‘I've got a daughter now man it's clean man’: Heteroglossic and intersectional constructions of fatherhood in the spontaneous talk of a group of young southeast London men

Abstract

This article provides an insight into the heteroglossic and intersectional construction of fatherhood in the self-recorded, spontaneous talk of a group of young men from ethnically and racially mixed working-class backgrounds in southeast London. By adopting an interactional sociolinguistic approach, informed by Bakhtin's (1981, 1984, 1986) work on dialogicality and Tannen's (1989, 2004) notion of constructed dialogue, this article explores the young men's use of voices for their positioning in a range of fathering discourses which are shaped by and shape intersectional and hegemonic masculinities. Intersections of race, ethnicity, and social class inform many of the young men's positions, especially in their talk about the influences of hip hop on their children. This polyphony of voices allows the group to balance traditional discourses of fathers as providers, protectors, and moral guides with contemporary models of intimate and involved fatherhood, but also competing discourses of virile masculinity and bad boy identity. (Dialogicality, discourse, ethnicity, fatherhood, hegemony, heteroglossia, intersectionality, identity, masculinity, race, social class, voice)*

INTRODUCTION

The understanding of fatherhood as constructed, both by society at large and fathers themselves, is becoming more established across an increasing body of scholarship from varying disciplines. Whilst the twenty-first-century model of the ‘intimate father’ (Dermott 2008) or ‘involved father’ (Miller 2010) has frequently been linked to middle-class masculinity (Dermott & Miller 2015), working class fatherhood is less studied and more pathologized (Maxwell 2018). The same holds true for Black fatherhood, which, as Wilson (2018) argues, is frequently linked to stereotypes of ‘deadbeat’ or absent fatherhood, associated with non-residential and low-income fathers.

Although some of the more recent work has provided fathers with the opportunity to position themselves or reflect on the way they are being positioned in interview studies and focus groups (e.g. Wortham & Gadsden 2006; Dermott 2008; Maxwell 2018), there is a dearth of research on spontaneous fatherhood talk which this article seeks to address. Sociolinguistic research on fatherhood remains rare, particularly in the UK, and pertains mostly to discourse analytic work exploring media representations of fatherhood (Alexander & McMullen 2015; Hunter, Riggs, & Feo 2019; Sunderland 2000) or research on family talk (Ochs & Taylor 1995; Tannen, Kendall, & Gordon 2007). This article provides an interactional sociolinguistic exploration of the intersectional and heteroglossic (Bakhtin 1981) constructions of fatherhood in the spontaneous, self-recorded talk of a group of four young men from ethnically and racially mixed working-class backgrounds in southeast London. Invoking and evaluating various voices constitutes one of the central ways in which the four young men perform fatherhood in numerous instances of ‘constructed dialogue’ (Tannen 1989), positioning themselves and one another in a range of different discourses, including the father as provider and the intimate/involved father.

Some of the existing cross-disciplinary work on fatherhood recognises the importance of considering the ‘complexity and diversity [of how] fatherhood is actually lived and experienced’ (Gillies 2009:50), considering the relevance of class, age, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion as well as different family settings (see Dermott & Miller 2015:185 for a summary). The present study seeks to contribute to this body of work by providing a unique insight into a rare body of data consisting of the spontaneous fatherhood talk of young men in southeast London.

Whilst discourse analytic studies investigating the plurality and intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989, 1991; Levon 2015) of masculinities tend to focus on gender and sexuality as Milani (2015:16) highlights, the current article foregrounds intersections of gender, race, and social class. These become apparent in the different discourses of fatherhood voiced by the young men in the group as they balance performances of involved fatherhood which counter raced and classed stereotypes of ‘absent fathers’ (Wallace 2017; Maxwell 2018; Wilson 2018) with their experience of financial hardship and performances of ‘bad boy’ masculinity/virility (Maxwell 2018). The heteroglossic and intersectional nature of the young men's construction of fatherhood, which is at the centre of this article, does not only offer an important counterbalance to public, media, and policy discourses on fatherhood, but also captures the interplay between ‘hegemonic masculinity at the macro level and men's practice and constructions of sense-making masculinities at the micro level’ (Christensen & Qvotrup Jensen 2014:62; Milani 2015:15–16).

The heterogeneity and intersectionality of fatherhood positionings in the data at the same time captures the complexity of hegemonic masculinity/ies as, for example, when the group distance responsible fatherhood from hip-hop masculinity, despite the latter being central to many other aspects of the group's identifications as Black or mixed-race men in an ethnically diverse friendship group (see Pichler & Williams 2016). Whilst the group's alignment with the discourse of caring/involved fatherhood achieves some alignment with what has been described as changing hegemonic masculinity (e.g. Johansson & Klinth 2008), the financial hardship that surfaces in much of the talk gives an insight into the challenges that the young men's raced and classed positions entail, particularly with respect to their responsibilities as fathers. As Christensen, Larsen and Qvotrup Jensen (2017:172) argue ‘intersectional theory can help us grasp how being a man can be a category of disempowerment, marginalization and lack of privilege rather than a privileged position’.

This article first offers an overview of fatherhood studies across disciplines, paying particular attention to research on classed and mixed ethnic and/or Black fatherhood. This overview is followed by a discussion of relevant scholarship on ‘voice’, with particular attention paid to the work of Bakhtin (1984, 1986), Tannen (1989), and Maybin (2006). Participants and the background to the study are introduced before the data analysis in the main section of this article.

FATHERHOOD STUDIES

Early work on social policy and social work concerned itself predominantly with the reasons for and impact of ‘absent fathers’ on children and families (Williams 1998). Recent research suggests that contemporary fathers have become more ‘involved’ with their children by spending more time with them, although this ‘intensification’ of parental activities and practices is also seen for mothers (Dermott & Miller 2015:184). This recent scholarship tends to be united in its understanding of fatherhood as constructed, highlighting the role of discourse, either in men's own positioning as fathers, or in the construction of fatherhood in media or social policy discourses (Lupton & Barclay 1997; Sunderland 2000; Datta 2007; Alexander & McMullen 2015; Dermott & Miller 2015; Maxwell 2018; Wilson 2018; Hunter et al. 2019). The question of what constitutes ‘good fatherhood’ has been at the centre of attention, with studies being concerned with the extent to which the significance of the father-as-breadwinner and other traditional roles foregrounding discipline and moral guidance have been superseded by the model of nurturing and emotionally ‘involved’ fatherhood (e.g. Johansson & Klinth 2008; Johansson 2011; Dermott & Miller 2015; Maxwell 2018).

Fatherhood and social class

The discourse of involved fatherhood is deeply classed, pathologizing poor and/or socially excluded ‘deadbeat fathers’, who are positioned as perpetuating deprivation and being in need of parenting support to become appropriately involved with their children (Gillies 2009:52).

Young fathers, ‘absent’ fathers, unmarried and unemployed fathers were particular targets for criticism… This led to a widespread characterisation in the UK of disadvantaged fathers as either ‘absent’ or ‘feckless’ fathers: irresponsible and lacking in commitment to their children… In the USA, this movement characterised these fathers as ‘deadbeat dads’. (Maxwell 2018:22)

Studies investigating men's own positioning in relation to this discourse of involved fatherhood have largely focused on middle-class men. While Johansson & Klinth (2008:42) argue that in Scandinavian countries fatherhood, as well as ‘the image of contemporary hegemonic masculinity [are] gradually changing’, Plantin (2007) sees the new discourses of involved fatherhood at odds with hegemonic masculinity for working class fathers in the UK, and Datta's (2007:111) focus group study in Botswana found little change to ideologies of gendered parenting roles, with fathers still attributing high value to the role of the disciplinarian. Gillies's work shows that both working- and middle-class fathers are involved with their children; however, ‘middle-class fatherhood is often publicly visible, associated with activities outside the home… In contrast, working-class fathering is considerably less prominent although in no way less significant’ (Gillies 2009:55).

Maxwell's (2018) interview study with working class, disadvantaged Glaswegian men found that her participants voiced a range of discourses, indexing the heterogeneity of working-class fatherhood. Maxwell's study did not confirm that the contemporary dominant model of the involved father was regarded ‘with suspicion and as middle-class ideals’ (2018:240). All men in her sample aligned themselves with discourses of involved fatherhood, highlighting the importance of showing affection, forging close bonds, making time for children and taking on care roles, albeit seen as assisting mothers rather than matching those of mothers (2018:153).

Maxwell also found that the men in her sample voiced more traditional discourses of responsible fatherhood, positioning themselves as providers, protectors, and teachers or moral guides, with only some fathers in the most financially unstable positions, dismissing the importance of provision altogether (2018:172).

At times discourses of involved fatherhood stood in opposition to a discourse that Maxwell associated with constructions of ‘bad boy’ masculinity, which celebrated ‘freedom from responsibility, including sexual freedom and displaying physical toughness and aggression’ (2018:156–59). The latter discourse tended to be restricted to the few men in Maxwell's sample who were not in stable/committee relationships and/or were non-residential fathers. Although this discourse, and many others, also appears in the talk of the young men in the present study, it cannot be attributed to non-residential status, nor does the latter and/or relationship to the child's mother allow for any conclusions about the extent to which involved fatherhood positions are adopted, as other studies have claimed.

Black fatherhood

Until recently, Black fatherhood was vastly under-researched, even more so in the US than in the UK (Gadsden, Wortham, & Turner 2003:382; Wallace 2017:598). In both countries Black fatherhood continues to be associated with discourses of the absent or deadbeat father in media and policy representations, despite being challenged by recent scholarship. This work highlights the involvement of Black fathers, explains reasons for absences that include social injustice, economic marginalisation, incarceration, and institutional racism, and disentangles notions of ‘absence’ from ‘being uninvolved’ (Jordan-Zachery 2007; Paschal, Lewis-Moss, & Hsiao 2011; Wallace 2017; Wilson 2018).

Research with very young African American fathers highlights the significance of age in the study of (Black) fatherhood. Paschal and colleagues’ (2011) interview study with thirty fourteen-to-nineteen-year-old US fathers showed that whilst the majority of the teenagers identified with the role of the provider (although in effect this was mostly seen as ‘helping out’ the mothers), only the older teenage fathers identified equally strongly with conceptualisations of fathers as nurturers, signalling that ‘age’ is an important component in understanding young men's conceptualisations of fatherhood.

Wilson (2018) explores fathers’ reactions to media representations of African American fatherhood. The fathers in her study distanced themselves from the stereotype of the absent father, aligning themselves instead with both the provider and the nurturer role. Race, racism, and oppression were highlighted by most of the fathers as shaping both portrayals and experiences of Black fatherhood (Wilson 2018:113). The participants also highlighted some fathering practices and discourses which they felt to be distinctive of them and their communities, such as ‘social fathering, which includes other men such as uncles, godfathers, brothers, cousins, stepfathers, or ministers in a child's life who take on a fatherly role’ (Wilson 2018:17, 85–86).

Gadsden and colleagues (2003) and Wortham & Gadsden (2006) explore the lived experiences of young, unmarried urban African American fathers. The findings align the young men with traditional discourses of fathers as providers, of both financial and psychological support, as well as current discourses of involved fatherhood, thus countering stereotypes about Black urban fathers. Interviews with the fathers were aimed at allowing fathers to tell their own stories about their childhood experiences, their transition to fatherhood, and their current lives and experiences as fathers (Gadsden et al. 2003:389).

My own article shares the interest in the voices and constructions of young urban fatherhood which emerged in Gadsden's work. With the help of microlinguistic transcriptions and an interactional sociolinguistic approach (e.g. Gumperz 1982), I present here a fine-grained analysis of voices and voice changes in my data, linking them to an analysis of discourses/ideologies of fatherhood and masculinity. My analysis provides an insight into how fatherhood is constructed spontaneously in the friendship talk and banter of four young men, rather than in an interview context. This naturally occurring talk does not only capture the significance that the topics of children and fatherhood play for the young men, but it also provides evidence of the polyphonic and dialogical nature of spontaneous fatherhood performances, which need to be understood in the context of intersectional and hegemonic masculinities.

VOICE

In linguistics, Bakhtin's notions of voice and dialogue have informed different strands of work. On one side there is a considerable body of research exploring the relationship between voice quality (and other prosodic features) and social meaning (stances, personas, etc.), for example, Agha (2004), Podesva (2007), and Sicoli (2019). On the other side there is interactional sociolinguistic and/or discourse analytic work on voices, including the present article, which does not foreground a phonological assessment of voicing contrasts. Instead, this work is concerned with the ways in which speakers evaluate and position themselves in relation to the voices they invoke (Tannen 1989, 2004; Maybin 2006; Pichler 2009; Bodó, Szabó, & Turai 2019). Although many of these linguistic studies apply Bakhtin's conceptualisations to spoken language, definitions of ‘voice’ and foci of analysis still vary, with some focusing predominantly on quotations and dialogue (e.g. Tannen), and others blurring the distinction between ‘voice’ and ‘discourse’ (e.g. Bodó et al. 2019).

Drawing on the work of Voloshinov and Bakhtin, Tannen (1989:101) argues that the quoted words do not ‘belong’ to the original speaker any longer, but instead have been appropriated by the speaker who is repeating them. Tannen therefore prefers to conceptualise reported speech as constructed dialogue, even in the case of so-called ‘direct reported speech’. This is not only because often the dialogue did not take place as reported, or at all, but also because ‘uttering dialogue in conversation is as much a creative act as is the creation of dialogue in fiction and drama’ (Tannen 1989:101). Tannen's constructed dialogue includes several subcategories, many of which also appear in the data extracts in the present article, such as ‘dialogue representing what wasn't said’, ‘dialogue constructed by a listener’, and hybrids labelled ‘fadeout, fadein’ where ‘an indirect quote fades into a direct one’ (1989:117). The extracts of spontaneous talk presented in this article support Tannen's argument in favour of conceptualising reported speech as constructed dialogue. However, the terms ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ reporting shall continue to be used whenever it is necessary to make a grammatical distinction in a discussion of specific examples of constructed dialogue, as in Tannen's explanation of fadeout/fadein above.

Whereas Tannen focuses mainly on direct and indirect quotations, where sources tend to be explicitly acknowledged by the speakers, for example, with the help of quotatives (‘he said’, ‘and she was like’, ‘and I thought’), quotations are in fact only one of many possible ways in which speakers invoke the voices of others, as Bakhtin's work shows. Bakhtin is particularly interested in double-voiced discourses, highlighting that in everyday conversational interaction speakers frequently reaccentuate the words of others, for example,‘with expressions of doubt, indignation, irony, mockery, ridicule and the like’ (Bakhtin 1984:194). For Bakhtin these, together with parody, constitute examples of vari-directional double-voicing, in contrast to unidirectional double-voicing, as in stylisation where the speaker only ‘casts a slight shadow of objectification’ over the reproduced voice (Bakhtin 1984:189). Whereas in stylisation the grammatical differences between the reported and reporting voice are not so distinct, the distance between the stylised voice and that of the speaker can become quite significant in vari-directional double-voicing, as in the example of parody where ‘in one discourse, two semantic intentions appear, two voices’ (1984:189).

The present article draws heavily on the work of Bakhtin, but also highlights aspects of his complex classificatory system, which do not translate as well to everyday conversational contexts—for example, Bakhtin's category of single-voiced discourse, to which he counts not only ‘direct, unmediated discourse’ but, somewhat more surprisingly, also the ‘direct speech of characters’ (Bakhtin 1984:186–99).

Maybin's (2006) linguistic ethnography of the talk of ten-to-twelve-year-old English working-class children constitutes an excellent application of the work of Bakhtin and Voloshinov to spontaneous conversational interaction. Maybin was struck by how often the children in her study invoked, reworded, and reaccentuated the voices of others, such as teachers, parents, and friends (Maybin 2006:5). Drawing on the work of Bakhtin and Voloshinov, Maybin (2006:1) highlights that one of the central purposes of invoking voices for the children was that it allowed them to engage in evaluation of the people/characters they invoked, as well of their behaviours, perspectives, and values.

It is perhaps not surprising, given his focus on written/literary language, that Bakhtin is less interested in single-voiced discourse. Analyses of spoken interaction, such as Maybin's work with children, show how important the category of ‘imitation’ or ‘appropriation’ is in naturally occurring talk. Maybin (2006:144) therefore adapted and simplified Bakhtin's framework, distinguishing between (i) (indirect and direct) reporting, (ii) simple repetition, (iii) appropriation, where the speaker ‘takes on the given words and makes them their own’, and (iv) stylisation. In order to distinguish between these different types of reproduction and assess the children's evaluation of the voices they reproduce, Maybin examines grammatical, prosodic, contextual, and ethnographic cues of her spoken data.

