Title: Trial Discourse and Judicial Decision-Making: Constraining the Boundaries of Gendered Identities
Abstract: Recent formulations of the relationship between language and gender, following Butler (1990), have emphasized the performative aspect of gender. Under this account, language is one important means by which gender—an ongoing social process—is enacted or constituted; gender is something individuals do—in part through linguistic choices—as opposed to something individuals are or have (West and Zimmerman, 1987). While the theorizing of gender as 'performative' has encouraged language and gender researchers to focus on the agency and creativity of social actors in the constitution of gender, to my mind there has been less emphasis placed on another aspect of Butler's framework—the 'rigid regulatory frame' (Butler, 1990) within which gendered identities are produced—that is, the limits and constraints on speakers' agency in constructing such identities. This emphasis on the 'performative' aspect of Butler's work, rather than on her discussions of the regulatory norms that define and police normative constructions of gender, may arise because, as Cameron (1997) suggests, philosophical accounts of Butler's 'rigid regulatory frame' often remain very abstract. For Cameron (1997: 31), too often in feminist philosophical discussions, 'gender… floats free of the social contexts and activities in which it will always be… embedded,' obscuring the fact that the routine enactment of gender is often, perhaps always, subject to what she calls the 'institutional coerciveness' of social situations.
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 13
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