Foster2023
| Foster2023 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Foster2023 |
| Author(s) | Emily Foster, Laura Kilby |
| Title | “Speaking as a mother”: A membership categorisation analysis of child-centric talk in a UK daytime television talk show |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Feminism, MCA, Membership Categorization Analysis, Motherhood, Postfeminism |
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| Year | 2023 |
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| Month | may |
| Journal | Feminism & Psychology |
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| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1177/09593535231173232 |
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Abstract
In this study, we explore motherhood as an interactionally emergent identity category that speakers construct and lay claim to in talk, and as a category that is imbued with moral expectations of how incumbents should behave. We analyse 18 child-focussed debates from British daytime television talk show, This Morning. Engaging a postfeminist framework, we use membership categorisation analysis to explore how, and to what effect, women deploy claims to motherhood. We report three main findings: (a) Speakers routinely quantify their motherhood credentials in the development of a “mother-cum-expert” identity; (b) speakers who construct motherhood in accordance with neoliberal norms of “good motherhood” habitually trump the arguments offered by other speakers, including those with professional expertise; (c) any challenge to essentialist norms of womanhood and/or motherhood become accountable matters. We conclude that whilst there is power in motherhood insomuch as it vests some women with expertise and elevates their rights to be heard on child-focussed matters, the speakers in our study nevertheless construct motherhood in a manner that (re)produces and elevates essentialised notions of gender and narrow versions of motherhood.
Notes
