Gender Talk

Gender Talk provides a powerful case for the application of discursive psychology and conversation analysis to feminism, guiding the reader through cutting edge debates and providing valuable evidence of the benefits of fine-grained, discursive methodologies. In particular, the book concentrates on discourse and conversation analysis, providing a full account of these methodologies through the detailed study of data from a variety of settings, including focus groups, interviews, and naturally occurring sources. Providing a thorough review of the relevant literature and recent research, this book demonstrates how discourse and conversation analysis can be applied to rework central feminist notions and concepts, ultimately revealing their full potential and relevance to other disciplines. Each chapter provides an overview of traditional feminist research and covers subjects including:* Sex differences in language: conversation and interruption* Reformulating context, power and asymmetry* Gender identity categories: masculinity and femininity.This unique and thought-provoking application of discursive and conversation analytic methodologies will be of interest to students and researchers in social psychology, sociology, gender studies and cultural studies.

"This is the most comprehensive and groundbreaking work to date in the field of gender and discourse research. Speer has taken gender and language studies beyond the current focus on postmodernism to an engagement with ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. Speer clinically lays out the theoretical and analytic issues in a range of contemporary perspectives, and in doing so produces a clear, concise yet sophisticated book that is essential reading for anyone interested in gender, language or feminism." - Elizabeth Stokoe, Lecturer in Social Psychology, Loughborough University"I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a cioncise and authoritative account of the potential for feminist discursive research that draws on Conversation Analysis and Discursive Psychology. Undergraduate students of gender and discourse will benefit from the clarity of the arguments and analytic examples. the book ispires, and even demands action from researchers." - Clare Stockhill, St. Martin's College, Carlisle, in Feminism and Psychology, November 2006.

Susan A. Speer is a Lecturer in Language and Communication at the University of Manchester School of Psychological Sciences. She is currently Principal Investigator on a three year project 'Transsexual Identities: Constructions of Gender in an NHS Gender Identity Clinic', which is part of the ESRC Social Identities and Social Action Research Programme. Susan was previously a Lecturer in Sociology and Communication at the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University.