410 CULTURAL CONTEXT
CHAPTER 33 ObjectiveInterpretive
Critical tradition
Phenomenological tradition
Muted Group Theory
of Cheris Kramarae
Cheris Kramarae maintains that language is literally a man-made construction.
The language of a particular culture does not serve all its speakers equally, for not
all speakers contribute in an equal fashion to its formulation. Women (and mem-
bers of other subordinate groups) are not as free or as able as men are to say what
they wish, when and where they wish, because the words and the norms for their
use have been formulated by the dominant group, men.1
According to Kramarae and other feminist theorists, women’s words are discounted
in our society; women’s thoughts are devalued. When women try to overcome this
inequity, the masculine control of communication places them at a tremendous
disadvantage. Man-made language “aids in defining, depreciating and excluding
women.”2 Women are thus a muted group.
For many years, Kramarae was a professor of speech communication and
sociology at the University of Illinois; she is now a research associate at the Cen-
ter for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon. She began her
research career in 1974 when she conducted a systematic study of the way women
were portrayed in cartoons.3 She found that women were notable mostly by their
absence. A quick survey of the cartoon art we’ve used in this book will show that
little has changed since Kramarae’s study. Less than half of the 37 cartoons con-
tain female characters, and only 9 of these women speak. All but three of the
cartoonists are men.
Kramarae discovered that women in cartoons were usually depicted as emo-
tional, apologetic, or just plain wishy-washy. Compared with the ­simple, forceful
statements voiced by cartoon males, the words assigned to female characters were
vague, flowery, and peppered with adjectives like nice and pretty. Kramarae noted
at the time that women who don’t appreciate this form of comic put-down are often
accused by men of having no sense of humor or simply told to “lighten up.” Accord-
ing to Kramarae, this type of male dominance is just one of the many ways that
women are rendered inarticulate in our society. For decades, her muted group
theory has helped people understand, explain, and alter the muted status of women
and other marginalized groups.
409
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CHAPTER 33: Muted Group Theory
initial concept offers insight into why women are muted and what can be done to
loosen men’s lock on public modes of communication. Kramarae argues that the
ever-prevalent public–private distinction in language is a convenient way to exagger-
ate gender differences and pose separate sexual spheres of activity. This is a pitfall
into which Deborah Tannen virtually leaps (see Chapter 31). Within the logic of a
two-sphere assumption, women speak often in the home—a “small world” of inter-
personal communication. But their words appear less often in the “large world” of
significant public debate—a place where the words of men resonate.
Elizabeth, a former student who is now a communication professor researching
women in the workplace, describes how men’s public discourse shapes the meaning
of one of her favorite activities:
I am a passionate knitter. In the dominant communication code, knitting is associated
with domestic women. I cannot count the number of times when men have made
jokes or comments about me preparing to be a good wife, or looking for a husband,
while I am knitting. But I knit because I enjoy it. I love working with my hands and
knitting makes a good change from schoolwork. My choice to knit has nothing to do
with finding a husband or preparing to be a housewife. Still, even though knitting is
an activity that is primarily engaged in by women, it is men who define its meaning.
Kramarae wonders what it would be like if there were a word that pointed to
the connection of public and private communication. If there were such a word in
everyone’s speaking vocabulary, its use would establish the idea that both spheres
have equal worth and that similarities between women and men are more important
than their differences. Since there is no such word in our lexicon, I think of this
textbook as a public mode of communication. I am male, as are the other two
authors of this book. I realize that in the process of trying to present muted group
theory with integrity, I may unconsciously put a masculine spin on Kramarae’s ideas
and the perceptions of women. In an effort to minimize this bias, I will quote
extensively from Kramarae and other feminist scholars. Kramarae is just one of
many communication professionals who seek to unmask the systematic silencing of
a feminine voice. I’ll also draw freely on the words and experiences of other women
to illustrate the communication double bind that Kramarae says is a feminine fact
of life. This reliance on personal narrative is consistent with a feminist research
agenda that takes women’s experiences seriously.
THE MASCULINE POWER TO NAME EXPERIENCE
Kramarae starts with the assumption that “women perceive the world differently
from men because of women’s and men’s different experience and activities rooted
in the division of labor.”8 Kramarae rejects Freud’s simplistic notion that “anatomy
is destiny.” She is certain, however, that power discrepancies between the sexes
ensure that women will view the world in a way different from men. While individ-
ual women vary from each other in many ways, in most cultures, if not all, women’s
talk is subject to male control and censorship. French existentialist Simone de
Beauvoir underscored this common feminine experience when she declared, “‘I am
woman’: on this truth must be based all further discussion.”9
The problem facing women, according to Kramarae, is that further discussions
about how the world works never take place on a level playing field. “Because of
their political dominance, the men’s system of perception is dominant, impeding
the free expression of the women’s alternative models of the world.”10
MUTED GROUPS: BLACK HOLES IN SOMEONE ELSE’S UNIVERSE
Muted group
People belonging to
low-power groups who
must change their
language when
communicating
publicly—thus, their ideas
are often overlooked; for
example, women.
