5th BAAL GaLSig
Gender and Language
in the Public Space
Gender, language and leadership:
Exploring research dissemination
Louise Mullany
Aston University
20th September 2011
Event themes & questions
• Public space: Businesses and
Organisations
• Academic-practitioner relationships
• ‘Impact’, ‘end-user’/’community
engagement’
Background
• Business School-English Language
and Linguistics collaborations
• MSc Communication and
Entrepreneurship 2009-present
• Gender and language components
• Student-based consultancy work in
the local community
Current collaboration
Community-based consultancies
‘Leadership Communication: Presence and
Impact’: HR managers, training directors,
practitioners etc.
Gender and language components
- Organisational Communication
- Applied Linguistics
- Drama/Performance
Aims and objectives
Applied Linguistic ‘toolkits’
Reflection and consciousness raising
‘Self-awareness and communication
dynamics’
- Consciousness-raising
- Critical language awareness
- Workplace cultures
Aims and objectives
Applied linguist as problem solver (in a
responsive, consultancy mode)
Applied linguist as educator (in a proactive,
futurist mode)
Applied linguist as joint collaborator and coresearcher (in a consultative, reflexive
mode) Sarangi 2006: 201)
‘Effective linguistics’ Sarangi (2006: 206)
Aims and objectives
At some point, our research has to be able to travel out of the
academy in order to draw attention to and challenge
unquestioned practices that reify certain behaviours as being
morally or aesthetically better than others. We should never
cease to engage actively with and challenge assumptions about
gender norms and loudly draw attention to the way power,
privilege and social authority interact with and are naturalised
as properties of independent social categories.
Holmes and Meyerhoff (2003: 14)
Theory, methodology and practice (Mills and Mullany 2011)
Methods of delivery
3 stage process:
-pre-course preparation
- 2 day course
- Follow-up electronically & one-to-one
Portfolio pre-assembly & 360 degree feedback
Active learning sets
Consent for research of these resources
Adapting academic research
Advantages/uniqueness:
•Real world, non-scripted data from empirical
research
•Theory as practice
• Applied linguistic toolkits
Problems and Challenges
•Managing expectations
•Register and style
•Diagrammatic representations etc.
•Transcription presentations
•Decontextualisation of materials
•Political conflicts (Mullany 2008)
Adapting academic research
Theory as practice:
Communities of practice
Gender and language ideologies
Gender stereotyping
Gendered discourses
Gendered workplace cultures
The double bind: evaluations and judgements
Not just gender: Social class, race, ethnicity, culture,
regionality etc.
Adapting academic research
Applied linguistic toolkits:
Turn-taking
Conversational floors
Speech acts
Humour
Small talk
Politeness/relational work
Conflict management and conflict talk
Illustration of materials
•
•
•
•
Awareness raising
Own questions and issues
Tailored to particular organisations
Workplace cultures and communities of
practice (Holmes 2006; Schnurr 2009)
Discourse of gender difference, including
gender and language ideologies
(Sunderland 2004, Cameron 2007, 2009)
Communities of practice
a) Mutual engagement
b) A joint negotiated enterprise
c) A shared repertoire of negotiable
resources
Wenger (1998); Wenger, McDermott
and Snyder (2002)
Feminine
Masculine
 indirect
 direct
 conciliatory
 confrontational
 facilitative
 competitive
 collaborative
 autonomous
 minor contribution in public  dominates (public) talking
time
 supportive feedback
 aggressive interruptions
 person/process oriented
 task/outcome-oriented
 affectively oriented
 referentially oriented
Widely cited features of “feminine” and “masculine” interactional style
(Holmes and Stubbe 2003: 574)
Meeting data
Amy is explaining departmental policy to Kirsty and
Eddie
Amy: we’re going to be carrying it for more than
fifteen weeks=
Karen: =yeah it’s ten weeks for stock and it will be
calculated on how many sales within five weeks
Amy: No it’s longer than that Karen
Karen: Oh (.) right
Amy: It’s longer
Mullany (2007: 108)
Interview data
Karen: Amy’s subordinate:
Amy is a very strong character very straightforward erm
says what she means is very direct and it can be quite
an overpowering experience talking to her.
Mullany (2007: 171)
Kelly: Amy’s status equal:
Females are more caring generally (.) naturally more
nurturing they’ve definitely got certain qualities that
are different to men but some females can be real
tyrants
Mullany (2007: 172)
Identity construction:
Sex-role stereotypes
• The mother role
• The seductress
• The pet
• The iron maiden (Kanter 1977)
Revisited in Baxter (2010) and
Mullany (2010)
Two female account managers here are not slow to use the
combination of will and gender to good effect when they can
see an opportunity to do so and that’s usually in the direction
of a male person get what they want I’ve no doubt about it…
that’s causing erm resentment from other males you know
there are other account managers who were who were certainly
were at the same level as them who feel they’re dropping
behind because of the ability of the two females to exert their
will gender mix to good effect.
Mullany (2010: 188)
Identifying workplace
discourses
• Presentation of research examples +
participants identify the gendered
discourses in their own workplace
cultures
• Dominant discourse of gender
difference (Sunderland 2004)
Gendered discourses and
leadership
– Discourse of female
emotionality/irrationality
– Discourse of motherhood and family
– Dominant discourses of femininity:
Image and sexuality
– Resistant discourses
(Mullany 2007:169-204)
Gendered discourses and
leadership
Discourse of masculinisation
(Baxter 2003)
Gendered corporations (Baxter
2010):
Male-dominated
Gender divided
Gender multiple
Next steps
• Piloting of materials
• Working with individual
organisations
• Development of resources and
interdisciplinary collaboration
• Standalone leadership
communication and gender
course