of discourse analyses. A focus on “abstract entities” such as discourses tends to de-people texts, and in academic research there is a danger that research texts can construct people as objects, “as things” (Billig, 2009, p.11; Billig, 1994). Names also have ideological significance (Billig, 1999). Unlike women who marry, many of whom signal their status change by adopting their husbands’ surname, in this study, the participants had maintained their birth names throughout their lives. The option of pseudonym selection and the process of name choice was thus a point of interest.

All of the participants elected to choose a (first name) pseudonym, which lends a note of informality (rather than formality) (Billig, 1999) to the final transcript.48 The first participant initially considered the name ‘Alice’, but then rejected it saying that is was ‘too particular’. She chose the name ‘Jane’ instead, commenting that she ‘wanted something fairly

48 For example, ‘Senator Jane’, ‘Queen Elisabeth’, or ‘President Irene’ confers a status that ‘Jane’, ‘Elisabeth’ and ‘Irene’ do not.

87 anonymous’, and that Jane Austin had also been a single woman. The second participant selected ‘Elisabeth’, specifying that it was to be spelled with an ‘s’ (not a ‘z’). The third participant chose the name ‘Irene’ after a character in a play called ‘Irene Callahan’, and after a few weeks of thought, the fourth participant selected the pseudonym ‘Mademoiselle’, because, as she put it “…that is what I am. The Frenchwoman in me is Mademoiselle”. From this point on, the participants in the study will be referred to using their selected pseudonyms:

Jane, Elisabeth, Irene, and Mademoiselle.

4.7. Participant Descriptions

Reflecting theoretical interpretations in the field, the kind and amount of biographical information about participants provided in DP/CDP studies varies. Some studies provide only basic information, such as the participants’ age, gender, and occupation, whereas in other studies, such as Wetherell (2003), who conducted ‘life history’ interviews, more in-depth

‘descriptions’ about the participants were provided.

In OT, life or personal histories are considered “essential to the occupational therapy process” (Burke & Kern, 1996, p. 391), and core to practice (Burke & Kern, 1996; Trentham,

2010). Although what is meant by a ‘life history’ can be subject to different kinds of theorization, in this thesis, life histories (or ‘herstories’) are considered (artful) constructions.

In social constructionism, biographies are not taken at face-value. As Davies and Harré have argued, “the positions created for oneself and the other are not part of a linear non- contradictory autobiography (as autobiographies usually are in their written form), but are rather the cumulative fragments of a lived autobiography” (1990, p. 265). Life stories can therefore be considered co-produced ‘fragments’, woven through a process of construction into what appears to be a coherent linear narrative. Historical time is not considered distinct

88 and cut off from the present, but “indissolubly connected to the present” (McLeod &

Thomson, 2009, p. 37).

Rather than expressing and transmitting some sense of an intact and pre-existing continuous identity, DP/CDP approaches reject the notion of a unitary agentic person

‘behind’ the talk (Taylor, 2010b). The production of life herstories and their inclusion in this thesis can thus be considered a constructive ‘intervention’ that 1) adds background and context to the discourse analysis; 2) offers a non-conventional life narrative that incorporates topics that may otherwise not be readily understood or appreciated by people who have not negotiated the single life on an ongoing basis, or have experienced a different route into being single; 3) ‘people’ the research text (Billig, 2013) in order to ‘humanize’ the participants in the context of a health discipline that operates within systems that tend towards de-humanization; and 4) acts as a counter-balance to largely reductive and often damaging representations of life-long single women commonly found in the research literature.

As it is ethically, theoretically, methodologically, and politically important to find different ways to recognize and acknowledge participants as persons in research practice

(Reynolds, 2004), and to acknowledge that talk (even if viewed as ‘discourse’) is the talk of people, each participant was sent a draft copy of their individual life herstories for review and asked to either: 1) accept the draft as is; 2) make corrections and deletions; or 3) omit the life history from the final thesis. (Please see Appendix G: Letter to Participant Letter re Life

History). The three participant-approved life herstories are presented below (See also Table

1. Participant Description).49

49 One participant (Irene) declined to have her life herstory included.

4.7.1 Life herstory: Jane

Jane was born in 1936 in the UK into “a middle-to-upper working class family.” Her mother had initially given up work when she married, but later, after her two children had been born, she returned to office work as a typist. Jane recalls her being an adept spinner of entertaining tales about the people and events in her workplace. Jane’s father, “an extremely talented man,” worked as a legal clerk in a city corporation. When he was fourteen, he had applied for a scholarship to grammar school, but not knowing that he was required to speak a second language, was turned down. Jane had one older sister who, being less enthusiastic about education than Jane, left school at the earliest opportunity and worked as a typist. She later married and had four children.

In the city neighborhood where Jane grew up, having a passion for Shakespeare and literature was considered unusual and “odd,” as was her aspiration to pursue a university education. Jane thoroughly enjoyed school, a girls’ grammar school where all of her teachers were women. Many were single, Jane explained, because they belonged to a generation of women “whose sweethearts had all been killed in the First World War.” Unlike other daughters who were expected to help with the chores around the house, Jane was encouraged to focus on her studies. As Jane explained, the working classes (men and women) “had been liberated by the [nineteen] forty-four education act,” legislation that opened the door to higher education to a limited number of working class people. Students who showed special academic promise, if supported by their teachers, could sit a university scholarship examination. Despite the dictum that “working class girls didn’t go to university”, Jane, an exceptional student, won a scholarship to attend one of the most elite universities in England.

As Jane dryly noted, the status of attending such a prestigious institution was “equivalent to being married.”

In 1950’s Britain, a university education was largely viewed to be a male

(middle/upper class) prerogative and few women went to university. Although the education of men did not call into question issues of masculinity, attitudes towards women and education were different. As Jane recalled, “because you were interested in books, people presumed that you would never marry.” Studious women were viewed as lacking sexual identity: “You didn’t have a sexual identity as a woman because that’s not what women did,”

Jane explained. University was also challenging and isolating for Jane in other respects: she wore different clothes; spoke with the wrong accent, and was marked out by her working class background. “I was a total alien to that world,” Jane recalled. Her parents, having no knowledge or understanding about the kinds of issues that Jane was facing, were unable to help or support her.

After graduating from university, in 1958, when Jane was twenty-two, she got engaged, but her parents had opposing views on the marriage. Jane’s father repeatedly advised her against marrying: “Don’t get married because you have too many talents and you won’t be able to use them if you get married.” Jane’s mother however, was keen for her to marry, and was disappointed and angry when Jane broke off the engagement. The two World

Wars had taken a terrible toll on generations of young men, and Jane’s mother was keenly aware of the lack of suitable and available young men for Jane to marry. By breaking off the engagement, she believed that Jane (in her early twenties) had effectively thrown away any chance of marriage. “You will never find anybody now. The best have gone. At your age, the best men have gone,” she declared.

Jane taught for several years after graduation, and in 1963, when she was twenty- seven, emigrated first to the U.S., and then, in 1969, to Canada. The transatlantic move

91 introduced Jane to different cultural attitudes towards single women. In the U.K., if a woman was not married by twenty-seven, “people might feel sorry for you, but they took it that life has many courses and many paths, and people were different.” In the U.S. however, Jane experienced what she described as “a kind of dogma” about marriage that to her, appeared to be strongly influenced by both Freudian and Puritanical ideas. In the U.S., unmarried women were considered “objects of suspicion”– “Why wasn’t she married?” The assumption, Jane recalled, was that there was “something wrong with you [as a woman] that you had not been able to go through this life ritual of finding a mate and setting up another family.” Either that, she said, or a sign of rebellion; that “you were deliberately and willfully avoiding the proper path.”

Jane’s initial teaching position at a northern U.S. university was less than ideal, and she decided to return to academic study. After completing a PhD at a prestigious southern

U.S. institution, Jane moved to Canada and took up an academic position in a small-town university. Despite her academic status change, she encountered the same kind of hostile social environment and atmosphere that she had first encountered while teaching in the U.S.

It was an era, Jane explained, when “the social life [of academic departments] was run by the wives50 of the faculty,” and “wives didn’t want single women around.” It was like “Noah’s ark,” Jane said, a strictly “two by two by two” scenario: events were organized by couples for couples. Jane, being both single and a woman, was a minority on the teaching staff; and as a woman “on her own,” she was assumed (by husbands and wives) to be ‘sexually available’ and thus a threat to existing marriages. Jane was excluded from social events, which limited her ability to build professional relationships and become fully-integrated into departmental

50 Jane observed that the wives of faculty members may have had degrees, but as women, the “marriage bar” prevented them from being married (and having children) and having careers at the same time.

92 life. She was treated with suspicion and hostility and became the subject of malicious gossip about the many affairs she was presumed to be having with (married) male members of staff.

Living “on the fringes” of departmental life, Jane also witnessed how single women were overlooked and sidelined for academic promotion. Feeling isolated and trapped, Jane resigned from her position and moved east to a larger city, where she found positions in sizeable, diverse and inclusive departments.

Jane also worked as a part-time freelancer in Canadian broadcasting. Given her own social position, and having a lifelong interest in the changing views of single women across the ages, Jane proposed a three-part radio documentary. The first program was to have examined changing views of virginity, specifically the importance accorded to virginity and the ideals of the virgin and the nun. The second program focused on the image of the ‘old maid’, who often lacked independent means and was usually financially dependent on relatives at a time when there were few viable employment options. Even if they worked,

Jane observed, they ran the risk of “losing caste.” The final program in the series was to have focused on the “modern view” of single women that offered an alternative and more positive, elevated set of images of “bachelor girls” and “swinging singles.” The focus here would have been on the “great importance of work” and “the freedom to work and have a career.” For

Jane, the modern view validated singleness as an alternative life path for women. Instead of being viewed as “anomalous” or “suspect,” the working life offered the possibility of respectability and legitimacy. Unfortunately the proposal was turned down, perhaps because of negative attitudes towards single women and/or the perception that the programs would have appealed only to a minority.

Jane was twenty-four in 1960, and she witnessed how “Everything changed in the sixties.” For the first time “people got divorced, people lived together, people had serial relationships, and there was also the sexual revolution.” Jane had been brought up to believe that sex outside marriage was wrong, and especially wrong for a woman. If a woman “had relations with somebody outside marriage,” she was automatically viewed to be “a kind of slut,” Jane recalled. As an adult, she may not have agreed, but it had nonetheless been a powerful and challenging message to overcome. The best-seller “Sex and the Single Girl” by

Helen Gurley Brown (1962) was, for Jane, one of the greatest books about being single because it publicly acknowledged and legitimated the right of single women to have sex lives. The contraceptive pill may have remained illegal for single women long after it was available to married women, but the sexual revolution, fueled by the feminist movement, radically altered the social and political landscape of women’s lives.

Jane rejoiced in feminist ideals that worked against the idea that “if you were single, you were a failure… and there was something wrong with you.” For her, second-wave feminism lifted “the burden from being single” and “absolutely validated being single and being in the workplace.” The validation of being in the workplace, for Jane, also pushed back against prevailing notions that a professional working life was simply “a marriage substitute”, that a woman “was a professional woman” only “because she was unable to get married.” But Jane was also critical of some feminists, who, while strongly proclaiming the values of the feminist movement, continued to shelter behind and claim the established

(heterosexual) privileges that came with marriage (and coupledom). For Jane, to be a “real feminist” was to be a single woman.

Retirement was initially challenging for Jane as she worked in an academic department that felt like “a ready-made community”. When she retired, Jane realized that she needed to find or create a new kind of community, one not geared around work. “If you are married, then you have a partner; you are ‘a two person’,” Jane observed. For her, being partnered and retired meant that there was some “kind of built-in social life.” But “[w]hen you are on your own, that effort to find a community becomes very important,” she said. Jane consciously worked to build and develop a new kind of community around her, partly through volunteer activities. Being passionate about the arts, she joined and started to volunteer for a number of arts organizations. “I don’t have time on my hands,” she commented, “and I am never bored.” She actively works at maintaining already-established close friendships (locally and elsewhere). She travels regularly to the U.K. to spend time with her sister and to visit old friends. Over time, however, as she and her friends have aged, Jane has noticed with sadness and regret, a slow depletion of her “friend world.” A number of her closest friends died, and other people very important to her have become ill. With her own health issues now impinging on what she feels able to do, Jane has not been able to offer as much practical support and help to friends living locally as she would like.

Jane has been diagnosed with diabetes and arthritis, and has been successfully treated for a non-life-threatening form of cancer. She also takes thyroid medication and has problems sleeping. She often feels tired, and is unsure if her fatigue levels are attributable to her health issues or whether her activity levels are too high. Commenting on this to her pharmacist, a man she has known for many years, she exclaimed: “I have just got to do something about going out.” His response had been disconcerting: “Yes, you really ought to. It’s just no good sitting inside and looking at those four walls.” To his surprise, Jane had quickly corrected

95 him: “Good heavens, no. I didn’t mean I wanted to go out more, I wanted to go out less,” she said. Reflecting on the exchange, Jane understood that the pharmacist had an image of her as a woman with “a problem,” and her problem was the lack of “a social life.” As the pharmacist persistently referred to her as “Miss” and not “Ms.” (her preferred title), she wondered if his image of her stemmed from some old-fashioned “ideas about Miss.” “I am sure it was something to do with my being an older single woman,” she said, that the lives of

“old retired unmarried teachers” or “retired single women” lacked meaning or purpose.

Characterizing the interaction as being “rather funny”, Jane also commented that it had also been “a shock”; his assumptions about her lack of a social life were in jarring contradiction to how she saw her own situation. It had been “a shock because you get somebody else’s image of you and it’s not the image that you have of you,” she said.

Some days, the future seemed gloomy to Jane. “There is this sort of awful fate that is hovering over all of us in my situation and at this age. Of being isolated in your house with some awful illness that stops you living your life almost completely,” she said. She also sometimes worried about the kinds of help that would be available should she ever become seriously ill. On other days, the future appeared bright, and Jane took great pleasure in claiming and living her own life on her own terms, and doing the things that were important to her. If at some point she had to move into care, Jane hoped that it would be to a lively place, with a lot of interesting people around to talk to, that would allow her to still “be involved in life.”

4.7.2 Life herstory: Elisabeth

Elisabeth was born in a rural English village in 1929. Shortly after her birth, her parents and one older sister moved from the village into a nearby town. Elisabeth’s father had joined the British army at fifteen, and had fought at Gallipoli. After the war ended, he

96 worked on the railways. An intelligent man who enjoyed reading and listening to political radio programs, he was passionately committed to the trade union movement, and he often wrote letters to the local newspaper about political issues. His views influenced Elisabeth as she grew up; to this day, she is supportive of trade unions and is passionate about local and international politics. Elisabeth’s mother gave up paid work when she married, and it wasn’t until towards the end of the Second World War, when married women were encouraged by the government to actively help the war effort, that she re-entered the labour force. Elisabeth was fourteen when her mother began part-time work, packing and sending parcels to British troops overseas. Rather than being financially dependent on her husband, she had her own money that she could spend as she chose. “That job,” Elisabeth observed, “was the making of my mother.”

Elisabeth was ten years old when the Second World War broke out. She recalled sitting with her family around her father’s radio, listening to Prime Minister Chamberlain’s radio announcement about the outbreak of war and then to Churchill’s famous 1940 war speeches. The news reels warned of potential German invasion, and Elisabeth dreamt of troops stealthily and menacingly advancing on their elbows towards the house up the long and narrow back garden. Waking in fright, she jumped out of bed to go and warn her parents.

Though she realized just in time that it had only been a dream, it had still been vivid enough that she crept cautiously towards the window to double-check.

In the late 1930s, few–only one in ten–English elementary school children received a secondary school education. Access to high school required passing a scholarship examination which Elisabeth passed with flying colours. Throughout her school years, she was often at the top of her class. Her father was keen for her to take her education even

97 further and go on to university, and Elisabeth remained at high school to complete a sixth year, primarily a preparatory year for university scholarship applicants. But Elisabeth had reservations. Nobody in her family or in her home town had ever gone to university, and her teachers were not very helpful. Even if she won a scholarship, she was concerned that the family couldn’t afford the expenses. “It all seemed a bit of a mystery,” Elisabeth recalled.

The advantages of a university education were also unclear. The employment options for women with degrees were limited, and one thing was certain, Elisabeth was quite sure that she didn’t want to become a teacher as the (single) women teachers at her high school were

“frumpy old things.”

Despite her misgivings, Elisabeth and her father went on a day trip by train to visit one of Britain’s most prestigious universities. Elisabeth remembers her father gazing with wonder at the old stone buildings and quadrangles, while she remain singularly unimpressed.

“He would have loved to have gone,” she said, “but all I see is this city with old buildings. It all looked a bit stuffy to me.” Looking back on it, Elisabeth suspects that if she had been awarded one of the few scholarships available, she probably would have gone. But her best friend from high school was already out in the workforce and earning money, and after the privations of war-time and post-war rationing, Elisabeth was keen to get a job and to earn a wage. The prospect of having her own money and of being able to buy her own clothes for the first time was very exciting, she recalled.

In 1954, at the age of twenty-five, with fifty pounds tucked in her pocket and the intention to stay only for a year, Elisabeth travelled by boat across the Atlantic to meet her sister in Toronto. Towards the end of the war, her older sister had trained as a nurse. She later married a soldier and they immigrated to Toronto, a city that was to become home for both

98 sisters. Elisabeth initially lived with her sister, brother-in-law, and her two young nieces, but finding it easy to get work, she quickly found alternate independent accommodation. She has lived by herself ever since.

As a British citizen, it had been relatively easy for her to immigrate, and she had little difficulty securing administrative and secretarial positions. “Being English somehow seemed to be a mark in your favour in those days,” she remembered, especially as Toronto was, as she described it, “a very Englishy kind of town.” It was also a time when “color discrimination was still legal.” Elisabeth recalled filling out job applications that required applicants to indicate “color.” Being initially unsure how to respond, Elisabeth asked for some guidance and was told that as a “white” person, the “color” box did not apply.

Elisabeth has always loved to write; as a child she created a “female version of

‘Biggles’.”51 In Toronto, her writing skills, eagerness to try out new things, and an ability to talk herself into different positions, often led to different and interesting work. Despite having no formal training in writing or in journalism, one of her favourite jobs was working as editorial assistant at a well-known local newspaper. Despite there being few women journalists around, Elisabeth was also hired by another Ontario newspaper. Disappointingly, in this job, she was required to write exclusively for “the Women’s section,” which, at the time, was almost exclusively devoted to issues related to marriage. It involved writing endless, boring descriptions of weddings and of “what the bride wore,” Elisabeth recalled.

Four years after arriving in Canada, after various dating relationships, Elisabeth met and became engaged to a visiting Australian. They planned to marry in Canada and then move to Australia, a prospect that dismayed Elisabeth’s parents because of the distances

51 ‘Biggles’ was a male fictional World War I British Royal Air Force fighter pilot and adventure hero.

99 involved. During the preparations for the wedding, however, Elisabeth gradually came to realize that she and her fiancé were “incompatible,” and she ended the engagement. She recalled that the sudden absence of the engagement ring from her finger drew the interested attention of many of her secretarial colleagues. They seemed astonished that it was she who had broken off the relationship. As “daughters of fairly well-to-do people,” Elisabeth explained, “they seemed totally focused on either planning their own weddings or friends’ weddings.” To them, a woman voluntarily breaking off an engagement was almost unthinkable, a reaction that for Elisabeth typified “their whole attitude to men and women and getting married.”

Elisabeth worked in many different organizations in various administrative capacities, but the work she enjoyed most was with organizations that had a social justice mandate and a connection to world politics. She especially enjoyed working for a Canadian church organization involved in supporting Latin American refugees. Elisabeth did not self-identify as an “activist,” but instead as someone deeply interested and involved in supporting activist activities.

At sixty-two, Elisabeth retired early, but not by choice. After what she suspected was a case of unfair dismissal from her last job, despite her experience and many skills, it had been difficult for her to find new work. In 1991, age discrimination was illegal, but Elisabeth nevertheless suspects that her age counted against her finding new employment. Living in cooperative (co-op) housing with controlled rents has helped her to manage the long-term financial implications of an unplanned early retirement. She has lived in her current apartment for over thirty years. A housing co-op, Elisabeth explained, is a form of social housing run on democratic lines, where importantly, residents have a say in the collective

100 decision making. The location of the co-op, with easy access to shops, the library, and public transit, is ideal. “I cannot imagine living anywhere else,” Elisabeth said.

After retiring, Elisabeth volunteered as a member of the co-op board and for other organizations needing volunteers with good writing and editing skills. She joined a book club, and thoroughly enjoys attending classical music concerts. But the greatest joy of her retirement has been the opportunity to learn. Most of Elisabeth’s spare time has been taken up doing community college courses, where she has studied subjects as diverse as Russian history, music appreciation, world politics, Latin America, and modern art. She also takes delight in the diversity of students encountered on campus. She loves listening to all of the different languages and accents that surround her, “It’s like the United Nations there,” she said with a smile. As “a white-haired lady,” as she described herself, college has been a great opportunity to mix with young people.

Many of Elisabeth’s friends shared her passion for politics. She made many friends through work, and she developed new friendships after retirement through the college courses. Both of her nieces live locally, and she keeps in close and regular contact with them and their children, especially since the sudden and recent unexpected deaths of both her sister and brother-in-law. “They are like a substitute family,” Elisabeth commented. Sometimes her nieces’ children call her “Aunt,” but Elisabeth prefers to be known by her first name: “I never felt ‘auntyish’ somehow,” she said, because, as a term, it seems to refer to someone older than she felt.

Elisabeth has always been in excellent health and has never been ill, and she has little patience with people who talk at length about ailments. Recently, however, a lingering and persistent cough over the winter had left her feeling occasionally short of breath walking up

101 stairs and steep inclines. “I began to feel old for the first time,” Elisabeth exclaimed. After visiting her family physician and undergoing a series of medical tests, the doctor prescribed some heart medication. Elisabeth now feels fully recovered, and has returned to climbing the stairs to her apartment.

Her overall approach to life could be described as pragmatic. Elisabeth reflected on how much of her life had been unplanned, but that despite this, she has been quite happy. “I have just gone from job to job, from one part of my life to another without really planning anything,” she reflected, and “even when things have happened in an unplanned way, they seem to have worked out.” She was also not unduly concerned about the future. Anticipating having to move at some point in the future, Elisabeth’s most pressing current priority was to file her taxes, and to make some headway on re-organizing and reducing the accumulated piles of paper in her apartment.

4.7.3 Life herstory: Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle was born in 1928 in a city in Eastern Canada. Her English-born mother immigrated to Canada for a fresh start after her soldier fiancé died during the First World

War. In Canada, her mother met and married Mademoiselle’s father, a bilingual French-

Canadian soldier and veteran of the First World War. After the war, he followed an established family tradition and joined the civil service.

Although both Mademoiselle and her younger brother were brought up in a French- speaking neighborhood, their mother never learned to speak French. Both parents were keen however for their children to be able to speak French and English; what Mademoiselle called

102 being a “twoee”52. At home, Mademoiselle spoke only English, but at her local Catholic school where she was taught by nuns she spoke French (and studied Latin). As Mademoiselle ruefully observed, nuns (and secular single women) at that time had few professional options.

Irrespective of personal ability or inclination, they could only be either teachers or nurses.

Mademoiselle learned to write early, and she loved to read. She remembers waiting impatiently to get her first library card, and with it, the freedom of being able to take out her own books. “My first public library card was a really strong color of rose”, she recalled, and

“when you reached sixteen, it turned to beige”. Not only was she passionate about reading and learning, but being a “twoee” had its advantages. She did very well at school, and was usually at the top of her class.

When Mademoiselle was fifteen, three years after the start of World War II, to her parents’ surprise, she announced that she wanted to go to university. She remembers sitting down to write a letter to them, laying out in persuasive terms the "improving effects" of the proposed education. Her parents were suitably impressed, and a few years later

Mademoiselle became the first member of her family to graduate from university. She studied a variety of subjects, but was especially drawn to languages. She graduated with a

General Arts degree, and being bilingual, had no difficulty finding employment. Following in her father’s footsteps, Mademoiselle initially joined the civil service, where she worked in both provincial and federal government.

While Mademoiselle could attend university and had the possibility (as a woman) of earning a degree, such privileges were unimaginable to women in previous generations. This was reflected in Mademoiselle’s own family. Aunt Mathilde, her father’s younger sister, had

52 Mademoiselle enjoyed playing with words. She also coined the word “singling” to refer to the process of studying or researching singleness.

103 not received a high school education. Mathilde’s father (Mademoiselle’s grandfather) had been moderately wealthy, and education for women was not considered necessary. As the daughter of a middle-class man, Mathilde (and her sisters) were expected to marry. But

Mathilde, described by Mademoiselle as being “a lovely, lovely woman,” had not married, and like many unmarried daughters her role became that of family caretaker. Mathilde looked after her parents, and then lived in turn with each of her married siblings, helping to look after their children and to assist with running the household. Mathilde also cared for her bachelor brother. Her duties, Mademoiselle recalled, were “the usual”; “to look after the house, and look after him, and cook,” and Mathilde’s company and services were very much in demand. She never actually had a home of her own, Mademoiselle reflected, but

Mathilde’s brothers and sisters were always vying with one another for her to come and live with them.

The outbreak of World War II changed matters. "Everybody could find a job then,”

Mademoiselle remembered, and Mathilde, now in her early fifties, found paid work in the civil service. Mademoiselle recalled Mathilde talking to her family about how much she enjoyed the work. Paid work “was a really, really great discovery for her,” Mademoiselle observed. But, after the war ended, so too did the opportunity of paid employment.

Mathilde’s temporary work contract ended, and she returned to her domestic family duties.

Although separated by only one generation, as single women Mathilde and Mademoiselle had very different life opportunities and experiences. By the time Mademoiselle was in her twenties, she had gone to high school, on to university, had earned a degree, and had secured a permanent job as a civil servant.

While Mademoiselle’s professional life developed, in her personal life, she had been

104 dating for some time. In 1954, when she was twenty-six, she was in a serious relationship with a man who had become very important to her, but she was also having some serious health issues. After a series of consultations, her doctors finally advised her to have major surgery–a hysterectomy–and the operation would signal the start of a series of major changes in Mademoiselle’s life. As in Mathilde’s time, marriage was considered the proper path for women, and one of the pre-requisites for marriage was an assumed ability to be able to bear children. It was like an “unwritten law,” Mademoiselle observed, “almost like a condition of marriageability.” After the surgery, Mademoiselle’s partner came under increasing pressure from his parents to marry, and to marry someone who could continue the family name by having children. Their relationship became increasingly strained, and in the end, to their mutual regret, they parted. After his marriage, he had contacted Mademoiselle to ask if she would be willing to continue their relationship as an affair. Mademoiselle was tempted, but in the end, regretfully declined: “As a woman, I couldn’t do that to her [his wife],” she said.

Her life also changed in other ways post-surgery. The experience had raised a number of spiritual questions that her local priest was not able to help her with. Although Catholicism had always been an integral part of her culture and her life, she found that her interest and commitment waned. Being Catholic was also bound up in complex ways with her French-

Canadian identity: “The more I went off Catholicism, the more I went off being

Francophone,” she explained. She described a process of breaking away from Francophone culture in order to embrace more of what she called “the Anglophone world.”

Mademoiselle left the civil service and her home city and travelled extensively in

Europe, living and working for a time in London, England. Her training in languages allowed her to work as a translator, and she later became involved in public broadcasting. In her last

105 position before retirement, she worked as a funding officer for a national disability organization that required her to travel and meet people from all over Canada. “We were there to enable persons to be treated equally and as well as possible,” she said. It was about

“being helpful” and “creative,” and by making policy, it made “possible things that we take for granted today,” Mademoiselle reflected.

Mademoiselle initially resisted the idea of retiring at sixty-five, but in the end, she embraced it wholeheartedly. She volunteered for over twenty years on numerous boards, and has only recently stepped down from these responsibilities. For most of her adult life,

Mademoiselle has lived in rental accommodation, but when she was seventy-five she bought her first (and current) home: “I felt it was time to do something with my life that was serious, and become a home owner,” she quipped. She shares her living space with “Jet,” her adopted feral cat. One of the attractions of the building and the community was the variety of people.

“I like the people here,” she said, “because there are people from a lot of different countries and I love that.”

As someone who has always enjoyed meeting people and making friends,

Mademoiselle has a number of different friendship networks. One network is associated with her current living complex, another is with friends who lived close to the downtown core, and she also has friends living in different cities across Canada. A majority of her friends are also single women who help each other out and provide mutual support: “You just cultivate a different kind of family,” Mademoiselle explained, “but it is a family that you have chosen as opposed to one that you have inherited.”

Apart from knee surgery a few years ago, and episodic periods of depression,

Mademoiselle has always been in good health. She drives her twenty-year-old car, does her

106 own grocery shopping, and makes frequent trips to the local library to replenish her stockpile of books. She regularly attends a seniors’ exercise class: “I force myself to go to a two-hour seniors’ exercise class once a week,” she said, and she loves to walk. With a history of dementia in her family, Mademoiselle’s strategy to combat the possibility of memory loss is to read (books and newspapers), do puzzles, and be involved in stimulating conversation.

Eager to try out new things, and given an abiding passion for crime fiction, she was considering auditing a criminology course at a local university.

Mademoiselle is passionate about many contemporary societal issues, especially global warming and other environmental matters, issues that she felt the current

(Conservative) government was doing little to address. With age, she has become noticeably more concerned about the effects of war, other tragic situations where there is unnecessary loss of life, and about the life conditions for future generations.

Mademoiselle was contemplating relocating, selling her apartment, and moving closer to the city centre where it would be easier to go to soccer matches and movies. But she also anticipated at some point in the future having to move into a care home. The prospect of moving not once but twice was daunting, and until she could make a decision, in the meantime, she was putting “her house in order.” She was sorting and downsizing her book collection, which included a sizeable array of international cookbooks.

Despite future uncertainties, Mademoiselle remains optimistic. Reflecting on how often her work life changed, and how rarely she has stayed living in any one place,

Mademoiselle is confident about her ability to adapt to new circumstances in a new location.

Not only is she looking to direct her energies in a new and as yet undetermined direction, but

Mademoiselle is ready for another change: “[Although] I may not be quite sure about what

107 change will look like …I am very confident of the future. I am not through with it yet,” she stated.

4.7.4 Participant Similarities and Differences

As one ‘version’ of many possible versions, the participant life herstories (above) show individual variety and diversity, but the participants were similar and different from each other along other parameters. All of the participants could be described as ‘white settlers’ (Kuper, 2017). Two were British nationals who had immigrated as adults to Canada, and the two Canadian-born participants also had one parent who had emigrated from the

U.K. All talked during the interviews about being in close and intimate heterosexual relationships at different times in their lives. Two participants identified that they had been engaged. Three were university graduates and one was a high-school graduate. In terms of

‘health’ issues (traditionally understood), they talked about having experienced a variety of health issues at some point over their life time. These issues included: bone fractures, cancer, depression, hip replacement surgery, heart disease and diabetes. Three drove cars. At the time of the interviews, one participant was actively seeking alternative accommodation (a retirement facility), and two others were actively downsizing their belongings in anticipation of a future move. They all anticipated a future of having to move out of their homes and into a care facility. All were in regular contact with biological family members, and they all talked about the importance of friends and friendships.

4.7.5 Table 1.

Participant Description

Participant SSS1 SSS2 SSS3 SSS4 Number Chosen “Jane” “Elisabeth” “Irene” “Mademoiselle” Pseudonym

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Date of Birth November 1936 February 1929 November 1927 November 1928 Age at First 76 84 86 85 Interview Number of 4 3 4 3 Interviews Place of Birth England, UK. England, UK. Canada Canada Date of 1963 (to the U.S.) 1954 at the age N/A N/A Immigration & at the age of 27, of 25 Age then to Canada in 1969 (when 33) Location of Interview 1 in a Restaurant University Home Interview Pub/Restaurant, Library with subsequent interviews in her home Residence Condo* Co-operative Condo Condo* (* owner Housing occupied)

4.8. Transcription

In discourse analytic studies, transcription is considered a selective and constructive activity (Reynolds, 2008 citing Ochs; Potter & Wetherell, 1987), and a form of analysis in its own right (Wetherell & Potter, 1992).53 As Reynolds (2008) observed, transcription processes are part of the data generation process, “the selection of what counts as data” (p.

163, italics in original), and so the creation of transcripts needs to reflect the research goals.

As the interest was in the content of discourse and the argumentative patterns, but also some of the finer grained features of talk, such as hesitations, corrections, long pauses, laughter, and marked intonation, the interviews were transcribed using a simplified Jefferson transcription notation originally described by Atkinson and Heritage (1984).54

53 Some stretches of talk were omitted from final transcripts, although a brief summary of the missing content was inserted into the text. Where there was some doubt as to the relevancy of the content, material was included. 54 The Jeffersonian system (Jefferson, 1985) is standard in conversation analysis, but the level of detail makes it difficult to follow (Wetherell & Potter, 1992; Taylor, 2001a), and it is extremely labor intensive to

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Transcription began immediately after each interview was completed, in preparation for subsequent interviews.55 Both the interactive talk of the participant (using the participant- selected pseudonym) and the interviewer (‘Rona’) were transcribed (Wetherell & Potter,

1992) using line numbers. Key identifiers were anonymized, and any additional observations made during transcription were added directly into the text. After several rounds of listening to each audio file and editing the transcript, paper copies of each interview were printed, color-coded, and bound.

4.9 Analytical Process: Discourse Analysis

As previously stated, the process of analysis began with transcription (Taylor, 2001a), but in discourse analysis (as with other forms of qualitative research), the journey from transcription to the writing up of the analysis is recognized to be circular, or iterative (Taylor,

2001a). After transcription, the researcher beings to look for patterns in the data, while not being entirely sure what these will look like, or what their significance will be (Taylor,

2001a). There was a preliminary process of ‘coding’,56 which in discourse analysis, typically involves repeatedly sifting through the material (in this case, 451 pages of interview transcript) for instances of the phenomenon of interest (singleness discourse) (Potter, 2004).

Being as inclusive as possible (Potter, 2004; Wetherell & Potter, 1992), the stretches of talk

transcribe (e.g., one hour of audio material commonly takes at least twenty hours to transcribe (see Potter & Hepburn, 2005; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). 55 All of the transcription was done by the interviewer, which also allowed for the addition of any preliminary observations and analytical questions to be inserted directly into the original transcript. As the analysis unfolded, the audio files were periodically revisited, and if needed, additional details were added to the stretches of text being analyzed. 56 The term ‘coding’ in discourse analysis should not be equated with the kinds of coding or procedures undertaken in survey or experimental research, where a reliance on ‘methods’ (such as statistical analyses) is the means through which claims about the data and the research conclusions are justified (Potter, 2004; Wetherell & Potter, 1992).

110 of interest are then copied electronically into an archive. The sifting process was open-ended and cyclical.

As my familiarity with the material grew, and as I began to discern some of the patterns, I revisited the original transcripts and the audio files, and moved additional material into the archive. Having completed all of the transcription myself, the additional notes made at the time, about what was odd, interesting, or confusing were especially helpful. In order to be able to ‘see’ the data, it was useful in the analysis to have two kinds of archive files.

Organized into tables, one file contained talk extracts of both the interviewer and the participant, and another file contained just stretches of talk from the participant. As I am a visual learner, it was also helpful to create poster sized maps of the material, organized by interview, topic, and participant, with a range of quotes on colored sticky notes that could be moved around. During this process, I started writing analytical memos about hunches and ideas and filled a number of notebooks with quotes and preliminary observations.

Following Reynolds (2008) and Gill (2000), the material was sifted for detail, nuance, contradictions, images, puzzling sections where the participant responses were unexpected, stretches of talk about specific experiences of being single, areas of vagueness, and variability in how singleness was talked about. Potter (2004) stressed the importance of reading for the fine details or fragments of discourse, such as word choice, image, pauses, and repairs, thus the process of detecting regularities and patterns was time-consuming and slow work (Gill, 1996, 2000; Potter, 1996; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Reynolds, 2008;

Wetherell & Potter, 1992).

As a novice discourse analyst, reading accounts of how other (DP) researchers described the analytical process, as well closely reading and re-reading their analyses

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(especially Edley, 2001; Reynolds, 2004; Lawes, 1999; Seymour-Smith, Wetherell, &

Phoenix, 2002; Wetherell, 1996a), were invaluable in gaining a sense of the overall process and what the end-product of the analysis (the write-up) could look like. It was also essential to have, in plain sight, a collated list of descriptive quotes about the three analytical tools, especially as the first task of the analysis was to identify interpretive repertoires.

As I previously identified, as a single woman, I brought to the analysis my own particular set of experiences and history of exposure to singleness discourse as a result of being a cultural member. The need to take a critical research approach was borne out of my own experiences, and there were ‘sensitivities’ to singleness discourse that were helpful in the analysis. But there were also challenges. There is no standing ‘outside’ discourse, and cultural membership can simultaneously ‘blind’ analysts to other taken-for-granted aspects of discourse. Over time, it became easier to adopt a “spirit of skeptical reading” (Gill, 2000, p.

178), although DP/CDP as a theoretical framework does not allow for the acknowledgment of emotional dimensions to the analytical process.

It took time to be able to focus on the details of discourse and not read for gist, to develop what Schenkein (cited by Potter & Wetherell, 1994) describe as “the right analytic mentality” (p. 58).57 Discourse analysis has been described as a craft skill (Gill, 2000; Potter,

1996b) in that there are no rules or recipes to follow: learning is by doing. Hunches are developed, followed by the development of tentative ‘interpretive schemes’ that are often revised (Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). For example, there were a number of instances of talk about ‘freedom/s’ related to singleness, but on close examination,

57 In order to build up an appreciation for the fine-grained detail of discourse, it was helpful to read examples of conversational analysis, such as: Widdicombe, 2008a, 2008b; Antaki, et al., 1996; Rapley et al. 1998; and in McKinley & McVittie, 2008, and examples of analyses in publications by leading DP/CDP scholars such as Gill, 1996, 2000, Margaret Wetherell, and Jonathan Potter.

112 notions of ‘freedom’ were being approached from two different perspectives. One perspective related to the freedom/s from (a particular alternative), whereas the second perspective related to freedom to do particular actions in the world. Repeated readings of key theoretical texts helped me to consolidate understandings of the purpose of analysis and the role that the analytic tools played in organizing the talk data.

Finally, it was helpful to keep a number of questions on hand to help guide the process of the analysis. The questions included: What claims about singleness are being made?; What is getting attributed to singleness?; What kinds of persuasive moves are found in the texts?; How does the speaker display their allegiance to or separation from an identity slot?; What is absent from this version of the world?; and rhetorically, how do the statements being made counter some alternative or ally themselves with some perhaps unstated view?

