Holmes, J. &

‘Doing femininity’at work: More thanjust relational practice1

Janet Holmes and Stephanie SchnurrVictoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Workplaces constitute one of the more interesting sites where individuals‘do gender’, while at the same time constructing their professional identitiesand meeting their organisation’s expectations. Drawing on interactionaldata recorded in New Zealand professional organisations, this paper focuses inparticular on how participants manage and interpret the notion of ‘femininity’in workplace discourse. In much current usage, the concepts ‘feminine’ and‘femininity’ typically evoke negative reactions. Our analysis suggests thesenotions can be reclaimed and reinterpreted positively using an approachwhich frames doing femininity at work as normal, unmarked, and effectiveworkplace behaviour in many contexts. The analysis also demonstrates thatmultiple femininities extend beyond normative expectations, such as enactingrelational practice (Fletcher 1999), to embrace more contestive and parodicinstantiations of femininity inworkplace talk.

KEYWORDS: Workplace discourse, femininities, gender identity, relationalpractice, communityof practice

INTRODUCTION

Researchers in the area of language and gender have recently begun toexamine the‘multiplicity of experiences of gender’ (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet2003: 47) in different social contexts and communities of practice. A numberof researchers, for example, have explored the concept of masculinity, andindeed ‘masculinities’ (Connell1995; Cameron1997; Edley andWetherell1997;Johnson and Meinhof 1997; Kiesling 1998, 2004; Bucholtz 1999; Mea“ n 2001;Coates 2003; Bell and Major 2004). Some attention has also been paid to ‘themultiplicity of . . . femininities’ (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003: 48), thatis, the dynamic and diverse ways in which people construct different kinds offemininity in social interaction in different contexts (e.g. Okamoto1995; Liviaand Hall 1997; Cameron 1997, 1998; Coates 1997, 1999; Cameron and Kulick2003). This paper contributes to this enterprise by analysing some of the waysin which people construct and negotiate different femininities in white-collarNew Zealand workplaces.

Journal of Sociolinguistics 10/1, 2006: 31^51

# The authors 2006Journal compilation# Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 20069600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.

Femininity is an ambiguous concept with complex associations. It could evenbe argued that ‘femininity’ has been treated as something of a dirty word ingender studies, associated, from a feminist perspective, with a rather dubiousset of behaviours. Most obviously, acting ‘feminine’ conjures up politicallyincorrect ‘frilly pink party dresses’; femininity is associated with demureness,deference, and lack of power and influence (as discussed in Eckert andMcConnell-Ginet 2003: 16ff, 184ff; see also Lakoff 2004). Femininity invokesa stereotype, and it is a negative one for many feminists, and a problematicand uncomfortable one for many academic women.2 Discussing this issue,Mills (2003) implicitly subscribes to this negative attitude: ‘one of the manyimportant advances made by feminism is to open up within the notion of whatit means to be a woman a distinction between femininity and femaleness, sothat one can be awomanwithout considering oneself to be (or others consider-ing one to be) feminine’ (Mills 2003: 188). Accepting such a claim entailssubscribing to the view that ‘feminine’and ‘femininity’are dirty words whichmust be replaced by the euphemisms ‘female’ and ‘femaleness’. But is thisnecessary? We argue that ‘feminine’can be reclaimed as a positive attribute.

In contesting the denigration and rejection of the words ‘feminine’ and‘femininity’, it is important to note that the basis for this negative stereotype isthe exaggeration of features which are associated with the construction bywomen of a normative gender identity. The exaggeration evokes derision. AsMills herself notes, in the media‘the representation of stereotypically femininewomen is rarely presented . . . without mockery or ridicule’ (2003: 187).3 Butthis should not mean that the enactment of normatively feminine behaviourshould be a cause for embarrassment and apology by professional women (ormen) in the workplace.

In what follows, we attempt to re-present the notion of femininity as apositive rather than a negative construction in workplace interaction. Weanalyse a number of specific examples which illustrate the negotiation of arange of femininities at work.We drawon the notion of a gendered communityof practice (Holmes and Stubbe 2003a), in which certain kinds of genderperformance are perceived as ‘unmarked’ (Ochs 1992: 343), or ‘‘‘normal’’behaviour’ (Kiesling 2004: 234), while others are regarded as marked or‘emphasised’ (Connell 1987: 187). Building on the notion that ^ through theirassociationwith particular roles, activities, traits, and stances ^ certain socio-pragmatic, discursive and linguistic choices, or ways of speaking, ‘index’(Ochs1992, 1996) or culturally encode gender (Cameron and Kulick 2003: 57),we explore the different ways of ‘doing femininity’ identified in our workplacedata.

