Date: 04-Aug-2006
From: Charlotte Brammer <cdbrammesamford.edu>
Subject: On Language and Sexual Politics
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-705.html
AUTHOR: Deborah CameronTITLE: On Language and Sexual PoliticsPUBLISHER: RoutledgeYEAR: 2006ISBN: 0-415-37344-1
Charlotte Brammer, Department of Communication Studies, Samford University,Birmingham, Alabama, USA
In this text, Deborah Cameron identifies major themes and positions thatconnect eleven previously published articles and formal speeches. Readerswho are familiar with Cameron's forthright style will appreciate herdirectness in introducing the four parts of the text as well as the briefcontexts she provides for each article and recorded speech. Asrepresentative of much of Cameron's work, the articles contained in thistext are written for sociolinguists, applied linguists, feminists, andanyone else who is interested in women's studies, cultural studies, andpolitical language and culture. Her candor makes even complex argumentsaccessible.
SUMMARY
In the introduction to ON LANGUAGE AND SEXUAL POLITICS, Cameron assertsthat her work ''treats the relationship between language and genderprimarily as a political issue'' and through it, she ''attempts to understandthe role of language in the conflicts and power struggles that shaperelations between men and women'' (p. 1). While acknowledging sometheoretical kinship to dominance approaches and social constructionism,Cameron emphasizes her critiques of various aspects of these paradigms andfocuses the discussion on gender relations, particularly critiquing the''prevailing social arrangements between men and women'' (p. 2). Power is animportant factor in these socially constructed arrangements. Language isboth ''the medium in which many conflicts about the nature and properrelationship of men and women are played out'' and ''a focus for conflict inits own right'' (p. 3). Cameron contextualizes her work both historicallyand socially, noting that feminism is in a ''waning rather than a waxingphase'' and explaining how this shift is evident in her writing in much thesame way that ''much of the meaning of any individual's work lies in thehistorical conditions that produced it'' (pp. 8-9).
The first section of the text, The Sexual Politics of Representation,contains two previously published articles and ''an edited version of apresentation'' for the 2004 Conference of the International Gender andLanguage Association. In the introduction to the first article, ''Sexism andsemantics'' (originally published in RADICAL PHILOSOPHY in 1984), Cameronexplains her disagreement with Dale Spender's (1980) ''Man Made Language'' inwhich, according to Cameron, he argues ''that the meanings encoded inlanguage reflected the experience and world-view of men rather than women''but confesses to a somewhat softer view of coded sexism in language, achange resulting primarily from developments in pragmatic approaches tolinguistics ''which do not reduce interpretation to decoding'' (p. 13). Sheis also quite direct in reasserting her belief that ''Without a satisfactorytheory of how meanings are constructed and reproduced, practical proposalsto deal with sexist language will themselves be unsatisfactory'' (p. 13). Inintroducing ''Non-sexist language: lost in translation,'' Cameronacknowledges criticism for the article's somewhat harsh and aggressive tonebut is rather unapologetic, explaining her tone as appropriate because, asshe says, ''I was writing for a publication that did not require me to mince[words], but it was also because I did not want to be seen as a hypocrite''(p. 20). Her tone is no less direct in her criticism of advertisingstandards, ''Language, sexism and advertising standards.'' She expresses herdispleasure in the lack of progress feminists have made in media criticism,concluding finally that current advertising standards continue to be ''morein line with a conservative social and sexual agenda whose values areheteronormative, patriarchal and phallocentric'' (p. 42).