gri13783_48_ch33_409-420.indd 410
411 412 CULTURAL CONTEXT
MEN AS THE GATEKEEPERS OF COMMUNICATION
The idea of women as a muted group was first proposed by Oxford University social
anthropologist Edwin Ardener. In his 1975 article “Belief and the Problem of
Women,” Ardener noted the strange tendency of many ethnographers to claim to
have “cracked the code” of a culture without ever making any direct reference to
the half of society made up of women. Field researchers often justified this omission
by reporting the difficulty of using women as cultural informants. They claimed
that females “giggle when young, snort when old, reject the question, laugh at the
topic,” and generally make life difficult for scholars trained in the scientific method
of inquiry (which has traditionally been dominated by men).4 Ardener reminded his
colleagues how suspicious they’d be of an anthropologist who wrote about the men
of a group on the sole basis of talking to the women. It’d be like a visitor trying to
understand your school by only talking to students of one sex. Any conclusions
drawn from such a study would be partial at best (and completely wrong at worst).
Ardener initially assumed that inattention to women’s experience was a problem
of gender unique to social anthropology. But along with his Oxford co-worker and
wife Shirley Ardener, he began to realize that mutedness is due to the lack of power
that besets any group occupying the low end of the totem pole. Mutedness doesn’t
mean that low-power groups are completely silent.5 The issue is whether people can
say what they want to say, when and where they want to say it. When a group is
dominant, that isn’t a problem for them. But muted groups must change their lan-
guage when communicating in the public domain, and thus cannot fully share their
true thoughts.6 As a result, they are often overlooked, muffled, and rendered
­invisible—“mere black holes in someone else’s universe.”7
Cheris Kramarae believes that men’s dominant position in society limits wom-
en’s access to communication in public spaces. Her extension of the Ardeners’
“I’m used to him finishing my sentences, but now he starts them, too.”
©Barbara Smaller/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
1/27/18 7:57 AM
Note that my phrase level playing field is a metaphor drawn from competitive
team sports—historically, an experience familiar to more men than women. This is
precisely Kramarae’s point. As possessors of the public mode of expression, men
frame the discussion. If a man wants to contest the point about a tilted playing
field, he can argue in the familiar idiom of sports. But a woman who takes issue
with the metaphor of competition has to contest it with stereotypically masculine
words, phrases, and metaphors.
Mead’s symbolic interactionist perspective asserts that the extent of knowing
is the extent of naming (see Chapter 5). If this is true, whoever has the ability to
make names stick possesses an awesome power. Kramarae notes that men’s control
of the dominant mode of expression has produced a vast stock of derogatory,
gender-specific terms to refer to women’s talking—catty, bitchy, shrill, cackling,
­
­gossipy, chitchat, sharp-tongued, and so forth. There is no corresponding vocabulary
to disparage men’s conversation.
In case you think this lexical bias is limited to descriptions of speech, consider
the variety of terms in the English language to describe sexually promiscuous indi-
viduals. By one count, there are 22 gender-related words to label men who are sex-
ually loose—playboy, stud, rake, gigolo, player, Don Juan, lothario, womanizer, and so
on. There are more than 200 words that label sexually loose women—slut, whore,
hooker, prostitute, trollop, mistress, harlot, Jezebel, hussy, concubine, streetwalker, s­ trumpet,
easy lay, and the like.11 Since most surveys of sexual activity show that more men
than women have multiple sexual partners, there’s no doubt that the inordinate
number of terms describing women serves the interests of men.
Under the socio-cultural tradition in Chapter 4, we introduced the Sapir–Whorf
hypothesis, which claims that language shapes our perception of reality. Kramarae
suggests that women are often silenced by not having a publicly recognized vocab-
ulary through which to express their experience. She says that “words constantly
ignored may eventually come to be unspoken and perhaps even unthought.”12 After
a while, muted women may even come to doubt the validity of their experience and
the legitimacy of their feelings.
Even if the public mode of expression contained a rich vocabulary to describe fem-
inine experience, women would still be muted if their modes of expression were
ignored or ridiculed. As an example of men’s control of the public record, Cheris
Kramarae cites the facts surrounding her change of name. When she was married
in Ohio, the law required her to take the name of her husband. So at the direction
of the state, she became Cheris Rae Kramer. Later, when it became legal for her to
choose her own name, she reordered the sounds and spelling to Cheris Kramarae.
Many people questioned Kramarae about whether her name change was either lov-
ing or wise. Yet no one asked her husband why he kept his name. Kramarae points
out that both the law and the conventions of proper etiquette have served men well.