In a recent paper examining the ways in which authority is constructed inworkplace interaction, Kendall (2004) suggests that gender identity is oftenirrelevant in the workplace. She argues that in everyday interaction peoplefocus on role construction rather than gender identity: ‘women and men donot generally choose linguistic strategies for the purpose of creating masculine

32 HOLMESAND SCHNURR

# The authors 2006Journal compilation# Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006

or feminine identities’ (2004: 56) . . . ‘situations in which women and menconsciously choose language options to create femininity and masculinity arerare’ (2004:76). Certainly gender is not frequently a conscious focus of identityperformance at work (but see Hall1995, 2003; Besnier 2003). Nonetheless, thedistinction between two types of social identity is not always easy to make,especially when particular linguistic features are associated with more thanone kind of identity (e.g. masculinity and leadership, femininity and sub-ordination/server status). As Cameron and Kulick note, in some cases ‘thesame way of speaking signifies both a professional identity and a genderedidentity, and in practice these are difficult to separate: the two meaningscoexist, and both of them are always potentially relevant. The actual balancebetween them is not determined in advance by some general principle, but hasto be negotiated in specific situations’ (2003: 58).

In our view, then, gender is relevant at some level in every workplace inter-action, an ever-present influence on how we behave, and how we interpretothers’ behaviour, even if our level of awareness of this influence varies fromone interaction to another, and from moment to moment within an inter-action.4 We are always aware of the gender of those we are talking to, and webring to every workplace interaction our familiarity with societal genderstereotypes, and the gendered norms to which women and men are expectedto conform (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003: 87).Workplaces are simply oneof many sites for gender performances which have the potential to strengthenthe ‘gender order’ (Connell 1987); and while in some professions ‘doing gender’is quite central to workplace performance, in all workplaces individualsunavoidably enact gendered roles, adopt recognisably gendered stances, andconstruct gender identity in the process of interacting with others at work.

In addition, there are situations in which people exploit their audience’sfamiliarity with stereotypical concepts of femininity or masculinity in a moreconscious fashion for particular effect, as we illustrate below. The concept of‘double voicing’ (Bakhtin 1984) is relevant here, accounting for the ways inwhich speakers mingle components of different styles for particular effect.Talk which indexes gender in exaggerated or over-emphatic ways may bemanipulated for the purpose, for instance, of parodying and even subvertingestablished workplace norms and expectations about appropriate waysfor professional employees to behave at work. The ability to interpret andappreciate the social meaning of such gender performances depends inevitablyon recognition of what constitutes an unmarked gender performance or‘unmarked behaviours for a [particular] sex’ (Ochs 1992: 343) in a particularcommunity of practice. The first section of the analysis addresses, therefore,the issue of the construction of unmarked femininity in particular commu-nities of practice.

The data we draw on was collected by the Wellington Language in theWorkplace (LWP) Project (see www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/lwp; Holmes and Stubbe2003b). The Project includes material from a wide variety of New Zealand

‘DOING FEMININITY’ATWORK 33


workplaces, and uses a methodology which allows workplace interactions to berecorded as unobtrusively as possible. The LWP corpus currently comprisesover 2500 workplace interactions, involving around 400 participants. In thispaper, we draw on data from white-collar professional workplaces in order toexplore the ways in which workplace participants, and especially workplacemanagers, construct complex femininities in different discourse contextswithin particular communities of practice.

‘DOING FEMININITY’ INA FEMININE COMMUNITYOF PRACTICE

We begin by considering what it means to behave in a normatively feminineway in a recognisably feminine community of practice. Holmes and Stubbe(2003a) explored the notion of ‘gendered’ workplaces, and examined some ofthe discourse features which people use to characterise the organisationalculture of different workplaces as being relatively more ‘feminine’ or ‘mascu-line’. Describing workplaces in this way does not indicate that everyone in aparticular workplace behaves in a consistently gendered manner; rather theselabels act as a shorthand, indicating the expectations and constraints ongender performances in some contexts in those workplaces.5 Indeed ouranalyses demonstrate that the characteristics stereotypically associated withsuch generalisations are often inaccurate, and that day-to-day interactions inparticular communities of practice typically challenge the generalisations.Nevertheless, it was clear that those participating in our research, as well asmembers of the wider New Zealand community, were very willing to identifysome workplaces as particularly feminine and others as very masculine. Andsuch perceptions inevitably affect expectations about appropriate behaviourincluding ways of speaking. IT companies and manufacturing organisationstypically tended to be labelled as more masculine workplaces, while organisa-tions (and especially government departments) which dealt directly withclients, or with people-oriented, social issues, or with education, tended to beperceived as more feminine places to work.

Within such workplaces people draw from a range of linguistic and discur-sive resources to construct their identities as ‘professionals’ in workplaceinteraction, and to negotiate particular pragmatic functions, such as givingdirectives, criticising, disagreeing, approving, and so on. Their choices indexparticular stances (e.g. authoritative, consultative, deferential) which con-struct not only their particular professional identities or roles (e.g. manager,team leader, support person), but also their gender positioning (see, for example,Holmes, Stubbe and Vine 1999; Holmes and Stubbe 2003a; Kendall 2003,2004). This is the most obvious way in which people enact conventionalgender identities at work ^ through linguistic and discursive choices whichindirectly index normative femininity whilst also instantiating a particularprofessional relationship. Example1 illustrates this in a community of practice



described by its members, as well as by outsiders, as a very feminine communityof practice:

Example 16

Context: Ruth is the department manager. Nell is a policy analyst. Nell has prepared anofficial letter onwhich Ruth is giving her some feedback.7

