This thesis is positioned at the intersection of two fields of research: language and gender and language development, to address the lack of linguistically informed investigation into the emergence of gendered subjectivity. Rather than treat the domain of language and gender research as a site of resolve, the research problematises the area to create a site of contestation by drawing attention to the limitations of research based on a single theoretical framework which proposes unified gender identity as gender difference. Gender will be read not as singular identity but multiple, as a Foucauldian 'nexus of subjectivities'. The study is an investigation into the construction of gendered subjectivity through a critical discourse analysis of a family playing games. The initial contention is that gender is a process which may be performed in multiple ways which are linked to the subject positions taken up in competing discourses. Focusing on children playing games, the study examines how gendered relationships are constructed in discursive practices to propose that it is possible to identify the performance of multiple femininities/masculinites through an analysis of patterns of interaction where the negotiation of power relationships is made visible in language and action. The study is a reflexive ethnographic case study based on data collected of two siblings, a boy and a girl, and their parents playing games at home. Conducted from within a framework which strategically combines poststructuralist readings with linguistic analysis, the research is an example of the viability of 'postlinguistic' approach to discourse analysis. The thesis argues that the study of a culture as it is lived in a family reveals the emergence of gendered subjectivity in the constitutive relationship which exits language, subjectivity and discourse. It is suggested that the development of a child's multiple gendered identities towards normative gender patterns may be traced in the discursive practices which s/he mobilises as a result of the subject positions in which s/he is positioned during the research period / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/181837 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Simpson, Alyson Melanie, University of Western Sydney, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Source | THESIS_FHSS_XXX_Simpson_A.xml |
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