Abstract
Why is it that somehow, women in the world,
and specifically women in Africa seldom make it to the top, or even to the
middle level positions in the corporate world? What confines them to these
low-level positions? Is it that they are less skilled and less qualified
than their male counterparts? Or is it a case of the “Glass ceiling
syndrome”? This paper describes the workplace situation, specifically in
Kenya, in relation to Gender and Discourse. It admits that many factors
act as obstacles to women’s ascent to powerful positions within the
corporate world. This paper is interested in the language factor;
specifically the discursive practices, which ensure that women are
discriminate against, and never rise beyond a certain level within the
organisational hierarchies. Although quite a bit has been done in Europe
and in the Western world, there is virtually nothing done from/or in the
African continent. This is what makes the paper more intriguing.
Management meetings within corporate firms are
recorded. These are subjected to transcriptions. Using Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) as an interpretative framework within the area of
linguistics, issues of power, ideology, gender and discourse are
discussed. Conversation Analysis (CA) is used as a tool for analysis of
the actual talk-in-interaction. The Power in/of interaction is noted. What
ultimately emerges is a picture where male styles of speaking are
significantly different from female styles. These differences, it is
found, are subtle features which act as further forces to marginalise or
relegate women to the rear.
This paper hopes that through CDA, women will
be sensitised further to know exactly both their linguistic, and
consequently social positioning within the public sector. This opens way
for (re)negotiations within the workplace space. Thus instead of warriors,
both men and women should become collaborators when equity is attained.
This should go a long way in transforming and reforming the African public
sector, which needs both men and women.
1 INTRODUCTION
In this century, women may
appear to be liberated, sophisticated and educated. In fact today, we even
have radical feminist movements. Men are "seemingly" no longer the
oppressors and enemy but partners, and women are involved in almost all
the professions that were initially held by men; these range from
engineering, to medicine, to law, to commerce, to politics, the clergy,
and the list is endless. In all these professional fields in workplaces,
both men and women are supposed to be viewed as collaborators, and not
warriors. We are made to believe that people are judged on individual
basis, and that everything is possible for every one, and that gender
differences are not an issue. However, if we look at any society, and
surprisingly even in Europe and America, which are about the most
developed of all, we find the following scenario;
- Unemployment rate among women is still
higher than men.
- Women are placed in less qualified jobs
and less prestigious jobs.
- Women earn less than men, even when they
are in relatively the same positions.
- Few women in top echelons in boardrooms
and middle-management positions.
As regards this last point,
it can be remarked that whereas women often encounter a "glass ceiling"
that prevents them from advancing upwards in male dominated professions,
men encounter a "glass escalator" that prevents them from remaining in
lower-level positions. As Williams puts it; "As if on a moving escalator,
they [men] must work to stay in place" (Williams 1995; 127).
Women are consequently
still very much aware of gender differences, as they constantly have to
face disadvantages due to their biological sex. If it is true that more
women today can now be found in top positions, even though we have moved
on to a new century, these women have had to fight their way up the
ladder. The question thus asked is this; Why is it that we have such few
females chief executive officers (CEOs) and managers in and around the
world? And even in cases where we have them, the pattern is usually this;
Increasingly, they are women who had just reached the "Glass ceiling" in
the mainstream organisations, and it seemed apparent that they had reached
their apex, and that there was no more upward or vertical mobility,
whatever their performance. Maybe out of frustration, or maybe due to
being ambitious to realise one’s ultimate managerial potentials and
challenges, the women who have been "able" maybe financially, have thus
moved out, and gone on to form their own companies, which they
subsequently head as CEO or managing director (MD) or senior managers.
2 GENDER AND DISCOURSE
One of the main weapons for
these struggles for one’s place at the workplace, and in society at large,
is language. Language determines who we are and how we position ourselves
in relation to others. Language creates social reality, and societal
reality is transferred through it. If it is a social reality that women
compared to men are disadvantaged in our societies even at the beginning
of the 21st century, it has to be expected that those
differences will surface in the use of language by men and women.
Language is never trivial or neutral. It is an extremely powerful tool for
looking at, and (re)creating reality in different ways. What is
communicated is much more than an individual means of expressing how the
world is viewed. It constantly reflects and helps to create the social
structures and systems that control us. As a result, one comes to
recognise the relationship between language and power. For researchers on
discourse and gender, power relations get articulated through language.
Kendall and Tannen (1997)
say that the workplace is characterised by many constraints. The workplace
is an institutional structure, in which individuals are hierarchically
ranked. It also has a history of greater male participation in most work
settings, and this is especially so at the higher ranking levels such as
middle management and top management. The workplace has a still existing
though recently permeated pattern of participation along gender lines. The
workplace therefore provides a special challenge to gender and language
researchers, as well as an opportunity to observe interaction in the
context of these constraints (Kendall & Tannen 1997; 81).
We may also look at the
workplace as "a community of practice" (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1998;
490), within which participants perform their various identities. The
community of practice takes us away from the community defined by a
location or by a population. Instead, it focuses on a community defined by
social engagement, and it is this engagement that language serves, and not
the place or the people as a collection of individuals. Gender is thus
produced (and often reproduced) in differential membership in communities
of practice. From our studies of interactional behaviour, we see that
women do the work necessary for interaction to occur smoothly. But it is
men who control what will be produced as reality by that interaction. They
(men) already have, and they continually establish and enforce their
rights to define what the interaction and reality, will be about (Fishman
1983; 100).