For the current article the link between voice and discourse is central. My own definition of discourse here is different from Bakhtin's (1984:181) ‘language in its concrete living totality’. Instead, I view discourse as ideology, approaching different types of discourses as different ways of speaking, thinking, perceiving, and representing, informed by ideologies or belief systems, and reflecting, affecting as well as constituting social and cultural practices and identities (e.g. Gee 1996; Fairclough 2003). My own, post-modern, conceptualisation of identity as related to discourse is indebted to philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault for whom discourses are ‘practices which systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault 1972:54). That is, when one of the young fathers in my data voices himself or his child, they also at the same time tap into pre-established discourses, which position them in relation to certain types of fatherhood and masculinities.

My analysis of voices is informed by Bakhtin's concepts of dialogicality, Tannen's classifications of different types of constructed dialogue, and Maybin's adaptations of Bakhtin's work for the purpose of evaluating voices in everyday conversation. Voices and voice changes are identified on the basis of grammatical, prosodic, and paralinguistic cues which have been carefully annotated in the transcript.

DATA AND PARTICIPANTS

The four speakers are young men in their early to mid-twenties living in southeast London. They met at music college and consider music-making their primary vocation. They describe themselves as being from working-class backgrounds with parents in manual labour or service sector jobs. Joe's mother and father are both of Filipino descent; Tim's father is from Jamaica and his mother from Wales, but both parents lived in England for most of their lives. Les is of mixed Jamaican and English descent with his father now living in Jamaica. Nath is of Caribbean/English descent and from early adolescence grew up in foster care in a working-class area of Birmingham.

Tim, Les, and Joe grew up in south London and spent their adolescent and young adult lives socialising in Peckham, a formerly poor working class and now ethnically highly diverse area in south London which has recently undergone regentrification. These three speakers describe their life in Peckham as involving fairly frequent criminality and violent altercations. Les was unemployed at the time of the recording, whereas Joe had recently found employment and Tim was about to begin an undergraduate music degree. Nath and Tim were flatmates, and Nath got to know Les and Joe through Tim.

Les was father to a one-year-old son at the time of the recordings, and Joe's daughter was four years old. Whilst Joe lived with his daughter, Les's baby son lived with his mother in north London, but also spent time with Les and his family in southeast London. Nath and Tim did not have any children, but Tim was very heavily involved in ‘social fathering’ of his nieces and nephews and therefore made significant contributions to the fatherhood talk throughout. Tim and Les are also related, and spent a lot of time round each other's houses, with the extended family.

The data was collected by Nath in 2012–2013, whilst he was an MA student in London, in various locations, including Nath's basement, Tim's kitchen, and Joe's studio in Brixton. During the more than five hours of recordings the young men talked about many topics, above all hip hop, the US vs. the UK, language use, social-class divisions, and race, but also fatherhood and family relations.

ANALYSIS

The young men's dedication to the topic of fatherhood might be surprising, given the fact that a large part of their discussion centres on music and hip hop. However, talk about personal topics including their families and financial hardship appeared throughout the recordings. Hip-hop music remains central even when the young men make sense of being fathers, at times offering opportunity to bond with their children and construct positions of involved fatherhood, as when Joe's daughter asks him to make some new sounds on the guitar, or when Les and his baby son ‘dance’ to the music, but, more frequently, being positioned in opposition to good and responsible fatherhood.

A focus on voices allows for a more in-depth discussion of the interactional work the young men do in their discussion of fatherhood. The dialogicality of the young fathers’ talk is evident not only in so far as each of the voices of the four group members are in dialogue with one another, but also to the extent that the same speakers at times voice competing discourses, which, for example, allow them to balance responsible and involved fatherhood with constructions of red-hot blooded, heterosexual masculinity (Cameron 2011). Whilst the association between the latter and ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 2005) is well established, there has been a body of research claiming that involved fatherhood itself has become hegemonic (see Johansson & Klinth 2008). A detailed examination of the constructed dialogues in the young men's talk also captures how they seek to instil the paternal voice in their children, at the same time as encouraging their children to be different from themselves, when this goes hand in hand with acquiring social status. The latter gives some insight into the hardship experienced by the young fathers in their efforts to provide and care for their children.

Opposing voices: Responsible fatherhood vs. virile masculinity

The following extract captures the beginning of one of the more extensive sections of talk dedicated to the topic of fatherhood. Just before the extract commences, Tim, who has been helping Joe to update his iphone, comes across some adult content on the search history of Joe's phone. Joe is not concerned about having been found out, confirming that he has indeed been watching pornography (see “bad bitches”, stave 1; “Japanese booty”, stave 4) and playfully suggesting that his friends had led him astray. This is vehemently rejected by Tim and Les, who admonish him with “you've got a problem” (stave 1) and remind him that they were the ones who found out that he had visited the infamous porn site ‘xhamster’ in the previous summer.

In stave 8 Tim constructs a dialogue (Tannen 1989) to express his indignation about Joe's earlier claim that he only watches porn when visiting his friends: “said ‘it's only when he comes around us’ ”. Tim's quotative initially elides the referent, so “said” rather than “Joe said” or “he said”. In the quotation itself, however, Tim includes the referent in third person, so “he”, rather than addressing Joe directly with “you”. Thus, Tim foregrounds his own evaluative perspective (Maybin 2006), indexing his indignation about Joe's claim both with the help of grammatical and paralinguistic/prosodic cues, that is, the heightened pitch range. This example comes close to vari-directional double-voicing, and indeed Bakhtin (1984:194) lists ‘indignation’ in the same category as ‘parody’. As Maybin (2006:78) sums up ‘when [speakers] want to distance themselves from the voice they are representing, they use more indirect forms’. Tim positions himself as indignant about Joe's consumption of pornography, and thereby in opposition to discourses of virile and at time even misogynist masculinity voiced by Joe. Joe, by contrast, reinforces his positioning as being an avid consumer of pornography, for example, “fuck the iphone it's the laptop blood” (stave 8); “iphone three was ratchet” (stave 11). The verbal duel of the two speakers comes to a head in staves 12–13.