1. Ruth: it’s actually quite I mean it’s2. it’s well written [inhales] I just have3. I just think the approach is could4. should be a bit different in terms of see like5. the organisationwouldn’t6. we wouldn’t usually say something like this7. that I mean it’s true but umwe should probably8. put in there that um the organisation has9. what we did actually in terms of10. providing advice on other avenues of funding11. /but\ what the organisation¼12. Nell: /mm\13. Ruth: ¼ provides is a policy advice organisation14. and does not have umþþ15. they actually have only limited funding for16. sponsorshipþ (and) I’ve just realised though17. that this is (like) that they go in a couple of weeks18. itmight have beenworth talking to Stacey19. about um funding through20. I think it’s through [name of funding agency]21. ( ) last year we got funding for [tut] a someone22. from [name of organisation] to attend23. an international conference [drawls]:in: India24. I think þ I can’t remember exactly the criteria25. but there is a fund there and itmay might be a bit late26. but just Imean Stacey knows the contacts27. and I think it’s in [name of funding agency]28. and whether or not it’s worth having a talk to them about . . .

Ruth wants Nell to make some amendments to the letter, and the interaction isclearly potentially face threatening. Ruth’s strategy for conveying her criticalcomments and her directives entails the use of a range of classic face-savingmitigation devices. In this short interaction, she uses a variety of hedges andminimisers (in bold above): could, may, might, probably, just (2), actually (3), Imean (3) and I think (5), and approximators, a bit, I think it was, I can’t rememberexactly, etc. These devices minimise the force of the face-threatening implicitcriticisms and directive speech acts, and pay attention to Nell’s face needs(Brown and Levinson1987).8

Ruthalsominimises the critical implications of her comments by emphasisingthe positive. So she begins by highlighting the fact that Nell’s version of the



letter is fine, it’s well written (line 2). She also acknowledges that what Nell hassaid is true (line 7), but comments that it is not the usual way of doing thingsin the organisation. The shift from the organisation (line 8) to the use of thepronoun we (line 9) which is strategically ambiguous between exclusiveand positively polite inclusive meaning (we wouldn’t usually say something likethis), allows Ruth to suggest that she and Nell are working on this together,thereby again saving both interlocutors’ faces in a potentially tricky situation.On this interpretation, mitigation is clearly at the core of this array of strategies.

From ananalyst’s perspective, this is normatively feminine talk, characterisedby features which have been described in decades of language and genderresearch (e.g. see Tannen 1993, 1994a, 1994b; Crawford 1995; Holmes 1995;Aries 1996; Coates 1996; Wodak 1997; Talbot 1998; Romaine 1999). In thissection of her interactionwith Nell, Ruth is making use of linguistic, pragmaticand discursive devices which signal considerateness and positive affect,stances associated with femaleness and feminine identity in New Zealandsociety. These are, of course, just some of the available strategies for fulfillingher role as manager, and in other contexts she draws on more confrontational,authoritative, and direct strategies to achieve her goals (see, for example,Holmes and Stubbe 2003b: 49). Example 1 serves, however, to illustrate aninteraction in which a middle-class professional woman performs her manage-rial role in a way which also constructs a conventionally feminine genderidentity. It also serves as a linguistic instantiation of classic ‘relational practice’(Fletcher 1999), that is, off-record, other-oriented behaviour which serves tofurther workplace goals. In Fletcher’s analysis relational practice is paradigmati-cally women’s work, and thus a quintessential example of ‘doing femininity’ atwork. In the community of practice in which these women worked, this genderperformance was unremarkable and ‘unmarked’. Being normatively feminine inthis communityof practice did notarouse derision, and nordid it require apology.

Importantly, however, the perception of such behaviour as acceptable andunmarked held true for professional women in many of the white-collarworkplaces in which we recorded. Doing feminine gender using the kinds ofstrategies and linguistic devices described above was typically perceived asunmarked, as simply one component of performing their professional identityin particular interactions in a very wide range of communities of practice.Feminine behaviour, in other words, was regarded as normal behaviour insuch contexts, and hence can be re-classified positively rather than derided.

When men ‘do femininity’ at work, however, the perceptions of, andreactions to, their behaviour are much more complex. For example, in ourdata, when men made use of discourse strategies and linguistic devices asso-ciated with normatively feminine behaviour, the responses varied significantlyon different occasions in different communities of practice. In a relativelyfeminine community of practice, the use by a male of linguistic markers ofconsiderateness and concern for the addressee’s face needs, such as thoseidentified in Example1, when used in a similar professional context, occasioned



no comment. Indeed, our ethnographic observations and interviews, indicatethat such behaviour was regarded as normal, appropriate and unmarked.

An example of such normatively feminine behaviour bya male in a departmentwith educationas its core business, is provided in Holmes and Stubbe (2003b: 32).Giving a directive to a subordinate, Len, the manager, uses a range of mitigatingstrategies, includinghedges,modalised interrogatives,minimisers,andhesitations,devices which very closely match those used by Ruth in Example1. In the contextwhere he works, this linguistic behaviour was considered perfectly appropriate;it did not attract comment as ‘marked’ in any respect, and his colleagues clearlyregardedhis linguisticanddiscursivestyleasunremarkable.

