12

GENDER AND
SOCIOPRAGMATICS1
Janet Holmes and Brian W. King

Introduction
This chapter explores some of the ways in which sociopragmatic research has made an increasingly
valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between language and gender over
the past few decades.We use the term sociopragmatics to cover research which examines the relation-
ship between social context and discourse, and we focus in particular on the pragmatics of power and
politeness in language and gender research.We begin with a discussion of the terms sex and gender.
Researchers working in the areas of pragmatics and sociolinguistics generally treat the term
sex as a label for the relevant biological category and gender as a label for the sociocultural cat-
egory. For both categories, despite the widespread popular belief that just two subcategories are
relevant, there is interesting evidence of complexity. As Bing and Bergvall comment:

If the boundaries are not problematic, it is curious that so much energy is expended to
reinforce them and to render invisible large numbers of people, including homosexu-
als, bisexuals, eunuchs, hermaphrodites, transvestites, transsexuals, transgendered and
intersexed individuals, and others who assume social and sexual roles different from
those that their cultures legitimize.
(1996: 6)

Similarly, the distinction between apparently feminine and masculine behaviours is not at all
clear-cut. Stereotypical or normative expectations about appropriately feminine and mascu-
line ways of behaving, including talking, differ across societies and speech communities. One
widely cited example is the contrasting norms of Malagasy vs. European societies. Malagasy
has two broadly distinguishable styles of talking: resaka, an informal style women and men
alike use in everyday interaction, and kabary, a more formal style that only men use in specific
contexts such as religious rituals, and for indirect criticism in competitive displays where suc-
cess leads to greater social prestige (Keenan 1989). In general, the women’s style of speaking is
considered direct and confrontational; women criticise directly and bargain aggressively in the
marketplace. The men’s kabary style is subtle and non-confrontational, associated with skill and
learning, and generally regarded as more polite. As Bucholtz (2003: 47) notes, “Keenan does not
explicitly contrast this pattern with the scholarly and popular view, common at the time she did
her research, of Western women’s speech as indirect and men’s as direct”, though many other
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scholars have done so. The example makes clear that what is regarded as “feminine” or “mascu-
line” is culture and context-dependent. It is also evident that dimensions such as (in)directness
and (im)politeness are matters of degree rather than absolutes, and sociopragmatic research has
made a major contribution by exploring these complexities in the past decade in particular.
In what follows, we first describe the ways in which theoretical approaches to research on the
relationship between language and gender have developed since the 1970s; we then explore the
insights gained from sociopragmatic research, focussing on the themes of politeness and power
and also queer-oriented approaches to sociopragmatics, illustrating with examples from our own
research. Next we discuss the directions in which we see this field developing, and we conclude
with a summary section and suggestions for further reading.

Historical perspectives on language and gender research

Language and gender research which focussed on pragmatic issues was kick-started by Robin
Lakoff, an outstanding pragmaticist, who profoundly influenced the direction of language and
gender research worldwide with her ground-breaking article (1973) and book (1975) Language
and Woman’s Place. She addressed two fundamental dimensions of the interaction of language
and gender, namely the language used by and about women, claiming that both contributed to
perceptions of women as weak and indecisive, and suggesting that women should adopt male
ways of speaking if they wanted to be taken seriously.
Lakoff ’s provocative and quite specific hypotheses about what she considered deficiencies
in the ways in which American women spoke compared to men generated a huge amount of
quantitative research in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Women, she suggested, used more of a
number of specific usages than men did. Consequently, sociologists and psychologists counted the
adverbs, tag questions, colour words, and specific adjectives (e.g. cure, divine) that Lakoff had iden-
tified as gender specific to test out her claims. Findings were very disparate and often conflicting
(e.g. Crawford 2003; Dubois and Crouch 1975). Sociolinguists, however, noted that Lakoff ’s
hypotheses about a range of superficially distinct linguistic forms (such as stress, tag questions, and
modal adverbs) were unified by an underlying analysis of two basic pragmatic functions, namely,
hedging and boosting (e.g. Holmes 1984, 1995; Talbot 1998). This meant that each form needed
to be considered in context to ascertain its social meaning and pragmatic force. By contrast, the
disparate linguistic forms that became the focus of quantification (typically lexical items easily
identified by a computer program which ignored their different meanings) had no such claims
to coherence. Moreover, sociolinguists also noted Lakoff ’s comments on the relevance of social
context, as well as her fundamental political argument about power and politeness. Subsequent
research supported her claims that the frequency with which particular forms occurred typically
depended on their sociopragmatic meaning in a specific interactional context, and also on power
relations rather than on the sex of the speaker (e.g. O’Barr and Atkins 1980; Holmes 1986).
Specifically, researchers argued that differences between women’s and men’s use of language
were best accounted for by attending to societal power relations. Hence, in contexts where men
were more powerful and influential, they often dominated the discourse: they talked more than
women, took more speaking turns, and disruptively interrupted other speakers more often (e.g.
Eakins and Eakins 1979). Women, on the other hand, were more likely in such situations to use
encouraging feedback and facilitative questions and to contribute talk when it was helpful to the
addressee (e.g. Holmes 1992). From here it was a short step to an argument that such differences
were the result of the different socialisation experiences of boys and girls.
Deborah Tannen is perhaps the best-known advocate of the “cultural difference” explana-
tion for men’s and women’s ways of talking. Her book You Just Don’t Understand, published in

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1990, drew on a wide range of sociolinguistic research to support the argument, first proposed
by Maltz and Borker (1982), that boys and girls are socialised differently and consequently
adopt different (sub)cultural frameworks. Males, she argues, develop a status-oriented frame,
while females are connection-oriented. Hence their ways of talking are different, and this can
lead to cross-cultural misunderstandings: for example in couple’s talk, men try to solve women’s
problems, while the connection-oriented women just want a sympathetic ear; men won’t ask
directions because that would put them in a one-down position; men like to hold the floor in
contexts where talk may enhance status; women prefer to talk in the comfort of intimate set-
tings; men focus on “report” talk while women prefer “rapport” talk.2
It is easy to see why such “men do this; women do that” generalisations became a target for
critical comment, though in fact Tannen was careful in basing her claims on published research,
and she also pointed out exceptions where there was evidence of them. However, some took
issue not just with the generalisations, but also with the theoretical “two cultures” explanation,
which they regarded as inadequate because it ignored the discursive effects of unequal power
distribution and differential social status (e.g. Troemel-Ploetz 1991; Freed 1992). Inevitably the
next wave of gender and language research gave detailed attention to contextual sources of vari-
ation in accounting for differently gendered talk.
Although any analysis which treats gender as distinct from biological sex (as with Tannen)
can be classified as “social constructionist”, this term has come to be associated with “postmod-
ernist” approaches to social construction (see Cameron 2005). As part of a postmodernist turn,
there was a shift away from treating female/male and woman/man as rigid cultural categories
in favour of viewing the “doing of gender” as an ongoing performance as opposed to one that is
stabilised in childhood (Cameron 2005). In other words, gender is performed (i.e. it is something
we do) rather than an expression of what we are; it is not a fact but an act (Nelson 1999).There-
fore, gender is never truly finished, and these gender performances are viewed during analysis as
changeable and dependent on context.
This postmodernist leaning coincided with the turn (mentioned earlier) toward context-
based variation, and also matched a shift to the pluralisation of gender into masculinities and
femininities. That is, attention turned to the ways in which gender intersects with other social
constructs such as class, race, and sexual identity to produce various types of masculinity and
femininity (e.g. middle class vs. working class, black vs. white, or gay vs. straight). Another way to
put this is that attention turned to the gendered politics that exist within femininity and within
masculinity (Johnson 1997) rather than always focussing on differences between masculinity and
femininity. The tendency towards pluralisation of gender has led to an interest in how nuanced
versions of gender and sexuality might influence the assumptions we bring to sense-making
during conversation. Thus, sociopragmatic analysis explores how masculinities, femininities, and
sexualities play a role in such sense-making. Pragmatics holds that meaning is grounded at least
partly in inference rather than being taken just from the words spoken. That is, a pragmatic
approach to analysis asks how conversational participants work out what is meant on the basis
of abstract discourse strategies instead of simply attending to the words and their grammatical
combinations (Cameron 1998). As part of this process, certain assumptions are brought to bear
by participants (based on their past experience and knowledge of the world) in order to decide
what is being implied or indirectly suggested, requested, and refused. As examples will demon-
strate, gender can make a difference to these implied meanings and their interpretation.
Cameron (2005) points out that a pragmatic approach to analysis is particularly useful in mov-
ing beyond a further debate which rages within all social constructionist circles (and has for some
time). The debate is about whether gender is (a) globally relevant to interaction even in the light
of diversity and local variability (a stance termed gender realism); or whether it (b) must be explicitly

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mentioned in talk to be relevant (a strong form of gender relativism). Cameron (2005) suggests that
this grounding of meaning in inference can actually be identified in both gender realist and gender
relativist analyses. Even in cases where gender is explicitly referred to, the strictest “relativist” analyst
also has to “go beyond the data” to explain why it is made relevant. ‘To answer the question “why
that now?” it is often necessary to presuppose an answer to the prior question “why that ever?” ’
(Cameron 2005: 329). In other words, background assumptions tend to preexist the conversation
being analysed; therefore moving beyond the realist-relativist debate involves everyone investigat-
ing how participants make use of information that is not explicitly encoded in the spoken words.
As outlined previously, postmodernist versions of social constructionism treat gender and sexual-
ity as ongoing performances rather than as pre-given or stabilised. However, “queer” approaches to
inquiry have begun to take very seriously the idea that the “taken-for-granted” status of heterosexu-
ality (i.e. heteronormativity) needs to be critically investigated more completely. That is, there is a
need to reveal how heterosexuality is made to look like common sense, while other forms of sexual
desire (e.g. same-sex attraction) or sexual identity (e.g. gay identity) are positioned as unusual or
“abnormal” in spite of their constant presence (Sauntson 2008: 282).When performances of straight
identity or heterosexual desire are treated as common sense while other sexual identities and sexual
desires are not treated that way, it becomes clear that those commonsense constructs are being placed
in a very powerful position. By looking more closely at the ongoing social construction of hetero-
sexuality in conversation we can gain more insight into the sociopragmatics of power and gender.
In other words, by looking at the assumptions people make in conversation and how they work out
various implied meanings (i.e. inferences) we can gain a lot of insight into how power, gender, and
sexuality come together.This type of analysis is exemplified later in Queer-oriented approaches to socio-
pragmatics. Finally in this section, it is worth considering the influence of ideology on what is valued in
a society. Keenan (1989) notes, for instance, that Malagasy language ideologies privilege the indirect
style men use, especially in oratory, evaluating it as skilled and artful, while denigrating direct language
as unsophisticated. In other communities where men’s discourse tends to be more direct, it is direct-
ness which is highly valued. Clearly the influence of ideology is an important consideration when
examining gendered talk in different communities (see Queer-oriented approaches to sociopragmatics).

Critical issues in sociopragmatics and language and gender research

Power, politeness, and gender

There is a huge amount of research which could be considered in this section. We have chosen
to focus on examples of how issues of power and politeness emerge in sociopragmatic research
which examines the relationship between gender and language.
Power can take many forms: for example, physical, economic, ideological (see Kiesling 1997: 68);
here we are concerned with the ways in which sociopragmatic strategies support or contest par-
ticular power relations in interaction.Tannen (1987: 5) points out that in any particular interaction,
different participants may have different kinds of power which they exercise in different ways. In
other words, she suggests that it is impossible to identify the power in a situation. Rather, power is
dynamically constructed and exercised, both implicitly and explicitly, in different aspects of a specific
interaction; different participants manifest power in diverse ways as they construct their own identi-
ties and roles in response to the behaviour of others in particular sociocultural contexts (Keating
2009). Current analyses of power in interaction tend, then, to take a dynamic approach, recognis-
ing that power is constantly being constructed, negotiated, maintained, and re-asserted, as people
interact. Another useful insight, especially in the context of language and gender research, emerges
from critical discourse analytical (CDA) research which highlights the “systemic” nature of power

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(Fletcher 1999, Wodak 1999), that is, the way the norms of the most powerful group are assumed
and taken for granted in most situations. This approach strives to identify evidence of the covert
exercise of power in, for example, the unobtrusive, “naturalised” conversational strategies through
which power and gender relations are constructed and reinforced in everyday, unremarkable, taken-
for-granted interactions (cf. Fairclough 1992; see also Holmes 2005). Consider how sexist jokes
often go unchallenged, or the frequent assumption that the most senior male has the right to lead
the discussion, or the fact that boys frequently get most attention in mixed-sex classrooms.
Analysing politeness in interaction has also occupied the attention of myriad researchers,
resulting in many different definitions and approaches (cf. Archer, Chapter 29, this volume).
Again, it is fruitful to treat politeness as a complex concept, dynamically constructed and exer-
cised, both implicitly and explicitly, in specific interactions in specific sociocultural contexts.
Politeness is often equated with attention to face needs (Brown and Levinson 1987), to “rela-
tional work” (Locher and Watts 2005), or to establishing and maintaining solidarity and “rap-
port” (Spencer-Oatey 2008).We illustrate these points by considering how power and politeness
manifest in workplace contexts, and especially in research on gender and leadership.

Power and masculinity

Power is a central component of leadership, since leaders are people with “legitimate power”,
that is, power due to position (French and Raven 1959). They may also have “expert power”,
that is, power derived from expertise and skills (French and Raven 1959), and in some con-
texts, gendered sociopragmatic behaviour may also contribute to the construction of leadership
identity. Holmes (2006a), Mullany (2007), and Baxter (2010), for example, all demonstrate that
effective communicators, both female and male, make use of a wide range of sociopragmatic
strategies to enact power in workplace interaction.3 Some of these are considered normatively
masculine or “power-oriented” strategies such as directing meeting talk, ratifying decisions, issu-
ing relatively “bald” directives, using controlling questions, and contesting the statements of oth-
ers, while other strategies are regarded as more normatively feminine or “politeness-oriented”,
such as expressing approval, attenuating disagreement, hedging negatively affective speech acts,
using humour as a “sweetener”, and providing a good deal of supportive feedback.
The limitations of normatively gendered views of talk are well illustrated by these workplace
studies, which demonstrate the flexibility of effective leaders in selecting the most effective socio-
pragmatic strategy in specific contexts. On the other hand, it is also important to recognise that
interactional norms may be gendered. Particular contexts and occupations, such as the police force
or the army vs. primary school teaching and the nursing profession, may be heavily dominated
by men vs. women, and consequently relatively masculine vs. feminine interactional norms may
obtain (e.g. McElhinny 1992; see also Holmes 2014). Baxter (2011) provides further support for
this analysis in her examination of the discourse of female leaders in British male-dominated
organisations. She uses the term “double-voiced discourse” (Bahktin 1994) to describe the ways in
which these women used language consciously and strategically to compensate for their margin-
alised status in large, male-dominated organisations, while Baxter and Wallace (2009) demonstrate
how, through their on-the-job talk, UK builders construct building sites as masculine workplaces.
The Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) recordings in factories and constructions sites
illustrate the complex ways in which power is enacted and gender identity constructed in these
typically hierarchical and “masculinist” settings (Holmes 2006a). Directives are predominantly
unmitigated (just take these staples; grab another bloody ladder; drill those; hold it like right there); swear
words and jocular abuse are much more frequent than in white-collar professional settings, and
social talk often revolves around sport rather than family, for example (Holmes and Stubbe

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2015). These findings are not surprising; they confirm societal understandings of normative
sociopragmatic gender patterns. It is interesting to consider, then, how power is enacted in a less
typical setting, where pre-allocated roles and responsibilities are not relevant.
The following example illustrates how power is abrogated in a situation where all participants
are, in principle, equal in status. Discussions held at different tables were recorded in a series of
public meetings organised to discuss the preservation of a particular city suburb as a historic area.
A table host (TH) was appointed for each group to lead the discussion, and our analysis clearly
demonstrated interesting differences in the way different THs exercised authoritative vs. facilita-
tive sociopragmatic strategies in enacting these roles (Lazzaro-Salazar, Holmes, Marra, and Vine,
2016). The most authoritative of the THs controlled the discussion by first asking questions,
which the other members of the group answered, and then commenting on their responses.
(1) illustrates these strategies.

(1)4 (Transcription conventions are provided at the end of this chapter.)

Context: talk at one discussion table in a public meeting forum.
TH is the table host. F represents unidentifiable female contributors.
  1. TH: but you’re talking about the tools you’re not talking about overall
 2. F: yeah
  3. TH: are are you willing to lose the history of SUBURB
  4. F: /no no\
  5. TH: /but\ you’re you’re talking about the tools and the rules \
  6. I’m talking about the big picture it’s (. . . . . .. . ..)
  7. but what you’re all looking at when it says retain
  8. you’re looking at retaining specific rules
  9. and things in the district plans or whatever
10. what I’m trying to suggest is a much bigger picture
11. F: /mm\
12. TH: /of of \\ of what your area looks like what it feels like
13. what it is to live in your community (.°.°.)
14. FX: /it’s a real (mix.°.°.)\
15. TH: yes that’s right it’s //your vision your vision
(Lazzaro-Salazar et al., 2016)

TH states his view of what the group is saying, for example, you’re talking about the tools (lines
1, 5) evaluates responses, yes that’s right (line 15), poses questions, for example, are you willing to
lose the history of SUBURB (line 3), and asserts repeatedly what he thinks the group should be
focussing on, the big picture (line 6), a much bigger picture (line 10). Nobody at the table seems
willing to contest or question the TH’s statements; rather their responses endorse his view (lines
2, 11) and indicate their understanding of what it feels like to live in this community (line 14),
and someone even responds cooperatively to his rhetorical question (lines 3–4). This is a nice
illustration of how power and control can be subtly exerted through the use of strategic ques-
tions and challenges. Summarising is another such strategy, also illustrated here; the TH criti-
cally summarises the group’s position as focussed on the tools and the rules (line 5). Summary is a
powerful sociopragmatic device since, typically, the summariser’s definition of issues is then on
record. Allocating turns to speakers who agree with your viewpoint is another powerful strat-
egy that we identified as a means of subtly influencing the outcome of a discussion (Lazzaro-
Salazar et al., 2016).

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Such controlling discursive behaviour, enacting power both explicitly and more covertly,
especially in relatively public or formal contexts, is generally regarded as normatively masculine
in Western societies; and there is evidence that this perception is also relevant in some Asian
contexts (Schnurr and Chan 2005; Chan 2007, 2008; Saito 2011). These strategies are effective
means of constructing authority and power, and there is good evidence that they are effectively
used by women leaders when judged appropriate to achieving their transactional goals (Holmes
2006a; Mullany 2007; Baxter 2010).

Politeness, relational talk, and femininity

To illustrate more relationally oriented sociopragmatic behaviour, we focus on humour.
Humour is a particularly productive and sophisticated sociopragmatic strategy to consider
in order to better understand the complexities of the relationship between gender and dis-
course in different sociocultural contexts, as our research has demonstrated (Holmes and
Marra 2002a, 2002b).
Humour is undoubtedly more frequent in relaxed interactions between friends than in busi-
ness meetings (Jenkins 1985; Hay 1995, 2002; Holmes and Marra 2002b), but an examination
of its distribution in workplace interaction is remarkably revealing. Stereotypically, men are
regarded as having a better sense of humour than women, while women are stereotypically allo-
cated the role of responders (Crawford 1995; Evans Davies 2006; Kotthoff 2006). But the reality
is rather different, as many researchers have demonstrated (e.g. Crawford 2003). Our analysis of
the amount of humour contributed by women and men in twenty-two workplace meetings,
for instance, clearly challenged the negative stereotype of women as humourless creatures: the
average ratio for women was twenty-five instances per 100 minutes compared to the men’s ratio
of fourteen instances per 100 minutes. Moreover, the very presence of women tended to be
associated with higher levels of humour: as the proportion of female participants in a meeting
increased, so did the amount of humour (Holmes et al. 2001).
Turning to different functions and styles of humour, gender stereotypes are again easily iden-
tified. Aggressive, confrontational humour, teasing, and jocular abuse are stereotypically regarded
as “masculine” (e.g. Tannen 1990; Coates 2003; Kotthoff 2006), or “masculinist” discourse (Bax-
ter 2003), while supportive and collaborative humour is stereotypically considered more “femi-
nine” (e.g. Tannen 1990; Eder 1993; Coates 1996; Kotthoff 2006). Again the reality is more
complex. There is certainly some evidence that certain workplaces tend to be characterised by
relatively contestive and challenging styles of interaction. Plester and Sayers (2007), for example,
studying IT companies, identified jocular abuse, aggressive barbs, and potentially hurtful teasing,
which they described as banter or “taking the piss”. Our LWP research identifies similar patterns
in IT companies, contexts in which males tend to dominate numerically (Holmes 2006b). On
the other hand, there is also evidence that women use jocular abuse both in relaxed contexts
(Hay 1995, 2002) and in workplace contexts, as (2) illustrates.