4.10 Attending to Reflexivity/Reflexivities

The etymological root of ‘reflexive’ means “to bend back upon oneself” (Finlay &

Gough, 2003, p. ix), but through a social constructionist framework, there is no one ‘self’ to bend back upon. In DP/CDP, subjects are viewed theoretically as “decentred, fragmented, relational, evolving and incomplete” (Gough, 2003, p. 27), making accounting for ‘self- awareness’ challenging, as it is something dynamic, continuing, and immediate (Finlay &

Gough, 2003), rather than fixed and static. Despite there being no essential stable private or

‘real’ self to ‘bend back upon’ or to be reflexive about, this does not mean that reflexivity cannot be addressed. The first step, as Gough (2003) persuasively argued, is that in social constructionism, reflexive practice can be considered in the plural as “reflexivities” (Gough,

2003, p.23, italics added), rather than as ‘reflexivity’ (singular).

Reflexivities can nominally be addressed by listing a number of researcher positions or identities, often couched in definite (monolithic) terms of ‘sameness and difference’, or as

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‘insider and outsider’ status relative to the participants, using short-hand category identifiers

(e.g., age, gender, marital status, class, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability). But as

Lawler (2014) observed, one of the problems with naming and describing people in this way is that ‘identity’ (and subjectivity) becomes reduced to such categories. In a social constructionist thesis which seeks to trouble simplistic understandings of ‘identity’ in relation to categories by re-theorizing ‘identity’ as a discursive practice, the provision of a list of positions would be theoretically inconsistent. Furthermore, a lengthy ‘rigorous’ explanation about the ‘real’ motivation for conducting the study would also be inconsistent with a constructionist stance (Gough, 2003). As Reynolds (2008) noted, one of the pitfalls of taking a social constructionist approach and then attempting to be self-reflexive is the danger of placing the self above or outside the patterns observed in the interactions.

While it is important to acknowledge the lack of consensus about how to conceptualize reflexivity/ies in social constructionism (see Finlay, 2002a, 2002b; Pels, 2000;

Lynch, 2000), and while the challenge is daunting (Finlay, 2002a, 2002b), and in addition to the explicit reflexive observations about my own positioning that are woven throughout the thesis, a ‘partial’ (Gough, 2003) and inevitably selectively constructive account of reflexivities about the ‘Stories of Singleness’ study is presented below. Following suggestions laid out by Gough (2003), who drew on earlier arguments made by feminist scholar Wilkinson (1988), I will briefly address three interrelated reflexivities: personal, functional, and disciplinary.

Personal reflexivity requires me to ask how my own personal positioning has influenced the ‘Stories of Singleness’ study. I was drawn to investigate the understandings

(or ‘Ms. Understandings’) of singleness and single women largely as a consequence of my

114 own positioning (and marginalization) as an (aging) single woman. Before the research began, I had not heard about the named discrimination of single people (singlism), and I was not aware that my own subjectivity as a single (white and otherwise privileged) woman had been shaped by something called ‘singleness discourse’ that had political and ideological dimensions and effects. I did know, however, that being single up to about the age of thirty was an assumed temporary state of affairs. The assumed life path was marriage, and the assumption was that ‘if a woman was not married by the time she was thirty, she never would be’. My experience of reaching and then moving beyond thirty was to enter into a liminal and socially-suspect social world, fraught with interactions that left me feeling that I was somehow ‘abnormal’, ‘too fussy or particular’, ‘to be pitied’, and ‘missing out’ on what were the really important things in life.

The shame and the silences that have surrounded the way single women have been stereotyped and discriminated against is perpetuated by the idea that singleness is a strictly personal and private matter; it’s my ‘fault’, there is something wrong with me. Unlike the other extreme forms of ‘isms, (such as sexism, racism, ageism, and ableism), and the others kinds of discrimination faced by people as a consequence of their sexual orientation and/or gender expression, single women have not been subject to hate crimes, nor have they been shot or jailed because of their positioning. This does not mean however that singlism does not mark lives and subjectivities. As the effects of the ‘#Metoo’ movement continue to raise consciousness about the gender discrimination that is endemic in our institutions, I hope that this thesis will raise consciousness about a dimension of gender discrimination that is often missed, despite the fact that it affects the lives of most women at some point. As an unrecognised discrimination, the effects of ‘singlism’ can be subtle and insidious until they

115 can be identified, named, and confronted. Adding to the complexity is that the ‘othering’ of single women can be done not only by men and by women who occupy other social positions, but also ‘internally’ by single women about the lives of other single women, and by single women in the process of talking about their own lives. When illness is added into the mix, as it was for me during the course of conducting this research, the challenges can be considerable.

After embarking on the research project and immersing myself in the research literature, it was often shocking and disturbing to read how single women were portrayed. To paraphrase Victor Frankl, ‘to see oneself through others’ eyes’ in the terms of the positivist quantitative literature, and in the terms offered by many of the qualitative studies of singleness – the title ‘unclaimed treasure’ stands out for me as being particularly irksome – was deeply troubling. Some portrayals of single women in the literature were simply banal, but other studies used language terms that were blatantly disrespectful and perpetuated

‘textual violence’ (Shotter, 1997) akin to the ‘symbolic violence’ identified by Bourdieu and

Wacquant (1992). The work of Jill Reynolds (2004) stood out from all of the other material I read largely because it spoke to dimensions of my own experiences that I could not have articulated, but immediately recognized. In the extracts from the women she interviewed there were echoes of my own narratives, but it was what she could show with her analysis that was especially illuminating. It was the way that Jill Reynolds was able to make connections between the particular accounts of the women in their everyday talk and the broader social and cultural values and beliefs (Wetherell, 1996a) that opened up a space of understanding that I had never before realized. It was also the ability of the analysis to be able to focus on process, and to be able to show conflict, that made discursive psychology

116 such an attractive (if challenging) approach. As a researcher learning the art and craft of critical qualitative research (Eakin, 2015), it was important to me to produce a research text that showed why singleness and single women matter in a way that did not ‘finalize’ or foreclose other narrative possibilities (Frank, 2010) or inadvertently fall into the trap of doing

‘violence’ to the study participants in how they were being represented. As a ‘recovering positivist’, making sense of the theory in the absence of an informed community of practice, was a monumental struggle as I endeavoured to steer clear of ‘methodolatry’ (see

Chamberlain, 2000) and other traps and pitfalls (see also Eakin, 2015).

In this thesis, I wanted to begin to draw attention to singleness as a site for potential discrimination and oppression in OT, at a time when there seems to be a growing awareness that there is a need to attend to issues of power and privilege. OT in Canada, as with other caring professions, is largely practiced and taught by women, often by white heterosexual women like myself who have little understanding of the privileges so entailed. In this thesis, I wanted to hold up a mirror to singleness as a social positioning in order to draw attention to how this can play out in practice and with clients, but also show how understandings of singleness can affect single women within the profession. In this respect, the thesis blurs those assumed boundaries between the professional and client world, and the personal and the political.

Silences can be very charged spaces. I have spent much of my life finding ways not to talk about my own status. I quickly learned to dodge the issue, and to quickly divert or close down conversations. During apparently ordinary interactions with (biological) family members, acquaintances, strangers, and even well-meaning friends, when being single was raised as a topic of conversation, I would not infrequently walk away from conversations

117 feeling somehow diminished, as if I had been subtly criticised and attacked, or worse, pitied.

But when I did try to speak about my experiences, words were a struggle. I wanted to avoid and resist telling stories that reified negative stereotypes, and yet without being able to always draw on the ‘romantic plot’ narrative, which is supposed to lead to the mythic

‘happily ever-after’ narrative, on what other terms could I understand and make meaning of the trajectory of my life? As I hesitatingly began to ask other single women to tell me about their lives, I was aware of how difficult the terrain was for both me and them. Conversations are often edgy and truncated, and it seemed a relief to all when the subject was dropped. For women with a background in feminism however, the questions often related to why narratives around marriage, coupledom, and children were so strongly legitimized and dominant. What were the politics that drove that, and how could those politics be changed?

When I chose to study women’s singleness at the doctoral level, with the aim of

‘troubling’ some of the taken-for-granted assumptions about singleness (and single women),

I was naively unaware that such work would necessitate repeatedly ‘outing’ myself as a single woman in a variety of academic and informal contexts. Some people were clearly put off by the research topic, and during other conversations about the work, explicit and implicit assumptions were clearly being made about who I was as a person. From the questions that were asked and the unrecognized assumptions that seemed to drive them, I gradually became aware that I was being subjected to the same kinds of negative stereotypical assumptions that my thesis sought to problematize. I was not only researching my thesis, I was living it.

At conferences, however, I learned to look forward to quiet conversations over lunch with single women who had attended my presentations. Not feeling comfortable or safe enough to share their experiences in public, they would often hesitatingly approach me

118 afterwards to talk about their own experiences. It was a relief, they told me in private, to finally be able to tell someone about what had happened to them, and to share their experiences. Bound up with the effects of power is also a sense of impotence at not being able to directly find the words, to tell a plotted narrative, or to have only a scatter of incoherent fragments. Perhaps this is what Hall meant when he suggested that identity “is formed at the unstable point where the unspeakable stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture” (cited by Wetherell, 1995, p.135). Part of the struggle was learning to identify and articulate why, in what seemed to be fleeting and even ‘trivial’ exchanges, small degradations mattered so much. As bell hooks (1988) so movingly observed, part of the process of ‘talking back” (p.5), of learning to speak ‘truth to power’, was “the fear of exposure, the fear that one’s deepest emotions and innermost thoughts will be dismissed as mere nonsense” (p.7). It was only as I learned to apply the fine-grained analysis of talk during the writing-up of this thesis that it became possible to catch and unpack the ideological underpinnings that make talking about singleness such a fraught matter. Although from a different scholarly tradition, Bourdieu’s notion of ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu &

Wacquant, 1992) names that which I couldn’t at first recognize or name.

Taking to heart Joan Eakins’ sage advice to treat ‘everything as data’, over time I developed a somewhat distanced sense of sociological curiosity about the diverse range of responses to my identified research topic. Some people literally stepped away from me, as if they could in some way be ‘contaminated’ by being close to a single woman. One retired political science professor asked why ‘such a nice friendly girrl like me would want to waste her time researching the lives of old women who had nothing to show for their lives’. Still, most did not explicitly ask about my own specific circumstances (Was I gay? Did I date? Did

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I have poor social skills? What else might be wrong with me? Was I too fussy? Did I like men? Had I left it too late? Did my parents have a bad marriage?). Other people were more subtle in their ‘oppression’. What was I to make of the sudden interjected long and elaborate stories about peoples’ ‘families’, their many children (and grandchildren), and happy family holidays? During such moments, it seemed that, for them, being single was something alien and fear-inducing. The stories seemed to function as a kind of verbal ‘fetish’ against the prospect of being single. By telling these stories, women seemed to be reassuring themselves that life had been well and richly lived, that they would not ‘be alone’ as they grew older, and that they could be secure in the knowledge of having a legacy that would continue into the future. Although there are now far more single women than ever before, and not just in

Western societies, ongoing singleness remains deeply transgressive, even ‘taboo’, but due to the absence of a strongly developed collective identity politics around singleness, this claim may at first sound overblown and exaggerated. For many people, singleness still seems to sit outside what Mills (1959) evocatively called the ‘sociological imagination’, but the terms used to describe single women speak volumes: ‘left over’ (Hong Fincher, 2014; To, 2015);

‘parasite singles’ (Yamada, 1999); ‘spinsters, old maids, and cat ladies’ (Barak, 2014);

‘surplus’ (Nicholson, 2007); and ‘blue china’ (Gottard, 2001).58

The timing of the research has been fortuitous. In 2005, DePaulo and Carr coined the term ‘singlism’ to describe the largely unrecognized or unacknowledged discrimination of single people. Since then, scholarship centred around the experiences of single women and on operations of ‘singlism’ has grown in the fields of social history, psychology, family and

58 In a book about the migration of single women to Australia, an unidentified Canadian writer in the 1890’s wrote: “Woman, it has been said, is like blue china, very valuable when sound, but very worthless when damaged or broken” (Gottard, 2001, p. 17). The metaphor of “sound” in this context is likely a euphemism for virginal or sexually uncompromised, which is set in opposition to being “damaged” or “broken” goods.

120 cultural studies, and sociology (see for example, Bell & Yans, 2008; DePaulo, 2015;

A.Taylor, 2012; Lahad, 2014, 2017; Parsons, 2008). But there has also been a growing online public debate about singleness. In July 2015, Bella DePaulo (scholar and singles activist) initiated an online closed Facebook group called ‘The Community of Single People (CoSP)’, of which I am a member.59 The combination of personal experience, informal conversations with women of all ages, online public conversations, responses to the research in the academy, fiction and films, and the scholarly interdisciplinary writings on singleness have all contributed to my understanding of the discursive landscape of women’s singleness and have informed the theoretical and methodological approach selected for the research. Having touched on a few key issues related to personal reflexivity, next I would like to briefly address functional reflexivity.

Although both personal and functional reflexivities are closely inter-related, according to Wilkinson (1988), functional reflexivities concern the focus of the research itself, including the choice of theory and methods and the practice processes of the research, and issues relating to power. Many of these have already been identified. For example, the problematization of the assumptions made about single women during the ethics consultation, the construction and inclusion of participant life herstories, where the participants were invited to change the content, or to have the herstory omitted from the thesis (i.e., to have some control over how they were represented in the thesis text), and in the terms selected for use in the thesis (single vs ‘unmarried or never-married). But functional reflexivity not only concerns the role of the researcher, but also the effects of

59 The Community of Single People (CoSP)’ site states that: “It is a place for discussing all aspects of single life except dating or other attempts to escape single life” (http://www.belladepaulo.com/2017/07/community-single-people/).

121 different identities in the interaction between the researcher and the participants (Gough,

2003).

Although the participants were made aware that I was also a single woman during the recruitment process, was I single like they were single? I too was an immigrant to Canada, a

‘white settler’ with a Scottish accent. But there were other differences such as age and generation, health professional status, and my status as a doctoral candidate at an elite university. There were some moments when my status as a single woman seemed to make it

‘safer’ for the participants to talk; one woman said ‘that’s a relief’ when I indicated that I was also single. But at other times, I felt that my own experiences and privileges, including my disciplinary background, clouded my ability to listen to their stories. During the interviews and analytical stages of the research, I was concerned about imposing categories like ‘single’ onto the participants (Taylor, 2013; Potter & Wetherell, 2003), and although efforts were made to power share during the process of the research, from the studies’ conception to the write-up, it is important to acknowledge that I was driving the research. Though as a qualitative researcher I am committed to ‘democratic forms of inquiry where the voices of participants are encouraged and respected”, as Gough (2003) observed, “it is virtually impossible to escape researcher-participant relationships structured by inequalities” (p. 23).

The third and final dimension of reflexivity to be addressed is disciplinary reflexivity, or “the requirement for a discipline or sub-discipline to explain its own form and influence”

(Wilkinson, 1988, p. 495), a definition that was later more accessibly glossed by Gough

(2003) as “a critical stance towards the place and function of the particular research project within broader debates about theory and method” (p. 24). I will briefly touch on two inter-

122 related issues: the status of qualitative research in OT; and the situatedness of the study in the context of a Rehabilitation Sciences Institute.

In recent years, qualitative research in OT (or qualitative health research as it is sometimes known) has become more accepted and acceptable, although qualitative

‘methods’ are often framed as inferior (‘soft’ science) supplements to quantitative approaches, or as part of ‘mixed methods’ (see Eakin, 2016). In a fiscal climate where grants for research are increasingly challenging to secure, it is widely acknowledged that qualitative studies are less often funded, and are more poorly funded than quantitative studies. In a

(unfunded) thesis that focuses on issues related to social status and positioning, the approach selected for the study is thus also a subject of political and ideological contestation as part of the scientific ‘power games’ that occur within an academic context. 60

Within the field of qualitative research, there are also disputes about what approaches are best for what kinds of questions. In OT, some qualitative research approaches are more

‘main stream’ than others (for example, ethnography, phenomenology, and more recently interpretive description). Although more researchers are turning to discourse analysis,

‘realist’ approaches to language have tended to dominate in OT, despite the urging by Frank and Polkinghorne (2010) to take into consideration the ‘turn to language’.

As realist-oriented studies of women’s singleness have tended to produce over- simplistic and stereotypical representations and understandings of single women, it was necessary to seek an alternative approach. This included an alternative way to theorize singleness, and in ways that took into account the complex language practices of people and the multiple and complex layering of meanings associated with being single. In many ways,

60 See Eakin (2016) and Chamberlain (2000).

123 the approach selected mirrored one of the challenges in OT practice. In clinical setting, much of what OTs do with people, can appear simple, every-day, and mundane to others. Although

DP/CDP may be a novel approach to discourse analysis in OT, it also takes as its focus that which seems to be ordinary, every-day, and mundane. However, as the analysis that follows will show, what appears simple has very complex political and ideological dimensions. It is somewhat ironic that, as Gill (2000) wryly observed, discourse analysis itself should carry ‘a health warning’, because learning to ‘do’ discourse analysis takes time, and requires a fundamental re-orientation towards how language and social relations are experienced (Gill,

2000).

As Wilkinson (1988) observed, reflexivity requires “asking not only how life experience influences research, but also how research feeds back into life experience” (p.

494). While I anticipate that the impact of doing this research will continue to unfold, Gill, I think, is right. Although there are certainly challenges to using an approach to discourse analysis that is novel not just in OT but also in Canada, like hooks (1988), when I think about the lives of single women (as OT care recipients and as OTs), for me the process has been a

“radical gesture”, that “not only brought me face-to-face with this question of power; it forced me to resolve this question, to act, to find my voice, and to become that subject who could place herself and those like her at the centre of feminist discourse”. In other words, “I was transformed in consciousness and being” (hooks, 1988, p. 15).

Having considered different reflexivities related to the ‘Stories of Singleness’ study, I turn next to broader issues of accounting for quality.

4.11 Accounting for Quality

Qualitative research has been described as a practice or craft skill (Potter &

Wetherell, 1994; Seale, 2003), and ‘data’ (cf. Denzin, 2013) can be ‘read’ in many different

124 ways (Holloway & Jefferson, 2000; Nayar & Stanley, 2015). There is no one-size-fits-all set of criteria to evaluate the quality of studies, and traditional (positivist) criteria such as rigour, reliability, validity, and replicability are inapplicable to discourse analytic studies (Taylor,

2001b; Potter & Wetherell, 1994). Although there are no definitive rules for conducting a discourse analytic study, and no universally-agreed upon criteria for evaluation (Potter &

Wetherell, 1987; Taylor, 2001b; Potter & Wetherell, 1994), there is a general consensus that reflexive acknowledgment of the theories, values and politics guiding the research is important (Taylor, 2001b), and that there is a need for theoretical and methodological congruity, (i.e., congruity between a study’s theoretical and methodological commitments, methods, research questions, analytic processes and report presentation). The reflexive acknowledgement of the theories, values, and politics that guide the research have already been identified (and addressed with specificity above), and the needs for congruity between the theoretical and methodological commitment have been worked through in some detail in the previous theory chapter, and also in relation to the specific approach taken to methods.

But how else is quality addressed in this study?

As a somewhat controversial amalgam of different theories, DP/CDP has stimulated a number of debates in Social Psychology about theoretical compatibility and also issues related to quality evaluation (see Hammersley, 2003a, 2003b, 2014a, 2014b, 2008; Potter &

Wetherell, 1987, 1994; Taylor, 2001b, 2013; and the debate between Schegloff, 1997 &

Wetherell, 1998). Following a useful critique by Antaki, Billig, Edwards, and Potter (2002), who identified common analytical shortcomings in discourse analyses, quality in the analysis in this study was ensured by:

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1. Attending to the specific details of talk and to the rhetorical complexity of the

speakers’ comments (vs under-analysis through thematic prose summaries).

2. Identifying the political stance of the study (critical and feminist), but an

explicitly pro or anti-single stance was not imposed onto the study or onto the

participants (for example, in the consent form, the questions in the interview

guide, and during the interactions with participants). Although the life

herstories offer an alternative perspective on the lives of single women, the

quotes in the analysis are intended to illustrate the interpretive repertoires

drawn on by the participants, and the patterns or strategies used by the

participants in negotiating their identities in talk (vs under-analysis by taking

sides).

3. Talk extracts are presented and analysed in detail. A description of the

interactive context that preceded the utterances is included in order to embed

the extracts as much as possible in the discursive context of the conversation

(vs providing long quotations that are expected to stand on their own, with

little analysis).

4. Quotes using phrases or statements such as ‘I think’ or ‘I have never thought’,

or ‘I like’, are not taken at face-value, and they are not assumed to

communicate direct access to a person’s inner thoughts or feelings. Such

claims are analysed discursively for the rhetorical work that they are doing in

context (vs a circular identification of discourses and mental constructs).

5. The participants are not assumed to be members and representative examples

of the universal category ‘single’ women. In fact, category membership and

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ways of managing and negotiating singleness as an identity are a feature of the

analysis (vs findings being generalized to all single women everywhere).

6. The analysis both identifies and draws upon previously published academic

research on conversational features, but it moves beyond the recognition of

the features to the detailed analysis of the action orientation of talk. The talk

of the interviewer is also subject to analysis, and attention is paid to the

discursive device being used (vs under-analysis through spotting detail and

features).

I have also attended to two other general principles that speak to the quality of studies in DP/CDP. First, research accounts are expected to be plausible, where plausibility is demonstrated in the flow and logic of the analysis of the extracts provided, rather than being taken on trust. Second, connections in relation to content are made with other similar studies

(for example, other DP/CDP studies on single women conducted by: Reynolds (2002; 2004;

2006; 2008); Reynolds and Wetherell (2003); Reynolds and Taylor (2004); Reynolds, et al.

(2007); and to a lesser extent, Moore and Radke (2015).

Four additional interlinked principles of evaluation have also been suggested by leading scholars in the field (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, Potter & Wetherell, 1994; Potter,

1996b, Taylor, 2001b). Coherence is asserted through the production of analytical explanations that address broad patterns relating to discourse organization, especially those that attend to inconsistencies in talk. In the case of discourse organization around contested or ‘troubled’ identities (Wetherell, 1998; Reynolds & Taylor, 2004), the analysis of rhetoric is a particularly valuable means of highlighting the way that some discursive ‘versions’ (of identity) are designed to counter real or potential alternative versions (of identity) (Potter &

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Wetherell, 1994; Billig, 1991). The analysis that follows thus identifies key areas of inconsistency in talk about singleness, especially instances where the speakers take up different stances in relation to their identification with the category and identity of being single. A concern with coherence is thus associated with the second principle of evaluation; a close attention to the participants’ orientations, or the specific stances and positions that are taken up at different moments by the participants (Potter & Wetherell, 1994; Taylor, 2001b).

In addition to attending to rhetorical and argumentative patterns in talk, in the analysis, close attention is paid to linguistic nuance and contextually-sensitive features of talk which, when compared to other methodological approaches, may appear mundane and even trivial (Potter, 1988; Potter 1996a; Potter & Wetherell, 1994; Wetherell & Potter, 1988, 1992,

1998). These can include the specific words selected, as well as the positioning and length of pauses, hesitations, vagueness, and laughter. As Potter (1996a) observed, ‘throw-away’ phrases that can be easily missed in transcription can become a point of significant analytical interest because as textual features, they give some indication of the possible work (action) being done in the interactive context (e.g., justifying, excusing, defending, refuting, denying, or convey doubt about an action or inaction). The rhetorical devices and linguistic resources used by participants are treated as an important means of working-up, managing, or negotiating identity (Potter, 1996a; see also Reynolds, 2004). Finally, the last principle of evaluation is the fruitfulness and relevance of a study, which includes an explanation of how the study contributes to sense-making around existing (and new kinds of) discourses related to a topic (Potter & Wetherell, 1987), and the implications of the study when applied to different disciplinary fields (such as OT).

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Having described in some detail the methods used to conduct the study, the next chapter, brings the theory/methodology and methods together in the analysis of singleness discourse, and seeks to answer the guiding research questions: How do single women talk about singleness? What interpretive repertoires do they draw upon, and what strategies do they use to negotiate their identities as single women?

CHAPTER 5 NEGOTATING SINGLENESS AS AN IDENTITY: INTEPRETIVE RESOURCES

…the self’s narrative is knowable only against the background of the stories that a culture makes available. –Arthur Frank (citing MacIntyre), 2010, p. 199

Women [in their twenties and thirties] are warned that if they do not find a man and settle down soon, they will be living lonely, bitter, pitiable existences. –Kate Parsons, 2008, p. 399

Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice In the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window, wearing the face That she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for ? –John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1966 5.1. Introduction

Drawing on the DP/CDP theoretical framework and the three linked analytical concepts or ‘tools’ for exploring data–interpretive repertoires, subject positions, and ideological dilemmas–the aim of this and the following chapter is to explore the discursive context of singleness. The discourse analysis that follows is divided into two chapters. In this chapter, I will focus on the interpretive resources, the content of discourse, and on some of the regularities of how that content is organized (Wetherell & Potter, 1992). After I provide an example of an interpretive repertoire around a specific theme, I will identify two main interpretive repertoires drawn on by the speakers in the interviews and provide and analyze a number of extracts to illustrate the repertoires.

In the second chapter of the analysis (Chapter 6), the focus will shift away from content and organization of the resources being drawn upon to how those resources are practically employed to negotiate singleness as an identity. Drawing on the tools of ‘subject

129 130 positions’ and ‘ideological dilemmas’, my focus in Chapter 6 is on how the speakers take up and use those resources in order to accomplish certain kinds of rhetorical and argumentative

‘work’ in relation to identity negotiation.

In this chapter, I begin with a brief overview of interpretive repertoires as an analytical construct, followed by a mini-example of a repertoire. Using a few short quotes from the study participants, I identify a small thematic repertoire, which is followed by a few subsequent analytical observations. For the remainder of the chapter, longer and more extensive talk extracts are presented in order to illustrate and support the identification of the two primary interpretive repertoires, each of which will be described and analyzed.

5.2 Interpretive Repertoires of Singleness

Interpretive repertoires have been likened to the cultural resources (i.e., terms, ideas, narratives) that people (in this case, the study participants) have available to talk about a particular position or identity (Edley, 2001), and some of the regularities or patterns in that content (Wetherell & Potter, 1988). As “relatively coherent ways of talking about objects or events in the world” that are “part and parcel of any community’s common sense”, interpretive repertoires provide “a basis for shared social understanding” (Edley, 2001, p. 98) about what it means, in this case, to be a single woman. Rather than being obvious or fully articulated, interpretive repertoires may appear as fragments (as a word, term, image, cliché, or phrase) that are alluded to in passing. As a consequence of shared cultural membership, the broad chain of associations being made by the speaker is (tacitly) understood, and the speakers are not required to further elaborate or explain (Wetherell 1998).

In order to arrive at an interpretation of the content of discourse and some of the regularities in that content, during analysis, I read the data corpus bearing in mind a series of questions. These include: What kinds of stock information provided by history/culture, and

131 relating to women’s singleness are the participants drawing on?; What stock images, stereotypical terms, clichés, phrases, and metaphors are the participants borrowing from the

‘common library’ relating to women’s singleness?; What ‘common-sense’ notions of singleness are being drawn upon in the conversation?

The following example illustrates one mini-pattern or interpretive repertoire from the

‘Stories of Singleness’ study.

5.2.1 Interpretive Repertoire Example: ‘Times have changed: In the past, when women married, they had to give up their jobs’.

Participant quotations:

 “All of the teachers at school were unmarried. If they got married, they left.”

 “Mother was a housewife; that was it in those days, more or less you know.”

 “[Mother] had no choice she hadn’t worked all her life, her married life,

because women didn’t in those days.”

 “Somehow or other I had it in my head that that if I got married and settled

down, I would have to give up acting.”

 “I think it really needs to be said that I really did want to marry, although in

some ways, in other ways, I didn’t, because I was very concerned with what I

would be in the world.”

 “One of the reasons, that’s another reason why I put off getting married was

because I felt my career would be hindered.”

 “My father was always saying ‘Don’t get married because you have too many

talents and you won’t be able to use them if you married’.” 61 62

61 The quotes are from all four participants.

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The above quotes are united by a common line or thread of argument about a widely known cultural/social practice that is implied, but not explicitly stated by the speakers. The

‘marriage bar’ as it has been called, was a legal (and social) regulation that required women

(never men), irrespective of their previous employment or educational accomplishments, to relinquish paid employment when they married (Campbell, 2009; Glew; 2016, 2017; Goldin,

1991).63 In practical terms, marriage (and/or pregnancy) resulted in immediate employment termination for women and, as a consequence, they lost their ability to earn an independent income or wage and they became financially dependent on their husbands. As an example of a regularity in the content of singleness discourse, the interpretive repertoire, ‘Times have changed: In the past, when women married, they had to give up their jobs’, brings to the foreground the idea that in the past, and during the working life of the speakers, either women could marry and give up their jobs or they could remain working and be single.

Given the operation of the marriage bar, simply by being present in the workplace, single women are in some respects rendered ‘hyper-visible’. By being present in workspaces, they are marked out as being unmarried, which can render them vulnerable to being stereotyped (‘desperate’, ‘past her prime’; ‘unable to attract a man’; a ‘spinster’ or ‘old maid’), or deemed eligible for marriage.

There are some additional observations about the repertoire that also apply to the more large-scale interpretive repertoires to follow. The quotations illustrate an important feature of discourses of singleness: singleness can be constructed indirectly, rather than

62 The examples construct ‘work/career’ in terms of paid employment outside the home, rather than unpaid (and often invisible) domestic labor that occurred within the home. As working-class women were often unable to afford to stop work once they married (Campbell, 2009), the participants are therefore implicitly drawing on a ‘middle-class’ construction of work and career. 63 The ‘marriage bar’ operated in Canada in various employment sectors and employment types (public and private) from 1914 until the late 1960’s (H. Glew, personal communication, March 20, 2017).

133 directly. Instead of explicit talk about being single or experiences of singleness, being single can be referred to obliquely, and through the category status ‘married’. For instance, “all of the teachers…were “unmarried”; “if I got married’; “I put off getting married”; “I really did want to marry”; “my father was always saying ‘Don’t get married’”. In these examples, being single (i.e., un-married) is being constructed by the speakers in negative terms, in terms of not being married. Indirect or oblique references to identities is not unusual; as Wetherell and Edley (2014) observed, identities are often worked up in talk through processes of

“contradistinction” (p. 356). In other words, people commonly define themselves (and/or are defined by others) in terms of “who they are not” (Wetherell & Edley, 2014, p. 356).

Although not explicitly named, the marriage bar–the requirement of women to stop work when they married–is being presented here in simple factual terms by the speakers of ‘simply how things used to be’. In other words, the historical context that formed the backdrop of women’s lives (including the participants), which produced the marriage bar as a social practice, is simply assumed and taken-for-granted. But from a DP/CDP perspective, the speakers are doing far more than simply stating the facts.

Chapter 6 of the analysis will look in more detail at how speakers use the resources available to them to accomplish certain kinds of rhetorical and argumentative ‘work’ in relation to identity negotiation, but for the purposes of an introduction, in this example, the marriage bar as a social practice is a resource around which talk about singleness is being organized. As a resource, the ‘fact’ of the marriage bar can be read as assisting the speakers to explain or to help justify marriage postponement or not marrying at all (“One of the reasons I put off getting married, because I felt my career would be hindered”; “I was concerned with what I would be in the world”; “My father was always saying ‘Don’t get

134 married because you have too many talents and you won’t be able to use them if you married’” [italics added]).

Given the specific positioning of the speakers (i.e., women who have remained single

[un-married] over the life-course), postponing marriage is, in the circumstances, made reasonable, comprehensible, and excusable, especially if paid employment/work/career was considered important. Any blame or personal responsibility for remaining single is thus also disclaimed, as the marriage bar practice was outside of the speakers’ control. Finally, references to the marriage bar also function to flag for the listener (in this case the ‘younger’ interviewer) that the prospect of marriage for the speakers was far from being dilemma-free.

Today, the prospect of women automatically being required to give up work when they married, would be, to most contemporary working women, largely unthinkable and incomprehensible, or outside of what Mills (1959) referred to as the ‘sociological imagination’. The oblique references to the social conditions of the time thus flag for the listener (and the analyst), that singleness needs to be understood in the context of a particular time (and place).

To summarize, as a discursive resource, by referencing the marriage bar as a social practice, something significant is indirectly being said about singleness: 1) marriage in the past required women to make what in today’s terms would be viewed as an ‘unreasonable sacrifice’. They were required (it is implied) to ‘choose’ between either work/career or marriage; 2) such conditions create dilemmas for women such that there may be sufficient grounds to delay or postpone getting married; 3) such dilemmas would be difficult to resolve.

The ‘times have changed’ collection of resources illustrates a mini-interpretive repertoire within the data set that the participants of this study drew upon in making sense of

135 their lives as single women. The remainder of this chapter will be concerned with the identification and illustration of two major interpretive repertoires or characterizations of singleness that were drawn on with regularity by the study participants. Although the participants spoke about singleness in a variety of ways, much of the content of their discourse can be organized into two main interpretive repertoires. I have termed the repertoires: ‘singleness as deficit’ and ‘singleness as freedom’.

The ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire are resources that tend towards constructing singleness in negative ways, in terms of a lack, failure, or deficiency. These resources work to denigrate women’s singleness (and single women), whereas the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire is its polar opposite. In the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire, the resources drawn upon tend to construct singleness in more positive but (overall) weakly idealized way–as the freedom to act and make decisions in the world. None of the participants solely drew on the deficit repertoire, or just on the freedom repertoire; all drew on both repertoires multiple times and across the interviews.

Before describing the repertoires in more detail, a few orienting observations about the presentation of the talk extracts are necessary.

5.3 Extract presentation.

In DP/CDP, the transcription conventions followed broadly reflect the fields’ theoretical commitments, and so, before illustrating the ‘singleness as deficit’ and the

‘singleness as freedom’ repertoires through examples, a few orienting observations about the formatting of the extracts are necessary:

In the social sciences, as Billig (2009) observes, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that talk is always the talk of a particular person, or the talk of people. Yet, the unit of analysis in discourse analysis is not the person, but rather on instances of discourse or

136 discursive practices (Wetherell, 2007; Taylor, 2010a). In the extracts that follow, the talk of people is acknowledged methodologically through the use of participants’ pseudonyms, and the researcher’s (first) name, but because the analytical focus is on discourse use, in most cases, the more neutral term of ‘speaker’ or ‘participant’ will be used in the analytical commentary that follows each extract.

As the primary focus of the analysis in this chapter is on the content of discourse and how that content is organized through the interpretive repertoires, descriptions of the preceding dialogue and context are kept to a minimum. The orientation of the speakers to the content becomes a point of greater analytical interest in the second chapter of the analysis

(Chapter 6), where more extensive contextual details, and supplementary transcription, are provided.

The transcription notation follows Reynolds (2004; 2006), who used a simplified version of notation developed by Gail Jefferson (see Atkinson & Heritage, 1984):

huh heh Audible laughter from the speaker

[…] Material deliberately omitted

‘text’ Indicates a ‘footing’, the reported speech of others

under Underlining indicates speaker emphasis

(.) Short pause/hesitation

(..) Pause of one second

(…) Longer pause (2 seconds)

lo:ng colon indicates syllable stretching or extension

↑ rising intonation (placed before the onset of the shift)

↓ falling intonation (placed before the onset of the shift)

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(unclear) material unclear from recording

Interview is coded by ‘Int’, followed by the interview number (1-4). The L number at the end of extracts is a location indicator that refers to the first line of the extract as it appears in the original transcript. All other L numbers in the analysis refer to the line number of the extract as it is presented. Punctuation has been included to facilitate ease of reading, but unless otherwise indicated, the text has not been edited.

5.4 Summary: Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Deficit’

As previously mentioned, the resources that make up the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire construct singleness in negative ways, in terms of a lack, failure, or deficiency, and which at times can be blatantly derogatory and (potentially) highly damaging. The compendium of resources that make up this repertoire construct singleness in stereotypical terms as a failure to marry, as a lack or deficiency (in the individual), as a kind of failure of womanhood, or in terms of individual abnormality or pathology. As has previously been identified, the negative stereotypes of never-married women are well known, but stereotypes

(Goffman, 1963) in DP/CDP are not understood to represent preconceived or oversimplified ideas or characteristics that typify a person. Instead, they are understood as interpretive repertoires or “social and collective products which function ideologically by justifying and legitimizing existing social and power relations within a society” (Augustinos & Walker,

1998, p. 629). In other words, as well-known social products, images, and narratives associated with stereotypes point to there being ideological processes at work that set up one set of social relations as legitimate (in this case, the justification and legitimacy of marriage and traditional notions of family), and another as unjustified and illegitimate (being unmarried, or rather ‘single’).

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In the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire, the lives of single women are often set up in contrast to a standard ‘naturalized’ heteronormative path, that of women marrying and having children. The lives of single women can be constructed as ‘lacking’ or ‘incomplete’, as not yet having achieved the completion associated with becoming and being married. As a

‘failure’ to follow the ‘proper’ designated life-course, single women are often expected to account for why they have not married (of which more will be said later), and singleness is discoursed in terms of being ‘anomalous’ and ‘inexplicable’. As one participant commented,

“it is more explicable to be divorced than never-married”.

The stereotypes of singleness for women are also age-inflected. As single women move deeper into adulthood, there is a danger of being defined as ‘left on the shelf’, or of being characterized in terms of being an ‘old maid’ or ‘spinster’. In other social settings however, as we shall see, to be a younger single woman can also mean being viewed as abnormal and a threat, especially to other (married) women. Until recently, women’s singleness has largely been considered a strictly private and personal matter, lacking in collective or political dimensions. As one participant observed, “We don’t exist as a group but we are.” In the absence of an acknowledged collective identity, individual single women have separate individual experiences of being single, but as the speaker observes, there has not been any means of acknowledging and recognizing that those individual experiences of single women could constitute a collective ‘group’ identity.

5.5 Summary: Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Freedom’

The resources that make up the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire are, in contrast, made up of two closely inter-linked sets or strands of resources that work to construct singleness in overall positive terms. One strand can be considered the ‘singleness as freedom from’ strand, and the other as the ‘singleness as freedom to’ strand. The ‘singleness as

139 freedom from’ strand is composed of resources that speak to the advantages of being single relative to the constraints and restrictions commonly associated with marriage. For example, in the ‘times have changed’ repertoire identified above, the final quote “My father was always saying ‘Don’t get married because you have too many talents and you won’t be able to use them if you married’” (Jane, Interview 2) can be understood as an argument about the constraints and limitations placed on the development of women after marriage. Marriage is being portrayed (through the authority of a parent, and a male parent at that) as a means of preventing or putting a stop to the development of the speaker’s existing “talents” and potential. If she married, the argument goes, those talents and abilities would ‘go to waste’.