Example 2 illustrates the same pattern in a different community of practice.It is taken from a meeting in one section of a large organisation; the sectionhas specific responsibility for meeting the needs of the organisation’s clients.Smithy, the male project manager, engages in facilitative behaviour by drawingthe attention of the chair to a contributionwhich merits praise:9

Example 2

Context: Large project team meeting in commercial organisation. The project manager,Smithy, is reporting on the project’s progress to the section manager, Clara.

1. Smithy: um service level team to produce2. a strategy document they’ve doneþ3. umVitawas to meet with I S to determine er4. an implementation plan for the recording device5. Vita: yes done itþ6. Smithy: [parenthetical tone] Vita’s done a umwork plan7. just for that/um implementation\ and that8. Clara: great/that’ll make the plan easier\9. Smithy: we can feed/(out what) youwant\10. Vita: /haven’t actually\(heard anything . . .)11. Smithy: Vita’s going to meet with Stewart12. to determine how 0800 numbers13. come in to the call centre

In lines1^4, Smithy reports onwhat the team agreedVita should do by this meet-ing, and in line 5,Vita confirms that she has indeed accomplished the specifiedtask. Since Clara, theDepartmentmanager,makes no immediate response, Smithyproceeds to‘prime’Clara to provide positive feedback toVita (Vita’s done a work planjust for that implementation, lines 6^7). Clara responds appropriately in line 8witha positive and appreciative comment, and Smithy then continues with the nextitem. Smithy’s facilitativemove ismade extremelydiscreetly, andClara picks up hiscue without missing a beat. This is a nice example of relational practice ^ subtle,backgrounded discursive work, attending to collegial relationships and ensuringthat things run smoothly. Relational practice is quintessentially gendered as‘feminine’ in Fletcher’s (1999) book Disappearing Acts, in which she arguesthat relational skills are typically associated with women, and hence Smithy’s



behaviour inExample2 couldbe characterisedas‘doing femininity’.This is just oneof many similar examples of Smithy’s style of workplace interactionwhich attractsno comment, and appears to be regarded as normal and unremarkable behaviourincontext, even inthis somewhat less feminine communityof practice.

In neither Len’s workplace nor Smithy’s, then, does their use on occasion of anormatively feminine style of discourse seem out of place, and nor does itattract comment as ‘marked’ in any respect. Using linguistic features anddiscourse strategies which attend to relational aspects of the interaction, andindex normative femininity, is perfectly acceptable as a way of performingaspects of one’s professional identity within these communities of practice.In other words ‘doing femininity’ is unmarked behaviour in such contexts,whether it is performed by a man or a woman. Thus defined, normativefemininity can be regarded positively rather than treated as the focus of ridicule.

‘DOING FEMININITY’ INA MASCULINE COMMUNITYOF PRACTICE

There are however, workplace contexts where using a feminine style canevoke a very much less positive response. Especially in relatively masculinecommunities of practice, the effective use of a normatively feminine style wasa much more complex and even hazardous enterprise. And men, in particular,tended to be the target of negative comment for using stylistic features whichconventionally index femininity.

So, for example, the discursive behaviour of members of an IT team in a bigcommercial organisation contrasted sharply with the norms of the placeswhere Ruth, Len and Smithy worked. There was, for instance, scarcely anyconventional small talk among team members before or after meetings.Pre-meeting talk tended to be business-oriented, a chance to update on workwhich team members were doing together in other contexts. In the sixmeetings of this team that we videotaped in full, there is scarcely a single topicthat is not directly related to some aspect of the team’s work. And the humouramong these team members was predominantly aggressive and sarcastic, andsometimes undeniably sexist (e.g. with references to nagging wives, and heavydrinking with the boys).10 Over 90 percent of the humorous comments whichoccurred in one meeting, for instance, were sarcastic and negative jibes,intended to put down the addressee or to deflate them. Behaviour which wasperceived as ‘soft’ or conventionally ‘feminine’elicited a very different reactionin this community of practice from the way it was treated by Ruth’s colleaguesand in Len’s workplace, as Example 3 demonstrates:

Example 311

Context: Six men in a regular meeting of a project team in a large commercial organisation.They are discussing a technical issue related to a project for some clients. Callum’scolleagues pretend to be horrified that he has actually talked face-to-face with the clients.



1. Barry: but we canwe can kill this/particular action\ point2. Marco: /well yep\ you can kill3. this particular action point4. Barry: and you/guys\5. Callum: /are\ you sureþþþ I took the opportunity6. of talking with some of the users7. Barry: what again? [laughs]/[laughs]\8. Marco: /not againwhat are you doing talking to them\9. Barry: [laughs]: go on/Callum come on\10. Marco: /[laughs]\11. Callum: and th- and they th-þþ12. Marco: they’ve still got/issues\13. Callum /(I I I)\ well þ I don’t think they’re sure?þ14. ( ) if they’re really issues or not

