In research on language and gender in the workplace in applied linguistics, performative approaches to gender focusing on how gender is discursively constructed and enacted in interactions have been dominating the scene. However, academic notions of the performance of gender in applied and queer linguistics have not yet translated into lay mainstream understandings of gender, which often refer to more homogenized binary masculine-feminine dichotomies (Meyerhoff & Ehrlich, 2019). This presentation aims to contribute to the aim of the symposium to discuss links between applied linguistics and queer linguistics with a special focus on how theoretical constructs and academic views are linked to the everyday experience of "lay people." Drawing on insights from politeness and intercultural communication research in applied linguistics (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017) we propose that a systematic differentiation between first- and second-order gender may add to these debates. First order notions of gender hereby capture lay usage of the term, often conceptualized as something that people have or are, based on masculine-feminine dichotomies. Second order notions of gender, by contrast, refer to the ways in which researchers conceptualize and operationalize gender in academic inquiry to make sense of participants' linguistic and behavioral practices, including the dynamics of the interactional and discursive achievement of the (un)doing of gender (e.g. Butler, 1990).
Drawing on interviews and audio-recordings of workplace interactions in different IT companies in New Zealand, the UK, Switzerland and the US, we illustrate how lay and academic views differ by way of the example of the concept of "gender" to show how a systematic differentiation of gender orders can be operationalized. In our analyses, we explore how participants explicitly make gender (as a first order construct) relevant, for example by orienting to gender stereotypes about what it means to be a woman in the largely masculine IT industry. We differentiate this from the more hidden processes of (un)doing gender (as a second order construct), which are more difficult to capture empirically. Applying our own second-order lens of interactional sociolinguistics, we show how participants both reject and endorse the cis-heteronormative gender order in intricate ways when drawing on first-order notions of gender. We discuss some of the ways in which a differentiation between first- and second-order gender in our analyses can help provide a more nuanced perspective on the application of complex theoretical concepts to real world problems, and the discrepancy between lay and academic conceptualizations of gender. We end our talk by outlining some questions for future research we hope language and gender scholars in applied and queer linguistics may find useful in their research endeavors.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
Meyerhoff, M., & Ehrlich, S. (2019). Language, gender, and sexuality. Annual Review of Linguistics, 5, 455–475. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-052418-094326
Schnurr, S., & Zayts, O. (2017). Language and culture at work. Routledge.