To remain single is thus to be free from such constraints (and by implication, presumably to be free to develop those talents and abilities). Such a comment could also, I would suggest, be read as the speaker indirectly and cautiously critiquing marriage by creatively using the reported ‘authoritative’ patriarchal voice.

The second closely-linked strand within the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire is the

‘singleness as freedom to’ strand, which is made up of a much more explicitly positive set of resources which set singleness up in terms of ‘liberation of action’; in terms of being free (as women) to be and do, to act in the world in ways that they would not otherwise have been able to. The ‘singleness as freedom to’ repertoire is much more clearly about the possibilities for women of self-determination (including being able to decide about whether or not to be in an intimate relationship), independence, and self-development. The primary emphasis here is on the kinds of positive accomplishments that can accompany being single as they relate to career and work, living situation (especially the identified pleasures and freedoms of living

140 alone), and having the freedom or autonomy to make independent decisions.64 For example,

“… it was the freedom, just freedom. And I could decide whether I wanted to have a relationship or if I didn’t” (Mademoiselle, Interview 2), and “I felt sorry for the married sometimes because they had children, and they couldn’t go off and do what I could do because I had no ties” (Irene, Interview 2). In the first example, being single is about the freedom to decide about whether or not to have a relationship. In the second example the speaker reverses a common argument against being single, that single women should be

‘pitied because they didn’t have children or a family’. In this instance, the speaker “felt sorry for the married” because they didn’t have the kind of freedom to “go off” that she did.

Having children and being married is thus constructed in disadvantageous terms as being confining or as “ties” that restrict one woman’s personal freedom in the world.

As these examples illustrate, the two strands of the freedom repertoire are closely inter-connected, each making the other possible. In practice, as will be shown, the two often seamlessly blend into one another, but for heuristic purposes it is necessary to separate them.

5.6 Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Deficit’: Talk Extracts

The six extracts in this section represent a few of the many instances across the corpus that show the participants drawing on images and cultural resources that make up the

‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire. As the term suggests, in this repertoire singleness is characterized in largely negative terms, as an unappealing and unattractive position, and as a state of deficiency, of lack, and of being outside the norm.

64 Discourses around the freedom of single women would be shaped by other positionings such as ability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, class etc.

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Extract 1 1 Rona […] Were you aware of specific stories or images of single women growing 2 up? 3 Jane Oh yes. 4 Rona What what resonates for you when you think about that? 5 Jane They were very unattractive. 6 Rona In what way? 7 Jane Well, first of all, in stories (.) they were somehow always the witches. The 8 witches were never married. Um and and (…) old women were often single 9 from the simple fact and then the old women I knew were often single 10 because their husbands had died. […] I mean there was huh heh an old 11 woman who lived, she seemed tremendously old, I think she was 12 probably about fifty or something huh heh and she lived at the top of the 13 road and was always telling us off for (.) destroying the flowers in her 14 garden quite rightly huh heh but to us she seemed like an old witch you know 15 and she was on her own. So very unattractive. 16 Rona mhh 17 Jane And the others were friends of my mother’s who were (.) always neurotically 18 involved with men who didn’t want them you know and 19 Rona They were having affairs with married men? 20 Jane Yes, not with married men with with um I don’t know if they were but they 21 were involved. There was a particular friend of my mother’s who always 22 used to come over and have long lugubrious conversations about ‘sort of 23 how this had happened and he had done this’ and so it gave you a sense of 24 they were sort of an unhappy and depressed lot […] though though later, 25 when I got older, I realized that this lady, Aunty Betty we called her, was in 26 fact very funny and we grew to like her a lot because she was so witty. In fact 27 she did eventually marry and everybody was very glad. ‘Good, good, she has 28 found a man’ you know that kind of thing. (Int 2,L682, text condensed)

In the extract above, when asked if she recalled any early childhood stories and images of single women, the speaker describes two ‘canonical’ images from the discursive landscape of women’s singleness that underscore the lack of appeal or the undesirability of single women.

The first stock image identified is the ‘witch’ (or ‘crone’) of the kind typically portrayed in fairy stories (L7-15). As an emblematic, often alarming (if powerful) image of single women, “the witches” were women who “never married” (L8) and were often “old women” who were “single” (L8) through widowhood. The speaker characterizes the witch as a “very unattractive” figure (L5), and a woman “on her own” (L15), an ambiguous phrase

142 that can have different connotations. It can connote a living situation (living alone), and/or a person who is ‘socially’ on her own or alone (i.e., ‘uncoupled’ in the sense of never having married or no longer being married [widowed]), 65 but it also signaled social separation, distance, and possible isolation and vulnerability. ‘A woman on her own’ is thus a term with many possible meanings that are associated with assorted values.

Such is the potency of the witch image that it extends outward from the pages of the fairy stories used to socialize children. The speaker recalls with some humor (L10-15) how, when she was a child, that a woman on her street was considered “like an old witch” (L14) for being “on her own” (L15) and telling off children for destroying the flowers in her garden. It seems that just about any woman on her own (whether from widowhood (L10) or having “never married” (L8) and “old” (L8, 10 & 14) could be vulnerable to being stereotyped or cast by children into the “very unattractive” image and role of witch.

The second stock image drawn on by the speaker could be titled ‘desperate prey’.

Close unmarried (but coupled) friends of the speaker’s mother (L17-24), these were single women who were “always neurotically involved with men who didn’t want them” (L17-18, italics added) and who had “long lugubrious conversations” (L22) with her mother about how they were badly treated by men. Here were single women who gave the impression that they were “an unhappy and depressed lot” (L24). In contrast to another stock image of a

‘frumpy spinster’ who ‘couldn’t attract a man’, the canonical image being evoked here is of younger women in intense but troubled and unhappy relationships with men. The phrase

65 Some sources consider women to be ‘on their own’ if they have children, but lack a husband/male head of the household, whereas other sources refer to women ‘on their own’ to mean having neither children nor a spouse (or male head of household). Women can therefore be considered ‘on their own’ whether they are living alone or not.

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“men who didn’t want them” (L16) could suggest that the men were ‘using’ women perhaps made vulnerable by their desire to marry and who were perhaps being taken advantage of.

As with the image of the witch, the speaker subtly complicates the child’s over- simplistic viewpoint of single women as ‘desperate prey’. Of the unmarried women who were vulnerable to being typecast as ‘desperate’, ‘neurotic’, and an “unhappy and depressed lot”, through the introduction of “Aunty Betty” (L25), the speaker humanizes and introduces complexity into what could otherwise be a conventional stereotypically-negative image of the unmarried woman having dating or relationship issues. The concluding comment “she

[Aunty Betty] did eventually marry and everybody was very glad” and the reported speech of others, “‘Good, she has found a man’ you know that kind of thing” (L25-27) vividly conveys the normative sense of collective relief and celebration when Aunty Betty was rescued from the ‘terrible’ fate of not being able to ‘find a man’ to marry. When Aunty Betty married, the speaker suggests, the ‘problem’ was solved, and thus she was able to escape the stereotypes of being unhappily partnered (but not married), and thus running the risk of eventually being consigned to being ‘on the shelf’.

In both of the named examples of the identified “very unattractive” images of single women, it is marriage that removes women from these categories. The old woman image of the witch stands as a warning and a threat to younger single women that if they do not marry, as women on their own, in the future, they too could be cast into the role of witch. It is significant that the speaker, herself an older single woman, characterizes such images in terms of being not just “unattractive”, but “very unattractive”. Single women or women’s singleness is thus confirmed as a negative, unappealing, and deficient social problem (deficit repertoire), and marriage as the (purported) desirable solution.

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The next extract introduces another clichéd stereotypical image of single women: the

‘spinster’ or ‘old maid’. Extract 2 (below) is a field note from the beginning of a first interview with the participant, who, before the audio recorder has been switched on, evokes the image of single women as ‘spinsters’. In this fleeting reference, the speaker introduces two contrasting images of single women. While the ‘modern day’ version of how women live their lives today is briefly evoked (L3-4), it is set against a more detailed image of single women from the past, whom the speaker refers to collectively as “spinsters” (L1). The figure of the ‘spinster’ and the related ‘old maid’ (and discourses of spinsterhood and old maidenhood) have complex histories (see Jeffries, 1985; Chambers-Schiller, 1984; Holden,

2005, 2008; A. Taylor, 2012), but in this extract, the speaker seems to evoke a Victorian image of the stay-at-home unmarried daughter. The ‘spinster’ daughter is a woman who may, at one time, have courted the prospect of marriage and/or have received an offer/offers of marriage, but would have turned-down the offer or have been required by her family to turn down the offer, and who offers self-sacrificing service to the family in whose company she lives out her life (see Jeffries, 1985; Franzen, 1996; Barak, 2014).

Extract 2: Field Note 1 She began by talking about “single women as spinsters, women supported by 2 family members, who stayed at home, and then faded away. These were women who 3 had no say in anything.” At the end she added “although things have changed since 4 then.” (Irene, Int1, p.1)

The participant initiates her spoken participation in the study by evoking a historical image of single women referred to by the speaker as “spinsters” who were women “who stayed at home” (L2) and who, over time, simply “faded away” (L2). As women, spinsters were dependent on their families economically and for a place to live and lived out their lives within the domestic and family sphere, where they (apparently) left little lasting mark on the world around them. As they age and as whatever ‘beauty’ they may have had ‘fades’ or as

145 they themselves ‘faded away’, these were single women without power, “who had no say in anything” (L2-3), even within the family realm. This image of women from previous generations, who were economically and socially dependent on their families if they did not marry, and the spinster image being invoked, is of invisible, voiceless women, with little authority, power, or influence. As single women of the past, the life of the spinster was marked in the speaker’s account through a lack of agency, accomplishment, activity, and vibrancy, and in terms of passivity, dependency, social powerlessness, and marginality.

But, as the speaker observes, times have changed (L3-4). Cast as an outdated and outmoded image and a product of bygone days, of how things used to be (but are no longer), such an old-fashioned view of single women as “spinsters”, the speaker suggests, must be clearly distinguished from a present day version of single women. By making a clear distinction between the past and the present, the speaker seems to be drawing a clear line.

The old and negative images of single women as “spinsters” are ones that can (safely) be consigned to the past and deemed irrelevant because “things have changed” (L3). In the present, it is implied, things are often better for single women. Single women today, it could be concluded, have access to a different set of possibilities (and thus images) related to being single, which means that the older devalued image of the passive and family-dependent single women can judiciously be left behind. By making such a distinction, the speaker could also be understood to be communicating to the researcher the ‘kind’ of single women she is talking to; not one of those old-fashioned single women as ‘spinsters’, but rather an independent and modern and likely assertive single woman.

The next extract is also concerned with terms used for single women, but the focus is more on the nuances of such terms. Extract 3 shows the participant, a Francophone who

146 chose the pseudonym ‘Mademoiselle’66, responding to a question about whether there were

French equivalents to the English terms of “spinster” and “old maid” to describe women who never married.

Extract 3

1 Mademoiselle Oh yes, quite quite commonly. 2 Rona And in what sense? 3 Mademoiselle Well to describe them 4 Rona To describe them 5 Mademoiselle Sometimes it was said, it was the way it was said, the way it was 6 pronounced whether it was being nasty or whether it was just 7 being oh well you know 8 Rona A::h so there was nastiness 9 Mademoiselle Oh there would be nastiness attached to it, to some of them yeah (Int2, L709)

Though confirming the existence of French equivalents to ‘spinster’ and ‘old maid’, the speaker does not specify the terms, but instead identifies that the significant issue was not the terms themselves, but rather how they were intonated or “pronounced” (L6). As identifiers, terms can be understood as neutral descriptors, but in this instance, they are clearly far from neutral. As the speaker makes clear, it was how the terms for unmarried women were “said” or “pronounced” that was the issue, as they could be said in a way that was “nasty”(L6), or conveyed “nastiness”(L9): “sometimes it was the way, it was the way it was said, the way it was pronounced whether it was being nasty” (L5-6), and “ Oh there would be nastiness attached to it” (L9). To be identified as an unmarried (single) woman through the use of titles or terms was thus to be made vulnerable to being publicly judged, sneered at, belittled, ridiculed, and subject to treatment that was deprecatory and contemptuous.

66 ‘Mademoiselle’ is the title/or a form of address for/to an unmarried French-speaking woman (Oxford English Dictionary, 2000).

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The phrasing “Sometimes it was said, it was the way it was said, the way it was pronounced whether it was being nasty” (L5-6) suggests that the speaker had either witnessed this kind of interaction or had direct personal experience of been treated in this way. By describing the practice as “nasty”, the speaker is clearly being critical of such practices, but such a treatment is not explicitly identified to be manifestly prejudicial or discriminatory. It may be that such instances were so commonplace and unchallenged in the past that they were simply accepted as being ‘just how things are’, but today, such discrimination could easily be identified as ‘singlism’, the largely unrecognized stereotyping, discrimination, and prejudice against people who are single (DePaulo & Morris, 2005a,

2006). In this example of the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire, the speaker is naming a social practice where simply being identified as a single (unmarried) woman could result in being treated in discriminatory and prejudicial ways, or being marked out in conversation as being in some way socially ‘abnormal’.

Singleness can also be viewed as an ‘abnormality’ in the working world. In Extract 4, which draws on two different American popular culture sources (‘Life’ magazine and the book ‘Sex and the Single Girl’67), the speaker talks explicitly about the marginalization of single women in the work setting, and how prevailing discourses around marriage resulted in single women being viewed with ‘suspicion’.

Extract 4 1 Jane I was reading in an article I think it was in ‘Life’ magazine um about a woman of 2 twenty-three or four who ‘still wasn’t married’ and was a ‘working girl’ and you 3 know ‘Why wasn’t she married?’ 4 I used to feel that um Freudianism helped, produced this view that you know ‘the 5 natural course for a life was to find a mate by a certain age, especially somehow

67 “Sex and the Single Girl: The unmarried woman’s guide to men, careers, the apartment, diet, fashion, money and men”, was written by Helen Gurley Brown in 1962. Made into a well-known film in 1964, it is often cited as one of the inspirations for the hit American TV series, “Sex and the City” (Gerhard, 2005; see also Whelehan, 2005).

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6 for a woman, and if you didn’t (..), ‘what was wrong with you?’ 7 So you you were an object of sort of suspicion you know in a way you 8 weren’t in England. Um people might feel sorry for you for being 9 unmarried and certainly not by the time you were twenty-seven you know, but 10 they took it that life had many courses and many paths and and people were 11 different, but in the States there was this very strong effort to sort of make you 12 conform to this ideal of marriage supported by this enormous um eh belief in in 13 Um (..) Freudian patterns […] um a book I read at the time which I still think is a 14 very good book was ‘Sex and the Single Girl’ by Helen Gurley Brown which I 15 think is one of the great books about being single in the States and she sort of 16 understood the sort of suspicion and um sense almost that there was something 17 wrong with you if you weren’t married. Either that or you were deliberately and 18 willfully avoiding the proper path. (Int1, L57, text condensed)

As Lines 1-3 indicate, such were the values and norms of work culture of the 1950-

60’s that if a woman “still wasn’t married ‘(L2) by the time she was aged “twenty-three or four” (L2), then questions were asked: “‘Why wasn’t she married?’”(L3).68 The emphasis on the word “still” (L2), suggests that marriage would have been expected at a younger age. Not only were women expected to marry by twenty-three or four, but to not be married by that age was to run the risk of being viewed as having “something wrong with you” (L6 & L16-

17). To be unmarried was thus constructed as ‘improper’, but also pitiable: “people might feel sorry for you for being unmarried” (L8-9). To be single at twenty-four was thus sufficiently concerning to others that serious questions could be asked about the individual’s

(mental) health. As the speaker identifies, the prevailing ideology around marriage presents marrying as “the natural course for a life” (L5), which means that to not marry was viewed as an ‘un-natural’ course, thus legitimating assumptions or suspicions that there was something

“wrong” (L6 & L17) with the individual, or that the pathology must be located in the individual.

68 Historical note: In 1950, the average age of marriage for American women was 20.3. By 1970, it had risen to 23.2 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). In Canada however, the average age for women to marry in 1950 was 25.9, but by 1970, it had dropped to 23.0 (Eichler, 2012).

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The indirect effects of the marriage bar can be seen at work in this extract. As previously identified, given that (middle-class) women were automatically forced to leave the workforce upon marrying, single (unmarried) women who remained in the workplace would have ‘stood out’, allowing them to be ‘singled out’. Simply being present in the work-force would therefore have made single women socially visible, more easily characterized as anomalous, and thus subject to various kinds of ‘interrogations’ about their singleness and why they were not ‘conforming’ to the “ideal of marriage” (L12). Either “there was something wrong with you if you weren’t married” (L16-17, italics added), or, as the speaker suggests, she was “deliberately and willfully avoiding the proper path” (L17-18, italics added), which, in turn, would also be subject to further interrogation and speculation, such as the question, ‘what kind of woman doesn’t want to marry? ’, and ‘Why would she deliberately and willfully avoid “the proper path”’ (L18).

Such was the unquestioned value and emphasis placed on marriage, that unmarried women, as the speaker identifies, became “an object of sort of suspicion” (L7). Questions like “‘Why wasn’t she married?’” (L3) and “‘What was wrong with you?’”(L6) suggests that such questions were always hanging over the heads of single women. Simply by their presence and existence, single women seem to disturb some deeply-held ideas about the nature of the social order, what is deemed ‘normal’ for women, and about what constitutes

“the proper path” (L18). Women’s singleness thus seems to disturb at some fundamental level, some deeply-held cultural ideas about what stood as the normative social order. If women are supposed to marry, but if they ‘fail to marry’, a range of questions can be raised about their personhood, such as their capacities to form social attachments, their sexual

150 orientations, their mental and sexual health, and their moral worth and value as persons, and so on.

The interrogative question “Why aren’t you married? (L3) or ‘The Why Question’ as it will be referred to from now on, could, at first glance, be considered unremarkable. The apparent normativity of the question, however, demands that it be examined more closely.

The apparent legitimacy of the question is premised on marriage being the assumed norm; the logic of the question flows from ‘common-sense’ or ideologically normative understandings that position marriage as the norm, and singleness as ‘abnormal’. After all, it is very rare for married people to be asked to justify why they married, or rather, ‘Why are you not still single?’ In other words, when single people are asked ‘The Why Question’, the question appears legitimate only if the ideology that positions marriage as the privileged status is unquestioningly accepted. It is because women who are single/un-married are positioned as having breached the social norm by not marrying that they can then be called to account for their (non) action. In short, the ‘The Why Question’, which appeared in various guises in a number of interview transcripts, is a deeply political question that is bound up with a seldom-recognized ideology of power. Issues of ideology will be more explicitly addressed in Part II, and again in the discussion chapter.

Returning to the specifics of the extract, on line 7, the speaker compares how single women were viewed in England and in the U.S. In England, the way single women could be viewed is presented as being relatively benign. Single women could be subject to the pity of others if not married by twenty-seven (L8-9), but as the speaker reports it, at least there was some tolerance of diversity–“they took it that life had many courses and many paths and people were different” (L10-11). In the U.S., however, the speaker identifies that being single

151 was viewed with more suspicion. To be an unmarried woman was to be considered “an object of sort of suspicion” (L7), which, in the participants’ view, was a perspective that was supported and driven by powerful psychological/psychosexual arguments stemming from an

American interpretation of Freudian theory (L4 & L13), which put considerable pressure on single women to “conform” (L12) by marrying (see also Extract 5 below, and Extract 18).

Extract 5

1 Jane […]there was a a writer whose name I forgot, it was a Freudian um (..) 2 analyst and she wrote an article in the journal that I read with some 3 disturbance. It really maintained that if you didn’t get into this fine sexual 4 relationship with an appropriate mate then you needed to go to a psychiatrist. (Int 1,L117)

In the face of the prevailing view that marriage constitutes “the natural course for a life” (L4) and the “proper path” (Extract 4, L18), being un-married (by implication) becomes

“un-natural”, “im-proper”, and ultimately ‘pathological’. To remain single beyond the time that they were expected to marry thus meant that single women were suspected of having some kind of psychological or psycho-sexual issues or pathology. If a woman did get not

“get into this fine sexual relationship” (L3-4) with “an appropriate mate” (L4)–and here

“appropriate mate” means a husband–then the advice offered by authoritative psychoanalysts was that single women needed psychiatric evaluation and intervention: “you needed to go to a psychiatrist” (L4). By not marrying, then not only were single women under suspicion, and questions were asked about their ‘mental health’ and about their ‘normalcy’ as women, but they were also assumed, through the influence of Freudian analytic theory, to be psychosexually deficient or defective and thus potentially requiring psychiatric intervention.69

69 Two sociological theories construct singleness in terms of ‘mental pathology’. The ‘social selection theory’ explains singleness (non-marriage and divorce) in terms of consequences of pre-existing poor physical

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Other single women were under ‘suspicion’ for other reasons related to sexual politics. The speaker in Extract 6 is responding to the question: “How do you think remaining single was viewed by other people?”

Extract 6 1 Irene […] Well (..) I at parties um sometimes I have felt that um I am viewed with 2 suspicion: ‘The Single Woman’. Especially if I am the only one there and 3 everybody else is married. And there were some single women who prey on 4 married men. I they kind of like er (..) but I just felt that sometimes (.) I was 5 looked upon with a bit of suspicion. 6 Rona What were you picking up? Like what? 7 Irene I don’t know 8 Rona This wouldn’t have been blatant, it would have been quite subtle? 9 Irene Oh yes. Oh yes. 10 Rona So what were you picking up? 11 Irene Oh not obvious at all. Um (..) a slight co::olness in attitude. Not (…) not too 12 much warmth um 13 Rona From whom? 14 Irene From the wives 15 Rona From the wives specifically 16 Irene Mhh yeah. Not from the husbands. (Int 3,L977)

In this extract, the participant offers a hint of some of the sexual politics at play when, as a single woman, she attended an ordinary every-day social event (a party). As a woman

‘alone’ or ‘on her own’ at an event that was identified as dominated by couples, the speaker recalls feeling a sense of exclusion and of being viewed at times, and especially by other women, “with suspicion” (L1-2 & L4-5). As a woman on her own, she could be stereotypically tagged “‘The Single Woman’” (L1-2), especially as she was the only

‘unattached’ woman in attendance.

In an interesting reversal of the previous image of single women as ‘desperate prey’

(see Extract 1), the speaker explains (L3) that married women could be suspicious of her as

“‘The Single Woman’”, explaining that there were “some single women who preyed on

and emotional health, whereas the ‘social causation theory’ is premised on the assumed social, emotional, economic, and health-regulating benefits of marriage, in contrast to the relative unremitting “strains” associated with singleness (see Pudrovska, Schieman, & Carr, 2006; Anderson & Braito, 1981; Marks, 1996).

153 married men” (L3-4). 70 In other words, by simply attending a social event un-accompanied, the speaker could be stereotyped or ‘read’ as dangerous, and as the kind of single woman who could be out to exploit or sexually ‘prey’ upon “married men” (L4). Such is the social and sexual political landscape being described by the speaker (between single and married women, and between men and women) that single women can be cast as potentially dangerous ‘rapacious predators’ of married men. Implied (but not explicitly stated) is the notion that married women may have viewed the attendance of a single woman on her own as a sign of her possible sexual ‘availability’, of being a woman who is potentially on the lookout for a possible sexual encounter, fling, or affair with a married man. As a possible threat, single women could therefore be viewed by married women with “suspicion” (L1 &

L5) and treated with veiled hostility and other subtle (and not so subtle) social exclusionary tactics.

The Extracts 1-6 above are just a few of the many examples from the interview transcripts that illustrate instances where the participants draw on resources from the

‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire. These are resources that characterize women’s singleness in negative and potentially highly damaging ways. Stock images of single women as ‘the witch’ and the ‘desperate prey’, characterized as unhappy, depressed, or neurotic, are identified as unappealing and “very unattractive”. Single women could alternatively be characterized as

“spinsters”, powerless, dependent, and passive women who stay at home and fade away.

Single women could also be constructed at common-place social events as sexual predators,

70 The film “Fatal Attraction” (Jaffe, Lansing, & Lyne, 1987) offers a chilling portrayal of a single woman ‘preying’ on a married man. The comparatively new term ‘cougar’ covers similar terrain; a ‘cougar’ can be used as a pejorative term to refer to an older woman who sexually ‘preys’ on a younger man (Lawton & Callister, 2010; Montemurro & Siefken, 2014), but it can also have positive connotations of an older woman with power, status and beauty.

154 who could potentially prey on married men. Even everyday titles that communicated a woman’s unmarried status could be uttered in such a way as to be exclusionary, nasty, and unpleasant. If women were not married by a certain age, they could be viewed with suspicion and as deviants who had not followed or conformed to the “proper path”. This was characterized as an improper and abnormal life, as by simply not marrying, it was assumed that there something was wrong with the woman, but the nature of that ‘wrong’ was open to public speculation. Ongoing singleness could be taken as a sign of some underlying psychiatric and/or sexual disorder that could require psychiatric evaluation and intervention.

Being single was thus to be positioned as socially suspect, of needing to provide a satisfactory explanation of ‘why’, as a woman, she had not conformed to the ‘natural’ and normal life path of marrying. The resources that make up the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire thus construct singleness for women in ways that that are strongly derogatory, as a highly problematic state of deficiency and in some cases, pathology.

But the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire did not constitute the only kind of resources that were drawn on by the participants during the interviews. They also drew on a second repertoire that constructs being single in terms of various freedoms.

5.7 Interpretive Repertoire: ‘Singleness as Freedom’

As previously identified, the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire is made up of two closely intertwined sets of resources that construct singleness in positive terms, as a social position that can afford certain freedoms and opportunities. The ‘singleness as freedom from’ strand of the repertoire constructs singleness in default positive terms, relative to the restrictions and limitations of being married (or otherwise coupled). The second closely- related strand of the freedom repertoire is the ‘singleness as freedom to’ repertoire, which is more explicitly positive about being single. The ‘freedom to’ strand draws on resources that

155 construct singleness in terms of certain freedoms of action in the world, or the kinds of activities and possibilities that being single can make possible. Extracts 7-9 (below) illustrate the freedom from strand of the repertoire. The freedom to strand is shown in Extracts 11-12, whereas Extract 10 shows the speaker tacking seamlessly back and forth between both strands.

In Extract 7, which is taken from a stretch of talk about the influence and effect of early feminist writings, the speaker is drawing on resources that construct singleness in terms of freedom from certain identified constraints of marriage and motherhood.

Extract 7 1 Irene […] I remember reading ah (.) oh(.) I am trying to think of my thoughts at that 2 time, I think it was (.) Scott Fitzgerald’s’ wife who um (..) who wrote herself and 3 the way she was treated by her psychiatrist, and it there there was no 4 understanding of what (.) the kind of life that women had to lead. I mean for 5 instance, the daily grind with the um ah looking after children and the washing 6 every day and everything and that horrified me. I didn’t want anything to do with 7 that. (Int 4,L43)

The speaker describes being “horrified” (L6) by the prospect of the tasks that were seen to occupy married women with children. The phrase “the daily grind” (L5) vividly conjures up a picture of a kind of domestic drudgery that married women, even wealthy public figures such as Zelda Fitzgerald,71 could be required to attend to every day if they had children. The prospect of that “kind of life” (L4), which involved ‘looking after children’ and

“washing every day and everything” (L5-6) is one that clearly held little appeal for the speaker–“I didn’t want anything to do with that” (L6-7). By expressing being “horrified” by the prospect of “the daily grind”, the speaker appears to reject such a prospect and thus the related constraints of domestic life that for many women, were an expected and ongoing part of married life.

71 Zelda Fitzgerald (née Sayre) married F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1920.

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As a celebrated writer, and wife and mother (L2), the speaker makes a connection between Zelda Fitzgerald (L2-4), and “how she was treated by her psychiatrist” (L3). Her psychiatrist, who would have been a man, was identified as having had “no understanding”

(L3-4) about “the kinds of life women had to lead” (L4). The situational constraints, the triple combination of “the daily grind”, along with “looking after children” (L5), and “the washing everyday and everything” (L5-6), combined with a lack of understanding about what women were capable of doing (despite the limitations of the ‘daily grind’), seems to suggest that such a scenario could easily have contributed to, or have been a contributing factor to Zelda requiring treatment from a psychiatrist.

Being “horrified” by the prospect of such constraints, and by asserting “I didn’t want anything to do with that” (L6-7), the speaker (as a single woman) positions herself by contrast in a situation of relative freedom. One of the freedoms that could come from being a single woman, it is suggested, is the freedom from the constraining effects of domestic drudgery, ongoing family care, and all the other aspects of family life that can tax a woman’s energy. Being free from such ties and constraints, the speaker is free do other things.

Extract 8 (below) similarly shows a different speaker also referencing the constraints that marriage can place upon women. In this instance, the focus is on the relative liberation or freedom of being single compared to women who were ‘trapped’ in a troubled (Catholic) marriage. In this densely-footed stretch of talk, 72 the speaker begins by talking about the kinds of things that she and her single women friends would talk about when they got together.

72 ‘Footing’ is the reported speech of others (Goffman, 2001; Ribeiro, 2006).

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Extract 8

1 Mademoiselle […] we would sort of say um we would start talking about it ‘well how is 2 well have you seen so and so lately?’ you know ‘No No Geez no.’ ‘But 3 she has been, I think maybe they have been having trouble you know, 4 like I think their marriage is in trouble.’ And you remember saying stupid 5 things like ‘Well, if I were married to a cloth-head like that, so would I be 6 you know in a bad state’. You know it was this this kind of silliness that 7 we really you know that we talked about. And then we would sort of 8 look at each other, and be very pleased that we didn’t have that kind of 9 problem you know, but that was just, that was just you know silly and 10 young. (Int2,L163)

Couched as collective and youthful talk or ‘gossip’, the speaker reports how she and her single women friends would congratulate each other on their relative good-fortune of not being in a marriage that, from a public perspective, was clearly “in trouble” (L4). Observing the marriages of the women around them, and discerning that there were some relationship difficulties, the participant and her friends would congratulate themselves on not being married to men vividly described as “cloth heads” 73, and to opine that any such marriage was bound to be “in trouble” (L4). Women would say “stupid things” (L4-5) like “‘Well, if I were married to a cloth head like that, so would I be in a bad state you know’” (L5-6) to each other. Such marriages were not to be envied; as unmarried women, “we would sort of look at each other, and look very pleased that we didn’t have that kind of problem” (L7-9). As women free from the “problem” of being in a difficult marriage, and in a context when men

“ruled the roost” (Mademoiselle, Int 2, L1557) and divorce would have almost unthinkable, young single women were able to celebrate their freedom relative to such challenges.

At the end of this sequence, the speaker downplays and disclaims the significance of such talk, dismissing such attitudes as the product of youthful immaturity. Phrases like “You remember saying stupid things like…” (L4-5), “it was this kind of silliness…” (L6), and

73 “Cloth-head” is a colloquial term used to refer to someone ‘thick-headed’ or a ‘clot-head’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989).

158 ending with an evaluation that such views were “silly and young” (L9-10), suggests that the speaker was well aware that such viewpoints could be judged unsympathetically. To be even mildly self-congratulatory, or to openly celebrate the freedoms of being single in relation to the kinds of troubled and troubled marriages experienced by their women friends, could be considered morally suspect, even reprehensible, which perhaps accounts for the need for the disclaimers.

In Extract 9, the same speaker again contrasts singleness with marriage. Marriage is determined to be “a state” with a clearly delineated set of “rules and regulations” (L3-4), whereas to be single was constructed as a more open undefined social space that lacked such parameters.

Extract 9

1 Mademoiselle I have never really sort of thought of I have never really I guess I 2 am jumping now, I have never really thought about being single as 3 a state whereas marriage is a state (…) um it has its rules and 4 regulations and so on or at least it did at that time, the time I was 5 in my twenties you know, whether you obey your husband, you 6 raise your kids, you keep your home. You do all of those things 7 Rona What your mother did 8 Mademoiselle Oh yes, definitely. And so on, and um (..) so singleness really didn’t 9 have any, didn’t have any er any written ↓ rules and regulations 10 about how you could be single […] (Int 2,L131)

Noting the time period when she was in her twenties (L4-5) (i.e., in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s), the speaker identifies that marriage was considered a clearly delineated

“state” associated with a set of pre-determined social expectations laid out in the form of specific “rules and regulations” (L3-4 & L9). Three are specified. Once married, women were required to obey their spouses, “you obey your husband” (L5), focus on raising children, “you raise your kids” (L5-6), and to keep ‘house’, “you keep your home” (L6).

Marriage as a life path was thus clearly defined and a pre-determined set of steps and actions.

As the speaker tells it, the social exceptions, roles, tasks, and routines of marriage were

159 manifestly evident and clearly laid out, whereas, in contrast, being single meant being ‘free’ or ‘untrammeled’ by such “written rules and regulations” (L9). Lacking the requisite social

(and institutional) guidelines, being single was a more open-ended (and ambiguous) prospect, which as a consequence could not be formulated as ‘a state’ in the same way as “marriage is a state” (L3).

In Extract 10, both strands of the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire are in evidence.

Extract 10

1 Rona […] this is a good life because you can... 2 Irene Get up and go huh heh 3 Rona Get up and go, that is the main thing? 4 Irene Yeah that’s the main thing. Your well you are beholden to nobody. 5 Rona Beholden, what do you mean? 6 Irene Well I mean you don’t have anybody telling you what to do you know cos 7 I didn’t live with my parents you know so I could do what I liked. I lived alone 8 and loved that. I could read all night if I wanted to, there was nobody coming 9 saying ‘Reeny turn the light off’. (Int3,L157)

Responding to a request to identify some positive aspects of being single and cued by the phrase “[…] this is a good life because you can …” (L1), the speaker initially identifies the importance of being able to “get up and go” (L2). Evoking the canonical image of the single woman as an ‘independent free spirit’ who, relative to the responsibilities of a ‘settled’ or ‘domestic” married life strongly determined by the needs and preferences of others, is unbound and untied. Being single means not being bound to the needs of others or being settled in one place.

The freedom to ‘get up and go” is then further qualified (L4) in slightly different terms; as being free from the duties and responsibilities of attachments and ongoing commitments. Not being “beholden” (L4) to anybody means being free from ‘personal obligations, duties, and services’ (“beholden,” 1989). If being “beholden” means to be attached and obligated, then being “beholden to nobody” (L4) means to be free or liberated

160 from such socially contractual duties. When asked to say some more about the meaning of being “beholden” (L5), the elaboration she provided is not having anyone telling or dictating what had to be done–“you don’t have anybody telling you what to do” (L6)–which presumably also means being free from being told by somebody what not to do. This is further personally qualified in relation to being free from parental authority in a domestic living space, “I could do what I liked” (L7), which was immediately followed by a very strong positive endorsement of living alone, “I lived alone and loved it” (L7-8). Living alone is thus being claimed as a position of freedom from the direct influence and authority of others, and also a space of freedom to do whatever she wanted to do- “I could do what I liked” (L7).

The example of what the speaker liked to do with that freedom, of being able to “read all night” (L8) without anyone asking her “to turn the light off” (L9) could seem, at first glance, a somewhat trivial claim, at odds with the strength of the highly positive endorsement of living alone. But bearing in mind that it has only been relatively recently that some women have had the means and the opportunity to live alone, such a freedom is not insignificant.

Due to social mores and economic circumstances, women in the past have rarely had the opportunity to be able to live alone, or to have the means, the right, and the ability to claim a private living space (Luken & Vaughan, 1991, 2003; see also Adams, 1976; Ogg, 2003; Trice

& Merill, 2010; Wilkinson, 2014; Woolf, 1929). Consequently, the claim by the speaker of being free to read all night uninterrupted, the freedom of not having to accommodate to the needs of others–the footed comment (L9) seems to suggest the voice of a husband/ lover– could therefore be considered a symbolic act of ultimate personal liberation.

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In the next extract, the same speaker tacks back and forth between the two strands of the freedom repertoire to talk about another subject, albeit also related to leisure. In this case, the freedom of action flies in the face of conventional gender expectations. The issue concerns going to the theatre alone or independently. The speaker is responding to a question about aspects of her life that she relished.

Extract 11

1 Irene […] You know when I was in London (…) I would go to the theatre by myself 2 and there was no problem. I didn’t feel ‘Oh, I am all by myself. I wish I had a 3 man to take me’. I was in a different city and I was going to the theatre 4 and that that was great. (Int 3 L184)

The speaker refutes the idea that a woman going to the theatre alone would be a

“problem” (L2), “I would go to the theatre by myself and there was no problem” (L1-2).

Unlike other women who find the prospect of going out alone to the theatre daunting or uninviting, the speaker is claiming to be liberated from being dependent on being ‘taken out’ to the theatre by “a man” (L2-3). As the footed comment “‘Oh, I am all by myself. I wish I had a man to take me’” (L 2-3) shows, the speaker defies traditional expectations that requires women to be ‘taken out’, and men to be the ones ‘doing the taking’. As a financially independent ‘free agent’, who is unwilling to depend on men to facilitate doing the things she enjoys, the footed comment can be heard to mimic the inner dialogue or the voice of a woman who is dependent on a man to take her out. The mimicked voice is one that seems to be unhappy at finding herself on her own, “Oh, I am all by myself”, and wishing that a man was available to take her out. Once again, the significance of being an autonomous agent can easily be overlooked. Women have traditionally been socially and economically dependent on men, therefore for women to be free to want to do things by themselves, and then be able

162 to do those things, especially alone,74 can be considered a form of personal liberation, where the named stakes are independence versus dependence.

In the final extract in this section, in Extract 12, singleness is talked about in terms of freedom from family responsibilities. However, as this extract illustrates, being single didn’t necessarily mean not having family responsibilities.75 In her mid-twenties, after her mother’s sudden death, the participant left her full-time and increasingly successful acting career in the

U.S to return to Canada to look after her father, where she was later joined by her brother.

Extract 12 1 Irene […] and we both looked after my father. We just came together as a family the 2 three of us. 3 Rona And you all lived together? 4 Irene Yeah yeah in in a house that they had, and I went off every summer to […] work 5 and left them alone. I had arranged for cleaners to come in and um in the winter I 6 got what work there was in Montreal […]. And um then my brother got married 7 and then my father got married again and this freed me. 8 Rona Freed you? 9 Irene Yes 10 Rona Could you say a little more about freeing you? 11 Irene Well (.) I was on my own huh heh I didn’t have to worry about them anymore. 12 They were looked after […] So I was now free to have my career huh heh 13 Rona so your father marrying opened 14 Irene ah I felt that I didn’t, that my responsibilities were um I I 15 didn’t feel responsible for either of them anymore. (Int1,L410)

After “coming together as a family” (L1) after the death of her mother, the speaker began to live in a house with both her father and brother. She picked up whatever local work there was to be found and went away each summer on tour. But after a decade or so, this pattern of life changed. First the speaker’s brother married (L6), and then her father re- married (L7). While such events could be characterized in many ways, the speaker here responds to these changes with a claim of freedom (L7-14), “this freed me” (L7) and “I was on my own” (L11). When asked to explain (L10), she describes how she no longer had to

74 The significance of the relationship between singleness, independence, and doing activities alone has yet to be adequately explored in OT (see Nilsson, Blanchard & Wicks, 2015). 75 See Allen (1989).