The group of men here make fun of Callum for engaging voluntarily in ‘communi-cative’ behaviour with clients. Using stereotypically masculine language, BarryandMarco suggest that aproposedaction, namelydealingwitha specific technicalissue, be killed, that is, dropped (lines1^3), since it is peripheral to themainproject.Callum interrupts with a protest, using a question are you sure (line 5), rather thanamore aggressive formof challenge. Even so, the three-second pause suggests thathis comment causes surprise. He goes on to point out that the proposed actionemerged from his discussions with the people who will be using the programme(lines 6^7). Barry and Marco then proceed to mock Callum, ridiculing the notionthat he should actually ‘talk’, that is verbally communicate face-to-face, withclients. Barry’s tone of voice in his question what again? (line 7) conveys mockingastonishment, and Barry’s Callum come on (line 9) is drawled with a rise-fallintonation indicating sardonic incredulity. Callum persists, despite the mockery,and maintains his relatively feminine approach, I don’t think they’re sure? if they’rereally issues or not (lines13^14)witha high rising terminal on sure, a feature codedas feminine in New Zealand speech. He is also reporting behaviour that is stereo-typically feminine, namely, these people don’t knowwhat they think, thus riskingtarringhimselfwith the samebrushbyassociation.

This short excerpt illustrates how this group of professional IT experts con-struct themselves as a very masculine community of practice; both in content(e.g. kill this point) and style: they contest each other’s statements very directly,and the floor is a competitive site where they interrupt one another freely. Inthis context, Callum’s verbal behaviour is clearly ‘marked’. The underlying(only slightly facetious) assumption is that ‘real men’ (and especially computerexperts) do not ever actually talk face-to-face with clients; talking to clients israther the responsibility of the support staff at the user interface, many ofwhom are, unsurprisingly, women. Indeed, contributing more than theminimal amount of talk seems to be generally regarded as relatively femininebehaviour within the culture of this IT project team, where the most seniorparticipant in the team meetings contributes the least talk. In this exchange,



then, the team members imply that Callum has behaved in an unmasculineway, and mock his conventionally feminine approach.

Example 4 provides another suggestive illustration of the kind of responseelicited by normatively feminine behaviour in a relatively masculine commun-ity of practice. It is an excerpt from an interaction between members of thesenior management team in Company S, a community of practice similar insome ways to the IT team described above. Many of the norms for interactionbetween the all-male members of this team are stereotypically masculine, withrelational practice expressed through contestive humour, jocular insult, andextensive competitive teasing (see Schnurr forthcoming). During the periodthat we recorded, a new member of the team, Neil, was being inculcated intothe team culture, the normal ‘way we do things around here’ (Bower 1966,cited in Clouse and Spurgeon 1995: 3), often through teasing and sarcasticcomment on features of his behaviour which were regarded as inappropriatein the context of the team’s usual ways of interacting. On one occasion, forinstance, he took seriously a negative critical response to his excuse for notbeing able to attend a meeting. It was clear from the reactions of others, aswell as the subsequent discourse, that the criticism was intended as jocular.But Neil misinterpreted Shaun’s tone, and responded in a way that the otherteam members clearly regarded as inappropriately fulsome. Our observationsand analyses in this rather masculine community of practice suggest that onedimension of this inappropriateness was the association of apologetic andmitigating language with relatively feminine ways of talking.

Example 4

Context: Meeting of the senior management team in middle-sized IT company. Neilapologises for not being able to attend the first monthly staff meeting to which he hasbeen invited.

1. Shaun: okay but I think it’s important2. you do go to the staff meeting3. and get introduced4. Neil: yeah . . . . . . . . .5. er I can’t do it today unfortunately I’ve6. I’ve already booked in some time7. with someone else this afternoon8. but the next one I can come along to yeah9. Shaun: we’ll think about it10. Neil: pardon11. Shaun: we’ll think about it12. Neil: /[laughs]\13. Shaun: /we don’t take kindly to\ being rejected14. Neil: oh I’m sorry I’ve got a yeah got a meeting15. this afternoonwhich I can’t get out of16. if I’d have known I would’ve changed it yeah17. Shaun: what is our formal position on Neil (5)



Neil needs to be introduced to the wider staff of the organisation (lines 1^3).The fact that he is not free to attend (lines 5^8) provides an opportunity forShaun to tease him for rejecting their invitation (lines 9, 11, 13). Neil does notrecognise that he is being teased, and he responds seriously to Shaun’s com-ment we don’t take kindly to being rejected (line 13), with an elaboration of hisexcuse (lines 14^16). His response is marked by a number of appeasementdevices (e.g. apology, excuse; he even claims he would have changed hisappointment if he had known that he was expected to attend the staff meeting(line16)). Shaun does not respond, however, to Neil’s attempt at appeasement;rather he replies in a very challenging tone with a confrontational, directattack on Neil’s status: what is our formal position on Neil (line17).

Neil’s inappropriately elaborate apologycould be regarded as overlyconciliatory,a stance strongly associated with more feminine styles of interaction. It clearlymarks him as an outsider to the team, a team which our ethnographic dataindicates forms a very close-knit community of practice, with a number ofnormatively masculine norms of interaction, as mentioned above. Clearly then,ways of talking which conventionally index femininity can function as unmarkedinsomecommunitiesof practice,while thesamediscourse strategiesand linguisticfeaturesmaybe perceived asmarked and comment-worthy inothers.We turn nowto the discussion of a rather different way in which women may exploit genderednorms of interaction at work, drawing on the conventional indices of femininityfor particular, and sometimes subversive, purposes.