So have the mass media. Cultivation theory researchers (see Chapter 29) tell
us that although men outnumber women on prime-time TV, women are more likely
to be portrayed as victims of violence. That’s no surprise to Kramarae, given who
runs mass media corporations. In Chapter 30 (agenda-setting theory), we described
gatekeepers as the editors, writers, and producers who control what gets published
in the mass media. Kramarae observes that most gatekeepers are men—a “good ole
 CHAPTER 33: Muted Group Theory 413
boys” cultural establishment that historically has excluded women’s art, poetry,
plays, film scripts, public address, and scholarly essays. She notes that women were
locked out of the publishing business for 500 years. It wasn’t until the 1970s and
the establishment of women’s presses in the Western world that women could exer-
cise ongoing influence through the print medium. Overall, Kramarae sees tradi-
Malestream expression tional mainstream mass media as malestream expression.
Traditional mainstream Long before Edwin Ardener noted women’s absence in anthropological research,
mass media, controlled by Virginia Woolf protested women’s nonplace in recorded history. The British novel-
men.
ist detected an incongruity between the way men characterize women in fiction and
how women concurrently appear in history books. “Imaginatively she is of the
highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry
from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history.”13
Feminist writer Dorothy Smith claims that women’s absence from history is a
result of closed-circuit masculine scholarship.
Men attend to and treat as significant only what men say. The circle of men whose
writing and talk was significant to each other extends backwards in time as far as
our records reach. What men were doing was relevant to men, was written by men
about men for men. Men listened and listen to what one another said.14
Thus, throughout history, women have struggled to publish—simply because
they’re women. When British author Joanne Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter
book, her publisher insisted on printing the book using initials rather than her first
name, fearing boys wouldn’t read a story written by a female author.15 This is not
an isolated incident. Many women have suppressed their feminine identity to satisfy
the demands of a male gatekeeper.
To some extent, Kramarae thinks advances in technology create new spaces
where women can make their voices heard.16 The Internet enables many artists to
share their work directly through blogs, social media, YouTube, and a stream of
other outlets. Computers don’t care about the gender of the person who created
the content.
Or do they? As we discussed in the critique of agenda-setting theory (see Chap-
ter 30), the Internet doesn’t eliminate gatekeeping. Instead, it replaces human pub-
lishers with algorithmic gatekeepers—computer programs that filter information and
decide what you’ll see. Tech executive Eli Pariser notes that these programs are
likely to “simply reflect the social mores of the culture they’re processing.”17 So who
is designing these algorithms, and whose culture do they reflect? One recent report
indicates that the culture of Silicon Valley tech corporations is dominated by men,
with nearly half of the major Silicon Valley corporations having no female executives
at all.18 Kramarae evaluates this reality bluntly: “This is a discouraging situation, for
everyone.”19
Sheryl Sandberg agrees. As a writer, her best-selling book Lean In calls for
women to pursue positions in corporate leadership. And as Facebook’s chief oper-
ating officer, she believes technology won’t reflect the interests of female users until
we have more women in technology fields. She points to Apple’s health app as an
example. When first released, it enabled users to track many kinds of health infor-
mation, but not menstrual periods—a dead giveaway that the technology probably
wasn’t created by women.20 Although technology may open new spaces for muted
groups to speak and network, it also may enable more subtle forms of muting when
marginalized groups have little influence on the technology’s design.
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CHAPTER 33: Muted Group Theory 415
one was listening; everyone was preparing their own response. The meeting oozed
one-upmanship. You wouldn’t dare say, “Look, I’m having this rough situation I’m
dealing with. Have you ever faced this problem?” It was only when some of the
women got together for coffee or went shopping that I could be open about my
experiences.
Although their status and abilities clearly show that Marsha, Kathy, and Susan
are remarkable individuals, their experience as women in male hierarchical struc-
tures supports muted group theory. Kramarae says that “men have structured a
value system and a language that reflects that value system. Women have had to
work through the system organized by men.”24 For women with less skill and
self-confidence than Marsha, Kathy, or Susan, that prospect can be daunting.
SPEAKING OUT IN PRIVATE: NETWORKING WITH WOMEN
Susan’s relief at the chance to talk freely with other female deans illustrates a cen-
tral tenet of muted group theory. Kramarae states that “females are likely to find
ways to express themselves outside the dominant public modes of expression used
by males in both their verbal conventions and their nonverbal behavior.”25
Kramarae lists a variety of back-channel routes that women use to discuss their
experiences—diaries, journals, letters, oral histories, folklore, gossip, chants, art,
graffiti, poetry, songs, nonverbal parodies, gynecological handbooks passed between
women for centuries, and a “mass of ‘noncanonized’ writers whose richness and
diversity we are only just beginning to comprehend.”26 She labels these outlets the
female “sub-version” that runs beneath the surface of male orthodoxy.