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“worry” (L11) about her father and brother anymore, “as I was on my own huh heh I didn’t have to worry about them anymore” (L11). With both her father and brother now being

“looked after” (L12) by their new spouses, the speaker ceased to feel responsible for them, “I didn’t feel responsible for either of them anymore’ (L14-15). Being freed after a decade from her responsibilities of caring for her father and brother, the speaker in her mid-thirties then became ‘free’ to focus full-time on re-building her acting career–“So I was now free to have my career” (L12).

In this extract, uncomplicated notions of freedom from responsibility are complicated by family circumstances that called for the speaker to take on what could be described as a family caregiver role. Having first been free to build and develop a career in acting, the speaker then largely gives up that full-time pursuit in order to “look after” initially only her father, and then subsequently also her brother. When, after about a decade, they both marry, the events are constructed by the speaker as a release of responsibilities, of being freed up to pursue (once again) her full-time career.

Summary

To summarize, the resources drawn upon by the participants in the extracts provided, in the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire the ‘singleness as freedom from’ resources rely on establishing the value of being single against assumed constraints and limitations of marriage, and dependency on a husband. None of the participants ‘intended’ to remain single; all aspired to or expected to marry, which may explain the overall moderate and relatively constrained critique of marriage evident in the interviews. Marriage could have been openly declared (and rejected) as a site of women’s oppression, for example, but this would have made it much more challenging for the participants to maintain an overall positive and open stance towards marriage, including accounting for past engagements. The

164 singleness as freedom from resources also rely on examples of marriages in ‘trouble’, and reference particular time-periods in the participants’ youth when, compared to today, women’s options to support themselves financially were limited and the stigma of divorce– assuming divorce was culturally permissible–would have been considerable. The advantages of being single are also constructed in argumentatively indirect and oblique ways, which tends to obscure the positive freedom claims being made

The ‘singleness as freedom to’ claims however, are much more explicitly positive, affirming as they do, the benefits of being able to work and have a career, to live alone, to be able to independently pursue activities and actions in the world that otherwise (i.e., if married) would not be possible. But even those ‘freedom to’ claims are relatively weak endorsements of being single. Consider the following strongly idealized claims about singleness made by DePaulo (n.d.), a self-identified singles activist and advocate–“I’m single at heart” and “Single is how I live my best, most authentic, most meaningful life” (italics added). The use of rhetorical extremes: “at heart’; best”; “most authentic”; and “most meaningful”, are extreme case formulations (ECFs) that show the identity claims being made about being single being pushed to the extreme limits, and constructed in essentialist terms.76

One can imagine a similar set of claims being made about marriage. The freedom claims being drawn upon by the participants in this study however, are not extreme and are relatively mild. The arguments do construct singleness in positive terms, but they are weakly positive, and relatively muted. Although there are some instances where arguments for the celebration of individual independence and autonomy are made more strongly, especially in

76 The discourse drawn on by DePaulo works to construct being single in strongly individualistic terms, and in ways that conversely construct marriage (and other forms of coupledom) as problematic social positions that inevitably compromise a person’s ‘authentic’ and personally meaningful ‘essential’ identity.

165 relation to work/career and living alone, overall the resources being drawn upon did not allow for very strong positive claims about singleness to be made. The freedoms of singleness are thus weakly idealized and thus vulnerable to being undermined and overshadowed by the powerful resources that make up the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire.

In the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire, being single is constructed in strongly devalued terms, as a position or state of ‘deficiency’ or ‘lack’ in relation to being married.

Being single is associated with ‘unattractive’ images, such as ‘witches’ or ‘dependent, passive, and powerless spinsters’, as ‘predatory’ ‘sexually available’ women, out to ruin other women’s marriages. Single women were also associated with negative traits and attributes. As women they were viewed with ‘suspicion’ as having ‘something wrong’ with them, and positioned on the ‘wrong’, ‘improper’, and ‘unnatural path’. Through the ‘deficit’ resources, singleness is set up as a problematic, illegitimate state in opposition to marriage, which is constructed as the ideal ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ course for a life, and what women should not only aspire to, but also are required to achieve or accomplish in order to be considered ‘real’ and ‘proper’ women. The proper place for women is thus in the home (and not at work), and being married and creating a ‘family’, is seen to be ‘proper’ expression of femininity and womanhood, and the path that confers legitimacy and value. Being married is the valued and legitimate position, being single (in contrast) is devalued and illegitimate.

Remaining single (to not marry and to never marry) is thus viewed as a violation or transgression of the social norm, and runs the risk of being subject to the ‘deficit’ repertoire.

Although all of the participants drew on both repertoires repeatedly during the course of the interviews, moving between repertoires as they constructed their accounts, there was a marked lack of free-play or diversity in the discourse. Although constituting two relatively

166 coherent ways of constructing singleness, the oppositional and polarized nature of the resources make a problematic package for single women to work with in constructing their identities. The polarized nature of the resources creates a number of challenges; either singleness could be talked about in strongly negative ways in terms of lack or deficiency, where singleness is constructed in a strongly unfavorable light, or singleness can be talked about in somewhat weakly positive ways, in terms of affording at least some degree of freedom from the constraints that would otherwise be imposed by marriage. As the

‘singleness as freedom from’ resources repertoire draws its force from critiques of marriage, which, on the whole, are relatively weak, and although the ‘singleness as freedom to’ repertoire is somewhat stronger, together, as the extracts in the next section will show, neither sets of resources are sufficiently powerful to combat the strongly undermining and overshadowing effect of the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire. As two opposing sets of value terms (singleness as freedom: singleness as deficit), the repertoires shape how the participants think or talk about singleness, and thus how they think and talk about who they are as single women.

Interpretive repertoires are an analytical tool to examine the content of discourse and how that content is organized. As a stock of discursive resources made available to them, the repertoires offer a constraining and restrictive value-opposing portfolio of possible positions, around which the single women interviewed for this study could accomplish their identity work. They show what kinds of resources the speakers have available to draw upon in talking about themselves as single women, but not how they implement or orient to them in talk.

Interpretive repertoires may form the argumentative texture of life (Edley, 2001), but they are

“abstractions from practices in context” (Potter et al., 1990, p. 209). In Part II of the analysis,

167 the analytical focus shifts in order to examine in detail how they are implemented in practice, and how the participants creatively worked with those resources to negotiate their identities as single women.

CHAPTER 6 NEGOTIATING SINGLENESS AS AN IDENTITY: NEGOTIATION STRATEGIES 6.1 Introduction

The focus of Chapter 5 was on the analysis of the content of discourse, and on the patterns of how that discourse was organized. In this chapter the focus shifts away from content and resource organization, towards how those resources are practically employed to negotiate singleness as an identity. Drawing on the tools of ‘subject positions’ and

‘ideological dilemmas’, the focus in Chapter 6 is on how the speakers take up and use the resources in order to accomplish certain kinds of rhetorical and argumentative ‘work’ in relation to identity negotiation. Four patterns of identity negotiation strategies will be introduced, described and analyzed. During talk, the speakers often moved seamlessly from one strategy to another, but for the purposes of analysis, they will be presented as separate and distinct identity negotiation strategies.

The strategies can be characterized as follows:

1. Singleness as Freedom: Anticipating Objections and Criticisms

2. Singleness as Deficit: Distancing and Neutralizing

3. Singleness as Deficit: The Running Battle

4. Troubling the Category Imperative

6.2 Overview

Strategy 1. Singleness as Freedom: Anticipating Objections and Criticisms

When drawing on the resources from the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire, the speakers tended to struggle to sustain being single as a valued and legitimate social position.

The extracts presented show the speakers anticipating objections and criticisms of even mildly positive claims about being single and employing a variety of discursive maneuvers in

168 169 order to manage the tensions and dilemmas of those criticisms. As I will show, claiming the

‘freedoms’ of singleness was often strongly over-shadowed and undermined by opposing arguments from the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire. Claiming singleness in positive ways is thus shown to be highly problematic and fraught with conflict.

Strategy 2. Singleness as Deficit: Distancing and Neutralizing

The ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire constructs singleness in ways that shape how single women are seen. The resources act as lenses through which actions, attributes, traits, and appearance are judged by others. It may be imagined that speakers could simply take up and speak out of the devalued subject positions offered by resources from the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire, and to talk about themselves in negative stereotypical terms as having deficient lives. A close examination of the interview texts, however, show that the participants almost never took up those positions, but instead, in the vast majority of cases, used creative strategies to either distance themselves from being associated with negative images of being single, or sought ways to rhetorically neutralize the potentially damaging effects. Although there are numerous instances of the participants working with the

‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire in such ways, the extracts selected to illustrate this way of negotiating singleness as an identity focus on one especially controversial theme within singleness discourse: the assumption that the single life is a ‘lonely’ life. The extracts analyzed in detail show the discursive work being done by the participants to either distance themselves from being positioned as single and lonely, or to neutralize concessions of loneliness.

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Strategy 3. Singleness as Deficit: The Running Battle

The third identity negotiation strategy also shows the speaker responding to the deficit repertoire, but employing a different, if less often used identity management strategy.

Instead of rhetorically distancing from or neutralizing the potentially damaging association with singleness in the repertoire, in this strategy the participant works in a subtly different way with the resources. She does not entirely avoid positioning herself in the devalued subject position, but by reflexively foregrounding the dilemmas and conflicts created by the deficit repertoire, over-simplistic binary understandings of the single life as being either

‘good’ or ‘bad’ are troubled and problematized. By directly naming and addressing the struggle to resist being constructed in an unfavorable light, the contradictions of singleness discourse are addressed directly, and the impacts on subjectivity are also made clear: the speakers’ ‘running battle’ with discourse shows the challenges that single women can have in sustaining a positive self-regard, and of maintaining a view of their lives as worthwhile and valuable.

Strategy 4. Troubling the Category Imperative

Whether it is through title selection or finding ways to negotiate membership in the category ‘single’, in this identity negotiation strategy, self-categorization and the management of being categorized ‘single’ are shown to be additional ways of managing the potentially stigmatizing effects of the deficit repertoire. The extracts in this section focus on two sets of examples. The first set focuses on the dangers of being publicly identified as single, and the significance of the shift in self-identification away from ‘Miss’ to ‘Ms.’. The second set of extracts shows the participants working creatively with the broader category of

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‘single’, and how category management can be a means of managing some of the potentially damaging effects and conflicts of being identified as a ‘single’ woman.

Each of the four strategies will now be considered in turn, and talk extracts will be examined in detail. As more attention is paid to the specifics of talk-in-interaction (the local particulars, subject positions, and action orientation of talk), and to the context of production, more information is provided about the interpretive context of the talk within the interview than in the previous chapter.

6.3 Strategy 1. Singleness as Freedom: Anticipating Objections and Criticisms

In the following extracts, the primary interest is in showing how the speakers try in their discourse to sustain positive arguments about the rewards and benefits of singleness, where being single is being constructed as a position of celebration and privilege. As will be shown, positive claims about singleness are not allowed to stand on their own and are not trouble-free. The speakers are shown to anticipate objections and criticisms, which, overall, function to undermine and weaken the strength of the positive claims being made. The participants use different kinds of defensive rhetorical maneuvers to manage objections and criticisms, which include justifications, hedges, extreme case formulations, concessionary arguments, and disclaimers. Positive claim-making about singleness is shown to be highly conflicted, but the conflicts are not elicited in response to specific verbalized objections coming from the speakers’ immediate interlocutor (the interviewer).

Extract 13 (below) shows the speaker drawing on both strands of the ‘singleness as freedom (from and to)’ repertoire. The speaker is responding to a comment from the interviewer about some women reporting that they never think about being single (L1). The speaker responds with an initial strong positive affirmation of being single, but this does not stand alone. It is followed by a complex sequence involving a justification, a re-affirmation,

172 and a strong rebuttal. The rhetorical structure of the sequence can be broken down into five sections. The speaker responds by producing: 1) a strong affirmation of being single (L2 &

L4); 2) a justification (L6-9); 3) a reaffirmation (L11-12); 4) a concession to an opposing viewpoint (L13-14), and 5) a strong rebuttal (L15-17). The analysis that follows divides the text in two sections: The first section focuses on Lines 6-12, and the second section on lines

L13-17.

Extract 13

1 Rona Some women say to me ‘I never think about being single’ 2 Mademoiselle I liked being single 3 Rona mhh mhh 4 Mademoiselle I liked being single 5 Rona mhh 6 Mademoiselle because I saw I saw from some of my er well that’s the usual the 7 usual thing you sort of say, well I saw some of my friends and how 8 their marriages were and I thought hmmm (.) you never know what 9 you are getting, 10 mind you neither did the husbands you know, 11 but um (.) it was um it was sort of you know the ability to make to 12 make decisions on your own, 13 which has some disadvantages because you missed the input 14 sometimes 15 but I I have always had a lot of women friends 16 Rona mhh 17 Mademoiselle and I have had on quite a number of occasions good men friends (Int1, L1641, italics added) 77

The participant’s initial response is strongly emphasized and repeated–“I liked being single” (L2 & 4)–which contradicts the suggestion that being single was not something she had ever thought about. It is as if the argument is: ‘Other women may not have thought much about being single, but I personally liked being single’.

L6-12: After strongly asserting that she likes being single, the speaker then immediately justifies that claim by referring to the subtle process of observing and evaluating the marriages of some of her friends–“…well I saw I saw some of my friends and how their

77 The presentation of the extract has been modified in order to highlight the position of the contrastive markers “but” (L11 & L15) to show the argument structure.

173 marriages were and I thought hmmm (.) you never know what you are getting” (L7-9).

Although not spelled out in detail, the final cautionary note contains an extreme case formulation (ECF)78 ‘never’- “you never know what you are getting” (L8-9)–an implied warning about the unpredictability of marital relationships, and the impossibility of

‘knowing’ people, and who they will become after marriage.

The combined disclaimer 79 and hedge 80–“that’s the usual thing you sort of say” (L6-

7)–works to establish that such practices are not out of the ordinary, that it is “usual” for women to evaluate other women’s lives, trying to imagine what it would be like to be in that position/situation, and comparing their own situation with the lives of others. The hedge “sort of” (L7) works to dampen down the force of the claim, and the disclaimer “that’s the usual thing”, works together to downgrade or normalize the practice of celebrating enjoying or liking the freedoms of being single, compared to being in a position of ‘not knowing what you are getting’ on marriage.

Although the gender politics between single and married women are established by the speaker as being recognizably different, the speaker takes care to observe that the uncertainties and un-predictabilities of marriage are not just an issue for women, but also for men (L10). In this stretch of the extract, the positives, or the liking of being single, are being affirmed using a line of argument that it may be better to be single than to be in a position of

78 Extreme case formulations (ECFs) are words like: ‘all, none’, ‘most’, ‘absolutely’, ‘always’, and ‘never’. ECFs are extreme terms that display an investment (defend or justify), a description, or assessment (Pomerantz, 1986; Edwards, 2000). 79 A disclaimer is a verbal device or discursive tactic that is “employed to ward off and defeat in advance doubts and negative typifications which may result from intended conduct (Hewittt & Stokes, 1975, p. 3). e.g., “I’m not prejudiced against (single/black/disabled/gay/poor/immigrants etc.) people, some of my best friends are (single etc.) people, but…” 80 A ‘hedge’ is a type of disclaimer where statements of facts, opinion, or belief are prefaced by disclaimers such as: ‘I’m no expert but…’; ‘I could be wrong but…’; or ‘I haven’t ever really thought about x, but …’. Hedges show a minimal or tentative commitment to what follows (Coates, 1996; Hewitt & Stokes, 1975; Myers, 1989).

174 realizing that the person you married is not who you thought they were, and that the realities of marriage–“how their marriages were” (L7-8)–were now a cause for pause–“I thought hmmm” (L8), and concern, “you never knew what you were getting” (L8-9).

On line 11, however, through the use of a contrastive marker “but”, the speaker strengthens her original assertion of liking being single using a justification that draws on a familiar ‘freedom to’ line of argument. Beginning hesitantly, “um (2 sec) it was um it was sort of you know” (L11), which weakens the power of the subsequent claim, the speaker then bolsters her repeated initial positive claim (“I liked being single”). Being single is to be liked on the grounds that it is a position where personal decisions can be made autonomously and freely, “it was […] the ability to make to make decisions on your own” (L11-12).

L13-17: The sequence following the ‘freedom to’ affirmative statement–“the ability to make to make decisions on your own” (L11-12)–is of special interest. The speaker immediately introduces a concessionary argument (L13-14), as if to acknowledge that a claim to be in the position of making your own decisions as a woman needs to be defended.

The concessionary argument nods to an opposing viewpoint, acknowledging that the freedom of individual women to make independent decisions has down-sides- “which has some disadvantages because you missed the input sometimes” (L13-14, italics added). The concessionary or naysayer argument 81 put forward by the speaker here acknowledges the opposing or contradictory argument that decisions made by women ‘on their own’ could suffer from the disadvantage of lacking the input from another/others. But the specific phrasing here deserves close attention. By referencing “some disadvantages” (as opposed to a

81 Naysayer arguments are those that anticipate objection in order to enhance the credibility of the argument being made, and are a verbal device employed to ward off and defeat in advance doubts and negative typifications (Graff & Birkenstein, 2007).

175 lot or many disadvantages) and “missed the input sometimes” (as opposed to often or always), the speaker works to downgrade the seriousness and significance of the disadvantage.

In the next turn, the speaker roundly dismisses that such a disadvantage applied in her particular case. Shifting her speaking position from ‘you’ to ‘I’, and moving from the past to present-perfect tense, “I have always had…” (L15), the speaker strongly refutes being disadvantaged. There is a strong assertion that she “always” (ECF) had “a lot of women friends”, and just in case this was not sufficient adds “on quite a number of occasions good men friends” (L17). Being unmarried, the speaker may not have benefited from having

“input” from a husband, but her rhetoric works to clearly establish that decisions were made following the input from many others, and not just women but also men. 82 Such a discourse not only works to uphold her argument of liking being single because it afforded her the opportunity to make her own decisions, but it also works to establish her identity as a socially well-connected woman (as opposed to someone lacking in friendships or who is/was socially isolated). In other words, by asserting that she liked to be able to make decisions “on her own”, this did not mean that she was literally ‘on her own’.

The final rebuttal (L15 & 17) works as an example of what Billig (1987) referred to as particularization.83 After the relatively modest claim about ‘liking being able to make decisions on her own’, the speaker then concedes that this may have a downside or “some

82 Independence and autonomy are thus not to be equated with being ‘asocial’, socially disconnected, or unconnected; the stress on “always” having had “a lot” of friends shows the speaker establishing the existence of an extensive and ongoing relational social network around her. 83 Drawing on rhetorical metatheory, Billig (1985, 1987, 1996) identified two argumentative forms: “particularization” and “categorization”, which, as opposing principles, pull in two different directions. Particularization “pulls in the direction of the uniqueness of things”, whereas categorization “pulls towards the aggregation of things” (1996, p.164). In categorization “a particular stimulus is placed in a general category” (p.164) whereas in particularization being positioned or identified in a general category (e.g., ‘single women’), the particular stimulus is robbed of its particularity.

176 disadvantages” (L13). By roundly refuting that these disadvantages did not apply to her in her particular situation (having many friends of both sexes to offer input), the speaker works to undermine the idea that being single is a position of social disadvantage, while also avoiding needing to make an explicit critique of marriage. Making solo decisions may be a position that has “some disadvantages” for some single people, but as an individual who claims to have had a lot of input from others, through an argument of particularization the speaker effectively takes herself out of or removes herself from belonging to such a disadvantaged category.

The speaker’s justifications around the relatively weak assertion of ‘liking being’ single are of particular interest. As Billig (1996, citing Perelman) noted, “every justification presupposes the existence or eventuality of an unfavorable evaluation of what we justify”

(p.117, italics added). In other words, justifications are rarely needed when the thing being justified (e.g., “I liked being single”, “making decisions on my own”) is unlikely to be objected to, criticized, or unfavorably evaluated (Perelman, 1979). The need to provide justification thus shows the speaker anticipating that even such mild affirmations will be objected to and unfavorably evaluated. Through the concessionary or naysayer argument, the speaker orients to what can be considered a standard line of objection (that women on their

“own” are either not capable of making their own decisions, or will make poor or bad decisions).84 By claiming input from many (including men), the speaker thus disproves that

84 The background issue at stake here is the notion of women’s ‘independence’. Today, women can be expected to make ‘independent’ decisions, but women in the past have rarely been in positions to ‘make their own decisions’ (Adams, 1976, 1981; see also Chambers-Schiller, 1984). Feminist discourse argues that women need to be able to live their lives independently from men and marriage, but married women are commonly presumed to benefit from their husbands making decisions for them, or of being part of a joint decision-making process. Thus, the speaker is probably objecting to the idea that because single women do not have the requisite husband to turn to when making life decisions, women’s decisions will be flawed, less well-considered, and of poorer quality.

177 she labored under such disadvantages. With such potential disadvantages being refuted, the argument of enjoying being able to make her own decisions is therefore more strongly sustained.

The rhetorical work being done by the speaker in this extract illustrates how even weak assertions about the merits of being single are socially highly controversial, require defense, or at least explanation. But it can be noted that the need to defend liking being single and enjoying making her own decisions and fending off objections and criticism is not elicited out of direct criticism or objections coming from the interviewer. Like the steps in a complex dance that is already learned, it seems that even modest positive claims about being single require careful rhetorical footwork.

The next extract comes after a lengthy stretch of talk in which the speaker describes to the interviewer the process of coming to realize how, as a single woman, she could accomplish things. Learning to be single involved (for her) a process of “realizing that you are a self, you are a person….you know ok you don’t have anybody beside you, but you can still do things, you can still accomplish things, you can still you know be successful”… “you do it you know” (Mademoiselle, Int 2, L238-248). In other words, not having “anybody” (a husband) “beside” her, did not preclude an individual striving to “do things”, to “accomplish things” in the world, and be “successful”, however ‘success’ may be understood.

Extract 14 (below) begins with the speaker identifying some of the pleasures and accomplishments that can accompany being single (L1). The argument that follows has a three-part structure: 1) a series of strongly positive assertions about the freedoms of singleness translated into actions or what she could do in the world; 2) a concessionary

178 argument (L4); and 3) a rebuttal (L5-6) using categorization (Billig, 1987, 1991) that neatly discredits the objection.

Extract 14 1 Mademoiselle I lived alone. I decorated my own apartment, it was wonderful. That 2 feeling of freedom that I could do whatever I want myself you know. 3 It’s great (.) 4 But there were moments of loneliness, 5 but then everybody else was going through them, 6 and even people who were married. (Int 2, L 250)

The speaker begins with a short list of practical accomplishments and successes that

(for her) came from being single, “I lived alone”, and “I decorated my own apartment”, followed by a very strongly positive evaluation, “It was wonderful” (L1). The speaker continues by describing having a sense of liberation associated with being free to do things in the world, “That feeling of freedom that I could do whatever I want myself” (L1-2), and a final (present tense) “It’s great” (L3).

The conversation then takes a turn in the opposite direction, signaled by the contrastive conjunction or marker ‘but’, which is followed by a stressed concessionary or naysayer argument, “But there were moments of loneliness” (L4). The speaker thus acknowledges and concedes that alongside the joys and pleasures of her single life, there were “moments of loneliness”. In this instance, the concessionary claim (L4) acknowledges the opposing ‘common-sense’ argument that such a position of ‘liberation’ would be compromised by an assumed lack of companionship and relationship. While conceding to this view-point in her rhetoric, the speaker also works to minimize it; loneliness was only for

“moments” (L4), i.e., fleeting and short, and thus, it could be argued, of little significance.

Not only are such moments described as fleeting, as the speaker establishes in her next move (L5), these kinds of moments are claimed as common-place and universal:

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“everybody else was going through them” (L5). If “even people who were married” (L6) (a category of people, who, it could be assumed, are least likely to be lonely)85 had such moments, then such moments are a normal and ordinary part of everyday human experience, irrespective of whether a person is single or married. Any possible suggestion that even moments of loneliness were a consequence of or were associated with being single and having the freedom to live alone and to be self-directive are downgraded and neutralized. If all moments of loneliness are part-and-parcel of the human condition, it is implied that any loneliness experienced should not be attributed to being single, or taken as an expected price to be paid for the freedoms of being independent and being able to make autonomous decisions.

The above three-part argumentative form fits the proposition, concession, and reassertion structure proposed by Antaki and Wetherell (1999). As Antaki and Wetherell show (and argue), in contrast to other ways of conceding, making a show of conceding using a three-part structure has the effect “of strengthening one’s own position at the expense of a counter-argument” (p.7). A three-part argumentative structure thus allows a speaker “to make the concession do more offensive work” (italics added) than other methods of conceding, irrespective of whether a position is identified as “mundane or explicitly ideological” (p.7).

By carrying “the battle to the enemy” (p.7), as they put it, a show of conceding serves to bolster the speaker’s case and weakens the counter-argument.

But why would the speaker be “carrying the battle to the enemy” and needing to make the concession do ‘offensive’ work? I would argue that by anticipating the potential for dispute about the positive affirmations of the freedom of living the single life and the kinds

85 There are also discourses of loneliness within marriage (see Rokash & Sha'ked, 2013; see also Coontz, 2005, for a history of marriage).

180 of activities and possibilities that can accompany such a life, the speaker is working to affirm the possibility that, contrary to expectations, women can enjoy and be happy being on their own. The concession offered is a recognition that the speaker’s claims are far from being socially uncontroversial or politically or ideologically neutral. Although seemingly mundane, the positive claims about singleness being made by the speaker challenge the taken-for- granted. The work being done here shows the speaker creatively working with and managing an ideological discourse that constructs (heterosexual) marriage (and co-habitation) as the

‘natural’ and ‘normal’ order of things for women, and that marriage is the ‘right’ and

‘proper’ expression of femininity and womanhood. By simply affirming the freedoms and pleasures of the single life, the speaker is inadvertently calling into question dominant ideological and gendered notions about a ‘woman’s place’. What this short and apparently unremarkable sequence of talk shows is the speaker, through her rhetoric, anticipating objections and criticisms, and finding a creative way to manage them via concessions which

‘fire-proof’ her claims against complaint, while simultaneously establishing that women who do not follow a normative path are not necessarily going to live unhappy lonely lives. As

Antaki and Wetherell (1999) observed, “making a show of conceding fire-proofs something in the speaker’s own position, making it less liable to challenge, upset or rebuttal” (p.11, italics added).

It may also be the case that the controversy fueling the argumentative back-drop is not just singleness, but the combination of women being single and living alone. As previously mentioned, women in the past have rarely been afforded the opportunity to be self-directive or have the exclusive right to control (and be creative in) private spaces

(Woolf, 1929). Paralleling and intersecting with the extraordinary rise in numbers of ‘single’

181 people across populations, there has also been an equally extraordinary rise in numbers of people ‘living alone’, which, as Ogg (2003) observes, is also a situation around which discourses are highly polarized.86

As I have already argued, although ‘living alone’ (as a living situation) and being

‘single’ (as a social position) should be theorized as separate and distinct constructs, where women are both single and live alone, as is the case for the participants of this study, the concrete practicalities and experiences of living alone can be an additional resource that single women can draw upon in talking positively about their lives. In this extract, it is clear that for the speaker living alone, being able to decorate her own apartment, and being able to do what she wanted to do were very important parts of the freedom to learn and to develop herself as “a self” (L238) and as “a person” (L239).

One final point can be made before moving on to the next extract. The pleasures of living alone, of being able to decorate one’s own apartment, and to be able to decide what to do and when, can be viewed (for those with economic means) as very ‘ordinary’ mundane domestic pleasures. In their seminal examination of youth culture and identity in action,

Widdicombe and Woofitt (1995) showed “punks” using a discursive strategy identified as

“doing‘being ordinary’ ”, a discursive strategy first identified by Sacks (1985)87, in order to resist aligning themselves with being members of a marked sub-cultural group. When

Widdicombe and Woofitt asked their study participants the apparently neutral question “How do you or would you describe yourself?”, the respondents commonly resisted representing

86 Paralleling and intersecting the negative stereotypes of single women, Jamieson and Simpson (2013) identified two recurring stereotypes of people who live alone. They are either “the carefree self-absorbed person who is oblivious to the responsibilities of family, kin, or community”, or “the sad, lonely neglected and excluded person” (p. 1). 87 According to Widdicombe and Woofitt (1995), Sacks argued that “an individual’s status as an ordinary person could be treated as an achievement which is, at least in part, constructed and maintained through discursive practices” (p 100).

182 their physical appearance as being in any way different, unusual, or extraordinary. In other words, members of a sub-cultural group (“punks”) resisted sub-cultural self-identification and instead, talked themselves up as being ordinary and just like everybody else (see also

Widdicombe, 1993, 2008a, 2008b; Widdicombe & Woofitt, 1995). As a discursive strategy then, ‘doing being ordinary’ can be a way for members of a group that is positioned by others as being in some way different, deviant, or abnormal, to manage or negotiate their identities in interactions.

Extrapolating such findings to this study, the kinds of mundane claims being made by the speaker in this extract (and by other participants in other instances) can be viewed as a discursive practice that demonstrates ‘doing being ordinary’, or displaying what an ordinary

‘normal’ woman (married or single) might do when able to control a protected ‘home’ space.

In social contexts where the freedom of women to make their own decisions, including living alone, may be considered a violation of a taken-for-granted social order, another possible way to negotiate singleness as an identity could be to produce unremarkable and apparently mundane descriptions (Widdicombe & Wooffitt, 1995) of the single life. Such a strategy or maneuver could function to head off in advance any suspicions that, as a single person, she was markedly different, dangerous, or ‘out of the ordinary’ as a woman. Seemingly mundane claims should thus not be considered or dismissed as mundane, but instead examined carefully as a set of creative responses to ideologically-generated objections, which, in this case, come from the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire.

In the third and final extract in this section, the speaker, a different participant, is also talking about a process of single women coming to realize over time what they can accomplish in the world as ‘selves’ and as ‘persons’. In this extract, the stakes involved are

183 much more clearly aligned with liberal feminist ideals and discourses, which are also bound up with the rights of women to make their own choices, to determine their own life paths, and to decide how they might wish to develop as people. In Extract 15, the speaker is explicitly concerned with how single women view and position themselves, how they are positioned by culture vis-à-vis marriage, and the freedoms and meaning-making possibilities of their lives.

In the same way that other discourses work to marginalize and stigmatize other minority groups such as the ‘disabled’, the ‘old’, and ‘people of color’, etc., in this extract, the speaker draws attention to some of the implications of how single women are positioned by marriage discourse. In this extract, discourses around marriage are shown to call into question not just the status of unmarried women as adults, but also their very humanness or status as fully recognizable persons. Rather than endorsing such positioning, the speaker carefully and cautiously objects to and criticizes such constructions, while simultaneously offering an alternative and positive ‘vision’ or idealized view of how single women could view their lives. As with the previous extracts, the analysis shows the speaker anticipating objections and criticisms of the positive claims being made, thus illustrating the controversial nature of women’s singleness, the kinds of social conflicts that can come along with being so positioned, and how such a position can have profound implications for how women negotiate singleness as an identity position.

Extract 15 (below) is the speaker’s response to an invitation from the interviewer to reflect on her experience, to see if she would like to offer some “advice”, “pointers”, or

“wisdom” to single women currently in their twenties, thirties, and forties. She was asked if there was anything that she would like to tell them, or thought might be important for them to

184 know. Such an invitation, in effect, invites the participant to position herself as ‘a spokesperson for single women’, and to offer a personal view or exhortation of how she would like single women to view themselves and their lives. By accepting the invitation, the speaker then takes up the speaking or subject position of a woman of authority, knowledge, and wisdom (see Baltes & Smith, 1990; Randall, 2013). As a form of collective address to younger women, however, the speaker elects not to offer practical advice, but instead to offer an exhortation for them to claim full personhood. Single women are advised to reject cultural messages that construct who they are in terms of lack and absence, as persons who are not yet persons (deficit repertoire), and instead to recognize how being single can, in the long run, potentially shape and develop their lives for the better, and to recognize that as single women they occupy different, but equally valuable social worlds as other women, and especially women who are married.

Extract 15

1 Jane I would say that (.) being single is a life. (.)It’s a way of being in the 2 world (.) that many women have undergone, have experienced (.) 3 and (..) that it has its (..) pluses and values (.) that a married life doesn’t have. 4 So don’t feel you’re somebody waiting to be a person. You already are a person, 5 and you may in fact be more of a person than the person who is married(.) the 6 woman who is married. 7 When you’re (.) with married people now widowed, and you are all in your (.) 8 sixties or in your retirement years, you will often find that you have the advantage 9 (.) That you seem in a funny way to have lived a fuller life than they have. You 10 have been less protected and maybe that’s brought you into being more. 11 I mean some people would argue that (.) the marriage relationship and having 12 children is what brings people into being (.) but it can also um (.) in a way stunt 13 people. Being single um can develop you in a way that a married life sometimes 14 doesn’t. (7 sec silence) 15 I think that’s what I would say. 16 So don’t don’t see yourself as, you are an alternative, you are a parallel. 17 You are not a lesser than (…) you have your own parallel universe. (Int 4, L 1532)

In order to facilitate the analysis, this complex stretch of talk is divided into three sections: Lines 1-8; L9-15; & L16-17.

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L1-8: The speaker begins her ‘advice talk’ with a series of positive and affirming claims about being single. There is the assertion that being single is “a life” (L1), and “a way of being in the world” (L1-2) that has “pluses and values” (L3). From the outset, the speaker rhetorically contradicts that which is commonly taken to be the case: that compared to being married, being single is considered deficient in not being ‘a life’ or a valid ‘way of being in the world’, and is to be viewed (constructed) as a “lesser” (L17) form of life that is lacking in both advantage and value. Being single and being married are not the same however; the speaker asserts that being single is “a way of being in the world” (L1-2) that is quite different and distinct, and possibly even better than being married (“you may in fact be more of a person than the person who is married (.) the woman who is married” (L5-6).

The emphasis placed by the speaker on singleness being a collective experience “that many women have undergone, have experienced” (L2), is itself unusual. Being single is usually viewed to be the personal and private domain of the lone individual, and the deficits associated with being single are commonly ‘explained’ through casual mechanisms such as the assumptions about the negative traits or attributes about the individual woman (‘a loner’, too ‘fussy’, too ‘selfish’, ‘cannot attract a man’, etc.). Here, however, the speaker encourages individual single women to recognize that they are not alone, that they are one of many, and that they are a collective.

L4 marks the start of a three-part set of assertions: 1) “so don’t feel that you’re a somebody waiting to be a person” (italics added), which can be heard as an objection to and criticism of the idea that single women are not yet persons, that they, by virtue of their singlehood, are ‘waiting to be’ persons, which can be glossed as waiting for marriage to signify, symbolize, and confer full recognizable personhood; 2) “You already are a person”

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(L4) which is the assertion that single women are already fully recognizable as persons in their own right; and 3) the hedged and (arguably) controversial assertion that single women may be more fully persons than married women–“and you may in fact be more of a person than the person” (self-corrected to) “the woman who is married” (L5-6). Such claims fly in the face of the idea that women only have value because of their potential to marry, that their value will only be realized when they marry, and that until that time, unmarried/single women occupy some kind of liminal (perhaps pre-sexual) state of pre-adulthood or pre- personhood as “someone waiting to be a person” (L4). The final assertion that a single woman “may” (hedge) “be more of a person” (L5) than her married counterpart is offered tentatively, 88 as if recognizing that such a claim could be contentious and controversial.

L9-15: The claim of single women being more fully persons than married women is acknowledged by the speaker to be difficult to account for, “you [single women] seem in a funny [unpredictable and curious] way” to have “lived a fuller life” (L9) (which contradicts the usual understanding of the single life being more empty or less developed) than married women. Such a realization does not however come early in life–“When you’re (.) with married people now widowed, and you are all in your (.) sixties or in your retirement years, you will often find [as opposed to ‘always’] that you have the advantage (.). That you seem in a funny way to have lived a fuller life than they have” (L7-9, italics added). The “fuller life” is then tentatively further justified and warranted through another claim, “you have been less protected and maybe [hedge] that’s brought you into being more” (L9-10), which is an argument that merits closer examination.

88 Although some historical periods have produced discourses that have strongly upheld that the single life for women is socially and personally valuable (Chambers-Schiller, 1984; Lanser, 1999), within the study corpus, assertions about the superiority of singleness over marriage, and by implication single women over married women, were rare.

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Within discourses of romantic love, marriage is often constructed as a desirable position. Marriage is seen to offer women a degree of protection, or social, economic, political, and domestic safety and security from the world (Wilkinson, 2012; Wetherell,

1995). This protectionist discourse is often combined with a “developmentalist logic” (Riggs

& Peel, 2016, p.3), or the idea that it is only through marriage and having children that women can develop and grow as persons. Marriage is thus set up as a situation of double advantage compared to being single, which is constructed (conversely) as a position of risk and vulnerability (both lacking in those protections), and also a position that could preclude the possibilities of growth and development that marriage and having children are commonly seen to confer. The speaker’s argument about singlehood being a position where women have the freedom to grow and develop, as a result of being ‘unprotected’, is thus quite radical.

The speaker concedes that the opposite view is often taken to be the case, “I mean some people would argue that (.) the marriage relationship and having children is what brings people into being” (L11-12). But the original proposition is then reasserted through a hesitant and cautious critique of marriage, “but it [marriage and family], can [hedge] also um (.) in a way [hedge] stunt people” (L12-13, italics added). In other words, rather than marriage being the ‘ideal situation’ that women should aspire to in order to socially and symbolically be recognized as adults and to develop themselves as people, marriage can also be seen to

“stunt” or markedly block or arrest women’s growth and potential for development. If marriage can be viewed as stunting women’s development, then the argument seems to be that being single has freedoms that can offer an alternative and feminist-oriented opportunity for self-realization or self-actualization (Kitzinger, 1989). Following the premise that ‘what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger’, the speaker seems to be suggesting that in the long-

188 term, and with growing age and maturity, being single has the potential to facilitate development and growth, allowing women to come “into being more” (L10). At this point, the speaker pauses to reflect, “I think that’s what I would say” (L15).

Line 16-17: After a false start and a correction, the speaker then closes with a final rhetorical flourish: “So don’t don’t see yourself as, you are an alternative, you are a parallel.