This paper therefore looks
at gender and discourse in a work place setting. How language is an
invisible tool of discrimination, and is rarely given much thought. In
most cultures, those with power may exercise the right to speak for longer
in contexts such as meetings. They may interrupt others, or use joking
insults as silencing devices. Because men in general more often hold
positions of power in particular interactions, they (men) contribute to
the construction of normative masculinity. As a group, women rather than
men are more often excluded from power. With women entering the situations
that were previously all male, where established norms of behaviour are
based on the ways men behaved in those roles, expectations must give way;
either expectations of how someone in that role should behave, or
expectations of the women who move into those roles.
This paper is motivated
partly by the discussions so far of the links between language, gender and
power. Robin Lakoff for example explains that norms of men’s discourse
styles are institutionalised, and that they are not seen as "the better
way to talk, but as the only way" (Lakoff 1990; 210). Gal argues that
men’s discourse styles are institutionalised as ways of speaking with
authority, that institutions are "organised to define, demonstrate, and
enforce the legitimacy and authority of linguistic strategies used by one
gender; or men of one class or ethnic group, while denying the power of
others" (Gal 1991; 186). Recent research has shown that the power
and status of conversational participants also has a strong and
predictable effect upon the way in which these interactions are organised.
To best examine gender,
discourse and power variables in the workplace setting, we need to use
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as an interpretative framework. CDA is
very useful in moving beyond the surface level examination of discourse to
the "deep structure" subtle relations of power and inequality, and as they
relate to gender. CDA sees discourse as a form of social practice. This
implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event
and the situations, institutions and social structures, which frame it.
Critical discourse studies see organisations not simply as social
collectives where shared meaning is produced, but rather, as sites of
struggle where different groups compete to shape the social reality of
organisations in ways that serve their own interests. It is not only
economic resources that are issues of interests in these struggles, but
also symbolic resources. Many organisation scholars are therefore
concerned with examining how these competing interests get resolved
through the control of symbolic and discursive resources.
Critical discourse analysts
tend to see power as already accruing to some participants, and not to
others, and this power is determined by their institutional role as well
as their social economic status, gender or ethnic identity (Fairclough
1992, van Dijk 1993). In this sense, social relations of power pre-exist
the talk itself, "power is already there as a regime of truth" (Foucault
1980; 131). As a result, in CDA, approaching the role of power in
discourse tends to be a question of examining how those members of society
who possess it, reflect, reinforce and reproduce it through the language
they use; their discourse practices (Thornborrow 2002). Discourse is thus
socially constitutive in that it helps to sustain and reproduce the social
status quo, with an aim of transforming it (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997). As
Critical Discourse analysts therefore, we are inclined to look at the
discourse structures more critically, and uncover those subtle discursive
practices that ensure that women never climb to the top, but are instead
always relegated to the rear.
A lot of research conducted
demonstrates that women in authority in fact also face a "double bind"
regarding professionalism and femininity. Lakoff describes the double bind
in this case as; "When a woman is placed in a position in which being
assertive and forceful is necessary, she is faced with a paradox; she can
be a good woman, but a bad executive or professional, or vice versa. To do
both is impossible" (Lakoff 1990; 206). One of the sources for women’s
inability to be perceived as being both a good authority figure and a good
woman is that, as Tannen puts it, the "very notion of authority is
associated with maleness" (Tannen 1995; 167). Women who attempt to resolve
the double bind by using interactional strategies associated with men find
that they are judged and treated very harshly by both men and women
(ironically). Some researchers suggest that language strategies that women
use to downplay their authority are drawn from the resources available to
them as mothers; this may be seen as an attempt to (re)solve the double
bind between professionalism and femininity.
As has already been
indicated, women in high status jobs are few (most of women in the
workplace are in subordinate and relatively powerless roles. This suggests
that it is most unlikely that they are getting a fair opportunity to
contribute to discussions and decision-making. They are unlikely to be
getting a fair share of the talking time; they are likely to be
interrupted more often than men; and in interactions with a predominantly
male group, they will get little encouragement to contribute (Holmes 1995;
211). Because boardrooms and work-based meetings among professionals tend
to be dominated by male talk, it is generally male ways of interacting,
which predominate. Many interaction problems may thus be the result of
structured inequality in the society; Power is the issue. As Henley and
Kramarae (1991) say; "Greater social power gives men the right to pay less
attention to, or discount women’s protests, the right to be less adept at
interpreting their communications than women are at men’s, the right to
believe women are inscrutable" (Henley & Kramarae 1991; 27). The
problem goes further than this. Women’s ways of talking differ from men’s
because each group has developed interaction strategies, which reflect
their societal positions. The different patterns of interaction into which
girls and boys are socialised, are not randomly different. Their features
are attuned to the requirements of the society, which are partly
determined by the power structure.
Troemel-Ploetz (1998) talks
about this disparity in now a more familiar way, but nevertheless quite
effective in showing how grave the situation is;
"Men are used to dominating
women; they do it especially in conversations: they set the tone as soon
as they enter a conversation, they declare themselves expert for any
topic, they expect and get attention and support from their female
conversational partners, they expect and get space to present their topics
and, above all, themselves-their conversational success is being produced
by the participants in that conversation. Women are trained to please,
they have to please also in conversations, i.e. they will let men
dominate...Men also exhibit and produce their conversational rights: the
right to dominate, the right to self-presentation or self- aggrandisation,
at the expense of others, the right to have the floor and to finish one's
turn, the right to keep women from talking (by disturbance or
interruption), the right to get attention and consideration from women,
the right to conversational success. Women, on the other hand, have
conversational obligations: they must not disturb men in their dominating
and imposing behaviour; they must support their topics, wait with their
own topics, give men attention, take them seriously at all times, and
above all, listen and help them to their conversational success" (Troemel-Ploetz
1998; 447).
