"Biological sex and gender could be different": A role for narrative in the production of social and linguistic differentiation

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Published: Oct 26, 2018
Keywords:
biological sex, gender, social identity, pragmatics, semantics

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Amy Sheldon
Mark Wicklund

Abstract

In everyday behavior speakers make connections between language use and social identities. Gal & Irvine (1995) assert that we often notice, rationalize, and justify these connections between linguistic form and social identities in a process that creates linguistic ideologies that purport to explain the source and meaning of the linguistic differences (p. 973). Judgments of the social groups are solidified in this process. Johnstone (2006) shows how narratives about encounters with linguistic difference influence the formation of vernacular norms and simultaneously serve in the process of linguistic ideological differentiation. Building on Johnstones analysis of narratives about dialect difference, we suggest that similarly structured narratives about encounters with semantic/pragmatic linguistic difference also serve in the circulation of ideological differentiation. Specifically, we use Johnstones framework to show how the kinds of linguistic ideologies that Gal & Irvine identified are shaped in relation to social and linguistic indexes of gender and sexual orientation.

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Issue
Vol. 8 No. 3 (2008): Gender in Language: Classic Questions, New Contexts
Section
Articles

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