Critical discourse analysis for fun and profit

[triskellian]

I've been thinking for a while about trying an experiment in the way I use language, and something that came up in my reading today made me decide to go ahead and do it.

The experiment is this: I will watch for times when I'm about to use "he" to refer to a person of unknown gender, and I will substitute "she" instead (I'm talking about speech; I take care to use non-gender-specific language in writing). I think I mostly do this with the drivers of nearby cars, when I'm predicting they're about to do something stupid ("He's going to pull out!"), so there's no value judgement involved, just an attempt to change the default setting on a switch, so to speak ;-)

I invite you to join me in this experiment if you wish, and to call me on it if you spot me using "him" as a generic (also if you wish!)


The reading that prompted this is for the Good Course (as opposed to the Bad one), which is on critical discourse analysis. The material we're currently covering is to do with the way ideology shapes language, and through it the world, and I've just finished reading a chapter on the way "common sense" encodes and enforces a particular way of understanding the world. (This same material is causing me to write and rewrite every sentence in this post as I notice the assumptions I'm building into the most innocent-looking phrases.)

Anyway. The words that solidified my intention to proceed with the experiment describe a way of foregrounding common sense, of making its working obvious and therefore open to question:

"the deliberate disturbance of common sense through some form of intervention in discourse"
(Normal Fairclough, Language and Power)

...And they're a reasonable description of my experiment, too. So that settled the matter ;-)

Comments

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I started on-purpose using neutral words instead of gender-specific ones a couple of years ago - both pronoun-ish ones (I use 'they' all the time) and role-specific ones (like police officer, chairperson, and so on). Within a couple of weeks it was utterly second-nature. I wasn't sexist-language-of-the-year winner before that, by a long shot, but I found there was still quite a lot of gender-specific-ness in my language when I started listening to every word I said or typed.

There are two things I noticed from this:

I'm far more aware of my inner assumptions/prejudices as a result. I *notice* when I make snap assumptions about gender - things like the mental image of a film director or a dj being male would be a simple example, but it's usually a lot more complicated than that. I didn't as easily notice that before.

I'm incredibly aware of people using non-gender-neutral language, both in writing and in speech, and it really bothers me. I find it difficult sometimes to restrain myself from correcting people. It also affects how I view what someone is saying, and I'm more likely to pick holes in an argument when someone uses gender-specific language.

[triskellian]

Thank you - that's what I'm aiming for :-)

I don't do it in writing, and I do use gender-non-specific language for a generic individual, but I've only just properly noticed that I do for specific people of unknown gender, and it's something I want to train myself out of.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

It should be (or at least, I found it to be) incredibly easy. I'd be interested to know how it goes.

I keep meaning to write up some sort of ramble on what I noticed, and what was easy and what hard, and the - oh, this sounds terribly self-help know-thyself - insights into all manner of Bad Thinking that lurk in my head. But it's all a bit unstructured, and involves writing down all about the sexist and classist and racist and *everything*ist assumptions (because once I started noticing one set, I started noticing all the others too) that I am capable of making, and that scares me a bit, because it's almost like going 'Hey! I'm nasty!'. I am trying to console me with thinking that *everyone* has these, and at least I notice and can therefore quash mine.

I might try getting that written up next week, actually, now that you've gotten me thinking (and wittering all over your journal) about it.

[triskellian]

I'd love to read that if you do write it up.