EXPLOITING NORMATIVE FEMININITY

The extensive exploration of style and styling in the speech of those from adiverse range of social, ethnic and gender backgrounds (e.g. Bell 1999, 2001;Bucholtz 1999; Johnstone 1999, 2003; Rampton1999, 2003) provides a usefulframework for discussing the ways inwhich some New Zealand women exploitfeatures of normative and even stereotypical femininity in workplace inter-action. As these researchers note, Bakhtin’s (1984) concept of ‘double voicing’provides a way of accounting for the mingling of stereotypical components ofanother style with ‘habitual speech patterns’ to ‘generate symbolically con-densed dialogues between self and other’ (Rampton1999: 422). In particular,this approach provides a way of describing how professional women in theworkplace make strategic use of linguistic features associated with stereotypicalfemininity to parody, and thus implicitly contest and ‘trouble’ the images ofwomen and the gender categories that such features support and maintain(Butler1990; Bell, Binnie, Cream andValentine1994: 31; Jones 2000).

In our data, this particular kind of double voicing, namely the ‘strategic useof an ingroup variety’ (Johnstone1999: 514), was observable in the behaviourof senior womenwhowere secure in their professional identity.12 This strategyallowed them tomake use of features whichmight otherwise be misinterpretedas ‘serious’ rather than ironic. Traditionally, the concept of leadership has



been associated with dominant, hegemonic masculinity: ‘what counts asleadership, the means of gaining legitimacy in leadership, and so on, are maledominated in most organizations’ (Hearn and Parkin1988: 27). Consequently,‘the language of leadership often equates with the language of masculinity’(Hearn and Parkin 1988: 21).We found that effective women leaders typicallydrew skilfully and competently on a wide range of discourse strategies,some regarded as indexing conventional masculinity, and some as enactingnormative femininity, to accomplish both their transactional and relationalgoals (Holmes 2000; Stubbe, Holmes,Vine and Marra 2000).

Jill, for example, is a company director in a small IT company, and the chairof the company Board. She appears to enjoy her position as a woman in thepredominantly masculine world of IT (Trauth 2002), as evidenced by manyaspects of her behaviour (see Schnurr forthcoming). Our recordings indicatethat Jill makes use of awide range of interactional strategies and ways of talking,including some which can be regarded as normatively feminine, constructingher female gender in a conventional, unmarked and unselfconscious waywithina range of workplace interactions, while at other times she draws on moreconventionally masculine strategies. So, at times she uses conventionally politediscourse, standard relational practice in Fletcher’s (1999) sense, apologising forinterrupting a subordinate, for instance, can I be a real pain and interrupt youagain, and making use of a variety of facilitative and supportive strategies inrunning a meeting. At other points, she uses more direct and forceful strategies,interrupting small talk to start a meeting, for instance, and firmly asserting theneed tomove onto the next point on the agenda.

In addition, however, Jill strategically ‘does femininity’on occasion, in a self-aware and ironic fashion that both exploits and parodies gender stereotypes.On such occasions, instead of playing down or minimising areas of differencein gender display in her male-dominated workplace, as senior womenoften do, she emphasises her femininity in a variety of ways, lampooningstereotypical features of gender performance. In Example 5, for instance, sheplays up her helplessness and ignorance (albeit, importantly, with an ironicelement of self-parody):

Example 513

Context: Jill, chair of the Board of an ITcompany, has had a problemwith her computerand has consulted Douglas, a software engineer, for help. Returning to her office, shereports her experience to her colleague, Lucy, a project manager in the company.

1. Jill: [walks into room] he just laughed at me2. Lucy: [laughs]: oh no:3. Jill: he’s definitely going to come to myaid4. but ( ) he just sort of laughed at me5. Lucy: [laughs]6. Jill: (and then) I’ve got this appalling reputation7. of being such a technical klutz and/( )\



8. sometimes look it’s notmeþ9. Lucy: /[laughs]\10. Jill: I work withwhat I’ve gotþ/( )\11. Lucy: /I know\ it’s the tools you’ve been prov/ided\12. Jill: /that’s\ rightþþþ

In this exchange, Jill constructs an image of herself as a stereotypical female:as technically ignorant and incompetent, a technical klutz (line 7) in the areaof the organisation’s specialisation, computer technology. She describes howher ignorance elicited laughter from the technical guy who was assisting her(lines 1, 4). Although she laughingly refutes the implication of incompetence,by blaming her tools (lines 8, 10), this excuse is clearly tongue-in-cheek orironic, since technical klutz is an identity she regularly adopts, playing up thestereotypically feminine role of incompetent ignoramus in the IT area.14 Theexaggerated intonation and high pitch with which lines 8 and10 are deliveredfurther underline Jill’s parodic intent.