As we enter the public workplace, we do
so with the following assumptions;
That Power-relation(s) somehow exist and
determine the course of actual concrete encounters, by focusing on the
local management of talk-in-interaction.
That power may be viewed in terms of
differential distribution of discursive resources.
That these discursive resources enable
certain participants to achieve interactional effects that are not
available to all, or are differentially available to others in the
workplace setting.
That the employment of Interruptions,
Questions and Topic organisations and control within the Turn taking
process, are examples of powerful interactional resources, which may
place constraints on the discourse options, which are available to
actors/agents/speakers in a discourse situation.
That the more powerful people/speakers
in a workplace situation may employ the use of these interactional
resources, which may suppress and/or oppress their less powerful
interlocutors.
That the less powerful interlocutors in
most cases, in the corporate world, are women.
That the use of these Interactional
resources within conversations, may then be just one of the very many
factors which may contribute to women not rising up the ranks within the
corporate world; above that "glass ceiling".
That the situation created thus far may
create disparity or polarisation of men and women in the workplaces, and
this may lead to further marginalisation and invisibility of women in
this public sphere, and by extension, in the general society.
With these assumptions in
mind, we therefore look at the discourse patterns of men and women in the
workplace and analyse them using Conversation Analysis. To critically
analyse gender and power within these interactions, Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) is then used as an interpretative framework. As already
pointed out, this is very effective in uncovering the subtleties of the
discriminatory discursive practices, which mark institutional discourse.
3 TURN TAKING AND
INTERACTIONAL RESOURCES AS CONTROLS
Interactional control
features broadly have to do with ensuring that the interaction works
smoothly at an organisational level; that turns at talking are smoothly
distributed, that questions are asked and answered, and that topics are
selected and changed. O'Donnell (1990) points out that floor holding,
topic control, and interruptions are closely related with power; "Interactionally,
greater power is correlated with floor holding, topic control, and
interruptions. Friendly talk among equals is more likely to be
characterised by utterance completions, latchings, and casual overlaps"
(O’Donnell 1990; 211). Zimmerman and West, and other scholars also state
that; "Just as male dominance is exhibited through male control of micro
institutions in society, it is also exhibited through male control of at
least a part of micro institutions" (Zimmerman & West 1975; 125).
In this paper, we therefore
look at interactional control. The objective here is to describe
larger-scale organisational properties of interactions, upon which the
orderly functioning and control of interactions depends. An important
issue is who controls interactions at this level; to what extent is
control negotiated as a joint accomplishment of participants, and to what
extent is it asymmetrically exercised by one participant. In the next
remaining sections, we thus examine as interactional controls; Turn
taking, Interruptions, Questions, and the issue of Topics. One of the
controlling mechanisms in micro institutions is related to the strategy of
interrupting. As men are interrupting more often than women, male
dominance can be established in conversations. Turns are thus claimed, as
topics are initiated and maintained by men or abandoned by women.
4 TURN TAKING AND
INTERRUPTIONS
The study of interruption
has been the locus of scholarly interest for nearly a generation.
Interruption has been studied across a broad spectrum of human behaviour
in both same and mixed gender exchanges. These have been done for both
children and adults, in variant contexts where power, status, topic and
task have been manipulated, and controlled in laboratory setting. In the
current study, interruption is analysed in a natural setting. It involves
mixed-gender exchanges for adults in the workplace setting, and within
this context, issues of power, status and gender are discussed.
Interruption has also been linked with personality traits such as
dominance and assertiveness (Ferguson 1977, Wodak 1981). In spite of
substantial effort to explain the dynamics of interruption, there is still
however little consensus about what an interruption actually is, how it
manifests itself in interaction, how to best measure its occurrence, and
how to interpret the role and function of interruption in conversation
(Hawkins 1988, James & Clarke 1993).
In this section therefore,
we examine the concept of interruption. This is done under the general
auspices of the turn taking process. The kind of questions that would
therefore be asked could include questions such as; Who interrupts whom?
Who interrupts the most? Who is interrupted the least? What kind of
interruptions are we talking about? Are the rights and obligations of
participants (with respect to overlaps, interruptions or silences, for
example), symmetrical or asymmetrical? As a way of beginning, we classify
the interruptions in order to see how they are spread across the speakers.
All along as we make these discussions, we have to relate these concepts
to power and gender, which are crucial to this study. We have got to
determine whether communication at workplace is pegged on gender, or it is
pegged on power, or whether there is a possibility of both gender and
power being players in such contexts and situations.
From the meetings recorded
and analysed (although I recorded seven meetings, I concentrated deeply on
only two of them), the percentage of interruptions out of the total turns
was relatively the same in both the meetings, which I refered to as A and
B. In most conversations, people usually interrupt without even being
conscious of the action. It is sometimes taken for granted. Sometimes
speakers only become aware of interruption when one specific speaker
constantly interrupts his/her interlocutors. As Coates (1989) argued, talk
then becomes interruptive when it infringes negatively on the current
speaker, who in turn may respond with verbal or non-verbal annoyance.
From the meetings also, it
became evident that the status of a participant within the larger context
(of the firm) has a lot of influence on the turn taking behaviour in the
specific contexts; namely meetings in this case. It is also undeniably
evident that the role of the chairperson in any meeting is quite powerful
and in most situations, we will have the chair taking the most number of
turns, and this is regardless of the gender of each chair. However, if we
critically compare meetings, which had a female chairperson, and those
which had a male chairperson in terms of their number of turns, an
interesting scenario unfolded. The male chairpersons seemed to have longer
turns and more amount of speech compared to their female counterparts.
