Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:57:37.481Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The balancing act: Framing gendered parental identities at dinnertime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2008

SHARI KENDALL
SHARI KENDALL
Affiliation:
Department of English, Texas A&M University, 227 Blocker Building, TAMU 4227, College Station, TX 77843-4227, skendall@tamu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A framing analysis of family interaction during dinnertime demonstrates that the mother and father linguistically create gendered identities through the number and types of discursive positions they take up within the frames they create and maintain. The mother accomplishes numerous tasks and activities by taking up multiple discursive positions within several interactional frames, whereas the father takes up fewer positions within fewer frames. Furthermore, the positions they take up are gendered, reflecting a sex-based division of labor, even though both parents work full-time outside the home. Through these gendered patterns of participation, the parents create gendered parental identities and negotiate their parental authority with their daughter and with each other. The attention to speech acts, footings, positioning, and framing reveals the intricate and dynamic details of interaction. Furthermore, this discourse model captures and explicates the process through which individuals create gendered identities as they enact and constitute other social identities.

Keywords

genderfamilyframingpositioninginteractional sociolinguisticsdiscourse analysis
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 539 - 568
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abu-Akel, Ahmad (2002). The psychological and social dynamics of topic performance in family dinnertime conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 34:1787–1806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, John (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.Google Scholar
Beals, Diane E., & Snow, Catherine E. (1994). “Thunder is when the angels are upstairs bowling”: Narratives and explanations at the dinner table. Journal of Narrative and Life History 4:331–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, Robert J., & Wood, Denis (1993). The dialogic socialization of aggression in a family's court of reason and inquiry. Discourse Processes 16:341–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, Suzanne M.; Milkie, Melissa A.; Sayer, Liana C.; & Robinson, John P. (2000). Is anyone doing the housework?: Trends in the gender division of household labor. Social Forces 79:191–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1990). “You don't touch lettuce with your fingers”: Parental politeness in family discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 14:259–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1997). Dinner talk: Cultural patterns of sociability and socialization in family discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brumark, Åsa (2004). Reconsidering comments in family dinner conversations. Rask 20:45–93.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary (1999). Bad examples: Transgression and progress in language and gender studies. In Bucholtz, Mary, Liang, A. C., & Sutton, Laurel A. (eds.), Reinventing identities: The gendered self in discourse, 3–24. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, & Hall, Kira (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7:585–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buunk, Bram P.; Kluwer, Esther S.; Schuurman, Mieks K.; & Siero, Frans W. (2000). The division of labor among egalitarian and traditional women: Differences in discontent, social comparison, and false consensus. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 30:759–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (1992). “Not gender difference but the difference gender makes”: Explanation in research on sex and language. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 94:13–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (1997). Theoretical debates in feminist linguistics: Questions of sex and gender. In Wodak, Ruth (ed.), Gender and discourse, 21–36. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coltrane, Scott (2000). Research on household labor: Modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family 62:1208–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Bronwyn, & Harré, Rom (1990). Positioning: Conversation and the production of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 20:43–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Geer, Boel (2004). “Don't say it's disgusting!” Comments on socio-moral behavior in Swedish families. Journal of Pragmatics 36:1705–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeFrancisco, Victoria (1991). The sounds of silence: How men silence women in marital relations. Discourse & Society 2:413–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul, & Heritage, John (1992). Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In Drew, Paul & Heritage, John (eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992). Communities of practice: Where language, gender, and power all live. In Hall, Kira, Bucholtz, Mary, & Moonwomon, Birch (eds.), Locating power: Proceedings of the second Berkeley women and language conference, 89–99. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1999). New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society 28:185–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan; Guo, Jiansheng; & Lampert, Martin (1990). Politeness and persuasion in children's control acts. Journal of Pragmatics 14:307–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan; O'Connor, Catherine; & Rosenberg, Jarrett (1984). Language and power in the family. In Kramarae, Cheris, Schultz, Muriel, & O'Barr, William M. (eds.), Language and power, 116–135. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Feiring, Candace, & Lewis, Michael (1987). The ecology of some middle-class families at dinner. International Journal of Behavioral Development 10:377–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishman, Pamela (1983). Interaction: The work women do. In Thorne, Barrie, Kramarae, Chris, & Henley, Nancy (eds.), Language, gender and society, 89–101. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1981). Footing. In his Forms of talk, 124–59. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1997). The time bind: When work becomes home and home becomes work. New York: Metropolitan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HochschildArlie Russell, with Machung, Anne Arlie Russell, with Machung, Anne (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. New York: Avon.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara (1996). The linguistic individual: Self-expression in language and linguistics. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, Shari (2003). Creating gendered demeanors of authority at work and at home. In Holmes, Janet & Meyerhoff, Miriam (eds.), The handbook of language and gender, 600–23. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, Shari (2006). “Honey, I'm home!”: Framing in family dinnertime homecomings. Text & Talk 26:411–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotthoff, Helga (2006). Gender and humor: The state of the art. Journal of Pragmatics 38:4–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langenhove, Luk van, & Harré, Rom (1999). Introducing positioning theory. In Harré, Rom & van Langenhove, Luk (eds.), Positioning theory, 14–31. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lee, Yun-Suk, & Waite, Linda J. (2005). Husbands' and wives' time spent on housework: A comparison of measures. Journal of Marriage and Family 67:328–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Michael, & Feiring, Candace (1982). Some American families at dinner. In Laosa, Luis M. & Sigel, Irving E. (eds.), The family as a learning environment, vol. 1, 115–45. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorber, Judith (1994). Daily bread: Gender and domestic labor. In Paradoxes of gender, 172–93. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Morin, Richard, & Rosenfeld, Megan (1998). With more equity, more sweat. Reality check: The gender revolution series. Washington Post, March 22, A1, A17.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor (1992). Indexing gender. In Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, & Taylor, Carolyn (1992). Family narrative as political activity. Discourse & Society 3:301–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, & Taylor, Carolyn (1995). The “father knows best” dynamic in dinnertime narratives. In Hall, Kira & Bucholtz, Mary (eds.), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self, 97–120. New York & London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Paugh, Amy L. (2005). Learning about work at dinnertime: Language socialization in dual-earner American families. Discourse & Society 16:55–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perlmann, Rivka (1984). Variations in socialization styles: Family talk at the dinner table. Dissertation, Boston University, Boston.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmel, Georg (1961). The sociology of sociability. In Parsons, Talcott, Shils, Edward, Naegele, Kaspar D., & Pitts, Jesse R. (eds.), Theories of society: Foundations of modern sociological theory, 157–63. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Stake, Robert E. (1994). Case studies. In Denzin, Norman K. & Lincoln, Yvonna S. (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research, 236–47. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1990). You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (ed.) (1993). Framing in discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1996). The sex-class linked framing of talk at work. In Gender and discourse, 195–221. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (2003). Power maneuvers or connection maneuvers?: Ventriloquizing in family interaction. In Tannen, Deborah & Alatis, James E. (eds.), Linguistics, language, and the real world: Discourse and beyond, 50–62. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah, & Wallat, Cynthia (1982). A sociolinguistic analysis of multiple demands on the pediatrician in doctor/mother/child interaction. In Di Pietro, Robert (ed.), Linguistics and the professions, 39–50. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah, & Wallat, Cynthia (1993). Interactive frames and knowledge schemas in interaction: Examples from a medical examination/interview. In Tannen, Deborah (ed.), Framing in discourse, 57–76. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Carolyn E. (1995). “You think it was a fight?”: Co-constructing (the struggle for) meaning, face, and family in everyday narrative activity. Research on Language and Social Interaction 28:283–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tryggvason, Marja-Terttu (2004). Comparison of topic organization in Finnish, Swedish–Finnish, and Swedish family discourse. Discourse Processes 37:225–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varenne, Hervé (1992). Ambiguous harmony: Family talk in America. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Waite, Linda J., & Nielsen, Mark (2001). The rise of the dual-earner family: 1963–1997. In Hertz, Rosanna & Marshall, Nancy L. (eds.), Working families: The transformation of the American home, 23–41. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Watts, Richard J. (1991). Power in family discourse. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Joan (2000). Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Don H., & West, Candace (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation. In Thorne, Barrie & Henley, Nancy (eds.), Language and sex: Difference and dominance, 105–29. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar