gendered attributes query

[Susanna Rance]

Dear Flingsters,

A query from a long-time but lately 'passive' list member, a feminist sociologist of UK origin researching Bolivian doctors' changing discourses concerning abortion.

I've been analysing the transcript of a hospital meeting between a male gynaecologist, his female boss, a female nurse and myself. In the initial part of the meeting there was a fairly tense exchange - with the first two speakers as main protagonists - in which normative arguments concerning postabortion care were effectively challenged with recourse to technical justifications. 

After this, 'repair' of this threat to the norms took place, with the four of us colluding to restore a spirit of constructive contribution to humanisation of care provided (also an official agenda). 

Language used by all in the initial 'conflict' discussion tended to be formal, assertive, categorical, impersonal  features characterised as stereotypically 'masculine'. In the later 'consensus' exchange, we all adopted a more informal, tentative, adjectival and personalised style of expression - which could be characterised as 'feminine'.

I don't want to get fixed into binaries, or into how men and women as such might talk differently. My interest is in the differential use and value attributed by any and all speakers (including myself) to certain gendered linguistic styles.

Please can you help me with references? Any available on Internet or in electronic versions I could access by e-mail would be  especially appreciated, since I don't have access to adequate libraries here in Bolivia. 

Thanks and greetings,
Susanna  



Susanna Rance
<srance at ceibo.entelnet.bo>
Fax (591-2) 485621
Tel. (591-2) 484060
Cel. 015-43970
Casilla 10640 
La Paz, Bolivia
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