They also had less interruptions on their turns, but incidentally
interrupted their interlocutors more than the female chairperson did to
their interlocutors.
It was found that
Interruption is a more complex phenomenon than what we normally think when
we first see it. It was also found that in order to analyse interruptions
effectively, we had to conceptualise them, and consequently classify them.
This was in view of the fact that it was noticed that not all
interruptions were an indication of violation of speaking rights by the
more powerful people. Less powerful people, it was observed, also used
interruptions on their more powerful counterparts. We thus devised a
categorisation (workable for the project) that showed Supportive
interruptions, Neutral interruptions, and Unsupportive interruptions.
These were able to bring in both the power and gender variables.
On Gender, it was noted in
both meetings that men used interruptions more than women. In meeting A,
at first glance, this did not appear to be the case. This was obscured by
the fact that the chair was female; It was only when the interruptions
attributed to her were put together with those of the rest of the women
that the women seemed to have more interruptions than men. When her
contributions were subsequently removed, it was noted that the women fared
on rather badly compared to the males. This was even despite the fact that
the women were more than the men in this meeting. When both the
chairpersons from the two meetings were observed, it was noted that the
male chairperson in meeting B outperformed his female counterpart in
meeting A. This may be an argument not just of power, but more so of the
gender factor, since both these people were powerful in their capacities
as chairpersons.
On the types of
interruptions, it was found that whenever the women used interruptions,
most times, they tended to use the Supportive type, whose principle aim
was to express solidarity and interest in the interrupted persons. Women
generally did not use the Unsupportive interruptions (which may be seen to
violate a speaker’s turns) although we should point it out that the female
chairperson used them occasionally. In general therefore, both men and
women avoided the unsupportive type of interruptions. Whenever they used
interruptions however, most times they were of the Supportive type, which
were identified as being the least effective in violating speakers’
rights. It was also found that after Supportive interruptions, both men
and women in relatively the same fashion also used Neutral interruptions.
It was thus noted that
before making conclusions on interruptions, you have to know exactly which
kinds of interruptions you are dealing with. It was also noted that before
you can make any judgement on the conversational behaviour of the
participants as regards these discursive controls, the issue of context
that featured in the discourse patterns very greatly had to be addressed.
We thus had to look at among other things, the post-interruptive behaviour
of the interrupted persons. At the same time, it was found that we had to
look at the contextual backgrounds that the participants brought with them
to the interaction process; these included the expertise role they brought
with them to the meetings.
We found that whereas some
speakers seemed to take the floor without a fight, others always had to do
so in a fight. In terms of gender, it was generally found that men fought
less to get the floor, and even when they eventually got it, the
resistance they got from their interlocutors was in most cases much less,
and they usually maintained the floor up to the point they wanted to exit
it out of their own volition. This did not always happen to the women in
the meetings, of course apart from the chair in meeting A, who despite her
status and position, still somehow faced some form of resistance in the
form of interruptive behaviour from the male interlocutors.
When it came to power, it
was also found that it was mostly the more powerful speakers
hierarchically within the organisation who took the floor without a fight,
and maintained it until they were through. In cases where these
individuals had to fight for the floor, they always emerged as the more
powerful participants in most cases, and most times they won. It was noted
that the behaviour of the rest of the members in the meetings was usually
less interruptive when these powerful people spoke and whenever they (less
powerful) interrupted; these were of the Supportive type, which in most
cases expressed solidarity with these people.
5 TURN TAKING PROCESS AND
QUESTIONS
In many forms of
institutional interaction, questions get asked primarily by institutional
figures such as attorneys, doctors and news interviews. It is however
important to mention that in most of these situations, it is the setting
that makes these people more powerful, and the number of questions they
ask does not quantify their immense power. Power here therefore depends on
the setting, which entrusts these institutional figures with their
powerful positions. Questions are however a powerful interactional
resource for the simple reason that the asking of questions places
constraints on the discourse options, which are available to its
recipients. And while individual questions constrain, sequences of
questions can constrain more strongly. An example is in the courtroom
discourse which Atkinson and Drew (1979) studied. The fact that the
attorney is able to ask sequences of questions, which the witness is
restricted to answering, gives particular powers to the attorney. Power
here depends on the setting, and not really on the power pegged on the
number of questions. The setting in this case, entrusts the judge with a
powerful position of being able to ask questions whereas the respondent
can only answer them, and in most cases, is obliged to do so.
The theme of questions and
questioning is an area where gender differences have been noted, in
different contexts, including the public workplace, which makes up a form
of institutional discourse. We would pose the following questions; What
are questions? Who asks most questions in different contexts and why? How
do they ask questions? What is the function of questions in different
situations and different contexts? What types of questions are asked? One
important question is whether these different types of questions are
pegged on gender? Is it possible that they are also pegged on power?
Still, is there a possibility of an interplay between gender relations and
power /hierarchical relations in these contexts?
Two broad categories are
identified when dealing with conversational groups. Holmes (1995) says
that it is useful to distinguish between response-restricting and
facilitative or supportive questions according to their function in
context. Response restricting questions are more often of the Yes - No
answers, whereas facilitative questions are usually more than one word
answer. In her study of second language learners, Holmes found that
response-restricting questions were generally more frequent than
facilitative questions. She also found that more men overly used
considerably more response restricting questions (88%) as compared to
women (66%). This she says is because females tend to use more
facilitative or supportive questions than males, opening up discussion and
encouraging others to participate. Males on the other hand use "organising"
questions, or questions that restrict responses to short factual
statements. A further broad categorisation was identified and found
relevant to this research project. The categories were thus labelled as
supportive questions, critical questions and antagonistic questions. It
must however be pointed out that it was sometimes not easy to determine
the question type just from the surface level, until we looked at it
within its contextual framework.