Today, Pinterest posts may be the latest version of these back channels. Although
the popular, visually oriented social media site is available to men, so far they’ve
shown little interest in it.27 That wouldn’t surprise Kramarae—she notes that men
are often oblivious to the shared meanings women communicate through alternative
channels. In fact, Kramarae is convinced that “males have more difficulty than
females in understanding what members of the other gender mean.”28 She doesn’t
ascribe men’s bewilderment to biological differences between the sexes or to wom-
en’s attempts to conceal their experience. Rather, she suggests that when men don’t
have a clue about what women want, think, or feel, it’s because they haven’t made
the effort to find out.
When British author Dale Spender was editor of Women’s Studies International
Quarterly, she offered a further interpretation of men’s ignorance. She proposed
that many men realize that a commitment to listen to women would necessarily
involve a renunciation of their privileged position. “The crucial issue here is that if
women cease to be muted, men cease to be so dominant and to some males this
may seem unfair because it represents a loss of rights.”29 A man can dodge that
equalizing bullet by claiming, “I’ll never understand women.”
ENRICHING THE LEXICON: A FEMINIST DICTIONARY
Like other forms of critical theory, feminist theory is not content to merely point
out asymmetries in power. The ultimate goal of muted group theory is to change
the man-made linguistic system that keeps women “in their place.” According to
Kramarae, reform includes challenging dictionaries that “ignore the words and defi-
nitions created by women and which also include many sexist definitions and exam-
ples.”30 Traditional dictionaries pose as authoritative guides to proper language use,
414 CULTURAL CONTEXT
SPEAKING WOMEN’S TRUTH IN MEN’S TALK: THE PROBLEM OF TRANSLATION
Assuming masculine dominance of public communication to be a current reality,
Kramarae concludes that “in order to participate in society women must transform
their own models in terms of the received male system of expression.”21 Like speak-
ing a second language, this translation process requires constant effort and usually
leaves a woman wondering whether she’s said it “just right.” One woman writer
said men can “tell it straight.” Women have to “tell it slant.”22
Think back again to Mead’s symbolic interactionism (see Chapter 5). His the-
ory describes minding as an automatic pause before we speak in order to consider
how those who are listening might respond. These periods of hesitation grow longer
when we feel linguistically impoverished. According to Kramarae, women have to
choose their words carefully in a public forum. “What women want to say and can
say best cannot be said easily because the language template is not of their own
making.”23
I have gained a new appreciation of the difficulty women face in translating
their experiences into man-made language by discussing Kramarae’s ideas with three
female friends. Marsha, Kathy, and Susan have consciously sought and achieved
positions of leadership in professions where women are rarely seen or heard.
Marsha is a litigation attorney who was the first female president of the
Hillsborough County Bar Association (Florida) and was chair of a branch of the
Federal Reserve Board. Marsha attributes her success to a conscious shifting of
gears when she addresses the law.
I’ve learned to talk like a man. I consciously lower my voice, speak more slowly,
think bigger, and use sports analogies. I care about my appearance, but a woman
who is too attractive or too homely has a problem. A man can be drop-dead gor-
geous or ugly as sin and get along OK. I’ve been told that I’m the most feared and
respected attorney in the firm, but that’s not the person I live with day by day.
After work I go home and make reindeer pins out of dog biscuits with my
daughters.
Kathy is an ordained minister who works with high school students and young
adults. She is the best speaker I’ve ever heard in a public address class. Working in
an organization that traditionally excludes women from up-front speaking roles,
Kathy is recognized as a star communicator. Like Marsha, she feels women have
little margin for error when they speak in public.
In order to communicate effectively with men as well as women, I intentionally use
illustrations that connect with men more easily. It is important to me to be authen-
tic to who I am as a feminine, petite woman, yet at the same time relate well to
men who otherwise might not be inclined to listen or take me seriously. To that
end I carefully choose my words to avoid language and imagery that I’d use with
an all female audience.
Susan is the academic dean of a professional school within a university. When
her former college closed, Susan orchestrated the transfer of her entire program
and faculty to another university. She’s received the Professional of the Year award
in her field. When she first attended her national deans’ association, only 8 out of
50 members were women.