Our extensive observational data indicate that Jill is a confident andcompetent member of this professional organisation, and this, along with hersardonic tone, supports an ironic (and even subversive) reading of her con-struction of a stereotypical, ultra-feminine, identity. In other words, we couldinterpret Jill’s gender performance here not as reinforcing the predominantlymasculine norms of her IT community of practice, but rather as troubling andcontesting the assumptions underlying them. By refusing to treat IT incompet-ence as a serious matter, she implicitly questions the validity of the hegemonicstereotype which discounts the competence of women who are technicallyunsophisticated. Like the American adolescent girls Eder researched, Jill hereparodies ‘traditional norms about feminine behaviour’ (1993: 25), and, as ademonstrably intelligent woman and competent manager, implicitly conteststhem, thus transforming their role as unquestioned and unquestionablereference points.

Unlike somewomen in ITworkplaces inwhichwe have observed, Jill does notappear to feel any pressure to pretend that she is no different from a man. So,for example, in response to a comment from her colleague Lucy that by nothaving a computer monitor she will have space for a pot plant, she commentshumorously to a male colleague you can tell the girly office can’t you. Jill’s use ofthe term girly here is superficially problematic since it appears to dismissivelyendorse an ideology which denigrates women’s preferences. Analysing anarrative in which awoman, Meg, uses the term girl in just such an oppressiveway, Coates (1997: 310) comments that Meg ‘presents herself as colluding in aworld view that denigrates and trivializes women’. But Jill’s usage here is differ-ent. Firstly she is talking about herself, and secondly, the comment is in noway apologetic in tone. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1984) concept of ‘doublevoicing’, an ironic reading is thus possible, a reading which is much moreconsistent with Jill’s confident gender performance in this male-dominatedcommunity of practice. So, for instance, she and Lucy take responsibility for the



kitchen renovations, discussing paint and cushions with no sense that they needto reject such a stereotypically feminine task. Although she holds a powerfulleadership position, Jill enacts her feminine identity with good-humouredassurance, alongside an intelligent awareness of the dominant societal genderstereotypes. Thus her use of the term girly office can be interpreted as indicatingher awareness of her male colleagues’gender stereotypes, along with an implicitcontestation and troubling of those views. By unapologetically embracing theconceptof a feminine spaceatwork, and indicating its acceptability, this powerfulwoman implies that she sees no contradiction between being statusful and beingfeminine in this communityof practice.

In another workplace the boss is known as ‘Queen Clara’, and addressed andreferred to by her staff with good-humoured irony as ‘your royal highness’.Clara, like Jill, is perfectly secure both with her professional and her genderidentity, and draws comfortably on the full panoply of available discourse stra-tegies, including those conventionally regarded as masculine, to do authoritywhen appropriate (see, for example, the ‘screendumps’example in Holmes andMarra 2002b: 391). Equally, Clara frequently behaves in normatively feminineways without any sense that this is inappropriate to her high status in theorganisation.

It is possible that Clara and Jill, as senior women who refuse to conform tothe conventionally masculine norms associated with leadership (Ely 1988;Hearn and Parkin 1988; Geis, Brown and Wolfe 1990; Maher 1997; Sinclair1998), are effectively contesting the related widespread expectation thatworkplaces (and especially those concerned with technology and IT) shouldbe regarded as uncompromisingly masculine domains (cf. Tannen 1994b;Trauth 2002; Kendall 2003), where male patterns of interaction serve as theunmarked model. Their secure attitude to the performance of their genderidentity in the workplace appears to free up these women to enjoy and exploitstereotypical, and even hyperbolic ways of ‘doing femininity’. Clara and Jillseem to revel in semi-facetiously and parodically ‘doing femininity’ in themore off-record, peripheral aspects of their managerial roles, but they alsodraw on both normatively masculine and feminine discourse resources in thecourse of their everyday workplace interactions. As women who are secure intheir professional identities, it seems that they do not to need to downplay thefact that they are female or minimise gender differences in aspects of theirbehaviour in order to ensure they are taken seriously.

CONCLUSION

This paper has explored certain aspects of gender performance in the work-place.We have discussed different femininities or ways of ‘doing femininity’,and suggested that workplace interaction provides opportunities not onlyfor indexing normative femininity, a kind of gender performance which



has been associated with ‘relational practice’ (Fletcher 1999), but, also forparodying, contesting, and troubling gendered workplace expectations andassumptions.

We have shown that the use of familiar and normative discourse resourcesfor indexing femininity by both women and men may elicit different responsesin different contexts within different communities of practice. We havesuggested that, especially in relatively feminine communities of practice, suchperformances are frequently treated as ‘unmarked behaviours’ (Ochs 1992:343), not just for women but for either sex. Indeed, in many contexts withinsuch communities of practice, the ability to discursively index conventionalfemininity is regarded as an asset, and skill in adopting a feminine stance ispositively construed. There is no evidence here for the negative conception offemininity which pervades much of the discussion of this concept. Femininebehaviour is regarded as normal and assessed positively in many contextswithin such communities of practice.

On the other hand, we identified relatively low tolerance for aspects ofbehaviour perceived as normatively feminine in some contexts, and especiallyby men engaged in transactional, task-oriented interaction in more masculinecommunities of practice. Features which are conventionally associated withfemininity may thus attract negative comment or derision in particularworkplace interactions, within particular workplace cultures. Though oftenexpressed in covert and implicit ways, such negative reactions could beregarded as evidence of sexism in suchworkplaces.