Supportive questions on the
one hand imply a generally positive response to the content of the
presentation. They may invite the speaker to either expand or elaborate on
some aspects of it. Supportive questions also provide "openings" and
invite the speaker to develop a point, or expand on an area of their
presentation. Critical questions on the other hand are a type of questions
which are less whole-heartedly or explicitly positive, and may contain a
hint of criticism. They often consist of a modified agreement, or a
qualified disagreement, perhaps expressing a degree of negative evaluation
or scepticism. The tone in which any question is expressed is also
extremely important in interpreting its function in order to classify it
accurately. This is particularly obvious with critical questions. A
sceptical tone of voice can turn a superficially supportive comment into a
critical one. As far as Antagonistic questions are concerned, they are a
type of questions generally involve challenging, aggressively critical
assertions whose function is to attack the speaker's position and
demonstrate that it is wrong. These antagonistic question are clearly very
face threatening. Somehow on the women's part, it is only the chairperson
in one meeting who used them, and even so, did it sparingly.
I would however hasten to
add that it was not always easy to determine whether a question was
supportive, critical or antagonistic. This was even despite the fact that
the descriptions of each type was so clearly laid down. What this meant
was that we also had to look at the question in its context of situation;
what had come before the question, or what had prompted the question to be
asked. Also to be considered was how the next speaker reacted to the
question. In many cases, this next response gave an insight into the type
of question at hand, especially if it may have been problematic in its
description.
On Turn taking and
Questions, it was observed that questions are a normal phenomenon in any
kind of verbal interaction and were also quite central in the
institutional interactions that we have analysed. It was noted that
questions are a powerful interactional resource, since the asking of
questions places constraints on the discourse options, which are available
to its recipients. It was also noted that questions are one way of handing
the floor over from one speaker to another, and yet still maintain
politeness. This is in view of the fact that although they may be quite
effective, interruptions may be considered impolite, so speakers who are
interested in politeness would prefer to use questions. However, although
questions may be an alternative, it was found that this depended on the
type of questions since different questions function differently in
various contexts.
In the private sphere, it
has been observed that women tend to ask more questions, and sometimes
actually ask more questions in comparison to men. In the formal context,
of which this research is a part of, it was found however, that this was
not always the case. In meeting A, women generally had more questions than
men. However, it was found that this was due to the fact that most
questions emanated from the chairperson who was female. When we separated
the chairperson’s questions from the rest of the women, it was found that
women’s contributions were pathetically low. This brings us to the power
interplay even within the same. In meeting B however, the male
participation in terms of the questions was invariably higher than for the
women. The fact that the chairperson was male only magnified the numbers.
However, it was also found that when both the female and male chairpersons
were compared in terms of their contributions on questions, the male
chairperson outperformed his female counterpart. This suggested not only
the interplay between gender and power, but also the fact that gender may
supersede power.
In terms of the
categorisation of questions, it was found that most of the speakers often
used Supportive questions whenever they asked questions. It was found that
the second most used type of question was the critical kind, and
antagonistic types of questions were the least used.
In terms of who used what
type of questions, it was found that both males and females used
Supportive questions, whether they were more powerful or less powerful
within the ranks. Of course the more powerful used them more, and also
more men used them compared to the females in both meetings. The
chairpersons of each meeting however asked more questions than the rest of
the speakers, although it was found that the chairperson in meeting B
generally asked more questions than the chairperson in meeting A. When
looking at Critical questions, it was also found that although both men
and women speakers used them, both chairpersons tended to use them more
often than the rest. At the same time, more males than females tended to
use them (of course in meeting A, this is if we removed the participation
of the chair!). The rest of the women did not use them. Being the least
used type of questions, it was hardly surprising to find out that
Antagonistic questions whenever used were mostly done by the chairpersons,
and the more powerful speakers. In meeting A (with female chairperson), it
is only the chairperson who used them, and also a speaker who was male,
and also hierarchically more powerful. The rest of the females in this
meeting refrained from using them. In meeting B, no woman speaker used
Antagonistic questions at all. As for the male participation on this, all
of the Antagonistic questions apart from one came from the chairperson.
In the use of, and
distribution of Questions across the meetings, it was noted that both
gender and power seemed to have a bearing. There was usually interplay
between gender and power, and in some cases observed; it was found that
gender seemed to be the decisive factor.
6 TURN TAKING AND TOPIC
ORGANISATION
Fairclough (1992) in
discussing interactional controls gives us an example of a standard
medical interview, where the doctor closely controls the basic
organisation of the interaction by opening and closing each cycle, and
accepting or acknowledging the patient’s responses. One corollary of this
is that the doctor is controlling the turn taking system in the way that
the turns are distributed between participants in the interaction. The
patient only takes turns when offered them by the doctor; for example when
the doctor directs a question at the patient. The doctor on the other hand
is not offered turns, but takes them when the patient has finished her/his
response, or when he decides the patient has said enough for the purpose
of the diagnosis. A further corollary of this basic organisation is to do
with "Topic control". It is mainly the doctor who introduces new topics
through his questions.
It has been suggested that
the person who controls the topic is the person who controls the
interaction (Shuy 1987, Walker 1987), and especially so in legal settings.