This is followed immediately by an interesting example of one specific subcategory of Tannen's constructed dialogue, that is, ‘dialogue representing what wasn't said’ (Tannen 1989:111). This dialogue positions the young men in a way that is particularly relevant with respect to fatherhood and masculinity. Again, Tim takes on the voice of Joe with a quotative which elides the referent, followed by the constructed dialogue itself, although this time Joe's voice is represented in first person: “said ‘I'VE GOT A DAUGHTER NOW MAN IT'S CLEAN MAN’ ” (staves 13–14). Direct reported speech, as Maybin (2006:78) reminds us, foregrounds the evaluative position of the character, that is, Joe. The evaluative positions of Tim and the quoted voice of Joe are not as far apart as in stave 8, yet this and many other examples in the data show why in spontaneous conversational data it is problematic to consider the quoted speech of others as ‘single voiced’. The two voices are still evident, and Tim very much stylises Joe's voice, which would classify this as unidirectional double-voiced discourse. Tim tried to align Joe with a discourse/ideology of responsible, mature fatherhood which would allow Joe to distance himself from the position of porn consumer and its associated misogyny. However, porn consumption of course also signals virility, and this is likely to be the reason why Joe rejects his positioning as a responsible father by mirroring Tim's reporting structure at the same time as aligning his reported voice with a very different discourse: “said ‘I've got a laptop now muthafucker’ ” (stave 13). So rather than accepting his positioning as a responsible father to a daughter, he states that his consumption of pornography has simply been transferred to another medium, from iphone to laptop. The position which Joe defends is that of the virile heterosexual young masculinity, tapping into what Maxwell (2018) calls the ‘bad boy discourse’, which stands in opposition to the discourse of the ‘family man’.

In the next extract Joe begins to move away slightly from his alignment with the kind of hyper-sexed masculinity foregrounded in his hot defense of his position as a guilt-free consumer of pornography. This goes hand in hand with an alignment with his role as a father, as the remainder of the conversation shows.

In this extract Joe initially aligns himself with the position of a responsible father when he says “especially with the daughter as well…” (stave 2). Whilst this foregrounding of Joe's position as a father offers a different masculinity to him than that of the pornography consumer, neither are alternative masculinities, as they support the dominant dichotomy of women as either madonnas or whores. Moreover, the remainder of the extract shows that Joe's alignment with the position of the father as protector is ambivalent. In stave 3 he adopts a stylized voice with clear mocking overtones: “if I could just make sure I could prevent this in the future I would do it now” (staves 3–4). The vari-directional double-voicing (Bakhtin 1984) of the discourse is clearly marked, and is picked up upon by Les, who then completes Joe's utterance in an example of what Tannen (1989:116) calls ‘dialogue constructed by a listener’: “but I love this shit though” (stave 4). This voice repositions Joe again in the discourse of male virility, a positioning which Joe aligns himself with in the following stave, “I love a bad bitch…” (stave 5), indexing both pornography and hip-hop culture.

Being a father to daughters is constructed as very different from being a father to sons. As Maxwell (2018:171) notes, daughters in particular are presented as in need of protection. In fact, Joe's next instance of constructed dialogue with a fictitious son suggests that a son would be expected to share in the subjugation of women by viewing and commenting on women and their body parts: “yeah man look at this” (stave 7). This constitutes an example of Tannen's (1989:111–12) ‘dialogue as instantiation of a general phenomenon’, one of several categories in Tannen's classification where the reported speech should not be mistaken for what actually was said. Joe's change of voice to a clearly identifiable ‘excited/aroused’ is stylized, introducing a notion of objectification (Bakhtin 1984:189), which, unlike parody, does not distance Joe significantly from a discourse of sexualized/virile masculinity. Bakhtin (1984:190) writes about the ‘imperceptible transitions’ between imitation and stylization. In everyday conversation the boundaries between unidirectional double-voiced discourses (stylization) and vari-directional double-voiced discourse (parody) can also be fluid, indexing varying degrees of alignment with and distancing from the reproduced voice, as staves 3 and 7 show.

Although there are several other extracts which reveal that making and enjoying music with their children is central to the young men's construction of involved fatherhood, the remainder of the extract shows that Les has made the decision to avoid listening to “certain music” around his son (stave 9). Shielding his baby son from bad influences, in particular from the language of hip hop (staves 10–12), allows Les to position himself as responsible father who leads by setting a good example for his son.

When Les introduces the fictitious future voice of his son, he does not change the tone of his voice. Moreover, by choosing direct speech, Les foregrounds his son's perspective instead of introducing some distance between his own voice and that of his son (Maybin 2006:77). It is also interesting that Les chooses the quotative “and he's gonna be feeling like” rather than a version of “and he's gonna be saying like” (staves 10–11). So for Les, it seems that it is not only hip-hop language per se, but also some aspects of hip-hop culture/mentality which his son needs to be shielded from. There are several other instances where Les expresses a concern about the problematic ‘vibes’ of hip hop, for example, when he says: “Joe, that's what you've gotta do you've gotta ban certain music… you have to ban that vibes and dem energy”. In extract (2) Les and Joe join into a duet performing the fictitious voice of Les's adult son in staves 10–12, with Joe following Les's “nigger this yeah nigger that” with “this bitch this and this bitch that”. The fact that Joe's contribution is marked by a laughing voice may well suggest his awareness of the fact that this is exactly the kind of language and mentality he himself has just displayed in his talk about pornography.