(2) Context: Three women of equal status in a government department discussing proposals they are
working on.
1. Val: and Celia’s finished her proposals I’m sure [laughs]
2. Cel: on the last one
3. Val: ah you sod
All: [laugh]
(Holmes and Stubbe 2015)

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This example also illustrates that swear words do occur in white-collar workplaces, and that
despite societal norms, women use them as well as men; however, relevant, this is a noticeably
rare and relatively mild instance.
While humour may be used strategically or subversively in workplace interaction (Holmes
2000, 2006b), there are also many examples in our data where both women and men contribute
to a more supportive style of relationally oriented humour that is often characterised as norma-
tively feminine (Tannen 1990; Coates 1996). Such humour often serves to develop and maintain
solidarity and collegiality. (3) illustrates some of the sociopragmatic complexities of this style of
humour in a white-collar professional workplace.This team does not meet together face-to-face
very often and thus constructing solidarity is an important function of such meetings.

(3) Context: Planning meeting of a group of four male and four female regional managers of a national
organisation. There is a lot of laughter and overlapping concurrent unintelligible talk
throughout this excerpt.
1. Pen: the fact that we don’t go to Malt [name of a town in New Zealand]
2. How: mm
3. Pen: doesn’t mean that people from Malt can’t
4. Sco: yeah
5. Pen: go somewhere to get help mm cos they were interested enough t-
6. Ral: if you live in Malt you need to go somewhere /(to get help)\
7. /[general laughter]\
8. Sco: there is actually quite a big consultancy in Malt
9. How: is there?
10. Sco: yeah
11. Hen: I was told many years ago that Malt /was the\
12. Mal: /Malt\
13. Hen: /heart of the\wife swapping area for [name of province]
14. Mal: /(Malt)\ [pronounced with local pronunciation]
15. Sco: /isn’t\ it Malt that had the highest rate of um
16. Pen: /ex ex nuptial\ birth- births /ex\
17. Sco: /s t oh no that’s Hopeville\ /highest\ the highest s t d rate per capita
18. Pen: /Malt had th-\the highest
19. Sco: /Malt or Hopeville [laughs]\
20. Kir: /did they?\
21. Pen: rates of ex ex nuptial births at one point. . . .
22. Mal: it’s the alcohol that does it
23. How: [laughs] it’s the alcohol
24. [General laughter and overlapping talk continues throughout next section]
25. Pen: poor old Malt
26. Kir: we should be there
27. Sco: we should be there
28. Pen: we should be there
29. [general laughter]
(Holmes 2006a)

This is a section from a much longer humorous sequence. Its main function seems to be to
provide light relief during a two-day strategic planning meeting; everyone is involved and it is

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good-humoured and entertaining. The humour revolves around the disadvantages of living in
a particular small, isolated, rural town, here pseudonymed Malt. Participants, male and female,
work together to develop the topic at length, making more and more outrageous claims about
the horrors of life in the town. Each utterance supports and further develops the proposition
of the previous contributor. There is a great deal of fast and frequently overlapping speech,
as well as laughter throughout. The contributions are closely integrated stylistically with one
person filling in another’s gaps and answering their queries. There are requests for confir-
mation (e.g. lines 9, 15, 20), and a great deal of repetition extending from single words and
phrases, for example, highest (lines 15, 17, 18) and outpost (lines 31, 32, 34), to whole clauses,
for example, the refrain we should be there is repeated by several different voices at different
pitches and volumes in a way which is strongly reminiscent of the different parts in a motet
or madrigal (lines 26, 27, 28).
More typically in our workplace interactions, humour is used to soften a directive or a criti-
cism, as in (4) where Sam comments good-humouredly on the fact that the chair, Jill, tends to
run long meetings.

(4) Context: Board meeting at a small IT company.

1. Sam: ke- keep going until there’s only one person standing
2. Jill: [laughs] oh you’ve been to our board meetings before [laughs](LWP corpus)

Jill’s laughing response to Sam’s sarcastic comment makes clear that the implied criticism is made
in a context where good collegial relations prevail.
As a final example of relational humour, it is, interestingly, often found in medical settings
(Pizzini 1991; Ragan 2000). In (5), humour is used to distract the patient during a painful
procedure.

