Pre-cursor to the Analysis:
To further analyze the concept of frames, I will use one of my interviews as a case study to discuss the role of gender in frames.
Before reading this post, I recommend to the reader that you read the interview labeled 'Abby Daley' under the meet the people section of this blog.
To perform this analysis, I will be drawing on secondary interviews/conversations with my interviewees and long-term observational fieldwork to connect the primary interviews to this additional conceptual element, in this case, the concept being gender. Long-term observational fieldwork, in this case, refers to the observations I have had pertaining to the conversations I have had over months/years with these individuals about relevant concepts, which I ran by them before citing and analyzing. This section of the blog aims to take an interesting conversation and give it a deeper focus.
Before this analysis, I would also like to recognize and emphasize the founding intellectual tenants surrounding the concept of lingual frames, which I have and continue to reference within this blog:
Course References for frames:
In this blog, I will be referring to Frames, as defined by Alexander Dent, as "A structure of expectations for the production and reception of discourse"(Week 3, class 2).
Also relevant to the breakdown of frames is the Dell Hymes acronym 'SPEAKING,' which I utilized to form my interview questions. SPEAKING refers to setting, participants, ends, acts, key, instrumentalities, norms, and genres (Week 3, class 2).
Michael Agar also identifies a term central to this blog which he labels as 'rich points', which can be otherwise understood as points in language/discourse that diverge from the expectations of that frame (Agar, Language Shock, Speech Acts 141-143). This concept was an important part of my conversations with interviewees because identifying rich points were important to me in order to understand the intricacies and relevance of language.
Analysis:
In Abby's interview and through many of my secondary conversations with her, the concept of gender is often one that comes up as an important intersection of her identity. This was one of the primary reasons I chose her story as a point of analysis.
Being raised in a relatively conservative, traditional, Irish catholic community came with strong expectations for Abby; expectations that often leaned on and were determined by her gender. These expectations were strongly enforced by the language used in her community in spaces such as the church, school, and home. When these three spaces intersect to curate a unanimous outlook on the world, that echo chamber can come to feel and be very restricting, particularly for those who feel that they cannot fit into the said echo chamber. For Abby, the restrictions of this echo chamber have been felt most in the expectations it has for tied gender. When Abby discusses her hometown, she describes it as an enclosed ecosystem, which is perhaps why social constructs, particularly in regard to gender, thrive so well there. When discussing the concept of social constructs, one thing Alexander Dent emphasizes is the idea that social categories have a need to be constructed and maintained (Week 6, class 1), and Abby's home of Westfield, Massachusetts, is a perfect example of the maintenance of social categories, in this case, the maintenance of social categories surrounding gender. Home, school, and the Irish Catholic Church all work together to form a tight-knit frame of expectations for the use of language which upholds and enforces social categories with impressive force.
Gender plays an important role in Abby's experience with language because the language she grew up around largely adheres to the binary, meaning that there is a recognition and also division between expectations for the discourse between men and women in this context, with no real consideration for the in-between that exists within the spectrum of gender. In this binary situation, such as the one Abby grew up around, even if there is some degree of 'equality' between men and women on a surface or occupational level, there is a phenomenon of disproportionate valuation of language recognized by Joel Kuipers. Kuipers recognizes that there is an unequal valuation of language between men and women, with the valuation of male speech being higher than that of a woman (Kuipers 448-449). Though Kuipers identifies this pattern through the differences in ritual (male) and colloquial (female) speech within the Weyewa Indonesian group, this pattern is evident within Abby's community in Westfield, Massachusetts. These patterns and structures, which place men with more narrative and demanding roles with language and place women with more emotive and spiritual roles, are dependent on social categories that limit both men and women to fitting into one aspect of this structure. The structuralist account that Kuiper provides explains that the structure of society determines the way that things happen, which helps to explain why in Abby's experience, if all aspects of the community put women in emotive and nurturing roles, their language will be limited to those roles and there will be no genuine way to account for their ability to fill other roles such as those of power(discussion 10/06); though there are many issues with this structure, this can help identify how someone like Abby might find herself outside of the frame of Westfield's language.
Lastly, it is important to note that Abby is a queer woman. Meaning that on a very surface level, her gender is incredibly important to how her identity is perceived on more than one level. This means the way in which femininity and gender are constructed through language is going to have large implications for her on an individual level. Kira Hall discusses this idea of femininity being constructed by language by breaking down the discourse between female phone sex workers who use language and language only to provide a service to men; what Kira finds is that these women construct a version of femininity that aligns with the male gaze as a way to profit from the situation(Discussion 10/06)(Hall 195-196). Though Abby is not a sex worker in any sense of the word, I think what those sex workers are able to do with language is incredibly relevant to Abby's experience. They play into seemingly simple roles of being a 'damsel in distress and create an entire fantasy that these men buy into, and I think that shows just how powerful language is in constructing social expectations. In Abby's case, almost all elements of her life work together to form language that forces the narrative that women are lesser than men, and gay people are lesser than straight people (for example, the patriarchal structure of the catholic church & Abby's experience of people talking negatively about her sexuality on social media) that narrative is going to have a lot of power to make her feel like an outsider. In turn, Abby's use of language in shared spaces with them, such as social media, works to break these very solid frames of language so that these limiting factors become less and less powerful.
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