This article focuses on the analysis of gossip that is done in a playful key, including laughter as a salient feature, drawing on extracts taken from two naturally occurring conversations among Galician female undergraduate students. The analysis indicates that gossip emerges as a form of indirect mockery in the data, which are commonly based on dramatized reported speech of the 'victim', including parodic stylization devices that are orientated to elicit laughter by making fun or through ridicule. The evaluation component also reveals important differences in relation to serious gossip, as it is not necessarily negative and is not always explicitly established or developed. For this reason, this component can be ambiguous in some cases. From a functional perspective, the article emphasizes that sociability and entertainment are not the only functions that playful and humorous gossip can play; at a fundamental level, this discourse practice has other benefits for the participants: as a way of constructing group identity and getting group comfort for a feeling of envy; of increasing self-esteem from the problems of another party; and of degrading other people's success. The common element behind these underlying functions is a comparative competition of the gossipers with the person who is the subject of their talk. Thus, gossip as mockery is not free of maliciousness and competitiveness.
Gender and discourse studies have traditionally reacted to the negative dominant beliefs on women's gossip by defending its role in the construction of female solidarity. This perspective proves inadequate to the extent that it ignores particular forms of female gossip which highlight patterns of competition between women and excludes the possibility that men could engage in the practice of gossip too. In this article, I aim to contribute to recent research documenting men's gossip by analysing complaint stories about third parties among men, a variety of gossip first analysed by Günth-ner (1997) in female contexts. The analysis highlights the emergence of patterns of emotions display which have not been previously found in women's complaint stories. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of addressing talk in both female and male contexts in gender and discourse studies, to avoid the perpetuation of stereotyped images of women's and men's talk.
Este artículo trata de poner de relieve el importante papel que desempeña el despliegue de emociones en la realización de una actividad comunicativa tan común como es la expresión de quejas. Apoyándose en el análisis de fragmentos de conversaciones “naturales” entre amigos/as y familiares, el presente artículo se centra en mostrar cómo se articulan los significados emotivos en el discurso de queja a través del trabajo coordinado de recursos de tipo prosódico y verbal. En este análisis se destaca, además, la estrecha relación que guardan algunos de estos recursos de intensificación afectiva con las normas de género, es decir, su capacidad para transmitir al mismo tiempo significados socioculturales como “feminidad” y “masculinidad”, y cómo estas normas parecen seguirse con un alto grado de fidelidad en el corpus constituido, ya que las formas emotivas “femeninas” se localizan en las secuencias de habla entre mujeres, mientras que las que presentan un carácter más estereotípicamente “masculino” se encuentran solo en el habla de los hombres.
This article analyses and discusses excerpts from a friendly conversation among three Galician men in relation to broad characterisations of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ interactional styles highlighted by more than two decades of sociolinguistic research on gender and discourse. In line with current tendencies in this area, it is assumed that these characterisations are ‘essentialist’, but it is also maintained that they capture quite well people’s dichotomous conceptions of gendered interactional styles, and that they use to function as an important guide for their behaviour in everyday social life. The main purpose of this article is precisely to illuminate the complex ways in which such conceptions proved as extremely opposing in the analysis of a ‘real’ conversation among men; specifically, the analysis offers empirical evidence that male participants in this speech event are expressing support and connection by collaboratively engaging in the practice of a ‘feminine’ narrative genre like complaint stories (Günthner 1997a), though in an ‘acceptable’ way from the point of view of hegemonic masculinity; this is argued drawing on the fact that the topical focus of the talk is on football issues, and that the tellers do not take a vulnerable role but rather that of a highly indignant victim, as it is manifest in the ways the characters are portrayed and discussed, as well as in the construction of particularly ‘aggressive’ patterns of emotions display.
This paper aims to contribute to recent research on bilingualism and emotions from a discourse approach, analyzing extracts taken from a spontaneous conversation between two Spanish/Galician female bilinguals. Spanish is the base language of this interaction and the dominant language of the speakers, but the extracts selected correspond to sequences of gossip and complaints about third parties including switches into Galician. The analysis reveals that these Spanish/Galician bilingual uses contribute towards the structure of the conversational activity and to foreground different affective stances. Spanish is employed to signal indignation at the arrogant attitude of the people talked about, while Galician is selected in producing a derogatory discourse on their social status or moral condition which displays contempt for them. While previous research on code-switching and emotions has linked the affective functions with the dominant language(s), this paper highlights the relevance of both the dominant language and the less dominant language in displaying affective stances. It is proposed that the specific emotive role of Galician in the contextualization of contempt could be related to the external symbolism of this language and its traditional lack of prestige.
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