Language and Gender

Making social moves - Introduction

• Social move = speech act which is embedded in social practice, it is a continuing discourse among interactants
• Speech acts consist out of two parts: talk and action
• Each utterance is part of a social situation in which it occurs
• Kinds of speech acts: compliment, insult, request, command, promise etc.
• A repeated move of a particular type can become an activity

Making social moves - Speech act theory

• Philosopher J. L. Austin initiated the systematic study of speech acts
• The main question was: How to do things with words?
• Performative utterances: words starts a chain of events
• Judith Butler: speech acts consist out of performative utterances and other performances which come off, acquire their meaning and do their work
• All utterances are actions
• Three kinds of action:
• Locutionary acts
• Illocutionary acts
• Prelocutionary acts

Making social moves - Politeness

• Everyone has got two faces: positive face and negative face
• Positive face: projecting a self that is affiliated with others
• Negative face:projecting a self that is a separate individual
• Two kinds of politeness:
• Positive politeness: addressing positive face needs
• Negative politeness:addressing negative face needs
• Politeness depends on the context: what looks like the same kind of act might be positively polite in one context but not in another

Making social moves - Affective and instrumental talk

• Three functions of talk:
• Affective function of talk
• Referential function of talk
• Instrumental function of talk
• Affective and referential functions are closely interconnected
• Women are more interested in affective talk
• Men are more interested in instrumental talk