You are not a lesser than (…) you have your own parallel universe” (L16-17). At this point, the earlier claim about the superiority of the single life to the married life is downgraded to a claim of equality, but qualified with a recognition of difference: equal, but not the same. The speaker encourages younger single women to view themselves as being separate, different, but equal to others, “you are an alternative, you are a parallel” (L16, italics added). Despite not being sanctioned by the established social order, the speaker advises single women to reject the idea that they should see themselves as being inferior “lesser” persons because they have not married–“You are not a lesser than” (L17)–but to recognize instead that they individually and collectively occupy a distinctive and unique social sphere of corresponding equivalence and worth: “you have your own parallel universe” (L17).

In this complex argumentative sequence of advice talk, the stakes being identified for single women are high. They are both developmental and existential, and the content of the advice being offered by one single woman to a (hypothetical) group of younger single women, is not random. Speaking from the subject position of being single and an authority, the speaker can be heard drawing on her own experiences as a single woman where (the singleness as deficit) discourses have constructed her as not really “having a life”, as inferior, as lacking in value, and as a lesser woman and person than a married woman. The speaker can thus be heard ‘talking back’ (hooks, 1988) to cultural discourses that set up singleness

189 and married women in opposition to one another, and single women as inferior, and married women as superior. It is as if the speaker is saying to other single woman: ‘I was told that being single did not properly constitute a life or a recognized valued way of being in the world. I was told that as a woman, my life would only gain status and legitimacy if I married.

As someone in my seventies who has negotiated being single long-term, I can affirm that the single life has freedoms that can bring richness, learning, and possibility, and that you do not have to get married in order to be able to claim your right to full personhood or citizenship.

So don’t let anyone tell you that you are living a lesser life, I am telling you that it is possible to claim your life on equal terms as a woman living in a different, unique and equally valuable social world’.

Speaking as a knower and an expert, Jane is disputing that which is commonly expected to be the case and argues the opposite. She advocates that single women reject the

‘lived ideology’ (Billig, et al., 1988), the cultural beliefs and taken-for-granted assumptions about marriage that in turn, work to construct singleness in terms of lacking and deficit. The advice can be read as an attempt to subvert the gendered ideological climate in which marriage is seen to be the only right, proper, and legitimate course for a woman’s life. The speaker disputes marriage for women as a universal panacea and the only route to women’s development and growth and challenges the view that the single life has no inherent value, merit, or worth. Instead of the single life being seen as either a life not worth living, a liminal existence, or a state of subordinate human existence, the argument is that irrespective of social positioning, all persons are entitled to be acknowledged and recognized in their status as human beings (i.e., a discourse of equity and equality). The deficit model of self is

190 criticized, and the speaker calls for younger single women to develop a different and more positive sense of self and of belonging to the world.

Although the speaker challenges the taken-for-granted views of singleness, thus underscoring the negative effects of the ‘singleness as deficit’ discourse on subjectivity, the arguments for the advantages and positives of being single are made carefully and tentatively. The use of hedges softens the claims being made, perhaps an indication that such claims could be deemed highly controversial, political or personally offensive. The language used is also notably abstract. The stakes identified could be characterized as ontological, as the debates being brought forward relate to deep-seated cultural notions about what constitutes “a life” and what is a ‘good’ life, what is a valid “way of being in the world”, and by what means are the lives of women to be “brought into being more”. As a rhetorical defensive maneuver however, abstractness or vagueness can be a powerful way of defending one’s argument from attack (Gill, 1996; 2000; Drew & Holt, 1989; Edwards & Potter, 1992), and is thus another way to manage the anticipated objections and criticisms of positive claims about singleness.

6.4 Strategy 2. Singleness as Deficit: Distancing and Neutralizing

The previous section showed some of the defensive maneuvering around even mild positive claims about the freedoms of singleness, but how did the speakers work more directly with the resources from the deficit discourse? As previously stated, the participants did not simply import these images and associations, claim them, and speak out of those devalued subject positions. Instead, in a majority of instances, the speakers employed creative strategies to either distance themselves from being positioned as single and lonely, or to neutralize the potentially damaging effects of the association. Rather than presenting piecemeal a range of instances showing how the participants maneuvered with different

191 aspects of the deficit repertoire, my focus instead will be on one particular aspect of the

‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire: how the participants negotiated their identities in relation to a specific stock image of the single life being ‘a lonely life’. But why choose the issue of loneliness?

As has been previously stated, during the process of conducting the study, interactions with clinicians and institutional processes such as the Ethics Consultation

Process indicated that loneliness was a core and defining feature of the study group.

Clinical/health audiences presupposed that singleness in later life was a worthy and salient topic to research on the grounds that the group was collectively lonely and sad, and therefore

‘at risk’ and ‘vulnerable’. During the ethics consultation, as has already been discussed, a concern was raised about whether the participants would become sad and distressed when asked to talk about their lives. Viewed as products of the constructive effects of discourse, such views are in alignment with the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire, identified in Part I of the analysis. Like other stock ideas or stereotypes of single women, such associations can be considered an unnoticed ‘habit of life’ (Billig, 1999) that pass unnoticed. As Billig wryly observed, it not unknown for ideology to “stalk the unnoticed and the taken-for-granted assumptions of intellectual inquiry” (1999, p. 548-9). Viewed critically in terms of ‘lived ideology’ (Billig et al., 1991), however, an analysis of how the participants worked discursively with the issue of loneliness would seem to be a profitable line of inquiry.

Before examining instances during the interviews when loneliness was introduced as a topic of conversation (either by the participants or the interviewer), a preliminary examination of the nature of the association between singleness and loneliness and some of the ideological dimensions to this association are necessary.

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6.4.1 Singleness and Loneliness.

Single people are commonly assumed to be lonely. As Cobb (2007) ironically laments, “One is the loneliest number. How terrible to be alone!” (p. 207). To be single and to be a “one” (not a ‘two’) is thus seen to be a social position that is about “loneliness” and being “alone”. Being single, as Cobb bemoans, is assumed to be a “terrible” situation. From a social determinants of health perspective, being single is assumed to be a risk factor for loneliness, social isolation, and friendlessness (Wilkinson, 2005). The loneliness of being single seems to stem from the idea that single people lack “social connections” (Wood, 1986, p.184), or as Stein and Tuval-Machiach (2015) put it, have a “relational deficit” (p. 212, italics added). In other words, being single is assumed to be a lonely situation because of the absence of relationships that count. Single people are thus presumed to be lonely because they are assumed to be socially lacking or deficient (Woods, 1986). Lacking the right kinds of “affiliations” (Wilkinson, 2005, p.25), single people are deemed lonely simply because they lack the advantages that are presumed to accompany other kinds of affiliative relationships that are valued, privileged, and deemed salient, such as those associated with marriage (or marriage-like relationships), and ‘traditional’ notions of ‘family’ (Wilkinson,

2012 & 2013; A.Taylor, 2012). In other words, the association of loneliness with being single is born (in large part) out of lived ideology.

Loneliness is not without moral dimensions. As Wood (1986) pointed out,

‘admissions’ of loneliness can be understood as admissions of failure. For a single woman to take up the subject position of being lonely (even temporarily), thus runs the risk of admitting to some kind of failure and an acknowledgement that she has ‘failed’ to have the kinds of relationships that she may have expected/wanted/hoped to have (Wood, 1986, citing

Gordon). Furthermore, while it is “‘bad’ to be lonely… it is bad, perhaps even worse, not to

193 be lonely [italics added] when one is supposed to be” (Wood, 1986, p.187). In other words, women ‘on their own’ are caught in a double bind. If they admit to being lonely, they run the risk of being seen as relationally deficient (i.e., confirming the effect of the absence of the kinds of social relationships that are seen to really count). But if they make the claim of not being lonely, then it is their capacity and ability to form social bonds and attachments to other people, their very sociality or nature as social beings, that can then be called into question. As Wood explained, if women say they are not lonely when they are in a position that is judged to be lonely, then their “very nature as a social being can be called into question” (1986, p. 184, italics added).

The stakes are high. If single women claim they are lonely, they confirm other people’s views that being single is a position of relational shortfall, but if they deny being lonely, then their nature as social beings is called into question (see also Gordon, 1975;

Gubrium, 1975). Loneliness and being lonely can thus be anticipated as a controversial, contentious, and rather sensitive topic for single women. How then did the participants of this study work with and respond to the potential for being viewed as ‘lonely’ subjects?

6.4.2 Analyzing loneliness talk. 89

In the next two extracts, the topic of loneliness was raised as a topic of conversation by the interviewer. In Extract 16, the interviewer presents the participant with a generalized comment about what “some single women” (L1) have said about loneliness (i.e., that, in some cases, loneliness was recognized and acknowledged as being part of their experiences, but for others, this either did not seem to be the case and/or they may have preferred to keep

89 A preliminary version of this analysis was presented at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, in May, 2014, under the title “The ‘Loneliness’ Talk of Older Single Women: A Critical Exploration”.

194 silent about the issue) (L1-3). Although couched in generalities, the speaker (L4) responds with a strongly worded and categorical personal disavowal of having been lonely that is further justified (L6).

Extract 16 1 Rona Some women talk about, some single women talk about loneliness being a 2 (.) part of their experience of being single and for other women loneliness just 3 doesn’t seem to be (.) part of [ the::ir ] 4 Irene [ I was ] never lonely being by myself 90 5 Rona right 6 Irene (.) I had too many things, I had always books 7 Rona mhh 8 Irene and my thoughts 9 Rona Mhh 10 Irene Never. 11 Rona Mhh Did people expect you to be lonely? 12 Irene Yeah, a lot of people thought I would be yeah 13 Rona Like who? 14 Irene (.) I don’t remember. 15 Rone (unclear) 16 Irene I really don’t remember. (2 secs) Maybe (.) married, maybe married would 17 say ‘Well Reenie, aren’t you ↑lonely’? (Int3, L569)

Before the interviewer completes the opening question, the participant interjects with strongly worded and emphatic rebuttal, “I was never lonely being by myself” (L4). The word

“never” is an ECF, which is a discursive move that takes the evaluative dimension of what is in question (in this case loneliness being an aspect or “part” of singleness experience) to its extreme limit (Pomerantz, 1986; Edwards, 2000). The claim “never” to have been lonely, is thus to strongly refute the idea that loneliness has ever been part of her life.

The interviewer’s introduced phrase of “being single” (L2) is not mirrored or repeated in the speaker’s response, instead the wording is subtly altered to “being by myself” (L4).

But what could such a shift signal? For the speaker, perhaps being ‘by herself’ is a term with less cultural ‘baggage’ than ‘being single’, and one that is also potentially more strongly associated with one’s living situation (i.e., living alone). By subtly rejecting the interviewer’s

90 Speech overlap at point of double brackets.

195 terms and by replacing them with her own, the speaker can be understood to be subtly reconfiguring her identity.91 Having strongly signaled an investment in refuting and distancing herself from being seen or thought of as lonely, the speaker then goes on to provide an explanation and justification for her stance. The explanation/justification also contains ECFs: “I had too many things, I had always books and my thoughts” (L6-8, italics added); and the final exclamatory “Never” (L10).

As a disclaimer that seeks to explain “never” being lonely, the content is somewhat unusual. Commonly, a disavowal of loneliness could be bolstered by a claim about multiple friendships and close relationships, but here however the disclaimer is strengthened by a claim about intense (mental) activity. The speaker positions herself amid plenitude, as someone who has always been intensely (perhaps intellectually) and creatively engaged (with books, ideas, and in thought)–“I was never lonely” (L4); “I had too many things”(L6); “I had always my books and thoughts” (L6-8). In marked contrast to the stereotypically ‘lonely spinster’ listlessly marking time until death, a ‘Miss Havisham’ version of spinsterhood, the image being presented here is of someone who lives (and has “always” lived) a very vibrant, intense, and lively ‘life of the mind’.

The strength and force of the speaker’s response could easily have worked to close down any further conversation on the controversial topic of loneliness, but the interviewer takes a different tack, asking “Did other people expect you to be lonely?” (L11). At this point, the speaker could have closed the conversation with a simple ‘no’, but instead the participant strongly agrees, “yeah, a lot of people thought I would be, yeah” (L12), indicating that such a view was not a rare, or even an unusual occurrence. The speaker, it seems, often

91 Terms, names, titles, and category memberships are seen as important means for people to negotiate identity, often in quite subtle ways (S. Taylor, 2012).

196 encountered other people who assumed that because she was single, she was lonely, or, put another way, the speaker was frequently positioned by others in the devalued subject position of being lonely.

When asked (L13) who made such an assumption, the response that follows is vague,

“I don’t remember”(L14), and “I really don’t remember” (L16), which is then followed by a qualification (L16) that perhaps married people expected her to be lonely, “Maybe (.) married, maybe married would say ‘Well Reenie, aren’t you ↑ lonely?’” (L16-17). The repeated hedge “maybe” at the start, dampens down the force of the claim, but the short but vivid stretch of talk that follows can be heard as a footing, the reported speech of another

(Goffman, 1981; 2001; see also Potter, Edwards, & Wetherell, 1993). The explicit use of the speaker’s first name (replaced here by her pseudonym), the colloquial phrasing, and the marked rising intonation, is suggestive of a reported question from someone who knew the participant quite well.

The footed question, “‘Well Reenie, aren’t you ↑ lonely?’”, is formatted as a

‘negative interrogative’ (Heritage, 2002). The question could have been “Are you lonely?” but instead “Aren’t you lonely?” or “Are you not lonely?” suggests that the questioner

(explicitly identified as being married) had already assumed that being single meant that

Irene was bound to be lonely. In other words, given the participant’s position as a single woman, from the perspective of a married friend it could appear inconceivable that she wouldn’t be lonely. As Potter, Edwards, and Wetherell (1993) observe, footed speech “can be an attempt to draw on potentially problematic claims … while avoiding the noxious attributions that might be made to a supporter of those claims (p. 96, italics added). Applied to this example, by introducing the footed speech of a married friend the speaker is able to

197 insert the problematic (potentially ‘noxious attribution’) that married friends assumed that she would be lonely being ‘by herself’. The footing can thus be heard to function as an implicit rebuke or criticism of the stereotypical assumption of married people that because she was single, she would be lonely.

By protesting or objecting to the common-sense assumption that women who are not married must be lonely, the speaker is identifying a point of tension between how married people view the lives of single women and how single women may view their own lives. The speaker’s comment could thus be interpreted as a carefully veiled protest or criticism aimed at challenging one of the privileges associated with being married. In contemporary parlance, the speaker is objecting to what Helen Fielding so vividly characterized as being an attitude of “the smug married” (1996, p. 41; see also A. Taylor, 2012).

To recap, in this short sequence, the study participant strongly distances herself from being positioned as ‘lonely’. Using a counter argument that relies on a discourse of (internal) busyness and engagement, the speaker avoids being positioned in the devalued identity or subject position of being ‘lonely’ being ‘by herself’. The exchange has a defensive quality, indicating that loneliness is a controversial topic. The speaker’s suggestion that married friends often assumed that she would be lonely points to the attribution of loneliness being a frequent and ongoing point of social conflict and dispute. As a regular and predictable feature of a single identity, the issue of assumed loneliness would, for reasons outlined above, require careful management. But disclaimers around loneliness, perhaps especially ones so adamantly stated, are not always believed. Forceful disavowals of being lonely are one way to manage other peoples’ negative assumptions, but until the ideology that drives such discourses is fully exposed and more closely examined, such assumptions are unlikely to be

198 questioned.

Finally, it is worth observing that in this exchange the participant was fully aware that the interviewer is also a single woman, and would thus in all likelihood have been subject to the same kinds of negative assumptions. Reflecting back on the interaction in hindsight, the strategy of offering the speaker two options of either aligning or not aligning herself with

‘what other single women have said’ about loneliness (as opposed to asking about loneliness more directly and thus risking ‘offence’), did not seem to alter the speaker’s need to take such an emphatic and strong stance of personal disavowal. Perhaps approaching the subject with the observation ‘I have found that people often think that I am lonely being single. Have you found that? What is that all about, do you think?’ may have facilitated a more expansive conversation.

In the next extract, the topic of loneliness was introduced by the interviewer circumspectly; the participant was shown the headlines from the previous day’s national newspaper. As part of a week-long series titled “The Rise of the Single Life”, the headline ran “The Devastating Effects of Loneliness”. The main caption read “Stay connected. It’s good for you”, which was followed by the sub-heading “Loneliness or isolation can cause hormonal and genetic changes and even alter the way the brain functions” (“The rise of the single life,” 2013, p.3).92

92 It is worth observing that the focus of the articles in the Globe & Mail (Life & Arts Section) was largely on young to middle-aged professional single people. In addition to a focus on loneliness, over the week the paper ran articles about friendships, “The death of dining room table” (about changing shopping, cooking and eating habits), alternatives to “the single ghetto” (about young single persons’ condominium living), and changing definitions of ‘the family’.

199

Extract 17 1 Rona There we go. So they are assuming that to be single, to live a single life… 2 Elisabeth is to be ↓↓ lonely 3 Rona is to be lonely 4 Elisabeth ↓ yeah (unclear) 5 Rona Now, now is that is that a an attitude or view point that is familiar to you like? 6 Elisabeth No, because I have ↑never been lonely. I have always had friends or you 7 know I have never had a period in my life when I felt ↑lonely. 8 Rona yeah and yet something like this, I mean this is part of 9 Elisabeth I better pick that up and read it huh heh 10 Rona I am ↓curious, um you have never come across ah (..) assumptions made by 11 other people that because you were single, you were ↑lonely? 12 Elisabeth (..) (coughs) (..) I don’t think so because my friends aren’t (..) 13 Rona ↑ Yeah 14 Elisabeth (cough) like that (8 sec silence). And I don’t think my sister ever assumed um 15 (…) you know that I was lonely. I I don’t know, I have always been busy 16 doing things 17 Rona Yeah (Int 1, L 459, italics added).

The participant initially responds by affirming the content of the headline, “to be single” (L1) “is to be ↓↓lonely” (L2). The marked downward shift in pitch at the word

“lonely” (L2) can be heard as a registration of astonishment or surprise that could suggest that the association was unexpected ‘news’ to the participant, but it could also be interpreted as calling into question the truthfulness, veracity, and normativity of such a claim (at least from the perspective of the speaker’s own personal experience). Expressions of astonishment may also be heard as a kind of rebuff that tends to call a halt to a line of questioning (Edley,

2002), which could also indicate that as a topic, loneliness was unlikely to be a ‘productive’ line of inquiry to pursue.

The participant’s agreement “↓yeah” (L4) is ambiguous. It could be heard as a putative agreement about the headline content, or, potentially at least, as an affirmation or agreement about the veracity of such an association. After a few false starts (L5), the interviewer then asks about the participant’s familiarity with the “attitude or viewpoint” that the single life is a lonely life, “…is that is that a an attitude or view point that is familiar to

200 you like?” (L5). The participants’ initial response “No” (L6) seems to confirm it to be unfamiliar.

But then the speaker offers a vague but strongly justified personal refutation,

“because I have never [ECF] been lonely” (L6), which seems to attribute the lack of familiarity to a lack of personal experience of loneliness. In other words, as the speaker had personally not experienced loneliness, she would therefore be unaware that the single life was commonly assumed to be associated with loneliness. The justification that follows further bolsters and warrants the claim of never having been lonely through a forceful claim about having many friends, “I have always [ECF] had friends or you know I have never

[ECF] had a period in my life when I felt ↑ lonely” (L6-7). Use of ECFs “always” and

“never” demonstrate the speaker’s strong commitment to, and investment in, denying that loneliness is a part of her experience, or put another way, a very strong investment in avoiding the devalued subject position ‘lonely’.

The claim about “always” having “friends” mirrors the rhetorical strategy used by the participant in the previous extract where busyness and intense engagement were drawn on as a means of warding off imputations of loneliness. Here however, it is a claim about lifelong and ongoing friendships that works to counter the stock image that to be single is to be relationally deficient and lacking in social connection. The common-sense logic in action here is that people who ‘always have friends’ are not those who are expected to be lonely.

Furthermore, friendship claims are a means of establishing a normative and acceptable degree of sociability (having friends is commonly assumed to be a ‘good’ thing), and so the argument could also be said to function in a way that works to establish the speakers’ social

‘normalcy’ and, indirectly, to affirm her social worth.

201

The conversation could easily have ended there; a repeated strong disavowal can be an effective means of signaling that continuing the conversation along these lines would be unwelcome. But the interviewer, hesitatingly, signaled by the “um” and the ‘ah” (L10) continues “I am ↓curious, um you have never come across ah assumptions made by other people that because you were single, you were lonely?” (L10-11). The participant’s response

(L12) is vague and uncertain, “I don’t think so…” which signals that there is (reasonable) doubt about the matter. As individuals, after all, we are not always privy to other people’s assessments of our lives.

A further qualification follows, referencing friends and a close (biological) family member. In the first instance, the observation (couched in present tense) “because my friends aren’t like that” (L12-14) is then bolstered by, “And I don’t think my sister ever [ECF] assumed um (.) you know that I was lonely” (L14-15). The categories ‘friends’ and ‘sister’ function to support the claim that: 1) Her friends are not the ‘kind’ of people who would make such an erroneous, and potentially damaging stereotypical evaluation or judgement that she would be lonely when she wasn’t; and 2), the speaker’s married sister, a family member that the speaker was close to (i.e., a legitimate authority) did not assume that the speaker was lonely.

The final hesitant note of uncertainty, “I I don’t know” (L15) is followed by another strongly worded justification. The claim “I have always been busy doing things” (L15-16) draws its persuasive force from the common-sense idea that loneliness is a product of personal inactivity or disengagement, or not being busy or actively engaged in “doing things” in the world and with other people. By claiming to have “always been busy”, the speaker works to rhetorically distance herself from being associated with the category ‘lonely’. It

202 could also be argued that a rhetoric of ‘busyness’ combined with claims about ongoing friendship could also be viewed as a practice of ‘doing ‘being ordinary’’ (Sacks, 1985). In effect, claims about always being busy and always having friends work to remove the speaker from reinforcing the ‘pathologizing’ notions of the single life being promulgated by the newspaper headlines. By staying “connected” (having lots of friends) and keeping busy, the participant would not be subject to “The Devastating Effects of Loneliness” (The rise of the single life, 2013, p.3).

In Extracts 16 & 17, the speakers adopt a strategy of emphatic disavowal that loneliness has in any way been part of their lives as single women. In their discourse, they work to strongly distance themselves or head off the undesirable prospect of being seen or assumed to be lonely. But disavowals of loneliness were not the only means to distance themselves from the devalued subject position.

As has already been discussed in the previous section (Extract 14), after a series of strongly positive claims about some of the freedoms that came with being single, the freedom to “accomplish” things and “be successful” (Mademoiselle Int 2, L 242-243), to live, to decorate her own apartment, the speaker then concedes to “moments of loneliness”. The concession was then immediately followed by the disclaimer “but then everybody else was going through them, and even people who were married”, which functions to argumentatively neutralize the admission of loneliness. If everyone had such moments, “even married people” who are presumed to be protected from being lonely by virtue of being married, then moments of loneliness can be viewed as a ‘normal’ part of everyday life (an argument of categorization). The concessionary argument and the disclaimer are therefore a means of heading off in advance any possibility of criticism about the possible downsides of

203 having freedoms, while simultaneously downgrading any preconceived ideas that single people are lonely and married people are not. By establishing that everyone gets lonely sometimes, irrespective of their social position, through her discursive rhetoric, the speaker also establishes herself as being ‘just like everyone else’.

In this instance, the speaker reverses the strategy used by the two previous participants. But although she uses different argumentative means, she still achieves the same ends. Using an argument of categorization to place herself in the general category of ‘human being’, the claim that all human beings (including those who are married) have moments of loneliness functions to neutralize the potential stigma of claiming to be lonely as a single woman. In the first two examples, the reverse strategy was used. Using a strategy of particularization, the speakers, through their discourse, establish how they as individuals are different or need to be separated out from the general category ‘lonely’. By positioning themselves as ‘always’ being busy and active, or ‘always’ having friends, it is possible to make a reasonable case for not being seen as lonely, despite loneliness being seen as the

‘typical’ feature of the single life.

Using different rhetorical strategies, the speakers in these examples distance themselves from resources that construct them as being lonely single women. Loneliness is shown to be a controversial and contentious topic and one that requires careful management.

Whether or not individuals seek to distance themselves from being seen as lonely, as with other constructions from the deficit repertoire, there is always the potential to be viewed as such by others. Deficit images of singleness also do not have to be explicitly invoked to shape social interactions. Negative stereotypes can be explicitly made manifest in exchanges, but there is also always the potential for them to be evoked in conversation. As with the

204 stereotypical images of any group, the possibility of negative stereotypes working in the background during interactions is always there. It is also worth wondering about the potential cumulative effects over a life time of occupying social positions that are constructed in largely deficit terms.

Resources from the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire are not sufficiently strong to fire-proof or protect single women from being assumed or charged with being lonely, deficient, or lacking. Although all of the participants talked about the importance of friends and friendships in their lives, unlike biological kinship or relationships constituted through marriage, friendships, and perhaps especially the friendships of (and between) women, have never been accorded much status, significance, or weight (Brake, 2012, Holden, 2008;

Jeffries, 1985; Milardo, 2010), or were viewed with suspicion as potential lesbian relationships (see Chambers-Schiller, 1984; Jeffries, 1985; Barack, 2014; Franzen, 1996).

One of the freedoms of being single that could be claimed is the freedom to grow and develop different kinds of friendships, but if there can be said to be an ideology around friendship, it is not sufficiently strong enough to counter the kinds of ideologically-driven arguments that privilege biological kinship and marital relationships.

Finally, the extracts in this section show the participants making sense of their lives against powerful and strong negative messages that work to constrain their senses of self.

The emphasis in the freedom repertoire is, however, largely on individualized freedoms, and, irrespective of claims about friendship, such a discourse could paradoxically work to reinforce constructions of single women as strident solitary figures. While there is an established discourse around the heroic solitary hero for men, or the ‘lone’ cowboy riding into the sunset (see Edley, 2002), there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent for women, although

205 there are many remarkable single women pioneers. Instead it is the images of ‘Eleanor

Rigby’, ‘Miss Havisham’, witches, and ‘lonely spinsters’ who are sad and regretful about their ‘wasted’ lives that tend to dominate.

6.5 Strategy 3. Singleness as Deficit: The Running Battle

In analysis, Potter and Wetherell (1994) recommend paying close attention to both within-and between-text variations. Although between-text variation can be more immediately striking, a single text or an instance of talk from one speaker can also be analytically revealing. In the previous section, the participants are shown to distance themselves or find ways to neutralize the potentially damaging negative images and associations with being single. In the vast majority of cases, the participants refused or disavowed the kinds of subject positions made possible by the deficit repertoire. But neutralization and distancing were not the only strategies employed in negotiating singleness as an identity. As the next two extracts will illustrate, another alternative was to reflexively identify the struggles and dilemmas created by the deficit repertoire. Rather than refusal or disavowal, an explicit reflexive strategy shows how much of a struggle it can be to keep the deficit constructions of the single life at bay.

Extract 18 and 19 graphically illustrate the power and impact of the deficit discourse on subjectivity, and how, as Burr (2003) put it, “The process of constructing and negotiating identities” is “often ridden with conflict, as we struggle to claim or resist the images available to us through discourse” (p. 110). Extract 18 begins with the speaker responding to a question from the interviewer about how she dealt with the “dogma” (L7)93 that surrounded

93 The term “dogma” was one that had previously been introduced by the participant.

206 marriage in 1950’s America that embodied, in the participant’s view, Freudian thinking.94

After a series of hesitations (L10), the speaker then produces a vivid characterization of the kinds of struggles and unresolvable conflicts that surrounded her negotiations of singleness as an identity.

Extract 18

1 Rona and you said that that was annoying and 2 Jane yeah 3 Rona (.) because you had gone there, you had escaped England, the class system 4 Jane Yes 5 Rona that you mentioned bothered you and (.) how things were 6 Jane Yes 7 Rona in England and to find yourself in the States faced with this dogma so what 8 Jane yes 9 Rona so how did you deal with that? 10 Jane um (3sec) we::Il I sort of eaghh (..) I kept it sort of a a (..) at a distance. 11 I wasn’t convinced by it. 12 Rona convinced by? 13 Jane I wasn’t convinced that there was something wrong with you 14 Rona mhh 15 Jane if you I if I mean I’ve kind of I have this running battle in my mind 16 Rona mhh 17 Jane with er Freudianism, and this sort of idea that you know you moved from this 18 stage to that stage, and that what was appropriate and grown up and 19 psychologically healthy for a woman was to be married. I I kind of you know 20 that sort of definite dogma kind of almost sucks you in 21 Rona mhhh 22 Jane but I I I really fought against it a lot, and sort of sorted it out. Well well it’s not 23 true in this respect and it’s not true in the other respect. I mean it was 24 around in England but it was much more apparent in the States which is 25 much more of a a shrink culture, you know, people go to psychiatrists much 26 more often. I Um (..) so defied it, um, in one sense. 27 Rona How did you defy it? What did that look like? 28 Jane Well. Euargh,um I I just I mentally refused to be pigeon-holed as having 29 something wrong with me because I wasn’t married. I mean I thought well, 30 there are other ways. I mean, women do have careers. I I just thought of 31 women who had been unmarried who had had careers you know like. 32 Florence Nightingale Would it have been better for the world if Florence 33 Nightingale had married and had children? Well, No, 34 Rona no 35 Jane it wouldn’t. She had something else to do. (Int 2, L1071)

94 In a previous interview, the speaker had criticized Freudianism for persuading women that if they were not sexually involved with “an appropriate mate”, then they required psychiatric evaluation and help (See Extract 5).

207

Drawing on metaphors of war, the speaker graphically describes having a “running battle” (L15) in her mind with what she characterized as the “dogma” associated with marriage that she encountered in the U.S. Keeping the messages “at a distance” (L10) for her meant not being “convinced” (L11 & L13) by the collective doctrine that was authoritatively laid down. The speaker was not convinced by the dogma that told her that as a single woman who was not yet married, that this signaled “something wrong” (L13). The use of the plural subject form “you” at the end of “I wasn’t convinced that there was something wrong with you” (L13), is a subtle shift in positioning that deflects the ‘wrongness’ associated with not being married towards the collective; there is a difference in making a claim that there was something wrong with ‘me’ versus something wrong with ‘you’, meaning unmarried women generally.

The “running battle” the speaker is referring to is with Freudian ideas 95 which are specified as: 1) life being a set of normative (psychologically developmental) stages that required persons to move “from this stage to that stage” (L17-18); and 2) that to be married was the “appropriate”, “grown-up”, and “psychologically healthy” (L18-19) thing to do (as opposed to being unmarried which would conversely be ‘inappropriate’, ‘juvenile’, and

‘psychologically un-healthy). She spoke to the strength and power of such views and prescriptions for life, that “almost sucks you in” (L20) or are nearly persuasive despite considerable resistance.

The speaker identifies that instead of unquestioningly accepting such dogma, she

“fought against it a lot” (L22). One named strategy of resistance was to logically break the

95 See Jeffries (1985), and also Adams (1976), who critically explores the connections between marriage, singleness and mental illness, and how remaining single after a certain age was often taken to be a sign of psychological maladjustment.

208 arguments down into the individual parts in order to ‘sort it out’ (L22), but rather than being persuaded by the arguments of Freudianism towards singleness, the tenets are rejected by the speaker one by one–“it’s not true in this respect and it’s not true in the other respect” (L22-

23). The speaker is thus “almost” persuaded that there was something wrong with her for not being married, but through a process of mental argumentation and struggle, the ‘dogma’ was fought within a process characterized as defiance, “I defied it” (L25-26).

Defiance took the form of “mentally” refusing “to be pigeon-holed as having something wrong with me because I wasn’t married” (L28-29). The historical example of the career of Florence Nightingale helped to remind the speaker that a single woman could contribute in remarkable ways to the world through their actions and examples (L30-35). The rhetorical question “…would it have been better for the world if Florence Nightingale had married and had children? Well, no” (L32-33) can be heard as an (ironic) criticism of the argument that it is for the ‘betterment of the world’ that all women should be required to marry and to have children, and that women’s sole function and role in society should be marriage and reproduction.

In this extract, the speaker shows through her reflexive discourse that the devalued subject positions offered by the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire are far from easy to keep “at a distance”(L10). Singling out Freudian theory as contributing to discourses that positioned her as a psychosexual deviant or at least psychologically developmentally defective or

“unhealthy” simply for being single (and not married), the speaker describes how she actively fought and mentally ‘battled’ against such arguments and tried to defy them. The description vividly conveys the energy and effort it took for her to keep these views at bay.

The ideological dilemma at the heart of this extract is about the value and worth of

209 women’s lives. If coupling, marriage, and children are what make women’s lives valuable, how then can a single woman position herself as living a meaningful and worthwhile life if she has not coupled or married? Through the resources from the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire, women’s singleness is constructed as an aversive, even ‘toxic’ identity (see

Rapley et al., 1998), and the lives of single women are constructed as deficient and defective and of little worth or value. The fleeting reference to Florence Nightingale and her ‘career’ contributions as a single woman who “had something else to do” (L35, italics added), suggests that, for the speaker, it was the possibilities of alternative actions in the world, what single women could accomplish when not married, that offered an alternative route to having the single life valued, and being recognized as valuable. The possibility of action, of having a

‘career’, could be seen as acting as a corrective or compensation to the view that to be single was a deficiency that arose out of a non-action, of not marrying.

To describe the fight against the deficit repertoire in terms of a ‘running battle’ shows the taking up of a position of ‘defiance’ against the resources that position who she is and what her life is in pathologizing terms. The phrase “I have this running battle…” suggests that the battle has never ceased but is still ongoing, and that effort is still needed to keep such discourses ‘at bay’ or as much as possible ‘at a distance’. By identifying that she was

‘almost’ persuaded, almost ‘sucked in’ to the viewpoint of dogma suggests being drawn close to the brink, or teetering on the edge of being brought to view her life in those terms. As the last extract in this section shows, however, there were times when the battle could not be sustained.

210

Extract 19

1 Jane One of the things that I found as I got older was that this sense dissipated a 2 little 3 Rona This sense ↑of 4 Jane this root sense of failure. 5 Rona ah ok 6 Jane and I think one the reasons was (.) first of all cultural changes, that 7 that the implacable divisions between the married and the single dissolved a 8 bit,because people got divorced much more often, people lived together, 9 people had serial relationships so that sort of the very steadfast set of 10 categories which was around when I was younger because in in the sexual 11 revolution they were sort of more dissolved. Also as I got older I mean two of 12 my friends er were married and their partners died, so now there so there 13 were lots of widows around so there were more single women. (Int 2, L 1).

On L4, the speaker fleetingly speaks out of a subject position of having ‘failed’ in her role as a woman. The “root” or core “sense of failure’ (L4), as the explanation that follows seems to indicate, is a consequence of not having married. As the speaker “got older’ (L1), the ‘sense’ she had of being ‘unsuccessful’ or a “failure” (L4) “dissipated a little” (L1-2, italics added) (i.e., not entirely or by much). The speaker does not refer to herself as ‘a failure’, but instead, rather more subtly, as having a “sense of failure” (L4, italics added), which, as it is characterized here, diminishes as she gets older and as social mores and norms shift. Along with the “sexual revolution” (L10-11), the pattern of social life shifted as more people divorced, cohabitated, and had multiple “serial relationships” (L9).

The suggestion that the ‘stigma’ associated with singleness diminished somewhat with age is of interest. The “root sense of failure” (L4) might be expected to continue throughout adulthood, or even be exacerbated in later life, especially as a consequence of aging discourses that construct older lifelong single women as especially vulnerable and lonely. To be a single adult might be ‘bad enough’, but to be an older single adult could be even worse. But the speaker’s comment challenges this supposition, suggesting that the reverse has been the case. Although the “sense of failure”(L4) dissipated “a little” (L1-2) with age, as more women move into the category ‘single’ following divorce or through

211 becoming widows, the sense of failure identified by the speaker seems to diminish.

Alongside changing social conditions and the emergence of new sets of social relationship possibilities, with age, and accompanied by a growing cohort of other aging single women, the stigma associated with lifelong singleness diminishes somewhat. Extract 19 illustrates one of the few times in the interviews when the participant makes it clear how challenging it has been to repudiate the deficit repertoire, to mentally ‘fend off’ the cultural messages that required her to view her life (identity) as a single woman in terms of failure. In Extract 18, the process of identity negotiation was described in terms of being a “running battle”, an ongoing war or state of conflict with the deficit repertoire. In Extract 19, by talking about having a “root sense of failure”, singleness becomes, in this instance at least, a “shameful” and “noxious identity” (Reynolds, 2003, p 131). However, by reflexively identifying the process of engagement with the deficit repertoire as a “running battle”, the speaker acknowledges that there was an ongoing (agentic) struggle to sustain a positive sense of self, but that it was not always successful. Identity negotiation strategies are thus more qualified than simply identifying resistance or complicity (Wetherell, 1998).

6.6 Strategy 4. Troubling the Category Imperative

In the last three sections, the focus has been on how the participants worked with the

‘singleness as freedom’ and ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoires. In this final section, another identity negotiation strategy is examined but the analytical focus is on how the participants worked with the titles and terms associated with being single, and ultimately, category membership.

Terms like ‘spinster’, ‘old maid’, ‘free spirit’, and ‘independent’ are part and parcel of the “cultural baggage” (Billig, 1987, p. 584) of singleness. The term ‘spinster’, for example, was oriented to by the participants in different ways. Some participants referred to

212 unmarried women of previous generations (their teachers and family members) as ‘spinsters’, but never (even ironically) to refer to themselves. As the participant in Extract 3 observed, titles in and of themselves could create problems, but how those titles could be said, were sometimes “nasty”.

As has previously been stated, terms do not neutrally package up the world (Potter &

Wetherell, 2003; Billig, 1991, 1999), and even the category ‘single’ should not be taken a simple neutral factual description or descriptor (see also Hacking, 2006; Bowker & Star,

2000). The recruitment title for this study may have been ‘Stories of Singleness’, but as it will be shown, it cannot be assumed that when the participants speak they will always speak as single women. It is entirely consistent with the way identity is theorized in DP/CDP that an individual may claim the subject position ‘single’ in one instance and in another instance problematize that position. For example, in this study the same study participant claimed “I like being single”, but later on, when the speakers’ interests had changed, there was also a claim that “I have never thought about myself as being single”. Membership in the category

‘single’ cannot be assumed, and how people work with a title and category can become a topic of analytical interest (Garkinkel, 1967; Edwards 1991; Potter & Wetherell, 1987, 2003;

Zimmerman & Pollner, 1971). In the above example, it can be noted that the issue of being single is not entirely disavowed (e.g., ‘I am not single’). The claim ‘I have never thought about myself as being single’, for instance, is a rhetorical strategy that enables the speaker to distance themselves from being associated with the category ‘single’, and also to establish that they have a minimal affiliation with the category. Category and term usage can therefore be viewed as creative ways to negotiate singleness as an identity. Rather than taking

213 membership in the categories for granted, as Widdicombe (2008) observed, “… membership of categories can be considered complex sites of negotiation and dispute” (p. 52).

