This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by GUENDOUZI, J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

`You'll Think We're Always Bitching':

The Functions of Cooperativity and Competition in Women's Gossip

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ENGLAND

Literature relating to gender and discourse has shown that the features and structure of women's talk are highly cooperative. The implicature taken from this research has led to a binary opposition of gender stereotyping that allows for the inference that if women's talk is stylistically cooperative then it follows that cooperativity is a characteristic feature of women's social lives. Further, in opposition to this, men are seen as competitive and, as Cameron (1997) has rightly noted, analysis that focuses on the `style rather than the substance of what is said' obscures the complex nature of talk and results in unhelpful `competitive/cooperative oppositions'. This article explores the genre of gossip and suggests two main sub-genres `bitching' and `peer group news-giving'. Analysis of instances of women's `bitching' reveals that while women's conversations may rely on interlocutor cooperativity and a collaborative floor, the conversations are underpinned by a need to discursively claim symbolic capital through competition for socially acceptable images of femininity which reproduce a hegemonic ideology of gender.

Key Words: backstage talk • bitching • competition • cooperativity • frontstage talk • gossip • social capital • socialized images of femininity

Discourse Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 29-51 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/1461445601003001002


CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				W. W.F. Orr `Prospecting an encounter' as a communicative event Discourse Studies, June 1, 2008; 10(3): 317 - 339. [Abstract] [PDF]

				K. van Vleet Partial Theories: On Gossip, Envy and Ethnography in the Andes Ethnography, December 1, 2003; 4(4): 491 - 519. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. Tholander Pupils' gossip as remedial action Discourse Studies, February 1, 2003; 5(1): 101 - 128. [Abstract] [PDF]