Tanaka-Fukushima2002

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Tanaka-Fukushima2002
BibType ARTICLE
Key Tanaka-Fukushima2002
Author(s) Hiroko Tanaka, Mihoko Fukushima
Title Gender orientations to outward appearance in Japanese conversation: a study in grammar and interaction
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, appearance, conditional relevance, conversation analysis, feminism, gender orientation, grammar and interaction, Japanese conversation, preference organization, weight
Publisher
Year 2002
Language English
City
Month
Journal Discourse & Society
Volume 13
Number 6
Pages 749–765
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/0957926502013006755
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This article employs 'grammar and interaction' — a new strand of conversation analysis — to contribute to the debate concerning the utility of conversation analysis for feminist research by exploring methods for making gender orientations accessible for analysis. We examine mixed-sex conversations in Japanese, in which participants discuss each other's outward appearance in general, and body weight in particular. We propose that certain 'breaches' of conversational organization can usefully be explained in terms of a possibly competing, normative 'gender constraint' involving orientations towards a man's expanded rights to topicalize, assess, demand and dictate standards of women's outward appearance. It is further suggested that this constraint may cut across a plethora of rudimentary organizations of conversation. The proposed constraint is shown to be oriented to or resisted by participants through the contingent mobilization of grammatical, prosodic and semantic resources to constitute themselves and others as 'men' or 'women' vis-à-vis this constraint.

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