Peoples’ use of categories, titles, and names can thus be understood as a social practice (Thwaites, 2013). Names, titles, and other categories are understood to be intrinsically connected with broader social organization, positioning, selfhood, and the relationships between people (Thwaites, 2013; see also Lindsey & Dempsey, 2017). As work by Thwaites has demonstrated, names are connected in highly complex ways with social organization and social positioning and, also, intimately with gender and identity (2013;

2017).

However, by volunteering for a study titled ‘Stories of Singleness’, and to have agreed to be interviewed a number of times about their experiences of being single, some degree of self-identification and meaning associated with being ‘single’ is implied. But, as has already been made clear, identity positions do not have equal value. As Wetherell and

Edley (2009) claim, different cultural slots or identity locations can “either [be] recognized” and “admired”, or “despised by large and small communities of practice” (p. 202). Speaking subjects can therefore insert themselves into the cultural slot of ‘single’ and speak out of that position, or they may elect at times to resist identification, to resist being so “stitched into discourse” (Wetherell & Edley, 1998, p. 168, citing Hall).

As Widdicombe and Woofitt (1995) have observed, even apparently ‘neutral’ invitational questions such as ‘Tell me something about yourself?’ can be heard as an invitation to specify the speakers’ membership in a particular cultural category. In this study, for example, one of the questions in the interview guide was about self-identification: ‘How do you normally introduce yourself?’ (See Appendix D). One participant registered an

214 objection to the question, criticizing it as being “a ‘university’ question” (i.e., not one that everyday folks would use), and stated that it was “very off-putting”. Not only can the ascription of social identity be viewed as a form of social control (Widdicombe, 2008b, citing

Widdicombe & Woofitt), but even apparently straight-forward questions that seek to explore how a person chooses to introduce themselves can be viewed as controversial.

Across the corpus, speakers worked in creative ways to both claim and dispute terms, words, and meanings associated with ‘being single’. I turn to two particular features that stand out. The first was the (unexpected) significance to the participants of being able to identify themselves as “Ms.”, and the second was how the speakers maneuvered, negotiated, or troubled the category ‘single’. I will begin by focusing on the title ‘Ms.’

6.6.1 “Is that Miss Ms or Mrs. Ms?”

Titles are such a part of everyday life that the practice of using titles often passes unnoticed. For instance, it is commonly accepted that men, whether married or not, are simply referred to as Mr., whereas the titles for women vary. In English-speaking cultures, women’s status has traditionally been signaled through the use of either ‘Miss’ (a shortened form of Mistress) or ‘Mrs.’ (Schwartz, 2003; Lakoff, 1973).96 The title ‘Miss’ however, is most commonly associated with young unmarried woman (Lawton, Owen Blakemore &

Vartanian, 2003). As Sontag (2013) put it, “ ‘Mr.’… exempts men from the stigma that attaches to any woman, no longer young, who is still ‘Miss’”, and so “[f]or men, there is no destiny equivalent to the humiliating condition of being an old maid, a spinster” (p. 750, italics added). ‘Miss’ as a title is thus ‘age coded’ in the sense that as a woman nears, reaches

96 On marriage, women have traditionally adopted their husbands’ surnames, and in the UK and Canada, for example, married women were commonly referred to by their husbands’ full name, e.g., Mrs. Frank Jenkins.

215 and then passes the ‘usual’ expected age of marriage 97, being identified as ‘Miss’ draws attention to her unmarried state, which may then make her more vulnerable to being stigmatized.

As early as 1901 in the U.S., however, an alternate title of ‘Ms.’ was available

(Erickson, 2014). But it was not until the 1960s and early 70s, following activism by

American feminists, that ‘Ms.’ became more broadly recognized and available for use by both married and un-married women (Erickson, 2014; Schwartz, 2003; Lawton, Owen

Blakemore & Vartanian, 2003). The motivation behind the move to ‘Ms.’ may have been driven by the politics of gender neutrality, but as will be shown, titles and name changes have deeply practical consequences for how people can be identified by others, and how they may wish to be identified. In practical terms, however, unlike the younger contemporary single

(and married) women today who can access ‘Miss’, and ‘Ms.’, and “Mrs.’, for the first thirty to forty years of their lives, the participants of this study would have had no other option but to be known and marked out as ‘Miss’.98

In Extract 20 (below), the title “Miss” marks the speaker out, and makes her subject and vulnerable to demeaning innuendo and judgements. When the new option of ‘Ms.” became available, the participant adopted it with alacrity.

97 See Sacks, 1992, and Moran, 2004. 98 Lawton, Owen Blakemore, and Vartanian (2003) found the title ‘Ms.’ was primarily used by older unmarried women.

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Extract 20 1 Rona some women I have talked to have talked about the shift from being 2 able to call themselves Miss to be able to call themselves Ms. 3 Mademoiselle Oh I did that. Oh I thought it was wonderful. 4 Rona Really. Tell me tell me about that. 5 Mademoiselle I just thought that was so I thought this Miss stuff was so silly. 6 Mind you I wasn’t too keen on Mrs. either because it wasn’t 7 terribly fair, we got the Ms. and they didn’t, but I thought it was 8 great that I was able to call and people would say ‘Is that a Miss 9 or Mrs.’ and sometimes they would go ‘snark snark’ you know and 10 I would say ‘oh definitely Ms.’ It was great because Miss has so 11 many memories attached to it, you know, so many things attached to 12 ah Miss you know. Misssssss. 13 Rona Like what? What sort of things were attached to 14 Mademoiselle Well some people well some people sort has this sort of there 15 was this it gave it a derogatory sort of tone in many cases. It was 16 nice to be able to abandon that and use a totally new term to 17 accommodate the new century. (Int2,L838, italics added )

Using words like “wonderful” (L3), “great” (L10), and “nice” (L16) to describe ‘Ms.’ as “a totally new term to accommodate the new century” (L16-17), the speaker uses highly positive terms to describe how she enthusiastically welcomed and embraced the new term

‘Ms’.99 But when asked to explain more about this (L4), the speaker becomes vague, and obliquely refers to “… this Miss stuff” being “so silly” (L5), “because Miss has so many memories attached to it, you know, so many things attached to ah Miss you know. Misssssss”

(L10-12).

Using footed speech (L8-9), the participant goes on to provide an example of how

“Ms.” was strategically employed over the telephone. When asked by the person at the end of the line, “‘Is that a Miss or a Mrs.?’, the question would sometimes be accompanied by

“‘snark snark’” (L9), a North American dialect term meaning “to find fault with” and “to make snide or sharply critical comments” (“Snark,” 2015). By using the footing and dialect term, the speaker vividly invokes the kinds of subtle but contemptuous insinuations that

99 Mademoiselle, born in 1928, would have been (about) forty years of age when ‘Ms.’ was introduced.

217 could accompany anonymous everyday interactions as an unmarried woman. The (reported) response “I would say, ‘oh definitely Ms.’” (L10) shows the speaker defiantly claiming the new term in an attempt to ward off the negative insinuations associated with ‘Miss’.

After a sequence of hesitations and hedges (L14-15) that followed another request to talk about the kinds of things “attached to ah Miss” (L11-12), the speaker then cautiously identifies that one of the problems with ‘Miss’ was the way that could be said in a mocking and derogatory way- “a derogatory sort of tone in many cases”(L15). “Derogation” means a

“lowering in honour or estimation; depreciatory, disparaging, disrespectful” (“Derogation,”

1989), and “derogatory” is defined as having “the character of derogating, of taking away or detracting from authority, rights, or standing, of impairing in force or effect” (“Derogatory,”

1989). “Miss” is thus identified by the speaker as being a social position that could potentially evoke a sneering and disparaging response in the course of everyday interactions.

Having established how fraught it is to be identified (or even potentially identified) as ‘Miss’, the practice of abandoning its use and the enthusiastic embrace of the new title ‘Ms.’ is made reasonable and justifiable.

The earlier statement that “we (women called Miss) got the Ms. and they (married women) didn’t” (L7) is curious. The “we” being referred to here seems to be unmarried/single women as a collective, but the significance of the claim that married women did not ‘get’ access to ‘Ms.’ seems puzzling when the original intent was for it to be used by both unmarried and married women. It may have been the case that in this speakers’ particular social circles, married women were strongly disinclined to adopt the new term

‘Ms.’ because it may, for them, have signaled an unwanted lowering of status. For single/unmarried women of a certain age however, the move to ‘Ms.” would have offered

218 them a possible degree of social protection from the stigma of being identified as unmarried, of potentially ducking below the status ‘radar’.

The final comment by the speaker (L15-17) “It was nice to be able to abandon that

(Miss) and use a totally new term to accommodate the new century” (italics added) strongly underscores the introduction of ‘Ms’ as a positive progressive development. By emphasizing a break with the past, the “new term” for “the new century” is cast as a means of leaving behind or abandoning the troubled accumulated cultural baggage associated with ‘Miss’, all those “many memories” (L11), and “things attached”(L11). By adopting the new title, the speaker can re-position and establish herself as a modern up-to-date, possibly feminist- oriented woman, who is ready and willing to enthusiastically embrace new ways of thinking that are in line with the demands of a “new century.” By embracing the title “Ms.”, not only does the speaker establish herself as a progressive ‘modern’ woman, but it also allowed for a strategic distancing from the old-fashioned and derogatory association with ‘Miss’, such as being seen as a ‘spinster’ or an ‘old maid’.

‘Ms.’ as a title was positively embraced by all of the other participants in the study.

One participant commented “It was a very good move”. “When on earth did it come around?

Probably in the late seventies or the eighties. It was an excellent move” (Jane, Int 4, L107).

Another observed that when she was growing up “…it was Miss or Mrs., there was no Ms.”, but that she adopted the title “‘Ms.’ as soon as it became available” (Irene, Int1, L543). The controversy of ‘Miss’ also extended into the material realm; a small pre-printed name and address label of the kind commonly sent out in bulk by charities as a fund-raising strategy was attached to a personal letter enclosed with a returned signed consent form. The original pre-printed title “Mrs.” that preceded the participant’s first and second name, had been

219 crossed-off in ink, and a bold handwritten “Ms.” had been added.

Viewed as a practice of ‘lived ideology’, the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture

(Billig et al., 1988), the cultural associations, beliefs and values associated with the title

‘Miss’ were clearly highly problematic for unmarried/single women, and perhaps especially for women who were marked out as being ‘past marriageable age’. But ‘Ms’ was not a title without its problems. Although it is now illegal in Canada to discriminate against women on the grounds of ‘marital status’, and privacy legislation has introduced the option of ‘not responding’ to questions about marital status (The Personal Information Protection and

Electronics Act [PIPEDA], 2000), bureaucratic processes and social mores still invite or require single women to identify whether or not they are married. Furthermore, as S.Taylor

(2012) observed, as relatively few married women in the U.K. (Canadian statistics are unavailable) have adopted the title ‘Ms’, the women who do still stand out, and can be ‘read’ as individuals who are inclined to defy social convention. As an identity negotiation strategy employed by single women to fend off what Reynolds and Taylor (2004) referred to as ‘the unacceptable face of singleness’, the adoption of ‘Ms.’ may have a limited positive effect. In the absence of alternative options, and in a social context where status distinctions between being single and being married has carried (and still carries) a number of social, economic, and political privileges that have not been subject to a sustained feminist critique (Moran,

2004; Reynolds, 2004), single women would have had to use whatever strategies and resources were at hand.

The shift in social practice from ‘Miss’ to ‘Ms.’ was adopted with alacrity, and for good reason by the study participants, but as individualized responses, such a move does not, from a feminist perspective, challenge the pathologization (and individualization) of

220 singleness, and the naturalization (and de-socialization) of marriage. As a strategy of resistance to oppressive social practice, single women are still entrenched in unchallenged disadvantage. Having explored some of the politics and dynamics surrounding the title

“Miss”, in the next section, my analytical focus shifts to examine another identity negotiation strategy; how the very category ‘single’ was troubled and made controversial by the participants in their discourse. This occurred at different times and at different places across the corpus, and objections were registered in different ways by different participants. The extracts that follow offer a flavor of how as an identity management strategy, the participants resisted the category imperative.

6.6.2 Resisting the category ‘single’

Within the study corpus, there were a number of instances of talk that were initially puzzling and perplexing, and as DP/CDP scholars recommend paying close to attention to such instances (Gill, 1996, 2000; Potter & Wetherell, 1995), they became a point of analytical interest. There were moments when it seemed that the very phenomenon that was under investigation seemed to ‘disappear’ or lack saliency. During the interviews, there were many instances where the participants seemed to have no difficulty orienting themselves and talking about their lives as single women. The talk extracts already presented illustrate this, and there were other examples such as, “…I really started to enjoy being single (.) in a conscious way when I was in my sixties” (Jane, Int 4, L523). But there were also other moments in the ‘discursive flow’ (Wetherell & Edley, 2014) when the participants showed a resistance to being positioned (or positioning themselves) in the identity slot ‘single’ (see

Extract 21 below).

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Extract 21

1 Rona Before we kind of close, you mentioned um you mentioned at the start 2 that (…) em thinking about your life as a single woman is not 3 something you have done much of 4 Elisabeth No. I I guess I’ve never thought much about it. I mean I think mostly I 5 have been so concerned with the jobs and the last, certainly the last 6 (unclear) years or so I have had jobs that have been really interesting 7 Rona Yes 8 Elisabeth You know 9 Rona Yes 10 Elisabeth and um so it’s not something that I have sort of ever thought about (Int 1, L243, italics added).

Coming at the end of a first interview, the (opening) comment refers to an earlier comment made by the participant at the start of the interview, that “thinking about your life as a single woman is not something you have done much of ” (L1-3). In the context of an agreed-upon series of interviews, in conversation analysis terms, such an opening statement could be considered a ‘dispreferred’ (as opposed to ‘preferred’) opener (see Pomerantz &

Heritage, 2012). By agreeing to take part in the ‘Stories of Singleness’ study, and by consenting to be interviewed several times, it could be presumed, in principle, that there was at least some sense of a shared understanding and commitment to the category ‘single’

(Widdicombe and Woofitt, 1995). Given the response, the question to be asked is what function such a declaration could have?

When a person makes a statement about ‘not having thought very much about’ a topic, they are drawing on a common-sense assumption that it is the important things in life that take up the most time, energy, and thought. Conversely, a claim about not spending time conveys the opposite; that being single is insufficiently important to warrant thought or reflection. L4-10 contains two further minimizations: “No. I I guess [hedge] I’ve never

[ECF] thought much about it” (L4) which is subsequently further downgraded to “not something that I have sort of [hedge]) ever [ECF] thought about” (L10). The explanation

222 offered to justify the lack of focus is one that foregrounds the speaker’s ‘worker’ identity: “I think mostly I have been so concerned with the jobs” (L4-5) that are noted to “have been really interesting” (L6). By demonstrating an unwillingness from the outset to speak about being single, and by establishing herself as being someone who has been more concerned with “jobs”, the speaker positions herself as someone who would be unlikely to have much to contribute or to say about being single. By introducing a concessionary identity ‘worker’, the speaker could be read as signaling that if there is little to be said about being single, there is plenty to be said about jobs and work, especially given the necessity of earning a living wage.

Taken at face-value, such an exchange could be interpreted as indicating that the category position ‘single’ lacked saliency, and that being ‘single’ was simply was not a label, term, or identity that the speaker oriented to in any meaningful way (cf. Koropeckyji-Cox,

2005). But, as research subjects in DP/CDP are not expected to speak consistently out of pre- determined subject positions and social identity is best treated as a flexible resource in conversational interaction (Antaki, Condor, & Levine, 1996), when viewed as a social practice the function of such an exchange could be to strongly downgrade any expectation that the interviewer may have that the participant would have much to say. The ECFs “never thought much about” and “not something that I have sort of ever thought about”, although tempered by the hedges “much” and “sort of”, demonstrate a strong (if somewhat equivocal) strategy of distancing from the possibility that the participant is willing to explicitly speak about her experience of singleness. As a discursive strategy, it also functions to effectively distance the speaker from the category ‘single’.

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In this instance, the social category ‘single’, in the context of a study titled ‘Stories of

Singleness’, does not seem to align with the participant’s orientation (see Antaki et al., 1996).

This observation is in no way intended to be critical of the participant, but rather to show how minimization as a strategy can be a very effective means of negotiating singleness as an identity. The strategy of calling into question the saliency of the category, in other words, allows the speaker to not talk about singleness, and to talk instead about what seems to be more salient – in this instance, the important matter of work and earning an income.

In the next example, the legitimacy of singleness as an identity category is also seemingly questioned. Extract 22 shows the participant responding to a question by the interviewer of whether there are times when the participant hadn’t ‘felt’ that she was single

(L1-2).

Extract 22 1 Rona Um (.) so have there been times in your life when you really haven’t 2 (.) felt that you were single? That you know that you were sss 3 Mademoiselle That’s most of the [time.] 4 Rona [Most of the time you don’t feel that you are single 5 Mademoiselle I don’t think about singlehood 6 Rona Right. Yeah 7 Mademoiselle You know. Isn’t that funny? 8 Rona No, it’s not funny. It’s interesting. 9 Mademoiselle I just simply don’t (.) I just it it just not (2 sec) What is it? Well yes I 10 [unintell] well yes I live alone yeah, well yes I am single yeah right. 11 So what, so ok what is on the television you know kind of thing 12 Rona Ye::es just not yeah it’s not 13 Mademoiselle It’s not an issue in my life 14 Rona Yeah 15 Mademoiselle Not an issue at all. (Int 2 L1656)

The interviewer’s question makes the assumption that there are some ‘feeling’ aspects to ‘being single’ (perhaps in the same way that people can talk about ‘feeling’ or not ‘feeling’ married). The speaker responds with “That’s most of the time” (L3), which suggests that some of the time she has felt single, but not for the majority of the time. After the interviewer has echoed the participants’ assertion (L4), the participant downgrades ‘feeling’ single even

224 further: “I don’t think about singlehood” (L5). An objection for the interviewer at this point could have risked an interactional or conversational breakdown or disruption (Condor, 2006), but the interviewer instead offers a series of agreements (L6, L12 & L14). As repeated agreements can signal the adoption of a concordance stance, as Holt (2012) observed, such agreements between interlocutors can function to signal social solidarity (see also Holt,

1996).

Lines 7-11 show the participant accounting for or justifying the absence of thought about being single. It is first acknowledged to be somewhat puzzling or curious, “Isn’t that funny?” (L7). When the interviewer disagrees, “No it’s not funny. It’s interesting” (L9), the participant, after some hesitations and false starts says, “I just it it just not (…)” (L9), then considers what could account for the absence of thought. The initial line of questioning concerns the nature of singlehood itself: “What is it?” (L9), which is followed by a three-part list. The first item concerns her living situation, “well yes I live alone yeah” (L10), which is followed by the affirmation that she views herself to be single, “well yes I am single, right”

(L10), but the short “So what” (L10-11) that follows effectively dismisses the items on the list as being unimportant and perhaps even trivial. The insignificance of such positions is made clear by the punchline “so ok, what is on the television you know kind of thing” (L11), which dismisses the subject altogether. What “singlehood” (L5) “is” (L9), is thus summarily dismissed as being of less significance or interest than what was entertainment on television.

The participant closes by even more strongly restating her view that singlehood is an insignificant aspect of her life, “It’s not an issue in my life. Not an issue at all” (L13-15).

The speaker does not disavow being single, “yes I am single yeah right” (L10) and seems to affirm (in some sense) her status, but by characterizing her life arrangement in the

225 style of a tick-box questionnaire or standard administrative form, the speaker establishes that she is single only in a minimally-affiliative sense. Instead of ‘working up’ singleness as an identity through the rhetorical moves shown here, the speaker works instead through her rhetoric to minimize the significance of singlehood to the point of dismissing it as an empty descriptive fact or uninteresting statistical artifact. In the face of what sounds like an adamant disavowal of the significance of singleness in her life, it would seem that there is little more to be said about the subject and the conversation, for that moment at least, is effectively closed down.

In both Extract 21 and 22, the speakers demonstrate minimal affiliation with the category ‘single’. There is no outright disavowal, and no absolute refusal of the identity slot, but the speakers work instead to downgrade the significance of being single by constructing it as being of minimal personal significance. The claims that singleness is “not an issue at all” and “not something that I have sort of ever thought about”, are quite extreme. As Potter and Wetherell (1987) have noted, when people are assumed to be members of relatively enduring social categories (in this case being ‘single’ women), inferences are made about who they are from that category membership. Through the deficit repertoire, the negative stereotypes of women who remain unmarried are repeatedly instantiated; they are often automatically assumed to be lonely and sad, as having something wrong with then, or are living lives of ‘deficiency’. Beyond a certain age, having the option to self-identify as ‘Ms.’, rather than be subject to potential derogation as Miss’, could therefore be understood as strategically protective. As social practices that resist the category imperative, the move to self-identification as ‘Ms.’ (and not ‘Miss’) and by working to down-grade the saliency of the category ‘single’ can both be viewed as creative identity management strategies. In the

226 last example, the artful reduction of singlehood to a meaningless factual tick-box category reduces the saliency of the category to a minimum. Such strategies signal trouble in an interactive sequence, and the interlocutor (in this case the interviewer) is warned off the topic. Not only is conversation about singleness suddenly seemingly out-of-bounds, but as a consequence of the rhetorical sleight-of-hand singleness as an identity seems to be removed from view and rendered insignificant, but also, importantly, ‘unspeakable’. One way of creatively negotiating singleness as an identity is thus to contend that there are, in fact, no

‘Stories of Singleness’ to tell. The strength of such a strategy is its capacity to protect; the conversation can safely be moved to other less controversial topics. Strategies of closing down conversations about social positions that are potentially damaging, are, in any moment, protective, and remaining silent, as Burr (2003) notes, can be a particularly useful means of resisting positions that we do not want to accept. But protection strategies have their price.

Silence does not allow for the naming of oppression or the possibility of raising consciousness about the power relations that place single women in the invidious position of having to persuade others of their credibility or legitimacy as women.

It could be argued that the categorical distancing responses identified above came about as a consequence of the interviewer imposing too rigid and narrow a definition of singleness onto the participants, who, feeling suddenly put on the spot, then elected to downgrade the significance of individual membership. While this was the case in some instances during the interviews, such a critique does not take into account the long stretches of talk when the participants seemed to have no difficulty orienting themselves to the category, and had a lot to say about their experiences. The participants were also aware that the interviewer (this writer) was also a single woman, who, as a putative ‘insider’, could

227 perhaps be expected to be especially sympathetic to their viewpoints. As the interviews were conducted using an informal interactive conversational style recommended by Wetherell and

Potter (1992), it was not uncommon for the participants to turn the tables and to start interviewing me about my own experiences. However, such conversations tended to focus on differences rather than similarities, such as differences in age, ethnicity, a rural vs urban upbringing, and (my) current student identity.

It should be noted that questions, which are a central part of data, should not be viewed as neutral invitations to speak (Baker, 2000). Questions “shape how and as a member of which categories the respondents are asked to speak” (Roulston, Bakers, & Liljestrom,

2001, p. 748, citing Baker; see also Roulston, 2014), and yet in those moments when membership in the category ‘single’ was troubled by the participants, such an action can be viewed as the participants demonstrating agency. As Barthes (1982) suggested, people are both ‘masters’ and ‘slaves’ of discourse. One way to interpret such moves is to assume that the speakers are asserting that being single does not define them, but perhaps the best way to understand such occasions is to view them as practices of “category-based denial…in which speakers accomplish the social action of denying by making claims about their character, disposition and identity membership” (Stokoe, 2010, p. 79, italics in original). As manipulators of discourse, by downgrading the saliency of the category the speakers can effectively distance themselves from a whole range of noxious associations and unfavorable inferences (see also Widdicombe, 2008a; Edwards, 2008). Despite my best efforts to set up a

‘safe’ and ‘inclusive’ conversational space and to address power differences by ‘outing’ myself as another ‘single’ woman, and by proposing through the study title that there are

‘stories of singleness’ to be told, such is the power of the deficit repertoire that participants

228 may still anticipate being criticized or judged. As Reynolds (2008) stated, “Single women in effect always stand accused” (p. 65).

During one exchange where a participant talked about responding to the ideologically- driven ‘Why Question’ (‘Why have you not married?’, ‘Why are you single?), she identified how important it was as a single woman to “learn the little tricks” of diverting conversation when the questions got too intrusive. Troubling the category imperative could also be considered one of those ‘little tricks’. As terms and categories are recognized to be sites where social power is enacted (Stokoe, 2010, citing Baker), whether power is enacted through electing to call oneself ‘Ms.’ or to minimize category affiliation, social identities are shown to both “loom and disappear into thin air in the course of a concrete social interaction”

(Antaki, et al., 1996, p. 478). By employing the learned ‘little tricks’, singleness as an identity can, by a rhetorical ‘sleight of hand’, be suddenly removed from view, only to appear again later on the same or next page of the interview transcript (Edwards, 1991). The need to develop such tricks is a testament to the contentious nature of singleness for women, and also the need for a theory/methodology that is sufficiently able to tune into social conflict in talk, and to show the kinds of complex negotiation strategies that single women use to navigate such a fraught and ‘troubled identity’ (Reynolds, 2003).

CHAPTER 7 DISCUSSION

‘April’: I am the first to bristle when married people or youngsters bandy about old ideas about “old maids”. I set them straight right away about what single women are like. Mostly I make sure they comprehend that ten single women present at least ten different approaches to living. –Barbara L. Simon, 1987, p. 151

‘September’: I suppose I will let you interview me if you think some good will actually come of it. But don’t write something that will collect dust in some dusty library. Write something that other single women will read. Write something that people who care for us in old age will read. Most of all, tell them why we matter. – Barbara L. Simon, 1987, p. 21

Sick While Single? Don’t Die of Discrimination. –Joan DelFattore, TEDxWilmingtonWomen

…when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak… –Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn, 1995, p.31-32 7.1. Introduction

The discussion that follows is organized into three parts:

Part I In DP/CDP, empirical findings about a topic can be cross-referenced and used to build on other studies about a topic (Potter, 1996b; 2004; Potter & Wetherell, 1994). Although there are no predetermined mechanical procedures or guidelines to follow, Potter and

Wetherell (1994) suggest identifying certain “features of discourse constructions and interactions that might apply across different contexts” (p. 62). In order to identify how this study builds on what has already been identified, and what it contributes to the existing literature, the analytic observations generated in the previous chapter will be summarized and reviewed in relation to other discursive studies of women’s singleness. Points of overlap and places of divergence will be identified and discussed.

Part II The second part of the discussion will consider the limitations of the study.

229 230

Part III will consider the implications of the study for Occupational Therapy (OT), and in particular, the contribution to a body of work identified as ‘Critical Occupational Therapy’ which encompasses considerations of issues related to ‘rights’, ‘equity’, ‘oppression’ and

‘diversity’. I identify some future directions for research in OT and other disciplines, and I conclude by suggesting a few ways in which political dimensions of women’s singleness could be further developed.

7.2. Part I: Contribution to Existing Discursive Studies: Resources & ‘The Little Tricks’

7.2.1 Analytical Summary.

In Chapter 5, which focuses on the identification of the Interpretive Repertoires, the language resources drawn upon by the participants in their constructions of singleness were shown to be polarized into two main interpretive repertoires: the ‘singleness as freedom’ repertoire, made up of two interlinked strands of arguments (singleness as freedom from and singleness as freedom to), and the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire. Singleness can either be worked up as an identity that affords a degree of liberty or freedom of action in the world, or as an identity of deficiency and pathology. As ways of making meaning, and making sense of life as a single woman, these resources offer a very restricted and challenging set of identity positions to manage.

In Chapter 6, the second part of the analysis of discourse, the analysis illustrates four identity management strategies, or the “little tricks” as we can call them that were employed by the participants in negotiating their identities as single women. Given the strongly devalued subject positions offered by the deficit repertoire, it might be expected that the participants would talk up or construct singleness in strongly positive ways by repeatedly drawing heavily on the singleness as freedom resources. But even modest claims that

231 affirmed singleness as a position of autonomy and independence (e.g., to have the freedom to work, to live alone, to make decisions, and to be able to decide what to do and when), were shown to be made with extreme caution and were carefully defended. The participants anticipated criticisms and objections to even modest affirmative claims about the freedoms of singleness, and the freedom claims were largely overshadowed and strongly undermined by the deficit repertoire.

Being single and being married were constructed as a binary; singleness was constructed as deficient in relation to marriage. In other words, because marriage was constructed as normative and was thus privileged, being single was constructed in opposition to marriage as a position of deficiency and pathology. One way to have managed the devalued subject position of being single could have been to work to discredit marriage; the speakers could have either rejected or strongly critiqued the presumed benefits of marriage.

Although some critique of marriage was present in the participants’ discourse, overall the critique was muted. None of the participants talked about explicitly rejecting marriage, which could then have allowed them to draw on a discourse of ‘singleness as choice’,100 but the participants talked about neither anticipating nor expecting to be single.

Such a stance creates dilemmas for the speakers not easily resolved. Through a stated positive intention to marry, the participants cannot then sustain arguments that strongly critique marriage, and heterosexual marriage is also affirmed as a desirable and normative trajectory. Although such a stance works to establish the participants as ‘ordinary’ and

‘normal’ women (doing ‘being ordinary’), which itself undermines some aspects of the deficit repertoire which constructs singleness as pathology, the same discourse also creates

100 When the issue of being single as ‘a choice’ was raised by one participant, it was to complicate the discourse of choice. The argument was that being single was both a choice and not a choice.

232 problems and trouble for the participants. By not rejecting the ideology of marriage and family, single women are then required to account for why they have ‘failed’ to marry, despite intending to marry. Although never asked by the interviewer to account for why they have never married (the ideologically- laden ‘Why Question’), the participants still produced justifications and explanations for remaining single (e.g., ‘bad luck’, ‘fate’, ‘chance’,‘wrong timing’, ‘the wrong man/men’, not wanting to give up work/career as a consequence of the

‘marriage bar’, etc.). In other words, the participants were trapped by discourse into trying to provide satisfactory explanations for their ‘failure’ to marry. Such a discourse therefore constructs them as ‘victims’ of circumstances, rather than active and self-determining women. Discourses of marriage are also ‘naturalized’ and ‘normalized’, which works to obscure their ideological dimensions. It is thus challenging for women to escape the devalued subject position of singleness as failure and lacking, and ‘unnatural’ and ‘abnormal’.

But even an outright repudiation of marriage would have caused a dilemma. Although the idea that women should be free to direct and manage their own lives, and to make their own choices is acknowledged to be valid and is widely valued, if the ‘singleness as freedom’ discourse gains its force from rejecting marriage, the subject positions made available by the singleness as ‘choice’ discourse are also problematic. What ‘kind’ of women choose to be single? Resources from the deficit repertoire offer up images of women who hate men, who are anti-social, self-centered, who are unable to engage in or are incapable of engaging in intimate relationships or may prefer relationships with women or are in some other way

‘pathological’. Single women who reject (heterosexual) marriage are therefore subject to other questions about their subjectivity, including their sexual orientation and why they are

(apparently) gender non-conforming. Although there are stereotypically positive images of

233 men who choose to be alone, the ‘the lone hero’ characters found in Westerns, and Rambo type characters who are lauded for being self-sufficient and self-determining (see Edley,

2002), there are few equivalent legitimizing images for women.

The ‘singleness as choice’ discourse can also be invoked somewhat indirectly in relation to past offers of marriage. All of the participants talked about having had the chance to marry, and of being engaged or being in relationships that could have led to marriage. This position allows for a distancing from the devalued subject position of being a woman who

‘couldn’t attract a man’, and the other ‘on the shelf’ and ‘unchosen’ images of spinsters and old maids, but although in the end the relationships ended, this did not mean that the participants had chosen singleness. As has already been stated, the participants disavowed singleness being a choice, using instead a strategy of particularization to explain why a particular relationship was not the ‘right’ relationship, the man was not ‘the right man’. Here, being single becomes a default identity that was unchosen, even if it was a consequence of active decision-making on their part. Agency can be claimed in ending relationships, but this still does not offer any protection from the other undermining and disciplining images of the deficit repertoire.

Traditional constructions of femininity and normative expressions of womanhood are centered on relationality and inter-dependence, and so claims about independence and self- determination call into question women’s femininity and sociability. The strong association of singleness with loneliness is premised on singleness being a social position that is relationally deficient, or at least lacking the kinds of relationships that count (i.e., marriage and having children). But the ‘oneness’ of singleness also calls into question the capacity to form intimate relationships and single women’s connectedness to others. At the very least,

234 women ‘alone’ can be charged with being selfish and self-centered, and shirking responsibilities to care for others. 101 Independence and autonomy are also values that have a

‘shelf life’. There is general acceptance that women in their early adulthood are ‘entitled’ to some years of freedom, and to learn how to negotiate their way in the world independently.

But research has shown that this time is also when the pressure on women to marry (or at least couple) is strongest (see Davies, 1995, 2003; Sandfield & Percy, 2003; Sharp &

Ganong, 2007, 2011), and to still be single at thirty runs the risk of being judged to have

‘missed the boat’.

Reynolds (2004) identified that singleness for women was a ‘troubled’ identity. I shall return to this idea of a troubled identity shortly, but the ‘trouble’ associated with being single was shown most obviously through the accounting work done by the participants in relation to the ‘singleness as deficit’ repertoire. Given the strongly devalued subject positions offered by the singleness as deficit repertoire, it is perhaps unsurprising that, overall, the speakers worked in their discourse to distance themselves from being seen as living

‘deficient’ lives, and lives of ‘failure’ and ‘pathology’. In the extracts that concerned the almost ubiquitous expectation that as single women they would be lonely, the participants were shown to strongly refute such a suggestion. Speakers adamantly disavowed ever having been lonely, and in one rare instance where moments of loneliness are conceded, the significance is immediately downgraded and neutralized as a universal human experience that has no association with being single.

101 Contemporary theorists of social change, including changes in the form of families, have raised concerns about the role that ‘individualism’ plays in increasing “self-centeredness and a decline in the commitments to others” (Simpson, 2006, p.1). Remaining single can be viewed as being paradigmatic of ‘individualism’, and single women are at risk of being characterized by their lack of connections to others (Simpson, 2003; 2006; Jamieson & Simpson, 2013).

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Distancing work was also evident where the participants worked in their talk to trouble the category imperative. Given the dangers of being publicly identified as a ‘Miss’ and of being treated with derision and contempt, when the alternate identifier ‘Ms.’ became available, it was embraced with alacrity. Although such a move would not have eliminated the possibilities of being stigmatized, the preferential move to ‘Ms.’ can be interpreted as an attempt to ‘pass’ more easily in the public sphere. But another “little trick” in identity negotiation was to persuade interlocutors that membership in the category ‘single’ lacked saliency. Claims about “never” having thought about being single, and that being single was

“not an issue at all” are effective rhetorical ‘sleights of hand’ that work in the moment to discursively disappear or remove singleness from view. Given the climate of “suspicion” and constructions of single women as deficient, as having “something wrong” with them, and the kinds of negative attributes and traits associated with ‘women who have never-married’, such moves are situationally strategic and protective as an identity management ‘trick’. In

Goffman’s terms, these “little tricks” are a strategy to avoid being both discredited and discreditable.102 In the face of legal constructions of singleness (as ‘never-married’), it would be challenging to argue that they were not single, but arguments about “never” having

“thought about being single” and singleness “not being an issue”, work to close down conversations and to make singleness ‘non-dialogical’.

If one identity negotiation strategy is to make singleness non-dialogical, or to suggest that there are simply no stories of singleness to tell, then another strategy was to reflexively identify the dilemmas caused by the deficit repertoire. By characterizing the relationship to the deficit discourse in terms of being a “running battle”, the struggles and dilemmas in terms

102 Goffman (1963) makes a distinction between people whose stigma is clearly known or visible (the ‘discredited’), and people who are ‘discreditable’, where the stigma is unknown and can be concealed.

236 of effects on subjectivity are brought to the fore. In the ‘running battle’ extract (see Strategy

3: Singleness as Deficit: The Running Battle, Extract 18), the speaker vividly conveys the work being done to try to keep the devalued subject positions of the deficit repertoire at bay.

The deficit discourse is fought against and argued with, and there is a clear sense of an ongoing struggle. The metaphor of a “running battle” speaks to the internal warring that discourse can provoke, and the deficit repertoire offers a variety of ‘noxious’ identity positions that are powerful and challenging to resist. The participant is shown struggling to retain a positive sense of who she is as a woman, but the struggle cannot always be sustained.

Although acknowledged only fleetingly, in Extract 19, the undermining power of the deficit repertoire sometimes overcame resistance, and the participant was brought to view her life in terms of “failure” and having “something wrong” with her as an individual. In the absence of a developed collective feminist-oriented politics of singleness that would allow connections to be made “between people’s accounts of themselves in everyday talk, and broader social and cultural beliefs and values” (Wetherell, 1996a, p.36), in this case the privileged and rarely recognized ideological beliefs and values around marriage and heterosexual partnering, then single women will continue to conduct a ‘running battle’ with discourse that works to establish who they are as ‘deficient’ ‘failures’, as ‘sad’ and ‘lonely spinsters’ and

‘old maids’, or as ‘witches’.

I turn now to a discussion of how these findings relate to other discursive studies of women’s singleness, and the contributions my study makes to the field.

7.2.2 Contribution to the Discursive Study of Women’s Singleness

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I was inspired to conduct the ‘Stories of Singleness Study’ as a consequence of the pioneering research that was conducted by Jill Reynolds (2004; 2008103; see also Reynolds,

2002; Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003; Reynolds & Taylor, 2004; Reynolds, et al. 2007), who conducted the first discursive analysis of the everyday talk of single women. By drawing on a

DP/CDP theoretical framework, Reynolds broke new academic ground. Since the publication of her work, only one other smaller Canadian discursive study on ‘midlife’ women’s singleness was conducted by Moore and Radke (2015)104. Although the ‘Stories of

Singleness’ study overlaps with and builds on these two other studies, especially the work by

Reynolds, in other ways it is quite distinct. As with the other two discursive studies of singleness, the focus has been on the meanings of singleness, and an examination of women’s experiences of singleness from a discursive perspective. But my study is the only study that has focused on the experiences of older single women, and to use multiple (not single) interviews. It is also the only study to ‘people’ the discourse analysis with participant life herstories. Moore and Radke (2015) also examined the talk of ‘always’ single women, but the focus was on working single women in their mid-thirties and forties, and not ‘veteran’ single women who have been negotiating singleness as adults in a rapidly changing social world for over five decades.

