Cultural Performances: Proceedings of the Third Berkeley Women and Language Conference

Preface

The papers collected here constitute the proceedings of the Third Berkeley Women and Language Conference, which took as its theme "Communication in, through, and across Cultures." The editors' decision to give a different name to the publication that emerged from the conference stems in large part from our recognition, during the long editing process, that the conference papers far surpassed our initial concept of their unifying theme. The original title suggested that cultures are discrete, taken-for-granted objects into and out of which the transfer of information can unobstructedly flow. Yet we found that the conference papers repeatedly demonstrated, from a number of perspectives, that cultures are not given but achieved and that much of the work of culout by means of language use. Thus, it became clear that communication is not achieved through the medium of culture, but, on the contrary, that culture is itself communicated or, rather, performed.

Our emphasis on performance highlights another fundamental aspect of these papers: that language use is not a mere transmission of ideas but an often conscious display of self. The agency of language users, and particularly of women and girls, is a premise that a great many of the papers in the volume share. Often the papers describe the dialectic between hegemonic forces of gender oppression and women's resistance to these forces.

Our goal in making culture central to our third conference was to expand the definition of the term, to encourage an examination of cultural practices of gender not only from within societies beyond our own, which has been the traditional focus in research on culture, but also within other kinds of communities. And indeed, the papers in these volumes draw the boundaries of culture in a variety of ways, focusing by turn on the microcultures constructed by intimates and the macrocultures created by technology and transnationalism, the cultures of past historical moments and those just now emerging in the late twentieth century, the cultures of fact and of fiction, of identity and ideology.

In each of these contexts, the relationship between language and gender is illuminated in a new way. We could not possibly do just to the richness of the papers in these volumes, which deserve close reading in their entirety. Nor do we presume to offer a single theoretical or political perspective that captures the diversity of authors' viewpoints.

The Proceedings were edited by Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, Laurel A. Sutton, and Caitlin Hines.

Table of Contents: Page Numbers

Rusty Barrett

"She is not white woman": Appropriation of white women's language by African American drag queens: 1-14

Victoria L. Bergvall

Cultural projections in constructed linguistic examples: Gender representations in introductory texts: 15-27

Laine Berman

Empowering the powerless: The repetition of experience in Javanese women's narratives: 28-36

Jan Bernsten

What's her name?: Forms of address in Shona: 37-43

Janet Bing

Killing us softly: Ambiguous markers of power and solidarity: 44-49

Mary Bucholtz

The powers that buy: Women's agency in the discourse of the shopping channel: 50-61

Lisa Capps

Constructing the irrational woman: 62-78

Josefina M. Castillo

Waves of change: The experience of Campesinas Unidas de Veracruz: 79-85

Joanne Cavallaro and Suellen Rundquist

Indirectness in women's communication: How power and status interact: 86-92

Grace P. Chan

Gender display among Hong Kong teenagers: 93-101

Lynn Cherny

Gender differences in text-based virtual reality: 102-115

Jennifer Coates

Discourse, gender, and subjectivity: The talk of teenage girls: 116-132

Colleen Cotter

The cook, the community, and the other: How recipes organize affiliation: 133-143

Martha Clark Cummings

Lesbian identity and negotiation in discourse: 144-158

Rebecca Dobkins

Corresponding with power: Letters between the mothers of California Indian children and federal boarding-school officials, 1916-1922: 159-167

Marcia Farr

Echando relajo: Verbal art and gender among Mexicanas in Chicago: 168-188

Suzanne Fleischman

Eliminating gender bias in French: A case of language ideologies in conflict: 187-196

Alice F. Freed

A cross-cultural analysis of language and gender: 197-204

Valérie Fridland

Language and power in male-on-male rape trials: 205-219

D. Letticia Galindo

Capturing Chicana voices: An interdisciplinary approach: 220-231

Marjorie Harness Goodwin

"Ay chillona!": Stance-taking in girls' hopscotch: 232-241

Elizabeth Gordon

Sex, speech, and stereotypes: Why women's speech is closer to the standard than men's: 242-250

Alice Greenwood

Children on trial: Language issues and child testimony: 251-259

Kira Hall

Bodyless pragmatics: Feminism on the Internet: 260-277

Susan Herring

Politeness in computer culture: Why women thank and men flame: 278-294

Caitlin Hines

"Let me call you sweetheart": The WOMAN AS DESSERT metaphor: 295-303

Leanne Hinton

The role of women in Native American language revival: 304-312

Preeya Ingkaphirom Horie

How language reflects the status of women in the Thai and Japanese societies: 313-321