(5) Context: The nurse is in the patient’s room taking out a cannula (a thin tube inserted into a vein or
body cavity to administer medicine, drain off fluid, or insert a surgical instrument.
  1. Sophie: so I’m staying with mum and dad
  2. Tara: wicked yeah
 3. Sophie: yeah
  4. Tara: a few home comforts don’t /hu- don’t hurt\
 5. Sophie: /oh mum would\ insist on it even if I don’t want to /she’d insist yeah
[laughs]\
  6. Tara: /yeah [laughs]\ mothers have that right /don’t they\
  7. Sophie: /they do\
  8. Tara: yeah /okay\
  9. Sophie: /well I don’t mind\ cos I get treated like a queen /so [laughs]\
10. Tara: /exactly \ lap it up
(Holmes and Major 2002: 8)

During all this talk, Tara is taking out the cannula. The colloquial, friendly, relationally oriented
chat, full of humour, helps distract Sophie from the discomfort involved. The overlapping talk
indicates the informality and good rapport between the two young women. The talk focusses
on Sophie, and on the comfort and care she can look forward to from her mother when she
leaves the hospital. The two women co-construct a collusive bond, expressing a shared wry, yet
appreciative attitude to the way mothers fuss over their daughters. Establishing friendly rapport

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like this obviously helps the patient feel more relaxed in this clinical setting, and this clearly
assists the nurse to achieve her goals as well. This is normatively gendered talk both in topic and
style (Holmes 2006a).
This section has examined some ways in which power and politeness are sociopragmatically
negotiated in interaction using data on meetings to illustrate how gender stereotypes and dis-
cursive patterns play out in different contexts.

Queer-oriented approaches to sociopragmatics

As outlined in Historical perspectives on language and gender research, the queer critique directly
addresses the exclusionary nature of binary systems, or the way in which binary categorisa-
tion has the effect of erasing certain categories which fail to fit neatly into such polar oppo-
sites. Even with good intentions, the analyst can be constrained by “heteronormatively realised”
social categories (e.g. “woman and man”, “female and male”, “gay and straight”), and thus erase
subjectivities which fall outside the narrow field of view such categories afford. This is because
although such dyads are inadequate classification systems for describing the world around us (see
Introduction), they are widely believed to constitute the extent and range of genders, bodies, and
sexual identities available.
(Socio)pragmatics has proved a useful tool in queer-oriented approaches to linguistic iden-
tity construction, and thus has taken a prominent place in theorisation about speech acts and
performativity (Motschenbacher 2010: 36–37). For example, Morrish and Sauntson (2007)
identify two pragmatic functions of what is termed the closet. These two functions, concealment
and disguisement, envelop a range of linguistic features which serve to “police” or “gate-keep”
the potential audience of sexual identity performances. With concealment, an ingroup code
is used which is not intelligible to outsiders at all, while disguisement deploys features which
the wider public finds intelligible as language, but which they decode differently. A hypo-
thetical example is the question ‘Are you a friend of Dorothy?’ to mean ‘Are you gay?’ (or
something similar). Only the ingroup will interpret it in a non-heteronormative way, and so
risk of exposure is minimised if remaining in the closet is one’s desire. This use of inference
to communicate in code can be seen as a variation on “strategic moves” of intentional misun-
derstanding (Cameron 1998). Cameron identifies these as moves in which a person exercises
power through the purposeful “incorrect” interpretation of another speaker’s utterance (at the
level of inference) in order to satisfy their own agenda. In the case of disguisement, the speaker
is strategically making use of the outgroup’s misunderstanding of inference in order to disem-
power them.
Inference and its interpretation also play an important role in resistance to heteronormativ-
ity as well as its propagation. This is because power lies in the heteronormative assumptions that
speakers bring to reasoning as part of making and interpreting utterances. Whether intentional
or not, the normalisation of heterosexuality (i.e. its stabilisation as the only truly “normal” sexu-
ality) is often achieved in the pragmatics of silence or omission (see Kulick 2005; Motschen-
bacher 2010), and/or in the positioning of/by others in conversation and possible alignments or
resistance to such positioning.
Data from sexuality education classrooms provide an interesting illustration of the effects of
inference on heteronormativity’s reinforcement or avoidance. (6)–(9) were recorded in a lesson
with senior secondary school students in New Zealand (King 2011). Their teacher, Mr J, has
asked them to complete an activity in which they must ask each other questions about hetero-
sexuality; questions typically asked only about homosexuality. As the lesson is set up by their

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teacher and the students engage with it, positionings are inferred. In the following two examples,
pronoun choice positions those present in very different ways.

(6) Context: Students in a sexuality education lesson have just been completing the activity.
1. Ruby: [reading] do you think straights flaunt their sexuality (1) if so (.) why
2. Callum: um
3. Ruby: I think SOME straights do
4. Callum: yeah like (.) it would be easier for them to like (1)
5. y’know flaunt their sexuality because more people out there are straight?
6. but (.) if like (.) someone who was homosexual
7. was around homosexual people they’d be the same?
8. Ruby: true
(King 2011)

(7) Context: Following the activity in (6), the teacher asks them how they felt about the questions.
1. Mr J unless anyone else wants to i’m gonna ask Caitlin
2. (5) are you ready to answer ↑
3. Caitlin i was just talking to Sarah about how it was quite easy
4. because like (2) it’s about heterosexuality and like
5. we ARE↑ and so like
6. it makes it more comfortable
7. Mr. J cool
8. (1) so the assumption there is that
9. (3) WE means the class↑
(King 2011)

