[Linganth] "Locker room talk"?

[Elizabeth Keating]

To add to this very interesting discussion:
Benjamin Bailey’s 2016 article “ Street remarks to women in five countries and four languages: Impositions of engagement and intimacy” in Sociolinguistic Studies is an interesting discussion about a similar case of contested interpretation of demeaning behavior towards women. He describes referential vs. interactional accounts of what the behavior (street talk) means and how people should be accountable for it. Men who engage in street remarks defend their behavior as benign  (e.g. I was just saying ‘hi’ or giving her a compliment), while women interpret the remarks as an imposition of intimacy (i.e. a first pair part greeting or compliment, with interactional preferences for what must come next, the second pair part, e.g. a greeting or acknowledgement of the compliment). Women regularly ignore the street remarks, and through their lack of response to greetings or compliments, treat them as outside of norms of civil interaction.

Best, Elizabeth


Elizabeth Keating
Professor, Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
2201 Speedway Stop C3200
Austin TX 78712
Phone 512-471-8518, office: SAC 4.156


From: Linganth [mailto:linganth-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of Deborah Jones
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 3:01 AM
To: Woolard, Kathryn <kwoolard at ucsd.edu>
Cc: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: [Linganth] "Locker room talk"?

Regarding the implications of talk of "locker room talk" for athletes, a couple years ago I taught a linguistic anthropology of "gossip, rumor, and lies" at University of Michigan. Among my students were four members of college football team, one of whom made a short presentation on "the locker room." His argument was that the locker room was a work space not entirely dissimilar to an office of cubicles: there were some corners in which you *could* have a more personal conversation, but you were still at work. According to my student, locker room talk was actually more likely to be about homework than about women. The real gossip, he claimed, came after practice, on the walk home. His teammates nodded emphatically in agreement.
I don't think the student was at all suggesting that the kind of talk often associated with locker rooms does not in fact take place among football players.  However, I found it intriguing that this football player, unprompted, chose to emphasize -- for the entire class -- that the locker room was a place for 'work' rather than 'gossip.'
-- Deborah --

On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 5:31 AM, Woolard, Kathryn <kwoolard at ucsd.edu<mailto:kwoolard at ucsd.edu>> wrote:
Hi all –

There’s a lot of expertise on gender and discourse on this listserv. Is anyone poised/ working on an op-ed piece and/or well-placed blogpost taking apart , for a general audience, the repeated invocation of “locker room talk” as a defense of bragging about sexual assault?

E.g., what/where is this canonical  “locker room” that excuses bragging about criminal sexual harassment,  in the long-established age of Title IX?  And, what are the implications of this genre defense for athletes in high schools and colleges, in addition to professional teams, in a time of such public concern about sexual assault on campuses and highly publicized incidents so often involving athletes?

I can’t write it, though I wish it could; I hope some of my talented, knowledgeable colleagues who can write for a broad public are working on it!

Thanks –
Kit


Kathryn A. Woolard, Professor
Department of Anthropology, 0532
UCSD
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0532
kwoolard at ucsd.edu<mailto:kwoolard at ucsd.edu>

New book:  https://global.oup.com/academic/product/singular-and-plural-9780190258627?q=woolard&lang=en&cc=us






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--
Deborah A. Jones
PhD Candidate
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Michigan
101 West Hall
1085 S. University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107 USA
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