I was very silent. I hated being there. If you didn’t communicate by the men’s rules
you were invisible. The star performers were male and they came on strong. But no
gri13783_48_ch33_409-420.indd 414 1/27/18 7:57 AM
416 CULTURAL CONTEXT
Appearance: A woman’s appearance is her work uniform. . . . A woman’s concern with her appearance
is not a result of brainwashing; it is a reaction to necessity. (A Redstockings Sister)
Cuckold: The husband of an unfaithful wife. The wife of an unfaithful husband is just called a wife. (Cheris
Kramarae)
Depression: A psychiatric label that . . . hides the social fact of the housewife’s loneliness, low
self-esteem, and work dissatisfaction. (Ann Oakley)
Doll: A toy playmate given to, or made by children. Some adult males continue their childhood by labeling
adult female companions “dolls.” (Cheris Kramarae)
Family man: Refers to a man who shows more concern with members of the family than is normal. There
is no label family woman, since that would be heard as redundancy. (Cheris Kramarae)
Feminist: “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people
call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” (Rebecca West)
Gossip: A way of talking between women in their roles as women, intimate in style, personal and
domestic in topic and setting; a female cultural event which springs from and perpetuates the restrictions
of the female role, but also gives the comfort of validation. (Deborah Jones)
Guilt: The emotion that stops women from doing what they may need to do to take care of themselves as
opposed to everyone else. (Mary Ellen Shanesey)
Herstory: The human story as told by women and about women. . . . (Ann Forfreedom)
Ms.: A form of address being adopted by women who want to be recognized as individuals rather than
being identified by their relationship with a man. (Midge Lennert and Norma Wilson)
One of the boys: Means NOT one of the girls. (Cheris Kramarae)
Parenthood: A condition which often brings dramatic changes to new mothers — “loss of job, income, and
status; severing of networks and social contacts; and adjustments to being a ‘housewife.’ Most new
fathers do not report similar social dislocations.” (Lorna McKee and Margaret O’Brien)
Pornography: Pornography is the theory and rape is the practice. (Andrea Dworkin)
Sexual harassment: Refers to the unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the context of a
relationship of unequal power. (Catharine MacKinnon)
Silence: Is not golden. “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” (Zora Neale Hurston)
“In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppressive, is violence.” (Adrienne Rich)
FIGURE 33–1 Excerpts from Kramarae and Treichler’s Feminist Dictionary
Source: Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, with assistance from Ann Russo, The Feminist Dictionary
2e, P
­ andora Press Routledge & Kegan Paul plc, London 1992.
but, because of their reliance on male literary sources, lexicographers systematically
exclude words coined by women.
Kramarae and Paula Treichler have compiled a feminist dictionary that offers
definitions for women’s words that don’t appear in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary and presents alternative feminine readings of words that do. The dictio-
nary “places women at the center and rethinks language from that crucially different
perspective.”31 Kramarae and Treichler don’t claim that all women use words the
same way, nor do they believe women constitute a single, unified group. But they
include women’s definitions of approximately 2,500 words in order to illustrate
women’s linguistic creativity and to help empower women to change their muted
status. Figure 33–1 provides a sample of brief entries and acknowledges their origin.
The Internet also enables women to remake language with new words. One
example is mansplaining. Although it isn’t clear who coined the term, one account
states that it became popular in the blogging world around 2008, describing “a man
explaining a topic of conversation to a woman who . . . could reasonably be pre-
sumed to know about that topic.”32 By 2010, The New York Times recognized it as
 CHAPTER 33: Muted Group Theory 417
one of its words of the year.33 Although 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton
and Carly Fiorina represented opposing political parties, both appeared in YouTube
videos that poke fun at mansplaining.34 Despite their many differences, each candi-
date expressed frustration with men who think they know better than women.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT: COINING A TERM TO LABEL EXPERIENCE
Perhaps more than any other single entry in the Kramarae and Treichler dictionary,
the inclusion of sexual harassment illustrates a major achievement of feminist com-
munication scholarship—encoding women’s experience into the received language
of society. Although stories of unwanted sexual attention on the job are legion,
Sexual harassment women haven’t always had a common term to label what has been an ongoing fact
An unwanted imposition
of feminine life.
of sexual requirements in
In 1992, the Journal of Applied Communication Research published 30 stories
the context of a
of communication students and professionals who had been sexually embarrassed,
relationship of unequal
power.
humiliated, or traumatized by a person who was in a position of academic power.
All but 2 of the 30 accounts came from women. As Kramarae notes, “Sexual
harassment is rampant but not random.”35 One woman wrote this account of her
attempt to talk to a senior professor who had made an unsolicited sexual advance:
I was at a disadvantage in our “open talk,” because I approached it as a chance to
clarify feelings while he used it as an occasion to reinterpret and redefine what
was happening in ways that suited his purposes. I told him I didn’t feel right
“being so friendly” with him. He replied that I was over-reacting and, further, that
my small-town southern upbringing was showing. . . . I told him I was concerned
that he wasn’t being objective about my work, but was praising it because he
wanted to be “friends” with me; he twisted this, explaining he was judging my
work fairly, BUT that being “friends” did increase his interest in helping me pro-
fessionally. No matter what I said, he had a response that defined my feelings as
inappropriate.36
Muted group theory can explain this woman’s sense of confusion and lack of power.