Miyako Inoue

Gender and linguistic modernization: Historicizing Japanese women's language: 322-333

Cheryl Johnson

Linguistic constructions of the darky, the wench, and the negress in Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose: 334-343

Christina Kakavá

"Do you want to get engaged, baby?": The cultural construction of gender in Greek conversation: 344-354

Itsuko Kanamoto

Sender-centered and receiver-centered persuasion: Two modes of communication elaborated by Japanese female mediums: 355-366

Elizabeth Keating

Language, gender, rank, and social space: Honorifics in Pohnpei, Micronesia: 367-377

Claire Kramsch and Linda Von Hoene

Rethinking the teaching and learning of foreign languages through feminist and sociolinguistic theory: 378-388

Amy Kyratzis

Tactical uses of narratives in nursery school same-sex groups: 389-398

William Leap

Can there be gay discourse without gay language?: 399-408

A. C. Liang

"Coming out" as transition and transcendence of the public/private dichotomy: 409-420

Anna Livia

The riddle of the Sphinx: Creating genderless characters in French: 421-433

Anna Livia

"She sired six children": Pronominal gender play in English: 434-448

Monica Macaulay and Colleen Brice

Gentlemen prefer blondes: A study of gender bias in example sentences: 449-461

Marianthi Makri-Tsilipakou

Greek women and the public destruction of face: 462-477

Norma Mendoza-Denton

Language attitudes and gang affiliation among California Latina girls: 478-486

Fadillah Merican

"The limits of my language are the limits of my world": Women's language in contemporary Malay fiction: 487-500

Gabriella Modan

Pulling apart is coming together: The use and meaning of opposition in the discourse of Jewish American women: 501-508

Birch Moonwomon

Lesbian identity, lesbian text: 509-524

Marcyliena Morgan

No woman no cry: The linguistic representation of African American women: 525-541

Rae A. Moses

Gendered dying: The obituaries of women and men: 542-550

Ruth Mukama

The culturo-linguistic dimension of women's invisibility and silence: An East African perspective: 551-562

Elizabeth Noll

Political discourse at a tit-in: 563-568

Shigeko Okamoto

"Gendered" speech styles and social identity among young Japanese women: 569-581

Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

Saliéndose con la suya: Literacy, gender, and "choice" in a bilingual classroom: 582-592

Susan U. Philips

Dominant and subordinate gender ideologies in Tongan courtroom discourse: 593-604

Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres

Lesbian pornography: Discourse of inequality and/or resistance: 605-614

Ruth Salvaggio

Tracing the O: Oral infusions in women's language: 615-620

Pamela A. Saunders

Do old women tell secrets?: A linguistic analysis of gossip in the discourse of older women: 621-630

Patricia E. Sawin

Reconceptualizing "women's narrative" as contextualized narrative: 631-641

Meryl Siegal

Second-language learning, identity, and resistance: White women studying Japanese in Japan: 642-650

Kyong-Sook Song

The dynamics of gender in Korean argumentative conversational discourse: 651-667

Marianne Stølen

Gender-related use of the ingressive Ja in informal conversation among native speakers of Danish: 668-677

Yukako Sunaoshi

Mild directives work effectively: Japanese women in command: 678-690

Liisa Tainio

The bodily self and the hollow self: Finnish everyday stories about the opposite sex: 691-711

Deborah Tannen

The sex-class-linked framing of talk at work: 712-728

Anita Taylor and Judi Beinstein Miller

Gender diversity: Conceptions of femininity and masculinity: 729-745

Sara Sistrunk Trechter and Eli James

"Appropriate" gendered speech in Lakhota society: 746-756

Keith Walters

Gender, quantitative sociolinguistics, and the linguistics of contact: 757-776

Kathleen M. Wood

Life stories as artifacts of a culture: Lesbian coming-out stories: 777-786

Marta Zabaleta

"We women are the actors in the drama of our times": An analysis of the speeches of Eva Perón: 787-800

Paula Zupanc-Ecimovic

Where is the I/she and the I/he in contemporary speech?: A comparative study of the position of the gendered subject in the English, French, and Slovene languages: 801-807

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Also presented at the conference but not included in these proceedings:

Beth Daniels

Killing conversation: An analysis of the predator/prey dyad in true-crime serial murder biography

Varanisi Lalini

The politics of caste in language and gender construction in India

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Also presented at the conference and scheduled to appear in the 1996 conference proceedings:

Sachiko Ide

Women's language in women's world

Bonnie McElhinny

Gender, "familiar conversation," and eighteenth-century linguistics: The sociolinguistics of Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi

Faye C. McNair-Knox

African American English womantalk is more than an "ear-full"