Making Gender Relevant: Conversation Analysis and Gender Categories in Interaction

TLDR

The article engages with recent debates in *Discourse & Society* about conversation analysis and other discourse analytic approaches. The authors critically assess a conversation analytic approach to studying gender-language links from a feminist perspective, examining the compatibility of feminist and CA stances and questioning reliance on participants' gender orientations. They analyze talk from two discourse datasets, focusing on how participants orient to gender categories within interactions. The study finds that CA offers rich insights into discourse‑gender links but also exposes methodological gaps, challenges the assumption that gender orientations alone suffice, and highlights overlooked cultural and common‑sense resources.

Abstract

In this article, we critically evaluate a conversation analytic approach to the study of the links between gender and language from a feminist perspective. In so doing, we engage in the recent series of exchanges about conversation analysis (CA) and other strands of discourse analysis that have been published in Discourse & Society. We consider talk from two sets of discourse data, focusing on participants' orientation to gender categories as they crop up in the interactions. We suggest that a CA approach produces a rich understanding of the links between discourse and gender. However, we are critical of several, often unexamined aspects and conundrums of conversation analytic methodology. First, we consider the extent to which the `analytic stances' of feminism and conversation analysis are compatible. Second, we question whether, as Schegloff (1997) suggests, it is fruitful to rely on descriptions of and orientations to gender solely in participants' terms, as well as problematizing the notion of `orienting to gender' itself. Finally, while we propose CA is a useful tool for making claims about the relevance of gender in conversational interaction, and that such claims are grounded in speakers' orientations, we suggest that culture and common-sense knowledge, of both members and analysts, are largely unacknowledged and unexplicated resources in CA.