103 Reynolds’ doctoral thesis “Women alone: A socio-psychological investigation” (2004) was later published as a book, titled “The Single Woman: A discursive investigation” (2008). Reynolds interviewed thirty women between the ages of 30 and 60, who had been single for over 2 years. Two thirds of the participants were ‘always single’, one third ‘single again’ (divorced, separated, widowed). The majority were white (two participants were black). Most were owner-occupiers. Two participants had disabilities, eight participants has children. Most referred to heterosexual experiences, one participant identified as lesbian, and two referred to having had intimate relationships with both men and women. 104 The work by Moore and Radke (2015) was based on Master’s level research conducted in 2011 by Jennifer Moore at the University of Calgary. Twelve white (one participant identified as Métis), well-educated heterosexual women, volunteered for Moore and Radke’s study. They were between the ages of 35-44, were not mothers, and they had not been living with a romantic partner (male or female) for five years.

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Scholars within the interdisciplinary field of women’s singleness are divided about the merits of collapsing distinctions between groups of single people, as opposed to exploring more fine-grained differences (see Lahad, 2014, 2017; DePaulo & Morris, 2005a, 2005b;

Simpson, 2003). Reynolds (2004) did not distinguish between the discourses of women who were ‘single again’ (i.e., divorced, separated, and widowed) and ‘always single’ (i.e., never- married) women. One of the dangers of collapsing distinctions, according to Lahad (2017), is that by ‘homogenizing’ single women, fundamental disparities between groups can be obscured and overlooked. For the women in this study, there were clear distinctions between

‘single’ and ‘married women’, and between the experience of being ‘always single’ and

‘single again’, to use Reynolds terminology. Today, divorce has become more common-place

(Kontam, Karwin, Curran, Lyons, & Celen-Demirtas, 2016) and socially accepted, but divorced women have also been stigmatized (Gerstel, 1987). As social positions, being divorced and being widowed are complex social positions in their own right that deserve separate discursive studies.

As category terms and signifiers, ‘divorced’ or ‘widowed’ automatically communicate a specific affiliation to marriage. Even if marriage was short-lived, to self- identify as ‘divorced’ for example, still has the potential to capitalize on the benefits and ideological privileges of having once been married, and to be able to potentially ward off the

‘toxic’ attributes and strongly negative assumptions and stereotypes applied to women who have ‘never married’. Although women may find it strategic to sometimes identify as

‘single’, and sometimes as ‘divorced’ or ‘widowed’, these are identity positions and privileges that women who have remained single cannot access. As one participant in this

239 study insisted, being divorced was “more explicable” than never having married, and the issue of ‘explicability’ is one that is discursively significant in identity negotiation.

Identities are also not equally valued. As Wetherell and Edley (2009) observed, some identities (as ‘locations’ or ‘cultural slots’) are “admired and positively recognized”, whereas others are “despised by communities of practice” (p. 202). Although widowhood and being divorced are not necessarily identities that are always ‘admired’ or ‘positively recognized’, the most powerfully pejorative terms and damaging stereotypical images of single women

(e.g., ‘spinster’ or ‘old maid’) are almost never applied to women who have at one time been married. In this sense then, women who have never married arguably occupy a more troubled and stigmatized social position. Although every identity position will also intersect with many other positions, there are implications for the specific kinds of discursive resources that women are able to draw upon in ‘doing’ their identities. By collapsing distinctions between groups of single women, there is thus the risk of overlooking and obscuring important and subtle aspects of the everyday politics of singleness.

The subtleties in the everyday politics of women’s singleness are not however to be found at the level of interpretive repertoires. In this study, the resources that single women had to draw upon in working up their identities were identified to be strongly polarized, but this was also the case in the other discursive studies of singleness. If, as Edley (2001) suggested, cultural resources are viewed as books available to be withdrawn from a public library, then the stock of books has not substantively changed. Although the studies by

Reynolds (2004) and Moore and Radke (2015) were conducted with younger women, the overall pattern of resources remains the same. The repertoires are still polarized between those resources that strongly denigrate singleness (Reynolds, 2004), and also resources that

240 construct singleness as a position with rewards and benefits. In other words, irrespective of age positioning, and the category single women belonged to, the resources available to women in talking up their identities are still markedly constrained (and constraining), and challenging to manage.

Although the resources drawn on by the participants in each of the studies is similar, there does seem to an evaluative difference between the resources drawn on by the participants in my study, and those by the participants in Reynolds’ study. The single women in Reynolds’ study drew on a strongly idealized repertoire of ‘singleness as independence and choice’ and ‘singleness as self-actualization and achievement’ (Reynolds (2004). As has already been stated, the participants in my study did not draw on a discourse of ‘singleness as choice’, and although some lines of argument could certainly be characterized in terms of

‘self-actualization and achievement’, overall the singleness as freedom repertoire was weakly developed and not strongly idealized.

The lack of force or strength of the freedom repertoire has implications for how women can or cannot sustain affirming arguments about being single. As my analysis showed, even when weak positive claims about being single were made, the participants anticipated objections and criticisms. Although they worked hard through their rhetoric to ward off the objections and criticisms in the face of the powerfully undermining and overshadowing (deficit) repertoire, singleness was barely sustained as a legitimate and positive position. Compared to singleness being a “privileged and celebrated” space where women were have access to a “freer space of independence and choice” (Reynolds &

Wetherell, 2003, p. 500, italics added), it seemed more challenging for the participants of my study to make such arguments and to sustain them convincingly. Consequently, it was much

241 more challenging to ward off the deeply problematic ‘deficit’ constructions of singleness, which makes being single an even more problematic social position to occupy.

The ways in which identities are negotiated are recognized to be time-sensitive, and there is the recognition that “different ways of ways of talking…do not necessarily arise spontaneously and independently, but develop together as opposing positions in an unfolding historical, argumentative exchange” (Edley, 2001, p. 204). As Billig (1991) noted, time and place inevitably affect the nature of people’s thoughts, and thus everyday talk about experiences. But how much does time and place affect the nature of people’s thoughts? In my study, the participants were young adults in the 1950’s, a time that saw a backlash against the freedoms gained by women during the war (Faludi, 1992). Rates of marriage in the 1950s were also extremely high. During the participant’ interviews, when marriage was referenced, the discourses of marriage drawn upon were notably traditional and conservative. Although the social conditions of the past can be considered resources upon which the speakers can draw for their own purposes, those social conditions would also have had a marked effect on singleness discourse. Given the intimate and opposing relationship between singleness and marriage discourse, one could speculate therefore that given the “historical, argumentative exchange” (Edley, 2001, p.204) that continued to unfold about marriage and singleness, it would have been more challenging for young single women in the 1950’s to argue that singleness was a “choice”, and to claim it as a “privileged and celebrated space” (Reynolds &

Wetherell, 2003, p. 500). But there is another dimension to discursive practice that has not yet been discussed.

In DP/CDP, there is the suggestion that over time, people can develop particular

“discursive styles or routines” (Wetherell, 2003. p. 115). Described by Wetherell (2003) as a

242 form of “discursive ‘habitus’” (p. 116), it is suggested that people can configure over time, their own “‘personal order’ and personal narrative canon” (Wetherell & Edley, 2009, p. 202) in relation to particular identity positions. Although retaining a theorization of identity as fluid and flexible, and that people are both ‘masters and slaves of discourse’, over time and repeated practice, everyday talk about a particular identity can become grooved by habit, and consolidated into particular discursive routines. For people with identities that have a long history of being “despised” by various “communities of practice” (Wetherell & Edley, 2009, p. 202), they can develop particular discursive strategies to manage the challenges of occupying such a position. Identities have histories (Hall, 1990), and given the deeply problematic history of singleness as an identity for women, in the absence of a strongly legitimizing set of resources to draw upon, and a weak discourse of singleness as choice, the

“little tricks” that were learned over time, to close down conversations, and to distance from being associated with the category, could be considered routine discursive strategies, and default ways of negotiating singleness as an identity in talk. As a response to the deficit repertoire, distancing work was a standard feature of the discourse of single women in the studies by both Reynolds (2004) and Moore and Radke (2015) 105, and both studies identified that being single was a ‘troubled identity’ for women. Strategies of establishing that the participants were not typical members of the category ‘single’ were also identified by

Reynolds, and some participants also worked reflexively with the contradictions and dilemmas created by the deficit repertoire. Although Reynolds (2004) noted one instance

105 Moore and Radke (2015) drew on DP/CDP theory, in combination with an ‘intersectional’ lens. Two interpretive repertoires of ‘midlife’ singleness were identified. The “standard midlife repertoire” “was about marriage, having children, owning a house, and having an economically and socially stable social life” (p. 309), whereas the “transformative midlife interpretive repertoire”, was about “taking stock of one’s life and making changes” (p. 312). The latter repertoire was identified to bear the mark of “neoliberal discourse” (p. 315). Singleness was also identified as a ‘troubled identity’, and the participants were shown working to manage singleness as a “deviant social category” (p. 314).

243 where a participant identified the difficulties of even talking about being single, which contributed to a sense of social exclusion, neither Reynolds nor Moore and Radke identified the distancing work, or the ‘little (discursive) tricks’ of protection that were intended to shut down interactions or facilitate virtual disavowal of category membership.

Although not examined from a discursive perspective, parallel strategies were however identified by Byrne (1999; 2000a, 2000b; 2003; 2008).106 Adult women in Ireland, a strongly ‘familistic’ culture, reported being bullied, blamed, teased, insulted, criticized, and repeatedly required to account for why they had not married. In response, Irish women resorted to practical strategies, which included concealing personal information about themselves, misleading others about their status by pretending to be married, partnered or engaged (i.e., invented boyfriends, partners and husbands), and wearing fake engagement rings. They were also extremely reluctant and reticent to talk about their experiences of being single to ‘family’ members, and close friends (Byrne, 2000b; see also Lahad, 2017; Lahad &

May, 2017; Sharp & Ganong, 2007, 2011; Zajicek & Koski, 2003). It is therefore not just older single women who learn little tricks to manage their identities as single women.

There is also some research about the complex intersections between ageism and singlism, which have highlighted the prejudice of young single women towards older single women (Sandfield, 2003; Sandfield & Percy, 2003). Being single was largely viewed by the young women to be desirable up to ‘a certain age’ (about thirty), and after that, if women have not married, older single women are subjected to singlist and ageist assumptions.

Echoing the observations made by my study participants, Sandfield and Percy (2003) found that younger single women constructed older unmarried women as ‘flawed’ and ‘deviant’, as

106 Byrne was also interested in singleness as an ‘identity’, but identity was differently theorized.

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‘failed women’, and ‘spinsters’ and ‘old maids’. They were viewed ‘disapprovingly’, and

“with suspicion that there was something ‘wrong’ with them” (p. 481; Sandfield, 2003).

Older single women are thus potentially subject to not just ageism, but also to an especially pernicious combination of singlism and ageism (see also Rubinstein, 1987; Rubinstein et al.,

1991). Even the talk about experiences and perspectives from previous decades could also be misunderstood and dismissed by younger women as ‘historical’ events or conditions that no longer have relevance. Whatever the challenges of setting up an intergenerational dialogue between different cohorts of single women, older single women do not sit outside contemporary culture. What they have to say about singleness may not only shed light on how discourse has changed over time, but it can also offer insight into how conditions of the past have affected, and continue to affect, women’s lives. By attending to the talk of older single women, ‘forgotten’ discourses of singleness are made salient, and the landscape of contemporary singleness discourse can be broadened, diversified, and enriched.

7.2.3 Singleness: A ‘troubled identity’ and an ‘identity of difference’.

Reynolds asserted that singleness was a ‘troubled identity’ not just for ‘always single’ women, but also for women who have transitioned back into singlehood following widowhood, separation, and divorce. In other words, the challenges of negotiating a single identity is problematic for all groups of single women. To clarify, Reynolds is not affirming that there is anything inherently problematic about being single, or that the problems of singleness are to be located within individuals, or are a part of some collective dysfunction

(Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003; Macvarish, 2006). In discursive terms, a ‘troubled identity’ is understood to be one that is “negatively valued” (Taylor, 2010, p.68), is related to images and subject positions that are “not creditable” (Wetherell, 1998, p. 398). Singleness was identified to be ‘a troubled category (difficult to align oneself with)” (Reynolds & Wetherell,

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2003, p. 507; Reynolds, 2004). In other words, Reynolds (2004) showed that all adult single women, irrespective of whether they were once married or not, do not escape the regulating effects of marital/coupledom discourse. If there is a ‘pathology’, it is one that lies within culture and society, in the nature of the resources made available for working up and sustaining a positive identity of being single, and in the constraints of such resources

(Reynolds, 2004; see also Wetherell, 1996a).

But how common are such polarized discursive and ideological spaces? Reynolds and

Wetherell (2003) speculated that it could be unusual that the “ideological dilemmas raised by the contradictions between the repertoires” would be so closely tied to possibilities for who single women can be (Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003, p. 502). Although the stereotypes associated with never-married women are widely recognized, unlike membership in other marginalized social categories, a feminist oriented “social movement” (Reynolds &

Wetherell, 2003, p. 502) or ‘identity politics’ specifically related to singleness has not been developed (Reynolds, 2004). Moran (2004) argued that second-wave feminism ‘forgot’ the single woman, and there has been a lack of collective or coordinated effort to deal with their denigration (Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003).

Today, being single does not necessarily mean never having married, and not having children (Reynolds & Taylor, 2004), and during the adult life-time of the participants who took part in this study, there have been far-reaching changes in relationship practices and patterns. And yet, singleness for women remains a troubled identity, and the stigma associated with being single does not seem to have significantly lessened with time. The growing interdisciplinary and international scholarship on women’s singleness also attests to the widespread nature of the marginalization of single women (See Barak, 2013; Berg-Cross

246 et al., 2004; Byrne, 2003; Dales, 2005, 2014; Ervin, 2015; Ferguson, 2000; Hong Fincher,

2014; Lahad, 2014, 2017; Rutlinger-Reiner, 2011; Shachar et al., 2013; Tweed, 2008).

Despite social change however, similar to the stigmatized identities described by Goffman

(1963), singleness for women has remained an “identity of difference” (Reynolds & Taylor,

2004, p. 198), and “an attribute that for women in particular, carries enduring negative associations” (Reynolds & Taylor, 2004., p. 198).

Marriage remains an ideologically privileged status in many cultures, but other forms of coupledom are also privileged, yet the privileged status and “ideological force of couple culture” is “rarely recognized or questioned” (Budgeon, 2008, p. 302; see also Byrne, 2003;

Chasteen, 1994; DePaulo & Morris, 2005a, 2006; Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003). Single people are not just discriminated against because they are not married; by not being married, they can be charged with and brought to task for not conforming to gender norms and the normative social order. Hostility to single people is also found in both heteronormative and lesbian and gay spaces (Wilkinson, 2012). The disruption to the social order that being single represents is thus not just limited to adult single women, but is seen to be problematic in a much wider variety of different communities. Although this study has focused on the singleness talk of a particular group of women, the ‘trouble’ of singleness extends much more broadly and deeply into social life, and impacts people in many different intersecting social spheres. In other words, singlehood is a highly sensitive point of social clarification across the social spectrum, and many different groups of people will be subject to ‘singlism’.

As singleness becomes an increasingly politicized space, and as awareness around the discrimination against single people grows, it can be hoped that single women will no longer

247 find it necessary to hide their identities, or to find it necessary to use “little tricks” for protection.

Having discussed the contribution of the study to other discursive studies of singleness, I will now consider the study’s limitations.

7.3 Part II: Study Limitations

Every study has its limitations, and “although theory… represents the capacity to connect local research projects on speciﬁc issues with a conception of what Max Weber called ‘the fate of our times’” (Frank, 2013, p. 19, citing Weber), which in this thesis, shows how singleness as an identity is dialogically managed, “every theory provides both a way of seeing and a way of not seeing” (Ray, 1996, p.674, citing Stoller). In this section, the concern is with the limitations of the study, and I touch on issues related to: sample, relationship to health, age and ageism, categories, single men, how quality concerns are addressed in

DP/CDP studies, the use of interviews, and as Ray (1996) observed, what the theoretical lens for this study did not allow for.

As noted previously, the unit of analysis in discourse analyses is on ‘instances of discourse’, and not on individual people, and as a consequence of the theoretical assumptions of discursive psychology, traditional concerns about ‘sample size’, ‘typicality’ of participants, and issues of ‘cohort representation’ are deemed inapplicable (Potter, 1996b).

The following observation about sample size by Potter and Wetherell (1987) is worth quoting in full:

Because one is interested in language use rather than the people generating

the language and because a large number of linguistic patterns are likely to

emerge from a few people, small samples or a few interviews are likely

quite adequate for investigating an interesting and practically important

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range of phenomena. For discourse analysts the success of a study is not in

the least dependent on sample size. It is not the case that a larger sample

necessarily indicates a more painstaking or worthwhile piece of research.

(p. 161).

However, despite there being no hard and fast rules about the volume of data needed in a discourse analytic study (Gill, 1996), as even small amounts of material can provide the basis for useful research (Kent & Potter, 2014; Toerien & Kitzinger, 2007), the talk analyzed, and the interpretive repertoires were generated from the discourses of a few similarly positioned women. While fourteen in-depth biographically structured interviews generated a large volume of ‘data’, and although the nature of the repertoires was similar to those identified by Reynolds (2004), women occupying different positions, such as women who self-identify as disabled, women of color, asexual and trans women, and nuns (of various traditions) etc., may draw on different sets of discourses, yielding different interpretive resource patterns. Different groups of single women, and women occupying a different combination of social positions, may negotiate singleness as an identity in different ways.

As independently-living seniors, the participants were not women in receipt of health and social services at the time of interview. Although the participants did at times talk about issues related to their health (such as how to manage issues related to arthritis, knee- replacement surgery, heart disease, cancer, and memory), the management of illness, and how illness discourses intersect with singleness discourses was not the focus of the study, although this would be an interesting topic to explore. The participants did not speak to experiences of a single identity during illness in later life, or indeed, how long-term illness could have shaped their lives at some earlier point in the life-course. The study also did not

249 seek to address ‘why’ the participants were single, or to account for the phenomenon of rising numbers of single people.

The study involved women in later life, but the research did not specifically focus on later life singleness. Although the interviews were biographically structured, and the final interview was dedicated to talking about issues of aging and singleness in later life and into the future, the analysis does not examine in detail how singleness and age discourses intersect. I find it a point of interest however that although being in good health at the time of the interviews, none of the participants anticipated being able to stay in their homes for the remainder of their lives. This may speak to a lack of resources, and/or the challenge of gaining sufficient home support services to ‘age in place’, but these were not dynamics explored by the study. Although a biographical approach allowed for some exploration of how singleness was experienced across the life course, more work is needed to explore how age, historical time period, and singleness discourses intersect. Longitudinal discursive studies that follow women in different age cohorts throughout their lives have not been conducted.

The status of the findings of DP/CDP studies is debated in the literature. Some conversation analysis scholars argue that a focus on the specific interactive context, precludes extrapolation to other contexts, but other scholars disagree, arguing that some features and aspects of interaction can be generalized to different contexts (see Potter &

Wetherell, 1994; Gill, 1996). Specific identity negotiation strategies are expected to be fluid and changeable; if I re-interviewed the same participants, different strategies may be employed, and so I cannot state with confidence that the same strategies will be employed by all always single women. Although this study found that the participants tended to resist

250 taking up the singleness as deficit resources, preferred to keep such damaging images and narratives at a distance, and people are assumed to want to present themselves in a positive light, this may not always be the case.

The relatively unchanging content of singleness discourse is however another matter.

Given that the other discursive studies by Reynolds (2004), and the more recent Canadian study by Moore and Radke (2015) show that the polarized nature of the interpretive resources around women’s singleness have not changed substantively, and that the deficit resources in particular create ongoing problems for single women, singleness as a troubled identity and an identity of difference can be claimed with considerable confidence. When considered in combination with the body of international interdisciplinary scholarship that shows the marginalization of and discrimination against single women, and in a context where singleness is becoming a rapidly politicized identity, which reflects a resistance to and rejection of singleness being seen in deficit and negative stereotypical terms, it is less a question of whether singleness is an identity of difference, but rather what kinds of actions are required to mitigate the effects of such discrimination. I shall consider the broader implications of this for the profession of OT in the next section.

The thesis does not show ‘singlism’ being enacted in care settings, or how singleness is constructed and discoursed more broadly in settings like emergency care, community care, long term care, or palliative care. A study by Nikander (2003; 2008) however, suggests that notions of singleness as deficit are likely to prevail.107 There is also anecdotal evidence that

107 Nikander examined how gender and marital status categories were mobilized in team decision-making in a hospital. The category description ‘never-married female’ conjured the image of a woman “who probably does not have a family network, a spouse or children to fall back on when living at home” (Nikander, 2003, p.117). Nikander observes that the categorization seemed to function as institutional short-hand to reference individuals described as having “greater vulnerability and isolation” (p.118), which was then used to justify specific institutional actions.

251 the category ‘single’ can be discoursed in health and social settings in a variety of ways. For instance, after a presentation about this study to a qualitative health research class at the

University of Toronto, a social work practitioner in Ontario working with women (with children) who have transitioned out of abusive relationships with their former domestic partners, identified that status changes away from ‘single’ by such women are closely monitored. ‘Single’ counts in this instance as shorthand for ‘no longer being with a formerly abusive partner’. As the status of being ‘single’ facilitates women being able to access additional support services for themselves and their children, in the context of former domestic abuse situations, it is a status shift away from being ‘single’ to coupled or co- habiting, works to ‘red flag’ the case for social workers.

Due to the close association between ‘geriatrics’–the branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease in older people and the problems specific to aging–and OT, in hospital settings, in my experience, it is relatively rare for OTs in clinical practice to encounter and provide care for ‘well’ older people. As a consequence, clinical practice settings invariably construct ageing and the lives of older women in terms of illness and decline (Gullette, 2004), and in the context of ageing populations, it is especially important for OTs and rehabilitation practitioners to guard against ‘ageism’ and ageist practice (Davys, 2008; Klein & Liu, 2010; Nemmers, 2005). By focusing on the experiences of ‘well’ older single women and from a discursive perspective, this study challenges constructions of singleness in old age as just being a situation of loneliness, vulnerability, and risk. Older age is much more than being about ‘ill-health’ and ‘decline’, but this thesis does not assist therapists in addressing specific issues that single women may need to negotiate in the event of illness, potential encroachments on their ‘independence’, or their ability to

252 manage everyday life. It also does not speak to their social networks or how their systems of support re-configure as they age.

By focusing on the discourses of ‘always single women’, this study does not specifically address the experiences of ‘single again’ women, such as those widowed, divorced, or separated, and it does not consider the experiences of single men. Singleness is understood to be a gendered phenomenon, which works differently in the case of men

(Adams, 1976; Barak, 2014; Byrne, 2000; Chang, 2015; Chudacoff, 1999; Davies, 2003;

Dowling, 1982; Faludi, 1992; Gordon, 1994a, 1994b; Hancock, 2017; Reynolds, 2004;

Simpson, 2003; Taylor, 2014; Lahad & Hazan, 2014; McKeown, 2015a, 2005b; Negra,

2006). Single men are differently positioned in relation to the patriarchy, and Reed (2016) claimed that single men are rarely considered ‘lonely’ or ‘aberrant’. The term ‘bachelor’ carries a much more positive set of connotations than does the female equivalent of ‘spinster’ or ‘old maid’ (Bell & Yans, 2008), and although there may be more strongly developed positive discourses around singleness as ‘choice’ for men (Davies, 2003), further discursive studies are needed to explore men’s experiences of singleness (Davis & Strong, 1977).

7.3.1 Interviews.

Reflecting the complex theoretical underpinnings and blending of theory in DP/CDP, debates have been ongoing about the use in analysis of so-called ‘naturally occurring talk’ or

‘naturalistic’ interactions (e.g., phone, radio, and video) instead of interview material (Hanna,

2013; Kent & Potter, 2014; McKinley & McVittie, 2008; Potter & Mulkay, 1985; Potter,

1996, 2004, 2014). Although interviews in DP are conceptualized as “an arena in which one can identify and explore the participants’ interpretive practices” rather than “as an instrument for accessing a veridical account of something that happened elsewhere or a set of attitudes and beliefs” (Potter, 1996a, p.134-135), there are still internal disputes about the merits of

253 using interviews, and the nature of what makes talk ‘natural’ or ‘contrived’ (see

Hammersley, 2003a, 2003b; Lynch, 2002; Potter, 2002; Speer, 2002, 2005; ten Have, 2002).

In the absence of established Seniors ‘Singles’ groups, or settings where talk about being single could be the norm, I elected to take a pragmatic approach of conducting repeat one-to-one interviews. But I recognize that interview talk is not random or ‘casual talk’, but a particular kind of talk interaction (Potter, 2004; Reynolds, 2008) where asymmetries of power play out in diverse and often unrecognized ways. The study was not initiated by the participants, and they did not assist in deciding on or designing the project. The topic and the interview guide were pre-determined by the interviewer, and although the ‘style’ of the interviews was conversational, as occasions of interaction, I concede that these were more

‘special events’, rather than ‘casual conversation’. As an experienced former health practitioner, a ‘clinical’ interviewing style was clearly inappropriate, but it was a challenge to put aside the ‘realist’ approach to interviewing, and the ‘felt sense’ that to be a ‘proper’ qualitative health researcher, I needed to be neutral and uninvolved, to produce “colourless, neutral interactions” (Potter, 1996a, p. 134). Although I responded freely when the participants asked me about my own experiences as an aging single woman, as a ‘recovering positivist’ and a novice ‘qualitative researcher’, there was still the sense of trying to conduct what could be thought of as ‘a proper’ institutionally acceptable ‘qualitative’ interview. The interviews may therefore have had a more ‘formal’ quality to them which may have inhibited the participants. Having gained a much deeper understanding of the theory/methodology, I now have a much clearer understanding of what it means to view interviews as ‘discursive events’ (Wetherell et al., 2001), and how I could have adopted a more animated and more explicitly argumentative conversational style recommended by Potter and Wetherell (1987).

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Although I endeavored to create a ‘safe’ private space for the participants to talk about their lives and experiences, and to address the asymmetries of power through the study’s methodology, in the writing, and in the inclusion of life-histories that were both read and approved by the participants, a more dynamic interview style could have provoked a wider variety of discourses from the participants.

7.3.2 Theory.

Theoretical frameworks are lenses that shape both what is made visible, and what is not (Ray, 1996), and all research involves the selective reduction of an ever-complex social world (Taylor, 2013). Foucauldian discourse analysts have critiqued discursive psychologists

“for failing to take into consideration wider social discourses in understanding accounts”

(Burr, 2003, p. 179) ; DP/CDP does not allow for a consideration of the more practical and structural aspects of single women’s lives, such as whether they have sufficient income to pay for rent, food, transportation. Furthermore, although discursive approaches clearly “do not tell us everything that we need to know about social life” (Potter, 2003, p 787), even if language is often required to identify and name that which has previously been unacknowledged or invisible (Taylor, 2014), I recognize that there is much that is meaningful in life that lies beyond the realm of language (Potter, 2003).

DP/CDP does not allow for an in-depth exploration of issues related to emotion or affect, such as possible feelings of ‘shame’, or the long term social/psychological effects of being marginalized and being positioned as ‘defective’ or ‘lacking’. There is also no way to recognize or reckon with the psychosocial costs of ‘battling’ discourses that construct single women as having ‘something wrong with them’, and the potentially long-term effects on well-being and a positive sense of self. Health practitioners respond to the complex needs of people who may be living with life-threatening situations, or who are struggling with very

255 difficult and challenging issues that involve much suffering (see Egan, 2007). By backgrounding the person and foregrounding talk in order to focus on singleness and issues related identity in this thesis, it has been necessary to ‘bracket out’ humanistic concerns, which as a former clinical practitioner, has been an ongoing point of tension and unease.

DP/CDP could be criticized for being somewhat ‘bloodless’ in its focus on language, and the lack of attention to material presence or embodiment, as the body is treated as a topic, to be worked up in talk like anything else (Burr, 2003). Although there are clearly troubling

‘moral’ dimensions to singleness discourses, DP/CDP analysis has a limited capacity to foreground moral concerns or to suggest interventionist strategies that could make a practical difference.

In the next section, I will identify the contributions of the research to the discipline of occupational therapy. This will include explication of how the work stands as an example of

‘Critical OT’ (Hammell & Iwama, 2011), which encompasses considerations of issues related to discourses of ‘diversity’, ‘justice’, ‘equity’ ‘difference’ being called for by both OT and occupational science (OS) scholars. 108 It will also include consideration of some of the implications of my findings for OT policies and norms of professionalism, the micro-politics of everyday OT practice, and for single women themselves. This will be followed by the identification of some possible future directions for interdisciplinary research.

108 Drawing on broader discourses related to ‘human rights’(Hocking, Townsend, Gerlach, Huot, Laliberte Rudman, & van Bruggen, 2015; Hammell, 2015c, 2015d ; 2008; Hammell & Iwama, 2011) and what constitutes ‘social justice’ (Wilcock & Hocking, 2015; Stadnyk, Townsend & Wilcock, 2004, Hocking, 2017) in OT, there have been multiple publications on the issue of ‘occupational rights’ (Hammell, 2008; 2015b, 2015d; Hammell & Iwama, 2011), ‘occupational justice’(Durocher, Gibson, & Rappolt, 2014; Durocher, Rappolt, & Gibson, 2014; Bailliard, 2014; Stadnyk, Townsend, & Wilcock, 2010; Wilcock & Townsend, 2000; Townsend & Wilcock, 2004, 2014), and ‘diversity’ ( Beagan & Anand, 2015; Beagan & Chacala, 2012; Hammell, 2011; Kirsh et al., 2006; Nelson, 2007; Taylor, 2007).

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7.4 Part III: Contributions to Occupational Therapy

There have been calls from within OT for the profession to sharpen its “critical edge”

(Gerlach, 2015, p. 245). Hammell and Iwama (2011) have also called for the development of

‘Critical’ OT, and the numbers of publications about issues related to ‘diversity’ and ‘culture’ have been growing. A number of position statements on ‘diversity’, have been produced by the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (2008; see also ACOTRO, 2014) and the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (2009), and there is a burgeoning literature on issues characterized as ‘justice’, ‘equity’, ‘difference’, and ‘rights’ in both OT, and OT’s

‘sister’ discipline, occupational science (OS), which supports the practice of OT (Yerxa,

1990). The ‘Stories of Singleness’ research study is thus not just in line with priorities, value commitments, and developments already identified by the profession, but as a piece of

‘critical’ research, it draws attention to an entirely overlooked dimension of diversity. In this section, I will consider various implications of the study for the profession of OT. I will begin by considering what is meant by the term ‘critical’.

7.4.1 Implications for Critical OT (& OS).

‘Critical’ is a term applied to many different kinds of work (Billig, 2000), not just scholarship informed by different kinds of ‘critical theory’. For example, OTs Robertson,

Warrender and Barnard (2015) describe ‘critical’ as a stance that demonstrates general openness, consciousness, reflexivity, and a means of making balanced evaluations and judgements. But as this thesis demonstrates, such a stance would fail to interrogate, challenge, or even acknowledge what aspects of practice are taken-for-granted. Hammell and

Iwama (2011) advocate for a ‘critical’ stance, but for them, ‘critical’ means something more.

They argue that it is necessary to draw on notions of ‘critical theory’ so that “conventional ideologies and assumptions” (p. 2) that operate in OT are challenged, and that there is a need

257 to examine the complex relationship between individual subjectivities, and broader contexts, including social, political, and structural dimensions. By calling for the development of

‘critical OT’ informed by ‘critical theory’, Hammell and Iwama are recognizing the need to foster a critical agenda for OT that has the potential to challenge previously unexamined dimensions of practice, and they call for research that is capable of attending to dimensions of care provision that are inextricably bound up with unexamined and unrecognized operations of power (Hammell & Iwama, 2011).

It is no coincidence that similar calls are appearing in the occupational science (OS) literature. Laliberte Rudman (2013) argues for the need to take a theoretical and politically informed questioning stance towards the ‘status quo’ in order to “to reveal inequities produced through the taken-for-granted ways in which society is structured, the policies and ideas that shape and support such structures, and the practices that flow from dominant structures, policies and ideas” (p. 300; see also Laliberte Rudman, 2014; Farias & Laliberte

Rudman, 2016). Although the terms may differ slightly, and there are a range of critical theories to be drawn upon, there does seem to be some consensus in both OT and OS on the need for politically and theoretically informed research that will speak into the practice arena in ways that can transform practice and care. I would argue that this consensus constitutes a particular ‘critical moment’ in the history and development of OT as a discipline, and that this thesis makes an important contribution to critical OT research.

Historically, biomedical approaches to research have been strongly privileged in OT, but calls for the development of a ‘critical OT’, and a turn to more ‘rights based approaches’

(Galvin, Wilding, & Whiteford, 2011; Wilcock, 2006) are aligned with recent United Nations and World Health Organization initiatives (Mousavi, Forwell, Dharamsi, & Dean, 2015).

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Issues related to ‘diversity’ have become a new priority for the profession, resulting in the publication of a number of professional position statements and guiding documents of diversity (WFOT, 2009; CAOT, 2008; ACOTRO, 2014). Yet a concern with issues related to

‘diversity’ and how socio-cultural differences can impact therapeutic encounters (ACOTRO,

2014) is not new. Over a decade ago, in their ground-breaking text ‘Occupational Therapy without Borders’, Kronenberg, Algado, and Pollard (2005) urged OTs to begin to “think and act critically”, to “become aware of the value patterns and assumptions embedded in our theories”, and importantly, to “avoid contributing to the oppression of the very people we intend to help” (p. xvi, italics added; see also Hammell, 2009, 2011).109 Finlay (2004) made a similar call, arguing that social constructionist approaches to research can help OTs to

“become aware of, and challenge, elements in our own practice that may be discriminatory or disempowering” (p.123). Although important distinctions can be made between human rights discourses, social justice discourses, and discourses related to ‘culture’, ‘diversity’ and

‘equity’, for the purposes of this discussion, they will be considered collectively under the same umbrella or rubric of a concern for critical research, and the need to develop critical OT practice.

Two strategies have been suggested to foster a critical consciousness, and thereby to move the profession forward. Beagan and Chacala (2012) and Hammell (2013) have argued for the application of ‘cultural humility’ and ‘critical reflexivity’ as useful ‘tools’ to facilitate a focus on issues related to ‘power’ in the discipline: “Cultural humility demands a critical awareness of one’s own assumptions, beliefs, values and biases; an understanding of how one’s own perspectives may be differ from those of other people; and an acknowledgement

109 For Hammell, ‘oppression’ refers to “the disadvantage and injustice experienced by certain people” (2008, p. 62).

259 of the unearned advantages, privileges, and power that derive from multiple dimensions of one’s own particular social position” (Hammell, 2013, p. 145, citing Beagan & Chacala). It requires ‘critical reflexivity’, which is described as “a process of constantly examining oneself in relation to social power relations” and “a path to identifying and ‘unlearning’ worldviews and everyday behaviors that systematically disadvantage particular groups”

(Beagan & Chacala, 2012, p. 150, citing Kondrat). In order to be able to apply those ‘tools’, and in order to engage in a process of individual (and presumably also collective) examination, it is important to interrogate and show how those taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs, values and biases manifest at the interactional and structural level. The material in this thesis thus stands as an invitation to OTs to become aware of the assumptions they are making about singleness, single women, and older single women, the operations of power that perpetuate such assumptions, and to question the values and beliefs that drive them, as well as the assumptions that are built into, for example, professional models of practice and taken-for-granted constructs such as ‘at risk’, ‘vulnerability’, and ‘social support’.

Finlay (2004) has argued that OTs must “be critical of the way we position ourselves and our services users” (p. 123), and I would argue that the approach taken in this thesis, and the level of detail in the analysis of discourse presented in the previous chapter, shows exactly why a consideration of ‘positioning’ is so crucial. In an applied health discipline, interpersonal communication and the need for dialogue between people is a crucial part of the therapeutic process. In spite of time constraints in practice, and obligatory form filling, a renewed attention to language and therefore to positioning will facilitate an awareness and a raised consciousness about the effects of language on people, and how the kinds of

260 assumptions about different groups of people, born out of culture, are embedded in everyday talk. But an awareness of positioning applies not only to how groups of people are positioned by particular discourses, and during particular interactions, but also in terms of the strategies people might elect to adopt to manage or negotiate those positions and their identities. By learning to tune into positioning, it is possible to attend more closely to how service users are positioning themselves and to respond accordingly.

Iwama (2007) identified that the values of OT as a profession are culturally biased, and while it is necessary to trace out how those biases are embedded at the more abstract level of theoretical/practice models, and in the practical assessment tools and forms used every day (‘marital status’ being one example), as the analysis in this thesis shows, biases also manifest at the level of person-to-person interaction and communication. They show up in the kinds of questions asked (‘Why have you not married?’), and not asked, in the unrecognized assumptions that may inform those questions (marriage for women is normative), in group discussions, and in collective decision-making processes. This thesis has shown how language is a crucial site for how identities are negotiated on-the-ground. I have shown that even talk that may be considered fleeting and mundane, is layered with complexity, and can have far-reaching implications for how people are defined, how they are known, and how they come to know and understand themselves as persons (Burr, 2003), and how those different dimensions intersect around singleness.

Given the crucial role language plays in power relations, attention to language

(written and spoken) is one very practical way of developing ‘critical’ ears and eyes. More than an issue of ‘political correctness’, it is about the need to learn new languages of engagement. OT is just beginning to recognize that taking difference and diversity principles

261 seriously will mean learning how to have uncomfortable and difficult conversations, and not just with clients/service users, but also OTs (researchers and practitioners) who are themselves members of diverse groups (Beagan & Chacala, 2012; Beagan, Carswell, Meritt,

& Trentham, 2012; CAOT, 2015).

In Canada, in many places in the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere in Europe, OT is a profession whose practitioners are predominantly ‘white’, ‘middle-class’, ‘able-bodied’, and

‘heterosexual’ ‘women’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 277 ; see also Beagan, et al., 2012, Hammell, 2011,

Hocking et al., 2015; Taylor, 2000; Nelson, 2007; Gerlach, 2015; Beagan & Anand, 2015;

Jackson, 1995, 2000). Just as a dominant heterosexual group can be unaware of the

“damaging” effects of heterosexism (Beagan et al., 2012, p.11), being a female-dominated profession can create other biases. Being part of a socially dominant group makes it easy to forget how “we see the world through a particular lens or world view not shared by all”

(Beagan, et al., 2012, p.11). Practice in a female-dominated profession can create professional ‘blind-spots’ in relation to gendered hierarchies, including those that relate to unrecognized workings of the ideology of marriage and family, and how they get expressed in health settings.

