Gender Discourse in Families

The topic of our group presentation was A Dialectical Model of Family Gender Discourse: Body, Identity, and Sexuality. The goal of our article was to propose a dialectical model representing gender discourse in families. .The focus of my research paper is also the same with a focus more on gender and identity in a family. The articles that I research comply with this topic quite well, touching especially on gender and identity in the family. I used three articles that touched on my topic; “Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teen Blogs,” by David Huffaker, and Sandra Calvat, “Sociologist looks at gender roles in evangelical families,” by John Bartkowski, and “Gendered Discourse about Family Business,” by Sharon Danes, Heather Haberman, and Donald McTavish. “Gendered Discourse about Family Business” mainly focused on identifying discourse styles and also changes in the family structure. “Sociologist looks at gender roles in evangelical families, focused on the gender roles of the husband and the wife. In the last article, “Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teen Blogs,” examines the issues of online identity about their gender and identity. All articles prove to be somewhat different but focus on the roles of Gender and Identity.

“Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teen Blogs,” by David Huffaker, and Sandra Calvat the article explores the concept of the World Wide Web and its usage among tees, male and female. The internet is one of the most popular and common assets to teens, and probably one of the most used activities out there. “While physical constraints such as the body, biological sex, race, or age can have a profound effect on self-definition and self-presentation, many of these attributes become flexible in online environments”(Calvart & Huffaker p 26). This leaves a very flexible chance for adolescents to explore their identity and play with it through different language. On the aspect of language use and gender the traditional roles reveal the male role as agentive, self-expansion, and individuality are the rule. The female is said to be communal, embodying emotional expressiveness, and dependent on the needs of others. The traditional roles I just explain go along with the Psychological perspective of gender discourse that my group and I discussed in our presentation, that “sex differences have been an often reoccurring theme in American psychology, which is generally, characterized by essentialist explanations of gender and individualistic understanding of self.” The research shows that on the web the females tend to be shy and show less confidence, they stray away from profanity, and they don’t’ give strong opinions. The male is just the opposite; he uses profanity and is not concerned with politeness, and they use more fact-oriented language on the net. The use of language on the net clearly ties into the traditional roles of men and women.

There was a study that took place within this article and that examined the gender similarities among webblogs created by teenagers. The focus was how teenagers present their identities online, and how they use language to express experience and their feelings. Their hypotheses was; females will use more emoticons to express their feelings, males will provide personal information of their identity such as their age name and location, males will use more aggressive language than females, females will use more passive and cooperative language, and females will discuss more intimate topics like their sexual identity more than males. The results were almost identical with their hypotheses, but the males were surprisingly carrying on the female traditional roles somewhat, for example, a small amount of males used expressive language and talked about intimate topics. The study is a clear example and supporting evidence of the traditional gender roles.

The next article was brief but to the point. John Bartkowski’s article titled “Sociologist looks at gender roles in evangelical families,” is about the gender roles of the husband and wife in an evangelical family. She states in the opining sentence, “In describing the roles of husband and wife in conservative families, such phrases as “breadwinner” and “helpmate”, or “stay-at-home mom,” have been said” (Bartkowski p1). These terms could fall into the categories of a gendered, un-gendered or non-gendered family. Bartkowski claims states that families with heavy religion may be far more dynamic and complex than stereotypes suggest. His research shows that in families where there is a husband and wife and they are said to follow traditional roles, the realities ca be somewhat different. The wife may actually make nmore than the husband, and there may also be some tension between their understanding of roles and responsibilities in their household. He found that in the evangelical family the