Her story is as much about a struggle for language as it is a struggle over sexual
conduct. As long as the professor can define his actions as “being friendly,” the
female student’s feelings are discounted—even by herself. Had she been equipped
with the linguistic tool of “sexual harassment,” she could have validated her feelings
and labeled the professor’s advances as both inappropriate and illegal.
Communication professor Ann Burnett (North Dakota State University) iden-
tifies similar confusion and powerlessness regarding date rape—an acute form of
Date rape sexual harassment often directed at college women. Although students possess a
Unwanted sexual activity
relatively clear understanding of stranger rape, they have difficulty even defining
with an acquaintance,
date rape. That confusion is only heightened by rape myths common on campuses.
friend, or romantic
(“All guys expect sex on a first date.” “Women who dress a certain way are just
partner.
asking for it.”) Burnett notes that although universities offer programs addressing
drug and alcohol abuse, fewer programs exist regarding date rape. There’s further
uncertainty when a woman tries to say no, because men and women often don’t
agree on what constitutes sexual consent. After a date rape, the lack of clarity
makes the victim feel confused and uncertain about what she’s experienced. Talking
about the incident with friends doesn’t always help: “After the rape occurs, both
women and male acquaintances blame the victim for not being more ‘sensible.’
This vicious circle mutes women by making them feel badly for not ‘doing enough’
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CHAPTER 33: Muted Group Theory 419
are caused primarily by men’s and women’s “different styles.” In fact, Tannen
cautions that “bad feelings and imputation of bad motives or bad character can come
about when there was no intention to dominate.”42
Kramarae thinks Tannen’s apology for men’s abuse of power is too simple. She
notes that men often ignore or ridicule women’s statements about the problems of
being heard in a male-dominated society. Rather than blaming style differences,
­Kramarae points to the many ways that our political, educational, religious, legal,
and media systems support gender, race, and class hierarchies. Your response to
muted group theory may depend on whether you are a beneficiary or a victim of
these systems.
For men and women who are willing to hear what Kramarae has to say, the
consciousness-raising fostered by muted group theory can prod them to quit using
words in a way that preserves inequities of power. The terms sexual harassment and
mansplaining are examples of how women’s words can be levered into the public
lexicon and reform society by giving voice to women’s collective experience. Phrases
like glass ceiling and date rape weren’t even around when Kramarae and Treichler
compiled their feminist dictionary, but now these terms are available to label social
and professional injustices that women face. Cheris Kramarae’s provocative analysis
of how women are a group muted by men continues to shake up traditional patterns
of communication between the sexes.
QUESTIONS TO SHARPEN YOUR FOCUS
1. What words do you use with your same-sex friends that you don’t use with
members of the opposite sex? Does this usage support Kramarae’s hypothesis
of male control of the public mode of expression?
2. In a journal article about dictionary bias, Kramarae wrote the sentence “I
­vaginated on that for a while.”43 Can you explain her wordplay in light of the
principles of muted group theory? How does the meaning of the sentence
change when you replace her provocative term with alternative verbs?
3. Think about the majors offered at your school. Which ones tend to draw more
women, and which tend to draw more men? Which seem evenly split between
the sexes? What might Kramarae say about these patterns?
4. Do you tend to agree more with Tannen’s genderlect perspective or Kramarae’s
muted group theory? To what extent is your choice influenced by your gender
identity?
CONVERSATIONS In my conversation with Cheris Kramarae, she suggests that the creation of
university departments of women’s studies is an encouraging sign that women
aren’t doomed to remain muted. When I asked if there should also be a “men’s
studies” program, her unexpected response not only made me laugh but also
underscored the rationale for her theory. Describing her International
Encyclopedia of Women entry on witches, she gives a fascinating account of how
the meaning of that word has changed to women’s disadvantage. I conclude the
interview by asking Kramarae to look back on our conversation to see if I had
said or done something that constrained what she said. See if you agree with her
assessment.
View this segment online
at www.afirstlook.com.
418 CULTURAL CONTEXT
to protect themselves, but sadly, the ambiguity arises, what is ‘enough’?”37 This
uncertainty favors men—and mutes women—before, during, and after date rape.
According to Kramarae, when sexual harassment was first used in a court case
in the late 1970s, it was the only legal term defined by women. Although date rape
and rape culture have entered our cultural vocabulary, research like Burnett’s indi-
cates that many men don’t understand what women mean by these terms. For muted
group theorists, the struggle to contest man-made language continues.
CRITIQUE: DO MEN MEAN TO MUTE?
Feminist scholars insist that “the key communication activities of women’s
experiences—their rituals, vocabularies, metaphors, and stories—are an important
part of the data for study.”38 In this chapter I’ve presented the words of 30 women
who give voice to the mutedness they’ve experienced because they aren’t men.