In (6), Callum uses the third-person plural pronouns them and they to refer to both heterosexual
people and homosexual people (lines 4, 5, and 7). As a result, he positions neither Ruby nor
himself (nor anyone else in the room) as either. This sits in contrast with (7) in which Cait-
lin says the questions were easy to respond to because we are heterosexual (line 5). Mr J then
conducts his own pragmatic analysis of this, pointing out that there is an assumption buried in
her use of the pronoun we (line 9). She has positioned the whole class as heterosexual and, by
doing so, foreclosed on other possibilities. This tendency to position everyone in the room as
heterosexual can be very powerful and insidious regardless of a speaker’s intentions or level of
awareness. In addition to the pronominal effect exemplified earlier, (8) demonstrates that non-
heteronormative assumptions can subtly keep the sexualities of people in the room open via
other linguistic means. This example also demonstrates that this “opening up” is rather unstable
and can quickly be undermined, yet again. In this excerpt, students are about to start the discus-
sion activity. Mr J is outlining the purpose of the task. Italicised, underlined sections comprise
a small group conversation taking place at the same time as the whole class discussion, which
appears in larger type.

(8) 1. Mr J  now (1) these are questions about sexual orientation
2. now (2) for answering these questions we’re asking that you
3. (.) um think aBOUT the question
4. and think about the BEST way you can answer that question

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  5. all right ((papers rustling)) the questions are all about heterosexuality
  6. does everyone know what that means
 7. Matt yeah=
 8. Luana =no
 9. Matt different
10. Liam normal
11. Codey can you /define it\
12. Liam /as in\
13. Callum boy likes girl
14. Liam yeah
15. Mr J define it↑
16. it’s /people who are interested in the opposite sex\
17. Liam /that’s what WE conside\/ normal
18. Codey EH ((heightened pitch))
19. Mr J ok↑
20. Luana
21. Luana yes
22. Mr. J do you understand what a heterosexual is
23. Luana yeah he’s telling me ((indicating Liam))
24. Mr J /people interested in the opposite sex\
25. Liam /people in the opposite sex\
26. into the opposite sex
27. Mr J now
28. Callum so not gay
29. Luana you mean interested in men
30. Liam that’s the SAME sex
31. Callum just straight not gay
32. Liam /yeah\
33. Mr J /we’re looking\ at ((picks up paper))
34. assumptions
35. societal assumptions and myths about homosexuals
36. but the WAY we’re doing that is by answering a lot of questions
37. about heterosexuals
38. (1) does everyone understand what we’re doing↑
39. Many yeah/yes/mhm [but murmured only]
40. Mr J the outcome is we’re looking at the societal myths of
41. (.) about homosexuals
42. myths and assumptions
(King 2011: 123–124)

Mr J’s language is carefully worded in these instructions, presumably so as to avoid ascrib-

ing to the students any particular sexual orientation. Pragmatically, this avoidance eventu-
ates from the absence of the word “normal” from his definition of heterosexuals (i.e. people
interested in the opposite sex – lines 16 and 24). In addition, Mr J repeatedly says heterosexuals
and homosexuals, avoiding (consciously or unconsciously) any reliance on the pronouns
“us” and “them”. For example throughout the passage he avoids saying “about them”,
but rather says about homosexuals (lines 35 and 41), and such an avoidance of pronouns is

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marked in English (Wales 1996: 30–31). However, Liam does suggest (only to his group)
that we consider heterosexuality normal (lines 10 and 17). This statement works against
Mr J’s lack of normalisation of heterosexuality, and (similarly to [7]) the inclusive we to
some extent ascribes heterosexuality to all present via its assumption that we are all people
who possess a heteronormative gaze. This slippage provides insight into the stability of
heterosexuality.
Another theme which pragmatic analysis can investigate is the power inherent in heter-
osexuality’s tendency to seem “invisible” or at least “transparent” enough not to be noticed.
Example (9) demonstrates that naming heterosexuality actually confuses some students. This is
because they do not know the word and so infer that its referent cannot be normal because it
is being named; it must be something “queer.” We would like to propose that these pragmatic
functions can be called gazing and averting, processes in which minority sexualities are “gazed at”
whilst that gaze is “averted” from heterosexuality.

(9) Context: Students are completing the discussion activity described in (6).
 1. Luana: [reading] how can you tell if someone is hesterohex- het-ter-ro-sexual
straight
  2. Lito: what’s (1) hetero (.) sexual
  3. Luana: (6) like you know how Amiria is a girl but she likes being a boy?
  4. Lito: oh a TOMboy
  5. Callum: no that’s not=
  6. Luana: =OH no that’s NOT it
  7. Callum: um (.) well you can’t really tell by looking at someone
  8. but (.) if you see them with like (.) a member of the opposite sex
  9. in like a relationship well I guess you can tell that they’re heterosexual
10. Luana: AH ok
11. Callum: heterosexual’s just the opposite of HOMosexual
12. Luana: (5) like so if a gay person is
13. Lito: (1) gay
14. Callum: they’re homosexual
15. if a boy likes a boy they’re homosexual
16. if a boy likes a girl they’re heterosexual?
17. Luana: AWW /DUHuhhUHH\
18. Lito: /so that’s\ normal
19. Luana: so a girl likes a boy that’s heter- (reading) heter-ro-sex-ual
20. Callum: yeah
21. Luana: NOW I get it
(King 2011)

Thus we see that Luana presumes heterosexuality must mean the same thing as tomboy (line 3),
and begins to apply her gaze to it as a marked positioning. But Callum corrects her and explains
the term’s meaning (lines 7–9). It is interesting to note that he avoids using the term “normal”
and thus avoids speaking heteronormatively (just as he does with pronoun use in [6]). However,
heteronormativity raises its head again in Lito’s final turn, as she replaces the term heterosexual
with normal (line 18). Once again our gaze is averted from heterosexuality.