The hostility towards single women shown in the analysis chapter was not merely because they remained ‘un-married’, but also because they were un-coupled in a cultural space that places such a high premium on coupledom. As Budgeon observes, “[t]he ideological force of couple culture is such that its privileged status is rarely recognized or questioned” (2008, p. 302), and not just in heteronormative spaces (Wilkinson, 2012).

Against a backdrop of diversifying social practices and shifting family forms, one of the consequences of privileging ‘couple culture’ (including marriage) is that relationships and

262 intimacies that fail to conform to the traditional and officially recognized formats and labels are rendered invisible (Budgeon, 2008). As Brake (2012) argues, “the assumption that valuable relationships must be married or amorous devalues friendships and other caring relationships” (p. 89), such as those practiced by new groups such as ‘urban tribalists’,

‘quirkyalones’, ‘polyamorists’, and ‘asexuals’ (see Watters, 2003 & Cagen, 2006). Today, there are new options for single women to take-up and self-identify with any one (or more than one) of these new identities. However, because these identities sit outside ‘marital’,

‘common-law’ or biological kinship models, they are neither legally or socially recognized nor considered legitimate (Brake, 2012).

This is especially important to remember in the context of health services, which are often organized around traditional notions of ‘family’ (‘family practice’, ‘family services’, family physician’), and expectations that care will be supplemented by ‘family’ care-givers

(usually daughters). It is not just (older) single women that run the risk of receiving less than adequate care, but also members of other groups that sit outside traditional ‘marital’ or coupled dyads. As the ‘problem’ of single women is often considered to stem from relational deficiency that flows out of personal failure, alternative theorizations of ‘family’ (Fitzgerald,

2004) may offer a promising new way of framing the relationships of single women in ways that are more inclusive. Yet, in professions where ‘couple culture’ is most often assumed to be the norm, the “ideological force of couple culture” (Budgeon, 2008, p. 302) is neither recognized, nor questioned (cf Fitzgerald, 2004). What happens to people (single women, older single women, single women living with a disability, black, gay, single women etc.) who are ill who sit outside couple culture? How are their lives imagined and evaluated? How

263 do ‘hetero-couplism’ and ageism interact with other dimensions of difference?110 What kinds of privileges are they excluded from, and how does this affect care quality and care outcomes?

Reflecting on issues related to ‘power’ and ‘privilege’ in OT, Nelson (2007) observed that dimensions of power and privilege are often rendered invisible to OTs as a consequence of enmeshment within three nested sets of ‘cultures’: 1) Western culture; 2) the culture of OT

(see also Iwama, 2006 & 2007; Iwama, Thomson, & Macdonald, 2009); and 3) the culture of the health and education organizations in which OT is embedded. In order to address issues of culture, power, and privilege and how they intermesh in OT, considerations of ‘diversity’ have been proposed as the ‘solution’, or at least a way forward. Until recently, discussions about diversity and cultural difference in OT have largely centred on issues related to

‘ethnicity’, however a recent Canadian Joint Position Statement on Diversity has advocated for a much extended and expanded understandings of diversity. Diversity is now to encompass “differences in age, ability, status, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexual orientation, citizenship status and so on” (ACOTRO, 2014, p. 10, italics added; see also WFOT, 2009; Beagan, 2015).

Beagan and Anand (2015), Beagan, et al. (2012), Jackson (1995, 1999), Kingsley and

Molineux (2000), Kirsh et al. (2006), and Taylor (2007) have questioned the profession’s unconscious privileging of ‘heterosexuality’. Nelson (2007), Gerlach (2015), Restall,

Gerlach, Valavaara and Phenix (2016) and others have called for the profession to become aware of ‘Whiteness’, ‘race’, and ‘colonialism’ (Beagan & Etowa, 2009)’, ‘class’ (Beagan,

2007), and also constructions of ‘disability’ (Phelan, 2011; Thomson, 2015). By discursively

110 ‘Hetero-couplism’ is a term coined by K. Morgan (personal communication, May 2, 2018).

264 exploring women’s singleness, a previously under-researched dimension of “gender” and

“status” and to a certain extent “age” (ACOTRO, 2014, p. 10), this thesis foregrounds a critically important dimension of difference in OT.

By taking an aspect of social life that is often viewed as strictly personal, factual, ahistorical and apolitical, and by recasting it as a collective ideologically mediated set of political concerns that reach deep into the lives of all female clients and OTs, I have shed light on what I see as a disciplinary ‘blind-spot’, and problematized the workings of the unrecognized ideology of marriage/coupledom and traditional notions of family. ‘Singlism’ is also a new term to OTs, and names a problem that, until recently, has had no name

(Morris, DePaulo, Hertel, & Taylor, 2008). The introduction of this term to the OT professional arena, is a means of consciousness raising about how unrecognized ideological dimensions work to frame singleness for women as a position of deficiency and pathology.

According to Hammell (2008), oppression is a consequence of “the effects of societal norms, laws and unchallenged assumptions” (Hammell, 2008, p. 63, citing Northway).

Reflecting back now on my years in clinical practice, I can now appreciate what I couldn’t before. I had little awareness about the kinds of value judgements and assumptions that shaped how I saw and treated ‘never married’ women, and how I may have unwittingly oppressed not only them, but other people occupying positions of difference. I was oblivious to the effects of health systems constructing ‘single’ factually and reductively as a ‘marital status’ category, and I took it as read that singleness was associated with risk, a lack of caring support, and early institutionalization. I also could not have named or articulated the power and privileges that I carried (and carry) as a member of a dominant majority group, given my position of power as a credentialed and educated health care professional. As Shotter (1993)

265 describes it, an inherent aspect of the “phenomenology of power” (1993, p. 40) is that those who have power, are the ones that are least likely to be aware of it or how they enact it. As

Beagan (2015) stated, “the invisibility of dominant groups in discussions of diversity means the inequitable effects of differences can operate unchecked” (p. 273). The approach selected for the ‘Stories of Singleness’ study has thus enabled me to highlight and problematize a previously unrecognized form of discrimination and oppression at a particular juncture in the profession’s history when much of what has been taken-for-granted is now being called into question and challenged.

The differential treatment of women on the grounds of their ‘marital’ and ‘family’ status stands as a form of discrimination that is legally prohibited under Human Rights legislation. Legally, the differential treatment of (older) single women is therefore as legally significant as the differential treatment of people on the grounds of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, religion, and other dimensions of difference. However, neither

‘marital’ nor ‘family’ status are identified as a dimension of difference in the position statements by CAOT (2008), ACOTRO (2014), the WFOT guiding principles on diversity

(2009), or the current College of Occupational Therapists Ontario Code of Ethics (2012).

Although this may reflect a lack of general awareness and understanding about the significance of ‘marital’ and ‘family’ status, and gaps in the research literature, such omissions are markedly at odds with rights-based legislation. If both statuses are legally recognized and protected against discrimination by Rights legislation, and are enshrined as categories of inclusion in other international rights laws, on what grounds can they be excluded (or omitted) from professional guideline documents in OT?

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Gerlach (2015) has argued that it is imperative to develop OTs “critical potential in working towards social justice and health equity” (p. 245), but I wonder if perhaps a more robust stance is needed than a focus on ‘diversity’? As Ahmed (2007) observes, the term

‘diversity’ only became the preferred institutional term as a result of the failure of other terms, namely ‘equality’ to work. As Ahmed asks, “if ‘diversity’ emerges after the failure of the term ‘equality’ to work, then ‘diversity’ itself might be read a symptomatic of the failure to achieve equality” (2007, p. 238; see also Ahmed, 2012). This begs the question of whether

OT should instead take up a stance of ‘Anti-Oppressive Practice’? As a term, ‘anti- oppressive practice’ has much more potency that either ‘diversity’, ‘equity’ or even

‘emancipatory’. Although such practices have long been established in social work (see

Dominelli, 1998; Fook 2003; Fook & Morley, 2005; Fook & Askeland, 2007; Fook, White,

& Gardner, 2006), and to a lesser extent in nursing (see Nzira & Williams, 2009; Hutchison,

2015), the notion of ‘anti-oppressive practice’ has not yet gained any traction in OT (see

ACOTRO, 2014).

Perhaps this reflects an overall lack of awareness about identity politics, rights, and justice in OT practice (and education) (Bailliard, 2016), and a lack of recognition that, at the practice level, even with groups that have an already strongly defined identity politics, discrimination is still largely unrecognized (see Kirsh et al., 2006). For people who occupy multiple intersecting positions of difference, as in the case of older single women, the implications and impacts can be far-reaching, even ‘deadly’ (DelFattore, 2018; DePaulo,

2018). There is clearly much work that needs to be done to change this. Kirsh (2015) calls for

‘advocacy’ to be made a professional imperative in OT, and Beagan and Anand (2015) suggest the creation of the ‘right kind of environment’ within the profession in order to

267 facilitate discussions about diverse experiences, perspectives, and opinions. What is needed are a set of structures and resources (funding, training, education, mentorship, infrastructure etc.) within the profession to make this happen. The need for ‘critical’ OT and critical OT qualitative health research is needed more now than ever before; there is an exciting opportunity here to build momentum and to break new ground. As critical qualitative health research is inevitably ‘transgressive’ (see Eakin, 2015), part of the ‘right environment’ envisioned by Beagan & Anand could be the creation of a new journal to disseminate critical research as a means of fostering discussion and debate internationally. There may never be a better time for the discipline to mobilize, and to bring together a critical mass of interested

OT educators, researchers, clinicians, managers, and students, together with representatives from diverse groups of people in order to establish a forum for discussion, the exchange of resources, and to support change. If OTs were to take ‘diversity’ seriously, what could ‘anti- oppressive practices’ actually look like on the ground? How would they be recognized? What would a practice-stance of anti-racism, anti-ageism, anti-ableism, anti-sexism, anti-singlism, etc. look like? What could be expected of such practices, and how could those practices be mandated and monitored? Discourses related to ‘diversity’ can easily remain abstract and theoretical. Individualized and group reflexivity may be a part of that, but change will only occur if translated into concrete action.

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, much could be learned from disciplines such as social work and education, who already lead the way. How do they understand anti- oppressive practice? What are the knowledge requirements to ‘do’ anti-oppressive practice?

What skills would need to be developed? How can these practices be modelled and reinforced so that the quality and experience of care (and research) for ‘marginalized’ clients

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(like older single women) who face discrimination is improved? Before OTs are ready to take on advocacy roles, as Kirsh (2015) identifies, there is a need to develop the competencies to do so. Having identified the contributions of this study to a critical OT, I will now consider some of the practical implications of the study for OT, the implications for single women, followed by the identification of some possible future directions for interdisciplinary research.

7.4.2 Implications for OT Profession and Practice.

 Cheryl Mattingly (1998a) claimed that the quest for an authorized position within

health care systems has meant that the OT profession has neglected the social and

moral aspects of practice and research. If this is so, then our service users are now

paying the price of that neglect. The ‘social’ realm in OT has traditionally been

narrowly and hierarchically defined as phenomena that operate at the level of ‘person,

family, community and society’, and with a strong emphasis on the primacy of ‘social

roles’. Yet social constructionist ways of thinking not only throw into relief those

traditional understandings, they problematize them. Although OT models of practice

have been critiqued for their ethnocentrism (Iwama, 2006 & 2007), recent calls for

‘critical OT’, and to attend to ‘diversity’, require OTs to reconsider previously

unconsidered dimensions and operations of ‘the social’, and how they may impact

how we interact with and treat people occupying positions of difference,

marginalization, and discrimination. It is therefore time to recognize what traditional

considerations of ‘the social’ have precluded, and how ‘the social’ can be newly

reconsidered in OT.

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 DP/CDP theorizes ‘talk’ and ‘human interaction’ in terms that are highly familiar to

OTs. Talk is considered to be ‘action oriented’ and being related to ‘function’, such

as to ward off negative imputations related to category membership, or to persuade

the listener that the speaker is just like other ‘ordinary’ women. By these criteria, talk

should be considered an ‘occupation’ or an activity like any other activity, but how

often is talk and other aspect of human communication considered an ‘occupation’ in

their own right? Realist approaches to language suggest that people talk about what

they do, but DP/CDP approaches suggest that talk is itself an activity with various

social functions. Where does talk fit in existing models of human occupation? Has it

generally been excluded from being considered an ‘occupation’ in its own right? If

OTs are to serve (older) single women (and other groups) better, far greater attention

is needed to language and how language is used to position people; a much stronger

focus on talk and different aspects of human communication are needed during

training and in practice.

 The theoretical lens of DP/CDP raises serious questions about the relationship

between apparently factual, neutral, and routine-looking descriptive information, and

how these are used in practice settings (Edwards, 2008; Billig, 1999). Client

description, typification, and categorization are central to the business of ‘people-

processing’ in health arenas (Nikander, 2003; 2008), and to what Hacking (2006)

describes as ‘making people up’ (see also Poovey, 1998). Such practices are invisible

in health systems, and yet, as this thesis has shown, categories and classifications are

a central driving mechanism for how individuals/groups are seen, understood, and

how they are treated. Although Hammell (2004) advocates for a ‘skeptical

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interrogation’ of classificatory practices such as the ‘International Classification of

Functioning, Disability, and Health’ (World Health Organization, 2001), the

interrogation of categories and classifications has not been extended to include other

taken-for-granted categories and classification systems in health systems and in OT?

For example, since the enactment of the Personal Information Protection and

Electronics Documents Act (PIPEDA) (2000), some, but not all information gathering

forms are required to offer the option of ‘Prefer not to Reply/Respond’. As a data

category, ‘marital status’ falls under this legislation. Is it always necessary to ask

about someone’s ‘marital status’? Existing forms such as those used by hospitals,

health administrators, and researchers could be reviewed and the additional protective

‘Prefer not to Reply/Respond’ category could be added. This also applies more

widely to Census, banking and insurance, immigration, and other sorts of forms.

 Although the main intent of this thesis has been to focus on the talk of older single

women and how they negotiate their identities using the resources they have available

to them, as has been documented, a number of instances or interactions occurred

during the process of the research are examples of ‘singlism’. From the comments

made during the Ethics consultation, assumptions made by OTs during presentations

on the topic, the stereotypical representations of older single women that appear in the

health literature, the experiences of the participants, and my own experiences as a

single woman and of conducting the study, it seems clear that ‘singlism’ is

happening, and it seems to be systemic. Although this was not what the study set out

to prove or to document, both the study itself, and the context in which it took place,

supports existing research and assertions that singlism is in operation at different

271 levels of the social world, and that an anti-singlist stance in practice is needed. In a recent online blog, DelFattore (2018) documents instances of ‘singlism’ in the U.S. health system. Identified examples include: 1) staff pitying dying single people because they are dying alone (i.e., in the company of ‘just’ friends, not a spouse or

‘family’) ; 2) friends being unable to accompany single women to important medical appointments; 3) hospital discharge restrictions: after a medical procedure, a single woman was required to arrange for a ‘family’ member (not a friend) to drive her home; and 4) an Oncology physician made the assumption that an older single woman without a live-in spouse would be unable to tolerate the effects of chemotherapy. As DelFattore stated: “The problems I've described here aren’t happening because doctors and health care workers are bad people. They're happening because anti-single bias is so common that it passes for normal thinking, and the solution isn’t blame, but education. Our stories need to be heard” (2018, para.

8, italics added). It seems highly likely that there will be similar instances occurring within the Canadian health system. More research is needed to document these, and to investigate single women’s experiences of the health system in order that care systems, policies, procedures, and best practices can be changed to better serve the needs of older single women, and single women generally. Rather than waiting for complaints, OTs and health administrators need to be proactive and alert to practices within systems that unfairly disadvantage (older) single women. Using sensitivity, single women can be asked to share their experiences so that problems within the system can be identified and practices can be changed.

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 My research shows that the assumptions made about older single women are strongly

shaped by unrecognized social/cultural norms related to heterosexual marriage and

normative ideas around what constitutes ‘family’. Exposing the influence of such

values and beliefs, and changing practices will be challenging but necessary. For

example, one small group of Israeli family therapists, who were married and

heterosexual, set out to explore their own attitudes and assumptions about (adult)

single women. The therapists were shocked and disturbed to discover how ‘singlist’

their thinking was, how biased they were against single women, and how much

coupledom/marriage dominated their thinking and frameworks of understanding. The

internal processes of reflection which involved exposing stories that stand at the

‘margins of consciousness’ (as they described it) was, for them, both a disturbing and

uncomfortable process that provoked strong feelings (see Shachar et al., 2013). The

question then becomes how singlism intersects with other positions like age and

disability. The ‘cultural humility’ and ‘critical reflexivity’ exercises suggested by

Beagan and Chacala (2012) as processes of “examining oneself in relation to social

power relations” (p. 150) may help move the profession forward towards positive

change and greater openness about diversity, but this requires the majority of OTs to

move out of existing comfort zones. Having skilled facilitators and trainers who are

used to managing conflict will therefore be essential. So too will clarity about exactly

what the training and education seeks to accomplish. Mandatory ‘diversity’ training

may soon become a requirement in both health and educational institutions, and

professional regulatory bodies may require such training as an additional means of

protecting the public. Rather than resist such moves, there is an exciting opportunity

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here for OTs to get ‘ahead of the curve’. Again, there is an opportunity to learn from

other disciplines, and to adopt a pro-active stance.

7.4.3 Implications for Single Women

 What are the implications of this study for older single women? Single women are not

the same; they are going to have different experiences, and they will have different

stories of singleness to tell. We are only just beginning to hear about what different

single women have to say. The identity negotiations strategies used by the

participants of this study may or may not be familiar to other single women, but there

is a very strong chance that they will be recognize the dynamic, the questions, and the

assumptions that other people make, or have made about their lives. For the first time

in women’s history, the discriminatory treatment of women on the basis of their status

as single has been named. Words count, and although singlism may not yet be a

familiar term, for the first time there is a term for their experiences of

marginalization, experiences that have never before been validated or recognized as

such. Today, women’s singleness is being collectively recognized and treated as a

political not just a private position and identity, and for the first time, women’s

singleness is a growing feminist concern for young women growing into adulthood

and older single women who are all negotiating what it means to live the single life.

The Stories of Singleness contributes to this important movement by encouraging

single women of all generations to mobilize, to have conversations, to take action, to

tell the stories that have never before been granted air-time, to find and claim a

language of legitimacy.

 In health-care contexts, manifestations of singlism are presently undocumented, and

the term ‘singlism’ is likely as unfamiliar to those working in health care as it is to

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most single women in need of health-care. But as the identity politics of singleness

develops and builds momentum, and the rising numbers of single people become a

political and economic force, this will impact health care. This thesis contributes to

knowledge about women’s singleness, single women, and how they are ideologically

positioned through the largely unrecognized ideology of marriage and family. Health

is not just about illness, health is also influenced by how people are seen, treated,

understood, and the assumptions that are made about them. It is my hope that this

thesis will start the process of consciousness-raising about women’s singleness in OT,

so that older single women can receive the best, most relevant, and health enhancing

care.

7.4.4 Future Research: Interdisciplinary Directions

 Despite existing care policies in Ontario such as ‘Aging in Place’, it was striking that

the women who took part in this study could not envision a future where they would

be able to remain at home. In the context of aging populations, and as seniors grow

more concerned about ‘Aging in Place’, this raises questions about who gets to age in

place and who does not? Are there unrecognized biases within care services that work

against single women? Do care policies inadvertently discriminate against single

people who live alone? Given the rise in solo living, what kind of policy planning

could help adjust and adapt care provision to communities where solo living is the

norm?

 If (older) single women are required to move into institutional care later in life, how

does being single shape care provision in these settings? Who makes decisions for

older single women if they do not have a substitute decision maker, and they are

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deemed no longer competent to make health decisions? The care of people in long-

term care facilities is often improved through the advocacy and added support of

‘family’ members, how is the care of people who may have friends but not family

impacted? What gets missed and overlooked? Could a new kind of advocacy service

set up just for (older) single women be helpful? What kind of provisions are made for

people who have other kinds of extended family, or no biological family?

 Older single women can be both caregivers and care recipients, but as Burnley (1987)

identified, the caring work of single women is largely unrecognized by families and

health providers. What kinds of caring experiences do older single women have of

being cared for/ and of caring? What kinds of ‘caring’ networks do older single

women have?

 How does being single shape how women negotiate illness? Do single women find

novel, creative and innovative ways to negotiate support and assistance when they are

ill, perhaps through ‘circles of care’, or by some other means of mobilizing their

social networks? Are there on-the-ground practices of single women that may

facilitate extra-support at home if needed? How do single women fare in palliative

care settings?

 Single women are often assumed to be ‘un-familied’, yet this study has problematized

the privileging of ‘nuclear families’ founded on marriage or marriage-like

relationships, which are often considered the only ‘natural’ unit that binds people

into social networks (Gordon, 1975, 2002). But as one participant in this study

observed, her friends “have been there for me, and I for them, we have helped each

other out a lot and I would still do it and so would they… So that is what you do, you

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just cultivate a different kind of family. But it is a family that you have chosen, as

opposed to one that you have inherited” (Mademoiselle, Int2, L1737-1442). Given the

possibility of alternative ‘chosen’ family forms, how could traditional notions of

‘family’ be extended beyond the biological, the inherited, and the heteronormative?

Could the emerging interdisciplinary field of ‘Critical Kinship Studies’ (Kroløkke, et

al., 2016; Riggs & Peel, 2016) offer a novel and more inclusive way of theorizing

human relationships and the development of alternative kinds of ‘social contracts’

between people? What could these alternative social contracts look like, and around

what principles could they be formulated?

 New discourses are needed, especially ones that offer strong non-shaming alternatives

to the deficit repertoire. Although pro-single discourses are emerging, it is concerning

that they are strongly individualistic, and rest upon assumptions of largely white

middle-class able-bodied privilege. Are there alternative discourses of singleness that

could be more inclusive? For example, for women who sit outside the category

‘mother’, ‘aunt’ is a category term that can connote a range of relationship types

beyond the biological, and there is an emerging discourse around ‘Auntship’. There is

the idea of the ‘spinster aunt’ (Hill, 2014), which draws on Sarah Ensor’s theorization

of ‘spinster ecology’ as an alternative way of theorizing social relatedness (see Ensor,

2012). ‘Aunting’ can be viewed as a cultural practice that sustains families (Ellington

& Sotirin, 2010; Sotirin & Ellington, 2013), and notions of ‘Savvy Auntship’

(Hayden, 2011) has emerged from an online community for aunts created by Melanie

Notkin (2008). English (2002) discusses another collective category. As a group of

women self-identifying as being ‘asexual’, the group ‘leather spinsters’ predates the

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literature on the newly emerged and recently recognized identity related to asexuality

or being ‘asexual’.

 As more thoughtful, and thought-provoking literature on women’s singleness appears

in popular culture (see for example, Bolick, 2014, and Traister, 2016), and in the

interdisciplinary academic press (see for example Hong Fincher, 2014; Lahad, 2017;

Taylor, 2012), alternative narratives of the single life and of single women will

emerge. But what else could be done? Intentional intergenerational conversations

between older and younger single women could be a way to foster understanding and

relatedness between women. ‘Single Salons’ could be a way to bring people together

in order to see if a shared sense of identity could be forged. As women’s singleness

has generally not been recognized as a feminist issue (Adams, 1976; Clements, 1999;

Hong Fincher, 2014; Moran, 2004; Reynolds, 2004, A. Taylor, 2012), there is an

urgent need to forge inclusive collectivities of single women who can, through

political activism, advocate for the needs of single women of all ages. Groups of

single women could form some kind of ‘Single Women’s Network’, a feminist safe

space for women to talk about their experiences of difference and begin to have

conversations about how to build solidarity and understanding.

 Responding to the shifting landscape of singlehood and marriage, and the growing

significance of non-kinship relationships (Moran, 2004), in 2001, The Law

Commission of Canada recommended a move away from a model in which the State

determines which relationships deserve protection and support, and towards a model

in which individuals are free to identify those relationships that for them, have a

special status. How could legal mechanisms better support caring relationships that sit

278 outside biological kinship and traditional notions of coupledom, and what could the experiences of (older) single women have to teach us about those relationships?

CONCLUSION

Discrimination against singles in the health care system: It’s time to shine a light on anti-singles bias in medical care. –Bella DePaulo, Psychology Today, March 21st 2018 In short, singlehood has arrived, with or without a formal movement to recognize it. –Rachel Moran, 2004, p. 284 Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. – James Baldwin, New York Times Book Review, 1962 The boundary of my language is the boundary of my world. –Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951

8.0 In a thesis that has foregrounded issues of language, it seems appropriate to close by offering up a new term, and one used by one of the study participants. Inquiring about where

I was in the process of studying singleness, Mademoiselle playfully asked how long I had been “singling?” Later, on looking the word up in the dictionary, I discovered that ‘singling’ was an obsolete French word for sailing. Botanically, it refers to the process of thinning out plants, but it is also a term that is used in the process of distilling to refer to what can usefully be drawn off from what is otherwise muddy or murky. It is therefore my hope that this thesis will stand as an act of ‘singling’ in OT, challenging the prevailing ‘Ms-Understandings’ of older single women and thereby contributing to critical OT, as well as effecting change in the policies and norms of OT professionalism, and the micro-politics of everyday OT practice.

279

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APPENDICES

9.1 Appendix A: Recruitment Poster/Flyer

Recruitment Poster/Flyer

[University of Toronto logo]

Stories of Singleness Research Study ‘Older Women’s Stories of Singleness in Later Life’

Are you a woman who has never married, is 75 years of age or older, lives alone, does not have children, is a fluent English speaker and lives independently?

If so, would you be willing to share your life story and unique perspective on the single life?

I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto, and a fellow aging single woman. The aim of this qualitative research study is to understand more about diverse women’s experiences of singleness in later life. The study involves interviewing 8 women (1–3 times) about their life stories and different experiences of singleness.

If you are interested in learning more please call:

Rona Macdonald 416 946 3724 (Ext 1) or email [email protected]

Stories of Singleness Stories of Singleness Stories of Singleness Stories of Singleness Research Study Research Study Research Study Research Study

Rona Macdonald Rona Macdonald Rona Macdonald Rona Macdonald 416 946 3724 416 946 3724 416 946 3724 416 946 3724

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9.2 Appendix B: Telephone Script

Telephone Script

[For potential participants who have telephoned to inquire about the study/ who have been identified by word of mouth as being potentially interested in participating]

‘Thank you for calling to ask about the ‘Stories of Singleness Research Study’/ I was talking to [name] about this study, and I was told that you may perhaps be interested in participating/ you had previously expressed an interest in finding out more about the study and so I wanted to phone to give you an update.’

My name is Rona Macdonald and I am a PhD candidate at the Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science at the University of Toronto.

I am conducting a study called ‘The Stories of Singleness Research Study’.

The ‘Stories of Singleness’ qualitative research study involved interviewing 8 women about their life histories and experiences of singleness. Participants will be women who have never married, are 75 years of age or older, live independently by themselves, have no children, speak English and would identify as being single. Each participant will be asked to fill out an information form and take part in three audio recorded interviews, which will last approximately 60-90 minutes at a time and a quiet place of their choice.

I think that older women who have never married have a unique life history that deserves to be heard, and by gathering the life stories or life histories of these specific women, the aim of the study is to gain a better understanding of women’s experiences of singleness, spanning their youth, middle age, later life and how they see their lives unfolding in the future. I am also interested in learning about how women see singleness shaping their daily lives and they talk about being single.

As a single woman myself, I think singleness for women has been misunderstood generally by the public and is not an aspect of life that Health Care practitioners ask about or consider.

You are under absolutely no obligation to agree to participate in this study, but if you are interested in learning more please call me on 416 946 3724 or email me at [email protected].

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9.3 Appendix C: Letter of Request to Participants

Letter of Request to Participants (Email/Letter Post) [U of T letter head] ‘Stories of Singleness’ Research Study

Subtitle: ‘Singleness and Wellbeing in Later Life: The Perspectives of Lifelong Single Older Women’.

[Departmental Address] Dear [Name],

My name is Rona Macdonald, and I am a Doctoral Candidate in the Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science at the University of Toronto. I am conducting a study called the ‘Stories of Singleness’ research study which will involve interviewing eight lifelong single older women about their life histories and experiences of singleness.

I think that older women who have never married have a unique life history that deserves to be heard, and by gathering their life stories or life histories, the aim of the study is to gain a better understanding of women’s experiences of singleness, spanning their youth, middle age, later life and how they see their lives unfolding in the future. I am also interested in learning about how women see singleness shaping their daily lives and they talk about being single. As a single woman myself, I think singleness for women has been misunderstood by the public and is not an aspect of life that Health Care practitioners generally ask about or consider.

Participants will be women who have never married, are 75 years of age or older, live independently by themselves, have no children, speak English and would identify as being single. Each participant will be asked to fill out an information form and take part in three audio recorded interviews, which will last approximately 60-90 minutes at a time and a quiet place of their choice.

You are under absolutely no obligation to agree to participate, but if you are interested in learning more about the study, please feel free to call me on 416 946 3724 or email me at [email protected].

Sincerely yours,

[signature]

Ms. Rona M. Macdonald Doctoral Candidate, Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science, University of Toronto.

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9.4 Appendix D: Information Sheet/Informed Consent

Information Sheet/ Informed Consent

[U of T Letter Head]

Title of Research Project: ‘Stories of Singleness Research Study’ Subtitle: Singleness and Wellbeing in Later Life: The Perspectives of Lifelong Single Women.

Investigators: Ms. Rona M. Macdonald, Doctoral Candidate, Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science, University of Toronto. Telephone: (416) 946 3724

Dr. Michael K. Iwama, Thesis Supervisor, Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science, University of Toronto. Telephone: (905) 990 0061

Dr. Pia Kontos, Thesis Co-Supervisor, Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Science, University of Toronto. Telephone: (416) 597-3422 Ext 7609.

Funder: University of Toronto.

Background and Purpose of the Research

The ‘Stories of Singleness’ research study is being conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a PhD degree in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Toronto. The ‘Stories of Singleness’ qualitative research study will explore in depth the experiences and perspectives of eight lifelong single women in later life.

In Canada today, people in a wide variety of social situations would describe themselves as being single, but women who were born in the 1920’s or 1930’s and who have remained single over a lifetime have a uniquely different set of experiences that are currently poorly understood by the public and by health care practitioners in general. By gathering the life- stories or life histories of older lifelong single women, the aim of the study is to gain a better understanding of women’s experiences of singleness. This will include experiences at a young age, middle age, present time and how women see their lives continuing to unfold in the future. The study also explores how participants see singleness shaping their daily life and analyze how they talk about being single.

Please consider this your official invitation to participate in the study. Please find enclosed a second copy of the Information/Consent letter, the Interview Question Guide, and the Background and Demographic Information Form for your reference.

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Participation Participation in the study will involve completing the Background and Demographic Information Form with Rona Macdonald during the first interview, and taking part in approximately one to three interviews, lasting approximately 60-90 minutes. The interviews will focus on each participant’s life history or life-story, and will include questions about the experiences of singleness at a young age, middle age, present time and into the anticipated future. The interviews will be audio-recorded, and will take place at times that are convenient to the participant and in a quiet location of the participants’ choosing. The interviews will be transcribed either by Rona Macdonald or by a professional transcriptionist.

The participants will be seventy five years of age or older, life-long single (i.e., never married), speak English fluently, and will not have any children. The participants will be living alone, independently in the community, in urban Toronto. Women attached to religious orders are excluded from the study.

Please note that your participation in the study is completely voluntary. You are free to refuse to participate, and you are free to withdraw from participating in the study at any time. You may decline to answer any question. You can end an interview at any time, and if after the interview, you feel uncomfortable about anything you have said, this can be deleted from the interview transcript immediately, all without negative consequences. If you withdraw from the study, your name, any identifying information about you, and the interview audio files and written transcripts will be deleted from the study files immediately.

During the analysis stage of the research, a preliminary version of each participant’s life history will be collated and mailed to each individual for a review of accuracy. After telephone follow up, any content changes identified as being important by the participant will be amended.

If you have are any further questions about the rights of participants in this study, please contact the Office of Research Ethics at the University of Toronto: (416) 946 3273 or [email protected]

Privacy and Confidentiality

Personal information (people names, place names and other identifiers) will be removed from the interview transcripts to preserve anonymity. Participants will be asked to choose a pseudonym that will be used as an identifier in the thesis, subsequent study publications and any presentations.

Access to the research study audio, written, and electronic files will be limited to the primary investigator and her supervisory committee. The audio and written files will be kept in a locked filing cabinet, and electronic files will be password protected. All files will be held in a secured location for up to seven years, after which they will be destroyed.

Risks: There are no identified risks of participating in the study, but life-story telling can be an emotional experience for some people.

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Benefits: There will be no financial remuneration for participating in the study, but as the life histories or life-stories of lifelong single women is rarely asked about or affirmed, the participants may find participating a positive experience.

When the thesis has been successfully defended, the participants will be invited to attend a ‘Thank You Tea’. Transportation will be organized and paid for by the primary investigator. There will be refreshments, a summary presentation of the research study and an opportunity for group discussion. At the end of the study, each participant will receive a copy of their individual life history.

Please find enclosed a second copy of the Information/Consent letter, the Interview Question Guide, and the Background and Demographic Information Form for your records.

If you agree to participate in the study, please sign and complete the Consent Section below and return the signed form (including page one and two) in the stamped addressed envelope provided.

Consent:

The research study ‘Stories of Singleness’, subtitled ‘Singleness and Wellbeing in Later Life: The Perspectives of Lifelong Single Women’ has been clearly explained to you, and you have had the opportunity to have your questions answered.

Consent to Recording:

I hereby consent to the recording of the interviews with Rona M. Macdonald (Principal Investigator).

Participant Name (Please Print):

Participant Signature:

Date Signed:

Consent to Transcription:

I agree to the interview transcripts (which will be stripped of all personally identifying identifiers) may be used in whole, in part, for purposes of education and research, in an edited or abridged form, and for publication.

Participant Name (Please Print):

Participant Signature:

Date Signed:

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9.5 Appendix E: Background and Demographic Information Form

Background and Demographic Information

‘Stories of Singleness’ Research Study

Study ID#: [SSS number ]

Participant Selected Pseudonym or Assigned Pseudonym  Name______

1. Date of Birth (day/month/year) ___ /___ / ___

2. Place of Birth:

Country:

Specific Location:

3. Year of Immigration to Canada (if relevant):

4. Length of time living in current accommodation:

5. Accommodation type:  Apartment  House  Other ______

6. Identification with ethnic group:  Native (Canadian or American)  Asian  African Canadian/American  Hispanic  White (Caucasian)  Other Please specify______

7. Schooling:  No formal schooling  Completed high school  Trade, technical, vocational or business school  University Please specify degree type and subject. ______ Other Please specify______

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8. Type of Work  Home ______

 Waged______

 Recent Voluntary______

9. Age of retirement  ______

 Still working

Please specify______

10. Community involvement

Past______

Present______

Principal Investigator: Rona M. Macdonald

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9.6 Appendix F: Interview Guide

Interview Guide

 Please could you tell me a few things about yourself by way of introduction? How do you usually introduce yourself to people?  Can you tell me what it was that drew you to want to take part in research about single women? Was there something specific that you want to say about your experiences of being single?  Were you aware of there being specific stories or images about single women as you grew up?  How do you think women who remained unmarried were viewed by your family when you were growing up?  Looking back, were there any specific events or circumstances that you feel really shaped your life as a single woman? In your youth? In middle age? In later life?  From your own experience, how would you say people perceive single women?  How do you think people perceive single women in middle age and in older age?  Have you had experiences when other people’s ideas about what it means to be single have differed significantly from your own?  Have you found other women who share your experiences of being a single woman?  Some women talk about singleness being a choice? What do you think about that?  Some women talk about singleness not being something they have chosen? What do you think about that?

Activities  Can you tell me about some of the things you like to do?  Are there any kinds of activities or social events that you find are difficult, bothersome or an effort for you to do as a woman by yourself?  Are there some things that you do that you think are made easier or more enjoyable by being a single woman?  Do you have any health issues that bother you or limit you in any way?  Have these health issues limited what you like to do in daily life in any way?  What aspects of being singleness do you most value right now? What do you most relish?  How do you see your life as being different from women of your own age who are divorced or widowed?  Has being single allowed you to do certain things that you wouldn’t otherwise have imagined?  If you were to look around your home and pick two objects that in some way say something important about your life as a single woman, can you tell be about what would you chose and why?

Future  If you think about the future, how do you see it unfolding?

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 Are there some aspects that concern you?  Do you have a sense of what is going to be really important to you as you get older?  If you were asked to give some advice or a piece of wisdom about life as a single woman to some younger single women, what do you think you would say to them? What would you tell them was important?  Is there anything you would like to add to what we have been talking about that we haven’t mentioned or barely touched upon?

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9.7 Appendix G: Letter to Participants (re Life History)

Letter to Participants re Life History [Insert Dept address] (Date) RE: Stories of Singleness Study: Individual Life History Dear , As a participant in the Stories of Singleness Research Study, in 2012/13 we met several times to talk about your experiences of being a single woman. The interviews made up the central part of the study, but an additional supplementary step involved the collation from the interview material of an individual life history. I am now delighted to be able to enclose a draft copy of that history for your review. One version of a life history can never fully do justice to a life lived, but I have endeavored to put your history together in a way that honors different aspects of your experiences. Although life histories take different forms, in this study, key features and turning points of your life (education, migration, employment, retirement, health etc.) have been woven together with some of the concerns and issues that were important to you at the time of the interviews. Given the extent of social changes that have impacted the lives of single women in your lifetime, some background contextual material has also been incorporated. Please read it carefully. It is important to me that you have the opportunity to read a draft of the history but also that you have a say in the content. You will see that for reasons of anonymity and confidentiality, it has been written using the name (pseudonym) that you selected, and in some instances, a few key personal details have been altered. In a week, I will telephone you to ask if you are satisfied with the content or whether you would like to make some changes. You may wish to add some material, take out a section, or change some of the wording. Also, if you prefer, you can choose to omit the life history from the final thesis. If you would like to leave a message stating your preferences, please call the Stories of Singleness Study line on 416 946 3724 Extension 2. In the interests of time, if I am unable to reach you by phone and have not heard from you via the study line after a month, the life history will go into the thesis in its current form, but I hope that there will be an opportunity to discuss it with you over the telephone. Please feel free to contact my Thesis Supervisor Dr. Pia K. Kontos (416 597 3422 Extension 7609; [email protected]) or call the Office of Research Ethics at the University of Toronto (416 946 3273) if you have any undue concerns about this process. I look forward to speaking to you soon. Thank you once again for agreeing to take part in the Stories of Singleness Study. Yours sincerely, Rona M. Macdonald (Doctoral Candidate and Primary Investigator)