Drawing from qualitative research by muted group theorists and from many other
sources, I could have easily cited hundreds more. It strikes me that ignoring or
discounting women’s testimony would be the ultimate confirmation of Kramarae’s
muted group thesis.
The theory has inspired many scholars to take the voices of women and other
muted groups seriously. This community of agreement runs roughshod over the
­disciplinary boundaries that often separate scholars in psychology, sociology, edu-
cation, communication, and other fields. Few other interpretive theories in this
book can claim such wide-ranging support and enthusiasm. This diverse set of
scholars is united in their conviction that, by understanding the experiences of
muted groups, we also achieve new understanding of people overall.
Steeped in the critical tradition, muted group theory is exceedingly candid
about trying to clarify values. Sometimes I’ve found that students (both male and
female) feel uncomfortable with the theory’s characterization of men as oppressors
and women as the oppressed. Kramarae addresses this issue:
Some people using the theory have boxed oppression within discrete, binary catego-
ries, e.g., women/men; AfricanAmericans/EuroAmericans. A focus only on the cat-
egories of women and men, or white and non-white, for example, is simplistic and
ignores other forms of struggle. . . .39
So, can men be members of a muted group? Kramarae’s answer is yes, especially if
those men identify with another marginalized group, such as the economically dis-
advantaged or an ethnic minority. Other men may face criticism or hostility when
transgressing gender expectations, like by becoming a stay-at-home dad.40 Thus,
Kramarae acknowledges that oppression is more complex than identification with
any one group. Yet she also states that “fixing names to the ones we call ‘oppressors’
may be necessary in order to have clear discussions” about oppressive power differ-
ences.41 How can we name an oppressive group without speaking in terms of demo-
graphic categories that are always too broad? The theory’s lack of clarity regarding
this thorny question may frustrate activists looking for practical answers.
The question of men’s motives is also problematic. Deborah Tannen criticizes
feminist scholars like Kramarae for assuming that men are trying to control women.
By Tannen’s account, yes, differences in male and female communication styles
sometimes lead to imbalances of power, but she’s willing to assume that the problems
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420 CULTURAL CONTEXT
A SECOND LOOK Recommended resource: Cheris Kramarae, “Muted Group Theory and C
­ ommunication:
Asking Dangerous Questions,” Women and Language, Vol. 22, 2005, pp. 55–61.
Comprehensive statement: Cheris Kramarae, Women and Men Speaking, Newbury
House, Rowley, MA, 1981, pp. v–ix, 1–63.
Original concept of mutedness: Edwin Ardener, “Belief and the Problem of Women” and
“The ‘Problem’ Revisited,” in Perceiving Women, Shirley Ardener (ed.), Malaby, London,
1975, pp. 1–27.
Dictionary of women’s words: Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, A Feminist ­Dictionary:
Amazons, Bluestockings and Crones, 2nd ed., Pandora, London, 1992.
Worldwide feminist scholarship: Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender (eds.), Routledge
­International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women’s Issues and Knowledge (4 vol.),
­Routledge, New York, 2000.
Sexual harassment: Julia T. Wood (ed.), “Special Section—‘Telling Our Stories’: Sexual
Harassment in the Communication Discipline,” Journal of Applied Communication Research,
Vol. 20, 1992, pp. 349–418.
Date rape and muting: Ann Burnett, Jody L. Mattern, Liliana L. Herakova, David H.
Kahl Jr., Cloy Tobola, and Susan E. Bornsen, “Communicating/Muting Date Rape: A
Co-Cultural Theoretical Analysis of Communication Factors Related to Rape Culture on
a College Campus,” Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 37, 2009, pp. 465–485.
Social media and muting: Wei Zhang and Cheris Kramarae, “BOLD Ideas for Creative
Social Networking: An Invitational Discussion,” in Handbook of Research on Digital Media
and Creative Technologies, Dew Harrison (ed.), IGI Global, Hershey, PA, 2015, p. 418.
Pregnancy, women’s health, and muting: LaKesha N. Anderson, “Functions of Support
Group Communication for Women with Postpartum Depression: How Support Groups
Silence and Encourage Voices of Motherhood,” Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 41,
2013, pp. 709–724.
Alternative interpretations of gender differences in discourse: Candace West, Michelle
M. Lazar, and Cheris Kramarae, “Gender in Discourse,” in Discourse as Social Interaction,
Vol. 2, Teun van Dijk (ed.), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1997, pp. 119–143.
Critique: Celia J. Wall and Pat Gannon-Leary, “A Sentence Made by Men: Muted
Group Theory Revisited,” European Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 6, 1999, pp. 21–29.
