New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research

Abstract

Gendered linguistic practices emerge as people engage in social practices that construct them not only as girls or boys, women or men – but also as, e.g., Asian American or heterosexually active. Adequate generalizations about gendered language use and explanations of such generalizations require understanding the place of particular linguistic practices in the life of what Lave & Wenger 1991 and Wenger 1998 call a Community of Practice: a group whose joint engagement in some activity or enterprise is sufficiently intensive to give rise over time to a repertoire of shared practices. Eckert's ethnographic/sociolinguistic workin pre-adolescent and adolescent communities of practice illustrates ways in which gender and other aspects of identity are co-constructed. We use these and other sociolinguistic data to suggest some of the many different kinds of generalizations, emerging from studies of language and gender, that look to communities of practice.