The young men's double-voicing thus allows them to balance different discourses, one aligning them with responsible fatherhood, the other with virile and at times misogynist masculinity. In Maxwell's data this ‘bad boy’ discourse tended to be restricted to the few men who were not in stable or committed relationships and/or were non-residential fathers. Maxwell (2018:157) therefore hypothesises: ‘living apart from their child(ren) perhaps allowed the men to separate their paternal identities from their masculine identities’. The spontaneous talk of Les and his friends shows that the living arrangements and relationship with the mother are not indicative of the father-child relationship. It is Joe, a residential dad, for whom the balancing act appears more of a challenge. By contrast, Les, who lives apart from his baby son and does not have a relationship with the child's mother, distances himself from a bad boy discourse, working extremely hard to position himself as a responsible father by modifying his behaviour in front of his son to set a good example. Framed by fatherhood talk, hegemonic masculinity associated with hyper-masculine virility (as normalised in porn sites such as xhamster) and female subjugation (as normalised in some hip-hop music, i.e. “this bitch this, this bitch that”) is presented as problematic in the group, whereas responsible fatherhood is presented as the norm to be aspired to.

Responsible fatherhood: Instilling the paternal voice

There are many examples of social fathering (Wilson 2018) in the data, where the young men look after and/or discipline their nieces and nephews, at times adopting authoritarian stances. In their talk about their young son and daughter, however, Les and Joe do not align responsible fatherhood with displays of authority and physical force but instead with another traditional discourse which positions fathers as teachers and moral guides (see also Maxwell 2018:172).

By focusing on the use of voices in the talk of the young men, it is possible to capture the way that Les envisages this process of leading his baby son to independence at the same time as instilling principles and a critical mind in him. The following extract captures the high value that Les places on fathers setting a good example for their children by not listening to hip-hop music with adult content but showing them that “there is other shit” (stave 1) and that “daddy don't [doesn't] listen to that [nonsense]” (stave 2).

This extract captures a constructed dialogue in which the responsible paternal voice is positioned in opposition to children's voices on one hand, and, more indirectly, to the voices of irresponsible fathers. In stave 5 the first fictitious child's voice is introduced by Tim, who appears to compete with Les over the floor, envisaging a scenario of a child catching a father listening to inappropriate music. This example then spurns Les on to distance himself further from this kind of irresponsible fatherhood, quoting the defiant and later proud voice of his nephew: “my dad listens to it my dad listens to it neneneym” (stave 7) and “he goes ‘my dad he's got it on his computer’ ” (stave 9). As Maybin (2006:78) argues, the narrator's positioning to and evaluation of the quoted voice is not only marked by grammatical cues in spoken interaction but also by prosodic and nonverbal cues. Constructed dialogue in the form of direct reported speech allows for ‘the evaluative perspective of the voice to come through clearly’ and ensures that the reported voice is ‘fully brought to life’ (Maybin 2006:78). It is clear that the prosodic cues override the grammatical cues, here indexing Les's disalignment with the voices of the children. In stave 7 the final chunk of the reproduced voice “neneneym” constitutes a stylization of a child's taunt, marked by a clear change of voice. The change of voice at the same times acts as a contextualization cue for the stylization to change into parody or vari-directional double-voiced discourse (Bakhtin 1984:199). Stave 9 constitutes a similar example of double-voicing. Direct reported speech is also used by Les to represent his own voice in dialogue with his nephew. Whilst in stave 8 it is possible (but far from certain) that Les indeed reports his direct reply to his nephew as it happened (“I said ‘where d'you hear this song’ ”), Tannen's argument about the constructedness of dialogue is even clearer in stave 11 where the ‘reported’ voice is likely to capture an example of inner speech (Tannen 1989:114–15): “like ‘you weren't speaking five years ago how do [you know] that’ ”.

The different voices adopted by Les and his friends animate the different positions that are represented. They constitute essential tools in Les's construction of responsible fatherhood, which is presented in clear opposition to the kind of father who listens to inappropriate music (like his brother-in-law). For Les, guiding his son involves instilling his own values in him, which, as the next extract shows, goes hand in hand with the son appropriating the paternal voice as he grows up.

Extracts (3) and (4) capture the significance of dialogue between father and child, which is presented as essential for involved and responsible fathering as well as for teaching children right from wrong. Whereas in extract (3) there are several examples of the father's voice instructing the child, in extract (4) the paternal voice has been appropriated by the child. So Les hopes that one day his son will reject inappropriate music: “what he needs to be saying yeah is like (.) ‘ah yeah I hear that shit there but those niggas are dumb though’ ” (stave 2). It is no coincidence that the voice of the child is not marked as different from that of the father in this instance, as they are one and the same. For Les, parenting responsibility can stop once it is clear that the child has appropriated the paternal voice. This, Les hopes, will make it less necessary for him to engage in explicit disciplining, aligns him with the role of the (moral) guide, rather than that of the authoritarian disciplinarian, a role frequently associated with traditional masculinity.

Responsible fatherhood: Distancing from ‘road slang’ and ‘the ends’

Although instilling the paternal voice is seen as an important aspect of fathering, this does not mean that Les and the other young men in the group want their children also to appropriate their fathers’ linguistic style. The next extract captures the voice of Joe's four-year-old daughter, which overall is evaluated positively despite her “attitude”, mainly because of her linguistic abilities which are positioned as superior to those of her father and his friends.