To discover scenes from feature films that illustrate Muted Group
Theory, click on Suggested Movie Clips under Theory Resources at
www.afirstlook.com.
 422
I n t e r c u l t u r a l C o m m u n i c a t i o n
When we think of culture, most of us picture a place—the South American culture
of Brazil, the Middle Eastern culture of Saudi Arabia, or the Far Eastern culture
of Japan. But Gerry Philipsen, a University of Washington emeritus professor who
specializes in intercultural communication, says that culture is not basically
­geographical. Nor is it essentially political or a ­matter of race. Philipsen describes
culture as “a socially constructed and historically transmitted pattern of symbols,
meanings, premises, and rules.”1 At root, culture is a code.
Ethnographers study the speech and nonverbal communication of people in
order to crack that code. We’ve already looked at Mead’s reliance on participant
observation (see Chapter 5) and Geertz’ use of thick description (see Chapter 19)
to unravel the complex web of meanings that people share within a society or
­culture. In like manner, Philipsen spent multiple years conducting two ethnographic
studies. The first study revealed what it was like to “speak like a man” in a multi-
ethnic, blue-collar Chicago neighborhood he called “Teamsterville.” He discovered
that men used talk primarily to show solidarity with friends who were part of the
neighborhood.2 The second study identified the communication patterns of a large
group of people dispersed around the United States whom he dubbed the “Nacirema”
(American spelled backward). He regarded the live audience for the television talk
show Donahue—a forerunner of Oprah—as typical members of the Nacirema culture.
He and Donal Carbaugh (University of Massachusetts) found that Naciremans felt
any appeal to a universal standard of ethical conduct was considered by members
of that culture to be an infringement of their right to be individuals.3
Philipsen selected these two American subcultures for study in part because he
saw their communication practices as so different from one another. Is there a way
he could have measured the extent of their discrepancy—or for that matter, the
cultural variability of any two countries across the globe? From a study of multina-
tional corporations in more than 50 countries, Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede
concluded that there are four crucial dimensions on which to compare cultures.4
1. Power distance—the extent to which the less powerful members of society
accept that power is distributed unequally (Americans—low; Japanese—
medium)
2. Masculinity—clearly defined gender roles, with male values of success, money,
and possessions dominant in society (Americans—high; Japanese—extremely
high)
3. Uncertainty avoidance—the extent to which people feel threatened by ambigu-
ity and create beliefs and institutions to try to avoid it (Americans—low;
Japanese—extremely high)
4. Individualism—people look out for themselves and their immediate families as
opposed to identifying with a larger group that is responsible for taking care of
them in exchange for group loyalty (Americans—extremely high; Japanese—low)
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CULTURAL CONTEXT
Many researchers agree that Hofstede’s distinction between individualism and
collectivism is the crucial dimension of cultural variability. The we-centered focus
of Teamsterville sets it apart from individualistic American society in general, and
from the extremely I-centered preoccupation of the Nacirema subculture in particu-
lar. Cultural anthropologist Edward Hall was the first to label the communication
style of collectivistic cultures as high-context and the style of individualistic cultures
as low-context. The designation divides groups of people on the basis of how they
interpret messages.
A high-context communication or message is one in which most of the information
is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in
the coded, explicit part of the message. A low-context communication is just the
opposite, i.e., the mass of information is vested in the explicit code.5
Hall contrasted American and Japanese cultures to illustrate the differences between
collectivistic societies that have a message-context orientation and individualistic
societies that rely more on message content.6
Americans believe in straight talk. Assertiveness is saying what you mean; hon-
esty is meaning what you say. Both are highly prized. Perhaps the highest art form
of explicit communication is the legal contract. A US lawyer’s dream is to prepare
a verbal document that allows no room for interpretation. Hall said that Japanese
communication is more subtle. Bluntness is regarded as rude; patience and indirec-
tion are the marks of a civilized person. What is said is less important than how it
is said and who did the saying. Meaning is embedded in the setting and the non-
verbal code. In Japan, the highest form of communication competency is empathy—
the ability to sense what others are thinking and feeling without their having to
spell it out for you.
Co-author Glenn Sparks experienced these distinctions when he—a typical
low-context American—worked with high-context Africans in Ethiopia.
When I was in Ethiopia, I worked daily with various folks at the university. I came
to learn that about half the time, a lunch appointment, a promise to have a key for
a room at a certain time, or a commitment to make copies of a reading for the
class just didn’t pan out. But all of these commitments were made with kindness
and politeness. Ethiopians were much more attuned to the overall tenor of an inter-
action than they were to the actual words that were said.7
Glenn is a quick study. By reminding himself of the crucial contextual issue that Hall
identified, he was able to reduce his frustration. Hopefully, in turn, his Ethiopian
hosts gave him a “visitor’s pass” for misinterpreting what they had said.
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