Just as in the medical discourse and also classroom discourse, research on
domestic discourse between female and male partners has also shown an
asymmetry in the take up of topics; women offer more topics than men, but
it is men’s topics, which are more often accepted by women than vice versa
(Fishman 1983). Ethnomethodological research on topics is however based on
conversation, and on an assumption of equal rights and obligations between
participants. In such interactions, topics are introduced and changed only
by the dominant participants, often according to a pre-set agenda or
routine, which may or may not be overtly set in the discourse. What this
means is that topic organisation and control in most cases is never
symmetrical, although this may depend on a lot of factors such as
status/power (as seen in the medical encounter), expertise, or even
gender. The context also matters greatly, and when you are talking of
institutional discourse in the workplace, these factors affect a great
deal the manner in which topics are organised and handled.
West and Garcia (1988)
studied mixed sex dyads and analysed male dominance in interaction by
investigating the frequency of instances of "unilateral topic change", or
one speaker’s attempt to change topic while the other speaker is still on
the previous topic. They found that men were responsible for initiating
more changes of topic than women (64% versus 36%). However, in contrast to
the study by West and Garcia (1988), other researches conducted of
conversations between strangers found no gender differences in the number
of topics initiated for discussion or the number of topics developed.
Pamela Fishman in her
studies, tried to find out why some topics by both men and women sometimes
failed, and yet some others succeeded. In the private conversations that
she studied (Fishman 1983; 89-101), she found that women raised more
topics than men, and they worked harder to develop those topics. Fishman
says that women use many conversational strategies so frequently because
conversations are generally more problematic for them than for men. This
can be seen by looking at what happens to the topics women and men
introduce into conversation. She found that women raised 62% of the
topics. While all the topics raised by men produced conversations, only
38% of the topics raised by women were successfully developed. Men thus
did less work in interaction to develop topics than women did. Fishman
found that women had much more trouble getting conversations going than
men did. She found that topics introduced by the women failed because the
men did not respond with the attention necessary to keep the conversation
going, whatever the content of the topic was. In contrast, she found that
the men’s topics succeeded not because they were inherently more
interesting, but because the women upheld their part of the conversations.
Topics men initiated thus succeeded because both parties worked in a joint
development, to turn the initial attempt into an actual conversation. This
study by Fishman (1983) has been widely cited, but there have been no
follow-up studies that attempt to replicate her results.
In working with data on the
current study, it was observed that Turn taking and Topic organisation
they were also central issues in interaction, especially so when one is
interested in looking at the issue of power. It was noted that the person
who controlled the topic was also by extension the person who controlled
the interaction. Topic control was thus seen to be a crucial factor in
measuring the status of a member within the interaction and also in
judging how power is distributed.
Like in the other
interactional controls, the role of the chairperson here was found to be
crucially important. Most times, the chairperson initiated topics, and
also shifted them occasionally and also closed the topics. It was found
that the laying out of the agenda was always the prerogative of the chair,
and this was regardless of the sex of the chair. It was also found that a
great deal of subtopics flowed from the general framework of laying out
the agenda, which has been said, was the docket of the chair. With regard
to this, the position of the chairperson was therefore found to be very
strong and unquestionably powerful. However, of the two chairpersons, it
was found that the female chairperson was more flexible in her handling of
the agenda. This could be seen in situations where a member kind of
deviated from the actual topic, even though there might have been a
relationship with the previous topic. In such cases, it was observed that
she gave the speaker audience, and listened to such contributions with a
lot of patience. However, the male chairperson, it was found, had the
habit of dismissing the contributions of the participants as "not ideal
for the current discussion", and he would recommend that such topics could
be discussed in more relevant forums or meetings. This, it could be
concluded can work to discourage contributions from participants who would
thus refrain from making future novel contributions.
It was also found that the
male chairperson when interrupted, as in the ringing of the telephone,
could resume or abandon a topic that was in progress at the time, and if
he decided to abandon it, or change it, despite what the initiator of the
topic did, the chair always succeeded. The female chairperson however, in
all the cases where there was interruption as in the ringing of the
telephone, she always invariably and consistently went back to the topic
that had been in progress before the interruption.
It was found therefore that
in connection to Topic organisation, three things came to bear;
- The first was that topic initiation,
topic development, topic change and topic closing were all influenced by
the gender of the participants.
- The second was that different
occupational status and power had an adverse influence on who raised
topics and how they were received and organised in the interaction.
- The third was that both gender and power
were related to context, which had an influence on how the topics were
organised.
7 CONCLUSIONS
From the findings, various
conclusions were drawn. These conclusions were based on the findings
related to the different interactional resources that were found within
the interaction patterns in the workplace. Understanding the complex
interplay of gender and discourse required careful examination of the
context of social roles. The variation evidenced in these contextualised
forms offered clues about a changing world and changing gender role
expectations, where discourse participants are struggling to challenge
restrictive notions and pursue new choices. Unfortunately, such
participants also struggle with the continuing forces of traditional
gender norms and the maintenance of the status quo by those who oppose the
loss of their power and privilege. This is where Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) played a pivotal role by making those practices more opaque
so that the affected know exactly what they are up against.
It was concluded that most
interaction problems such as the unequal distribution of talk in public
contexts are the result of structured inequality in our society. Women’s
ways of talking differ from men’s because each group has developed
interaction strategies, which reflect their societal positions. Most
cross-gender communication problems in public contexts are women’s
problems because the interactional rules in such situations are men’s
rules. So conscious-raising and mutual understanding may resolve not only
some problems of cross-cultural miscommunication between the sexes, but
also in the real world situation. In the real world situation, the real
issue is power. There has been unequal distribution of power between the
sexes in society. Changing the power structure would probably alter the
patterns.