When Joe parodies his daughter's attempt to correct her father in staves 1–2 “no daddy you're not s'pposed to do it like that”, his change of voice impersonates a bossy little girl, thereby exemplifying her “attitude”. However, by adding “shit” to his observation that his daughter is “talking better English than me” (stave 2), Joe underscores his argument that his daughter's language use is more refined than his own. Moreover, Joe changes his voice once more to what could be described as expressing mock surprise or even (fatherly) pride.

Throughout the extract, Les supports Joe in his alignment with linguistic inferiority, by reflecting on their own language use, which is described as “road slang” (stave 4) and “vulgar” (stave 10) and is set in opposition to “better English” (stave 2) or even just “English” (stave 3). Staves 4–5 contain a further snippet of constructed dialogue between father and daughter in which Joe positions himself as a father policing the language use of his daughter when he tells her off “ayayayay” (as if wagging his finger at her, stave 5) after one of the rare occasions when she used inappropriate language “a:h man” (stave 4). As Maybin (2006:79) concludes, grammatical forms and prosodic cues alone are not sufficient for the interpretation of speaker's evaluation of reported voices in their constructed dialogues. Instead, analysts also have to take into consideration contextual information, for example, from the ongoing conversation itself (or from ethnographic knowledge). In this extract it is clear that the mocking tone adopted by Joe when he first portrays his daughter's alleged “attitude” in staves 1–2 is offset by the positive evaluation of her exemplary language use and opposition to swear words. Joe is not really positioning himself in opposition to his daughter, but instead constructs himself as proud father of a talented young girl.

The extract thus shows that another important fathering position for the group is one where the young men position their children at a distance from their own linguistic and/or ‘street’ background. This distancing is not restricted to language use alone, but also extends to the young men's south London neighbourhood, which is frequently described as ‘the ends’, in alignment with hip-hop jargon. So, for example, when the young men later discuss how to prevent children from turning onto the wrong path, Les states that his son will not be at risk because “he's from a different ends man he good in Finchley bruv {laughter}”. These different “ends” in Finchley are associated with alleged north London wealth, although household income varies greatly across this borough. Nevertheless for the group this is a “rich area”, with Joe's son living on a “money road”. Of course, for Les, being positive about the living arrangements of his son also means that he does not have to blame himself for being a non-residential dad.

Responsible fatherhood then, in this group, can mean that on occasions an upbringing different from their own is evaluated positively or even encouraged, both with respect to language use, as in the case of Joe's daughter, and with respect to the child's surroundings and living arrangements, as in the case of Les's son. Whilst the young men's classed and raced positions are topicalised explicitly in many of the recordings, they are indexed more indirectly in their talk about north vs. south London upbringing of children and the financial hardships of fatherhood, for example, when Joe talks about prioritizing children when money is short, “you don't buy nothing for yourself bro that's what it is that's worse than broke blood”. The young men acknowledge that what they can offer their children in their London “ends”, including their linguistic capital, falls short of the economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1979/1984) afforded by other men (or women) to their children who enjoy a more privileged upbringing. Implicit in this acknowledgement, I would argue, is therefore an understanding of their own marginalized masculinity (Connell 2005) as young southeast London Black men and fathers.

CONCLUSION

Whilst it has certainly been true that ‘fathers are rarely the sources of data about their own behaviours and practices’ (Gadsden et al. 2003:384), this article contributes to more recent work which foregrounds fathers’ own voices. Whilst all of this recent work relies on interview and focus group data, the present article offers insights from naturally occurring fatherhood talk.

Voices

By focusing the analysis on the many voices which appear in young men's talk, it is possible to demonstrate the polyphonic and heteroglossic nature of fatherhood constructions in the group. Of particular interest for the analysis were the interactions between the voices of the four young men and the voices they adopt in their constructed dialogues, which revealed interesting evaluative positions and frequent double-voicing (Bakhtin 1984, 1986). The data extracts focused in particular on instances where speakers reproduce or construct their own and each other's voices and those of their children, ranging from the recent past, for example, the voice of Joe's young daughter, to the distant future, such as the fictional voice of Les's grown-up son.

The many examples of reported speech, or better, constructed dialogue (Tannen 1989) throughout the data play a significant role in the young men's performances of fatherhood. Voices reproduced were always evaluated (Voloshinov 1973; Maybin 2006), with evaluative positions of speaker and reproduced voices often being indexed as different or even opposing. Evaluative perspectives can be indexed grammatically, for example, constructed dialogue taking the grammatical form of indirect ‘reported’ speech tends to foreground the perspective of the author, whereas constructed dialogue taking the grammatical form of direct ‘reported’ speech foregrounds the perspectives of the character (Leech & Short 1981; Maybin 2006). Even more importantly, analyses of spoken interactional data can and should draw on contextualisation cues such as paralinguistic voice changes (e.g. stylized children's voices), information from surrounding talk, and, if available, ethnographic information (see also Maybin 2006) to interpret the evaluative positions of authors/speakers in relation to the characters and voices in the dialogues they (re)enact. Frequently it is difficult to capture these verbal and non-verbal cues as well in transcription as they are evident in the recordings of speech.

