Positioning Gender in Discourse: A Feminist Methodology

Positioning Gender in Discourse introduces a newly emerging approach to the analysis of talk. Feminist Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA) offers a means of analyzing the ways in which speakers construct their gendered identities within a complex web of power relations. The FPDA approach challenges the traditional feminist view that females are often disempowered within mixed-sex settings. The FPDA approach to analyzing talk shows that both male and female speakers are constantly shifting between positions of powerfulness and powerlessness - even within the same conversation. The methodology is demonstrated through a study of teenagers' conversations in class and a study of senior managers' discussions in business meetings, concluding with suggestions that while female speakers are often 'silenced' by dominant social discourses, they are far from uniformly powerless.