It has often been suggested
that quantitative findings on male dominance in conversation can be
explained to a significant extent by the fact that males on average hold
higher status positions than women; that is, it is not simply gender that
causes men to dominate and women to differ. If this is true, then it
should follow that;
- Where women are in a position of power
they will dominate conversation in ways similar to men.
- That where men are in subordinate
positions, their dominant behaviour will diminish or disappear.
From my findings, less
powerful men in my sample were still able to dominate more powerful women
status-wise, although the truth is that more powerful women status-wise
came out more strongly and more assertively in their conversational styles
than less powerful women. On power, when you however look at the
performance between the chairpersons in their respective meetings,
although one was male and the other was female, the male chair seemed to
have more of the interruptions, questions and topics; these may be
indications of gender variables outdoing status and power.
It was thus concluded that
the gender based patterns tend to override status variables, so that even
when a woman is in a higher status position or more powerful role, she is
likely to be interrupted by even a lower status man within that hierarchy,
more often than she interrupts him i.e., subordinate males interrupted
higher status females in other work situations more than they did to their
male counterparts. Through "violations" of the turn taking model, men
denied equal status to women as conversational partners with respect to
rights to the full utilisation of their turns and support for the
development of topics. The study has provided strong evidence to suggest
that the power generally assumed by males is reflected in domination of
conversational interaction.
From the current study, it
was also concluded that in most cases, powerful participants will be
selected to speak more often than non-powerful participants. It was noted
that powerful people dominate conversation, not only because of their own
efforts, but also because of the support they receive from others.
Powerful participants will self-select more often than non-powerful
participants. Powerful participants will interrupt and overlap others more
frequently than non-powerful participants. Powerful participants will be
interrupted and overlapped less frequently than non-powerful participants.
However, status alone as we have seen, can not account for the results.
There is thus enough evidence from the research carried out, to suggest
and conclude that a significant difference exists in the way that men and
women organise conversation. Also, that the power assumed by males is
reflected in their domination of mixed-sex interaction and thus also in
disproportionate floor holding. More powerful participants thus dominate
conversational organisation thereby gaining for themselves a
disproportionate amount of floor apportionment, and in most cases, due to
societal arrangements and structures, the more powerful participants are
in most cases men. In verbal behaviour within the organisation, the
participants are acting out the real life situations where men dominate,
and women continue to be suppressed and oppressed.
This study showed that when
the two power bases of gender and occupational status are at work, then
gender seems to exert the greater influence on floor apportionment. The
power base of occupational status did influence the way that both men and
women organised conversation (Generally, speakers in high occupational
positions spent more time holding the floor than their subordinates, and
more specifically in two cases, the same speakers gained more floor space
in "boss" rather than subordinate positions). Nevertheless even when women
held high-status occupational positions, male subordinates still organised
the interaction in a way that allowed them (males) to dominate the floor.
Gender and Power therefore,
are so intricately related in the way that they influence the Turn taking
behaviour of participants, although we have singled out Gender as being
more deterministic in these verbal behaviour of the participants. We
should however be careful not to automatically identify the linguistic
strategies used by women as factual makers of subordinate status. We
should also note that the patterning of specific linguistic forms may be
illuminated by many more variables than just gender. These include the
role taken by participants in interaction, the objectives of interaction,
the participants’ relative status on a number of dimensions, and many more
variables. One thing to remember is that "women" do not form a homogeneous
social group. We have women from Africa, Europe, Asia etc, and they all
come with differing cultural characteristics, which are reflected, in
their linguistic behaviour. Gender is crosscut with other social
divisions, and their relative importance is affected by the specifics of
the situation.
The question may thus really be who are the
powerful speakers in a workplace setting? This domain, as has been
discussed, had traditionally left out women, and as of today, the picture
has not changed very much, and the linguistic equation may similarly
follow the same pattern. However, we have slightly more women in these key
powerful positions, but as compared to male representation in the same
domain, this is still quite insignificant. Women in this domain thus need
to work towards negotiating and struggling against the conditions of their
oppression in these kinds of settings. They need to work towards making
this so called "glass ceiling" more opaque, or shattering it altogether.
Looking beneath the discourse patterns of men and women in the workplace,
the two groups have been unveiled as working as warriors in their claim
for public space. This does no good to society in general. Because these
practices are bound to be made more visible and opaque, men and women
should now work towards being collaborators in this crucial sector if our
society is to achieve maximum benefit. This goes a long way in reforming
the African Public Sector.
REFERENCES
Atkinson, J. Maxwell & Paul
Drew (1979) Order in Court: The
Organisation of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings. London:
Macmillan.
Coates, Jennifer (1989)
"Gossip revisited: Language in all
female groups". In Jennifer Coates & Deborah Cameron (1991) (ed.),
Women in Their Speech Communities. London and New York: Longman.
(94-122).
Eckert, Penelope, & Sally
McConnell-Ginet (1998) "Communities
of practice: where language, gender and power all live". In Coates
Jennifer (1998) (ed) 484-494.
Fairclough, Norman (1992)
Discourse and Social Change.
Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Fairclough, Norman & Ruth
Wodak (1997) "Critical discourse
analysis". In T. A. van Dijk, ed., Discourse Studies: A
Multidisciplinary Introduction London: Sage. 258-284.