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Future directions
Fruitful research into gender and sociopragmatics is needed in numerous areas, but a topical
avenue would be to pursue multimodal analysis. Although research into multimodal socioprag-
matics is beginning to proliferate (see Norris 2011), at present there is a dearth of scholarship
focusing on this topic in relation to gender. In the area of media advertising some have begun
to do so (see e.g. Velasco-Sacristán and Fuertes-Olivera 2006; Del Saz-Rubio and Pennock-
Speck 2009). Additionally, analyses of interaction between social actors have also benefitted from
a multimodal pragmatic approach (e.g. Ferré 2011). In fact, Goodwin and colleagues (2002)
incorporated gender into their investigation of body language, movement, and inference a dec-
ade ago, but there has been little (if any) similar published research since. These studies have all
opened vistas for research which will hopefully soon be explored in more detail. Sociopragmatic
research in the area of language and gender has moved through several stages in the past four
decades. An early focus on ways in which women’s ways of talking could be distinguished from
men’s speech styles evolved into more contextualised and nuanced approaches which recognised
that pragmatic strategies and devices constituted resources available for constructing complex
social identities, including gender identities. Treating gender as a performance led to an appre-
ciation of the gendered politics that exist within femininity and masculinity.“Queer” approaches
fruitfully questioned the “taken-for-granted” status of heterosexuality (i.e. heteronormativity),
providing convincing evidence of the importance of exploring the pragmatic inferences we all
constantly make in everyday interaction.

Conclusion
Exploring the themes of power and politeness, this chapter has illustrated the richness of socio-
pragmatic research which focuses on the relationship between gender and language. Using
data from workplace contexts, the analysis has suggested how power and authority may be
constructed through subtle discourse choices, such as strategic questions and challenges and
skilfully positioned summarising, and masculinity performed through the use of contestive and
aggressive discourse, including, in some contexts, jocular abuse and swearing. Similarly, good
collegial relations are created and maintained through the skilful use of pragmatic strategies such
as complimenting, expressing approval, and, more subtly, through hedging disagreement and
criticism, and the strategic use of humour and small talk.
Data from sexuality education classrooms has highlighted the usefulness of sociopragmatic
research in exploring the stabilisation of heterosexuality. This takes place regardless of speaker
intention in some cases, through nuanced usage of pronominal reference. Additionally, the avoid-
ance of heteronormative talk can be achieved through the avoidance of pronouns. In addition,
we have seen the power of “averting our gaze” from heterosexuality, as students secure their
understanding of the term through its “normal”, unremarkable status.
In sum, this chapter has surveyed and illustrated a range of approaches with the aim of dem-
onstrating the insights that a sociopragmatic analysis of the relationship between language and
gender can provide.

Suggestions for further reading

Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013) Language and Gender, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
A definitive social constructionist approach to the analysis of gendered discourse, including discussion of
“the gender order”.

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Ehrlich, S., Meyerhoff, M., and Holmes, J. (eds.) (2014) The Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality.
Malden, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
This is a comprehensive reference text with chapters by leading scholars on a wide variety of different
theoretical approaches to the relationship between language, gender, and sexuality.
Mills, S. and Mullany L. (2011) Language, Gender and Feminism: Theory, Methodology and Practice. London:
Routledge.
This book provides a thorough and accessible introduction to contemporary language and gender studies and
addresses in detail the differences and similarities between second-wave and third-wave feminist analysis.
Motschenbacher, H. (2010) Language, Gender and Sexual Identity: Poststructuralist Perspectives. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
This is an accessible introduction to queer linguistics which provides a clear outline of language, gender,
and sexual identity scholarship. It is a useful resource for gaining understanding of critical approaches
to heteronormativity and gender binarism.
Talbot, M. M. (1998) Language and Gender: An Introduction, 2nd ed. Oxford: Polity Press.
This is a very readable and comprehensive introduction to language and gender research with especial
attention to critical discourse analysis approaches and evidence of gendered discourse in the media.

Notes
1 We would like to thank Sharon Marsden for her assistance with references and a literature survey which
we have made use of in this chapter.
2 See also Coates (1996, 2003).
3 Saito (2011) makes the same point about Japanese leaders.
4 This example is slightly edited for ease of reading.

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 Janet Holmes and Brian W. King

Transcription conventions
[laughs] : : Paralinguistic features and editorial information in square brackets, colons
indicate start/finish
SOME Strong stress
. . . . . .. \ . . . Simultaneous speech
. . . /. . . . . .. \\ . . .
( ) Unclear utterance
(hello) Transcriber’s best guess at an unclear utterance
.°.°. Section of transcript omitted
= Turn continuation
(1) Elapsed time of silence in seconds
(.) Tiny gap, less than one second
↑ Rising intonation in the preceding syllable
 Falling and then rising intonation in the preceding syllable
 Rising and then falling intonation in the preceding syllable

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