Abstract
The school, more specifically the classroom, is a popular site of investigation for researchers of language and gender. Language and gender studies in general, and especially early studies, have often focused on the differences between men and women’s speaking strategies, positing these differences as natural expressions of being men and women (for example, Maltz and Borker 1982, Tannen 1990). Studies of classroom talk have typically taken a more critical stance to language and gender by examining power and how it is enacted through speakers’ domination of the conversational floor (for example, Spender 1980, 1992; Sadker and Sadker 1990; Swann 1992). In general, these studies find that it is the male students who tend to dominate both whole class and small group discussions through interruption, asides and laughter, among other speaking strategies. More recent studies of classroom discourse approach language and gender as social practices: ways in which people construct gendered identities and practise these identities through their language (for example, Eckert 1989; 2000; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1995; Bergvall and Remlinger 1996; Stokoe 1998).
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Remlinger, K.A. (2005). Negotiating the Classroom Floor: Negotiating Ideologies of Gender and Sexuality. In: Lazar, M.M. (eds) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599901_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599901_5
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