Ferguson, Nicola (1977)
"Simultaneous speech, interruptions
and dominance". British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16,
295 – 302.
Fishman, Pamela (1983)
"Interaction: the work women do".
In Thorne, Kramarae & Henley 1983, pp.89 – 101. In Barrie Thorne & Nancy
Henley 1975. 105-129.
Foucault, Michael (1980)
Power/Knowledge (trans.
C. Gordon). New York: Pantheon.
Gal, Susan (1995)
"Language, gender and power: an
anthropological review". In Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (ed) (1995).
Gal, Susan (1991)
"Between speech and silence: the
problematics of research on language and gender". In Michaela di Leonardo
(ed.) Gender At The Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminism Anthropology in
The Post-modern Era. Berkley CA: University Of California.
Hawkins, (1988)
"Interruptions in task oriented conversations:
effects of violations of expectations by males and females". Women’s
Studies in Communication. 11, 1 – 20.
Henley, Nancy & Cheris
Kramarae (1991) "Gender, power, and
miscommunication", in Nikolas Coupland, Howard Giles and John Wiemann (ed.),
Miscommunication and Problematic Talk. 1991 (18-43). Newbury park. CA:
Sage.
Holmes, Janet (1995)
Women, Men and Politeness. U.K.:
Longman Group Ltd.
James, Deborah & Sandra
Clarke (1993) "Women, men, and
interruptions: a critical review" in Deborah Tannen (ed.) (1993) Gender
and Conversational Interaction. Oxford: O.U.P 231-280.
Kedar, Leah (1987) (ed.)
Power Through Discourse.
USA: Ablex publishing corporation.
Kendall, Shari & Deborah
Tannen (1997) "Gender and Language
in workplaces". In Gender and Discourse. R, Wodak, (1997) (ed.).
London: Sage 81-105.
Lakoff, Robin (1990)
Why can’t a woman be less like a man?". In
Talking Power: The Politics of Language. San Francisco: Basic Books.
Lakoff, Robin (1975)
Language and Women’s Place.
New York: Harper & Row.
Hall, Kira & Mary Bucholtz
(1995) (ed.) Gender Articulated:
Language and The Socially Constructed Self. London: Routledge.
O’Donnell, K (1990)
"Difference and dominance: How labour and
management talk conflict". In Grimshaw A. (ed.) Conflict Talk:
Sociolinguistic Investigations of Arguments in Conversations. p
210-240. Cambridge: CUP.
Sacks, Harvey, Emmanuel
Schegloff, & Gail Jefferson (1974)
"A Simplest Systematic for the Organisation of Turn-taking for
Conversation". Language 50 696-735.
Shuy, Rogers (1987)
"Conversational power in FBI covert tape
recordings" In Keder Leah (1987) (ed.). 43-56.
Tannen, Deborah (1995)
Talking From 9-5: Women And Men
In The Workplace. Language, Sex And Power. New York: Avon.
Thornborrow, Joanna (2001)
Power Talk: Language And
Interaction In Institutional Discourse. UK: Longman (Pearson
education).
Thorne, Barrie, Cheris
Kramarae & Nancy Henley (1983) [1975] (ed.)
Language, Gender And Society.
Cambridge. Newbury House Publishers.
Troemel-Ploetz, Senta
(1998) "Selling the apolitical" in
Coates Jennifer (1998) (ed.) Language and Gender: A Reader. UK:
Blackwell publishers. (446-458).
van Dijk, Teun (1993)
Elite Discourse And Racism.
Newbury park, CA: Sage.
Walker, Anne (1987)
"Linguistic manipulation, power, and legal setting". In Kedar Leah 57-82
(ed.) (1987).
West, Candance & Angela
Garcia (1988) "Conversational shift
work: A study of topical transition between women and men". Social
Problems 35: 551 – 575.
Williams, Christine (1995)
"The glass escalator; hidden
advantages for men in the ‘female’ professions". In Michael S. Kimmel &
Michael A. Messner (ed.) Men’s Lives. (3rd. Edition). Needham
Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Wodak, Ruth (1997)
"Critical discourse analysis and the study
of doctor-patient interaction." In Gunnarsson et al 1997. The
Construction of Professional Discourse. New York: Longman Limited.
Wodak, Ruth (1997)
(ed.) Gender and Discourse. London: Sage publications.
Wodak, Ruth (1996)
Disorders of Discourse. London:
Longman.
Wodak, Ruth (1981)
"Women relate, men report: Sex difference
in language behaviour in a therapeutic group". Journal Of Pragmatics 5,
261-285.
Wodak, Ruth & Michael Meyer
(2001) Methods Of Critical
Discourse Analysis. London, New Delhi: Sage.
Yieke, Felicia (2002a)
"Language, gender and power: The
use of questions as a control strategy in workplaces in Kenya". To appear
in the Wiener Linguistische Gazette. Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
der Universität Wien. Austria
Yieke, Felicia (2002b)
"Language and Discrimination. A
study of gender and discourse in workplaces in Kenya. Unpublished PhD.
Thesis, University Of Vienna. Austria.
Yieke, Felicia (forthcoming)
‘Gender and Discourse in the
Workplace. A case of the "Glass Ceiling" Syndrome’. To appear in Journal
for proceedings on Gender Conference on women studies; Gains and
Challenges in the 21st Century. Held in Kampala, Uganda.21st
July –26th July 2002.
Zimmerman, Don & Candance West
(1975) "Sex roles, interruptions
and silences in conversation". In Barrie Thorne & Nancy Henley 1975
Language, Gender And Society. Cambridge. Newbury House Publishers.
105-129.