Part II: Power and difference also consists of three earlier publications.The first article, ''The form and function of tag questions,'' was writtenwith Fiona McAlinden and Kathy O'Leary in 1988. This article is one of theprimary critiques of Robin Lakoff's LANGUAGE AND WOMAN'S PLACE (1975). Inre-publishing it here, Cameron reaffirms her position that ''there is seldomif ever a one-to-one mapping between linguistic form and communicativefunction'' (p.46). In her introduction to ''Performing gender identity: Youngmen's talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity'' (1997),Cameron points out the deficiency in linguistic studies of middle-agedmales. In this discussion of gender performance, as first introduced myJudith Butler (1990), Cameron emphasizes the importance of context: ''Peopledo perform gender differently in different contexts, and do sometimesbehave in ways we would normally associate with the 'other' gender'' (p.64). ''Is there any ketchup, Vera?: Gender, power and pragmatics'' (1998)critiques Deborah Tannen's use of difference theory in YOU JUST DON'TUNDERSTAND (1990) and, importantly, also criticizes dominance theory,positing instead that the ''key ingredient is conflict, not just in theabstract sense that two groups objectively have conflicting interests, butin the more concrete sense that subjective awareness of these conflictinginterests has caused individuals within a society to diverge in theiractual beliefs about gender relations'' (p. 85).
Ideologies of language and gender, Part III of the text, addressespervasive beliefs about language and gender that permeate popular culture.The first article, ''Verbal hygiene for women: Linguistics misapplied?''(1994) questions the ''misapplication'' of linguistics, primarily as a way ofcountering the widespread belief that women must talk more ''assertively'' ifthey are to be successful. In contrast, ''Styling the worker: Gender and thecommodification of language in the global service economy'' (2000), Cameronexpresses concern over the privileging of speech characteristics oftenassociated with women (expressiveness, questioning, etc.), suggesting thatthe ''degendering'' of ''women's language'' may simply mean a continueddevaluation of service work and service workers. ''Men are from Earth, womenare from Earth'' (2003) was a speech delivered at Leeds University's Centrefor International Gender Studies and addresses John Gray's popular pressMEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS (1992). In this written speech,Cameron clearly articulates the underlying premise for much of her work,namely, ''any difference in men's and women's ways of communicating is notnatural and inevitable, but cultural and political'' (p, 145).
Part IV: Language, gender, and sexuality has two articles. ''Naming ofParts: Gender, culture and terms for the penis among American collegestudents'' (1992) is, in Cameron's terms, ''a modest contribution to thelong-standing debate about the relationship between reality and itslinguistic representation'' (p. 150) and concludes that while men use termsthat imply ''masculinity as dominance, femininity as passivity, and sex asconquest,'' women ''may reject certain metaphors which the men endorse, but[they] offer no real alternatives'' (p. 162). For Cameron, creating newmetaphors are needed to reframe the political aspects of language andgender. This theme is revisited, albeit for a different topic, in the finalpaper, a speech she delivered at the University of Washington in Seattle,2003. Appropriately titled ''Straight talking: The sociolinguistics ofheterosexuality.'' Cameron posits that ''it is important for researchinformed by a radical sexual politics to focus critically on mainstream ormajority norms and practices… [in order to challenge] the cultural tendencyto exclude, devalue and demonize'' (p. 166).
EVALUATION
This text provides a strong argument for both the depth and breadth ofCameron's scholarship. Her rich descriptions situate the articles andspeeches well and will be invaluable to researchers who are interested ingendered language. The text's organization works to tie her earlyscholarship to her more recent publications and to connect the personallanguage of individuals(from Part I) to the current and meta-discoursediscussions of the politics of gendered/ sexual language. On a practicalside, publications prior to 1992 are not readily available via the web, andthis text will make several articles and certainly the speeches accessibleto researchers. This is important because Cameron's work is important foranyone seeking to understand traditional and current theories and trends(and criticisms) in the study of gendered language and politics.
REFERENCES
Gray, John (1992). MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS. New York:HarperCollins.
Lakoff, Robin (1975). LANGUAGE AND WOMAN'S PLACE. New York: Harper and Row.
Spender, Dale (1980). MAN MADE LANGUAGE. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Tannen, Deborah (1990). YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND: MEN AND WOMEN INCONVERSATION. New York: Morrow.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr. Charlotte Brammer is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies,Howard College of Arts and Sciences, and Director of Writing Across theCurriculum, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama. She received herPh.D. in English/Applied Linguistics from the University of Alabama. Herresearch interests include writing pedagogy, professional communication,and sociolinguistics.
|