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Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning: Linguistic Practice and Politics Sally Mcconnell-Ginet Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning Linguistic Practice and Politics

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Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning: Linguistic Practice and Politics Sally Mcconnell-Ginet Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning Linguistic Practice and Politics Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND GENDER Mary Bucholtz, General Editor Advisory Board Penelope Eckert, Stanford University Kira Hall, University of Colorado Janet Holmes, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Miyako Inoue, Stanford University Sally McConnell-Ginet, Cornell University Marcyliena Morgan, Stanford University Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University Ana Celia Zentella, University of California, San Diego Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse Edited by Mary Bucholtz, A. C. Liang, and Laurel A. Sutton Pronoun Envy: Literary Uses of Linguistic Gender Anna Livia Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People Edited by Shigeko Okamoto and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith Language and Women’s Place: Text and Commentaries Revised and Expanded Edition By Robin Tolmach Lakoff Edited by Mary Bucholtz From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women’s Hair Care Lanita Jacobs-Huey Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning: Linguistic Practice and Politics Sally McConnell-Ginet Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning Linguistic Practice and Politics Sally McConnell-Ginet 1 2011 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McConnell-Ginet, Sally. Gender, sexuality, and meaning: linguistic practice and politics / Sally McConnell-Ginet. p. cm.— (Studies in language and gender) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–518780–9; 978–0–19–518781–6 (pbk.) 1. Language and languages—Sex differences. 2. Semantics. 3. Semantics (Philosophy). I. Title. P120.S48M33 2010 306.44—dc22 2010013979 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Carl Foreword It is an honor to include this collection of Sally McConnell-Ginet’s essential feminist writings in Oxford University Press’s Studies in Language and Gender. The volume is not only an indispensable introduction to the key work of this critically important scholar, but it is also a veritable biog- raphy of language and gender studies over the last three decades and more. This is no accident, for McConnell-Ginet stands as one of the foun- dational fi gures of language and gender research. Her impact has been signifi cant both for her substantial contributions to the fi eld as well as for her status within linguistics as a formal linguist with an international rep- utation for her work in semantics, independent of (but by no means unre- lated to) her scholarship on language and gender. Her unwavering commitment to advancing feminist goals through her research is espe- cially remarkable given that linguistics has never been known for its pro- gressive views regarding gender. McConnell-Ginet’s close involvement in the development of language and gender studies highlights the important truth that a feminist perspective on language is not reserved for sociolin- guistics—the research area that has been most closely linked to gender issues—but can and should be brought to bear on every subfi eld of linguistics. McConnell-Ginet’s theoretical focus and acute political gaze have been strikingly consistent over the years. All of her feminist scholarship engages deeply with the issue of power, its diverse manifestations in language, and its consequences for the lives of women and men. Yet her research does not stop at identifying the workings of power. As an early feminist voice challenging essentialist perspectives on gender and language and advo- cating recognition of women’s linguistic and social agency, she paved the way for more nuanced and contextualized approaches that nevertheless remain centrally concerned with issues of equality and social justice. McConnell-Ginet is a generous and broad-minded scholar who does not impose artifi cial boundaries in her pursuit of interesting and impor- tant questions. Her analytic scope ranges widely in these chapters, from lexical semantics to prosody to variationist sociolinguistics. What draws together this rich and diverse body of scholarship is her attention to the question of meaning, which has emerged as the key issue for much con- temporary language and gender scholarship. The bulk of McConnell- Ginet’s research—both in language and gender studies and in formal Foreword vii linguistics—focuses on semantics, or the study of linguistic meaning. Her feminist explorations of this issue demonstrate that there is no such thing as “mere semantics.” To begin with, she makes clear that semantic meaning is by no means a straightforward matter, for the meanings of words, let alone entire utterances, are always variable and often contested. The fol- lowing pages document numerous instances of struggles and debates over what was said and what was meant, from the defi nition of queer to the meaning of gender itself. Meaning, in short, matters. At the same time, McConnell-Ginet extends her consideration of meaning beyond the traditional mandate of formal semantics to incorpo- rate the social and stylistic meanings that are projected through language use. This innovative move allows her to take account of contextual fac- tors—including gender and sexuality, to be sure, but also race, age, class, and so on, as well as more interactionally based issues like the social rela- tionship between the speakers and what they are trying to accomplish through their talk, as well as the larger social practices in which they engage. Readers will fi nd the roots of this perspective in McConnell- Ginet’s earliest writings on gender and its fullest development in the work that resulted from her long-term intellectual partnership with Penelope Eckert. These scholars’ collaborative investigations of the relationship of gender, social meaning, and style are among the most infl uential theoret- ical contributions within language, gender, and sexuality studies, providing a fi rm foundation for the exciting new social-constructionist direction the fi eld began to take in the 1990s. Their theoretical insights continue to bear fruit, informing the latest research developments. The following chapters encompass some of McConnell-Ginet’s best- known work on language, gender, and sexuality—such as her ground- breaking essay on gender and intonation, which fi rst appeared in the premiere feminist journal Signs and which opened the gate to a now- thriving fi eld of research—as well as some chapters that will be new to many readers, like her thoughtful discussion of how linguistic, literary, and poetic views of language can play complementary roles in understanding gender. Her most recent work incorporates issues of sexuality into her longstanding concern with gender, providing deep insights into how the large-scale cultural discourses that ideologically structure social systems begin with the simplest and most powerful of building blocks, words and meanings. It is a joy to read the work of a writer who communicates so clearly and engagingly about complex ideas and who is not afraid to bring her personal voice and perspective to her academic writing. As a result, Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning is sure to fi nd a wide and appreciative audience. Language and gender specialists will not only fi nd great utility in the book’s theoretical focus on meaning as a productive unifying theme for the entire fi eld, but will also enjoy reacquainting themselves with their favorite pieces and discovering those they may not have encountered pre- viously. Meanwhile, their students as well as their colleagues in other viii Foreword fi elds—both nonlinguists and nonfeminists—will learn a great deal from the volume, which provides an excellent introduction to the key issues and developments of language and gender studies as a research area. McConnell-Ginet has been instrumental in bringing the study of lan- guage and gender and, more recently, the study of language and sexuality into the mainstream of the discipline as a course instructor on those topics at the biennial Linguistic Society of America Institute. And her stature as a former president of the LSA has lent important credibility to a small subfi eld that has often been stigmatized and marginalized within linguis- tics. Her impact on language and gender studies is due in no small part to her unfl agging efforts to work from within established institutional struc- tures to effect meaningful change, whether this means pushing formal linguists to consider the social world of language use and language users or urging feminist researchers to offer accounts of gender and language that capture the full complexity of both phenomena. It is telling, too, that change is at the center of McConnell-Ginet’s intellectual and political enterprise. Her work paints a portrait of gender and sexuality as the foundation not merely for social dominance but also for individual agency and collective transformation. By her own invaluable defi nition, Sally McConnell-Ginet is the quin- tessential feminist scholar, whose “scholarship informs feminism and fem- inism informs scholarship” (chapter 3). Both her groundbreaking scholarship and her passionate feminism have helped to bring language, gender, and sexuality studies into being and have helped to make it the dynamic and robust fi eld that it is today.
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