Bakhtin (1984:189) considers ‘discourse of a represented person’, that is, the direct speech of a character, mostly as ‘objectified’ or single-voiced discourse. This would be surprising, were it not for the fact that he has literary discourse in mind. By contrast, Bakhtin (1984:194) concedes that in everyday dialogue double-voiced discourse is the norm. Double-voicing, is, however, not only the norm in spontaneous everyday dialogue, but it is, as the present data shows, also extremely prevalent in reported speech, or better, constructed dialogue (Tannen 1989). In fact, it is difficult to conceive of constructed dialogue in everyday spoken interaction as single-voiced. It might indeed be more useful to consider all animated dialogue in everyday interaction as double-voicing, with ‘appropriated’ voices and aligned evaluative perspectives in constructed dialogue classed as unidirectional double-voicing and constructed dialogue with different evaluative perspectives, clearly indexed as such by grammatical, paralinguistic, verbal, and contextual clues, as vari-directional double-voicing.

Fatherhood and hegemonic, intersectional masculinities

A focus on (double) voicing/heteroglossia and discourse has much to offer to the study of fatherhood and masculinity, as well as to the study of language and identity more generally. Its potential lies in particular in the ability to capture the interplay between micro and macro levels of socioculturally and interactionally constructed identity, an interplay which ought to be central to the study of language and identity (see Bucholtz & Hall's 2005 positionality principle; Pichler 2019) and to the study of hegemonic and intersectional masculinity in particular (Christensen & Qvotrup Jensen 2014; Milani 2015).

This polyphony of voices in the talk of the young southeast London men tended to go hand in hand with a polyphony of discourses which informed the young men's positioning in general, and constructions of fatherhood in particular. The young men aligned themselves both with more traditional discourses of responsible fatherhood and with the dominant twenty-first-century model of intimate and involved fatherhood. However, these constructions of fatherhood were also competing with other identities, such as virile masculinity or ‘bad boy identity’ (Maxwell 2018), as in Joe's attempt to defend his consumption of pornography despite being a father to a little girl.

This article also explored the significance of (hip-hop) music for the young men's constructions of fatherhood. At times the value of music for involved fatherhood was highlighted, however, more frequently, hip-hop music, language and ‘vibes’ were censored, particularly by Les, who was acutely aware of being a role model for his baby son. Tracing the constructed dialogue between Les and his son from the present to a fictional future also showed that the appropriation of the paternal voice is seen as central to the discourse of father as teacher/moral guide. However, despite wanting to teach and inspire their children, the young men in the group were also very clear about the benefits of their children having a different upbringing from their own in some respect. Thus, the ‘standard’, profanity-free language use of Joe's daughter was applauded, as was the opportunity of Les's baby son to grow up in a middle-class north London neighbourhood, away from “the ends” in southeast London Peckham. The “ends” are, however, not comparable to the ‘street’, which is positioned as dangerous in comparison to a nurturing home by the young urban African American fathers in Gadsden and colleagues (2003) and Wortham & Gadsden (2006). Instead, Les and his friends value the opportunity his son will have to experience both his own Caribbean family life and culture in the south London “ends”, and the culture in what they perceive to be the richer, (whiter) neighbourhood of north London's Finchley.

Social class membership and (lack of) financial security was very much on the minds of the young men in the group, and the hardships of the role of fathers as providers was felt acutely. At the same time as experiencing this responsibility as a major source of stress, being with children was also presented as a means to destress, or, as Joe said, spending time with kids allows him to go to “another place… and just forget about shit”. Certainly, Les's financial hardship does not prevent him from striving to be an exemplary involved father. In Les's own words, “you have to love being a dad though”.

Much has been made of the status of residential vs. non-residential fathers, especially with respect to policy research on Black fathers who have often been presented as ‘absent’ or ‘deadbeat’ (e.g. Paschal et al. 2011; Wallace 2017; Wilson 2018). Despite being a non-residential Black/mixed race dad, Les's extensive reflections on fatherhood clearly challenge the stereotypes around absent fatherhood. As the group member who speaks most, at times challenged but frequently supported by Joe, who is a father to a little girl, and Tim, who is an uncle engaged in social fathering, Les's performance of fatherhood is highly polyphonous and intersectional throughout.

Overall then, the polyphony of voices in the young men's fatherhood talk capture both the interplay and the tensions between intersectional and hegemonic masculinities. Working class, Black masculinities are frequently represented as subordinate to hegemonic masculinity (Connell 2005; Christensen & Qvotrup Jensen 2014; Wallace 2017), as the men in this group are very well aware of as their explicit talk about race and social class in many of their recording shows. Voicing discourses that align them with ‘red-blooded hetero-sexual’ masculinity (Cameron 2011:261), by contrast, show clear alignments with some aspects of hegemonic masculinity. The fact that hegemonic masculinity is, however, ‘not universal or stable’ (Milani 2015:8), is captured by the various different discourses of fatherhood which are voiced in the spontaneous talk of the group. There is clear evidence that caring fatherhood is positioned as the norm in this group, providing support for the argument that caring fatherhood in itself has become hegemonic. As Johansson & Klinth (2008:58) argue on the basis of their Swedish data:

To qualify for hegemonic masculinity, it is no longer enough to the rational, goal-means oriented, career oriented, and disciplined. Today, men must also show their readiness to engage in child care, their child orientation, and their willingness to live up to the ideal of gender equality.

The struggle, however, which the men in this group experience, as underprivileged men short of material resources and positioned as ‘deadbeat’ in public and policy discourse about Black and working-class fatherhood, shows that on a macro level, the men in this group are clearly not ‘at the top of the masculine pecking order’ (Milani 2015:15). This captures the complex, dynamic, and ambiguous nature of hegemonic masculinity/ies, whose ‘internal hierarchy’ (Christensen & Qvotrup Jensen 2014:63) on one hand positions the young men in the group as disempowered in many respects, but, on the other hand, also shows their enthusiastic alignment with more recently hegemonized norms around caring/involved fatherhood.