More positively, identifying particular types of behaviour as markedlyfeminine, also opens up the possibility for exploitation, and through a kind of‘double-voicing’, for parody and ironic self-quotation. Language can be usednot only to enact and reinforce conventional gender positioning, the ‘genderorder’, but also to subvert unacceptable socio-cultural norms, and contestrestrictive concepts of professional identity at work. Hence, some seniorwomen in our data deliberately exploit feminine stereotypes, consciouslyparodying conventional notions of howwomen should behave in theworkplace(cf. Koller 2004).

In conclusion, while professional identity might appear the most obviouslyrelevant aspect of social identity in workplace interaction, the analysis inthis paper demonstrates that people also discursively manage and interpretcomplex gender identities through workplace talk. Moreover, we suggestthat our analysis provides a basis for recasting the concepts ‘feminine’ and‘femininity’ in a more positive light, reclaiming the potential for women andmen to behave in feminine ways, and make constructive but unremarkable useof conventionally feminine discourse strategies,‘even’at work.



NOTES

1. The content of this paper was first presented at IGALA 3, the 3rd BiennialConference of the International Gender and Language Association held at CornellUniversity, June 5^7, 2004.We thank those who attended and contributed to thediscussion which has informed our revision. We thank those who allowed theirworkplace interactions to be recorded, and other members of the Language in theWorkplace Project teamwho assisted with collecting and transcribing the data.Wealso thank Meredith Marra and Emily Major for much-appreciated assistance withediting and preparing this paper for publication. Finally we are indebted to theeditors and the three anonymous reviewers who provided detailed and valuablefeedback which has resulted in a much improved paper.

2. In this the concept of ‘femininity’ contrasts significantly with the concept of‘masculinity’, which is regarded positively. As Kiesling (2004: 230) points out‘studying masculinity allows the discussion of idealizations of manhood that noman mayactually fulfill’.

3. Mills (2003:186^188) describes changes in feminist analyses of femininity over thelast decade, and especially the ironisation of femininity which has been the focusof work by Liladhar (2001). The concept of ironising a ‘feminine’ performance isexplored below. See also Clift (1999).

4. This approach is endorsed by a number of other analysts, for example,West andFenstermaker (1995), Mart|¤ n Rojo (1998), Stokoe and Weatherall (2002), Stokoeand Smithson (2002), Kitzinger (2002).

5. This point is more fully explored in Holmes and Meyerhoff (2003), Holmes andStubbe (2003a), and Holmes (in press).

6. This example is discussed in more detail in the context of an analysis of leadershipstrategies in Holmes, Schnurr, Chiles and Chan (2003). Tina Chiles, in particular,contributed to the analysis of this example.

7. SeeAppendix for transcription conventions.8. We are not suggesting that indirectness should always be construed positively (or

directness negatively). There are obviously occasions when indirectness canbe unhelpful and counter-productive (see Holmes in press chapter 2). Suchassessments can only be made in context; they require attention to participants’reactions, and often to the longer-term outcomes of an interaction insofar asthese can be derived from the ethnographic detail collected in workplaces wherewe recorded.

9. This example is also discussed in Holmes and Marra (2004: 388), a paper whichfocuses on the range of linguistic and discursive strategies which may instantiateFletcher’s (1999) concept of ‘relational practice’.

10. See Holmes and Marra (2002a) for a fuller description and exemplification, andBaxter (2003: 145) for a description of a very similar community of practice in theBritish context.

11. This example is used to illustrate a different point in Holmes (2005: 53).12. Tew (2002: 78ff) discussing the work of Cixous and Kristeva, notes the importance

they attach to identifying elements of ‘‘‘a different voice’’ . . . in the ordinary every-day discourses of women and other subordinated social groups’, as one means ofstarting to disrupt the hegemony of ‘phallocentric codes and rules’ (2002: 81^82).Parody constitutes one such element.

13. This example is also discussed in Schnurr (forthcoming) and in Holmes and Schnurr(2005) where it is used to illustrate the way Jill uses humour in the workplace.



14. See Clift (1999:543) on self-deprecating irony, and also on‘the affiliative qualities ofirony’. See also Johnstone (2003: 204^205) who describes how being southernand sounding southernas resources for someTexanwomen, can be used sometimes‘for very specific fleeting purposes (such as selling a business service to a manwhowants you to flirt)’.

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APPENDIX

yes Underlining indicates emphatic stress[laughs]:: Paralinguistic features in square brackets, colons indicate

start/finishþ Pause of up to one second(3) Pause of specified number of seconds. . ./. . . . . .\ . . . Simultaneous speech. . ./. . . . . .\ . . .(hello) Transcriber’s best guess at an unclear utterance? Rising or question intonation- Incomplete or cut-off utterance. . . . . . Section of transcript omitted¼ Speaker’s turn continues[edit] Editorial comments italicized in square brackets

All names used in examples are pseudonyms.

Address correspondence to:

Janet HolmesSchool of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

Victoria University of WellingtonP O Box 600Wellington

New Zealand

[email protected]



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