`Emotion Work' as a Participant Resource: A Feminist Analysis of Young Women's Talk-in-Interaction

Abstract

This paper explores and develops the concept of `emotion work' as used by young women talking about sexual negotiation. It suggests that `emotion work' should be viewed not simply as an analyst resource of use to social scientists, but also as a participant resource used by ordinary social members. Existing research on emotion work generally treats self-report data as offering a `transparent' window through which the behaviour `behind the talk' can be (more or less adequately) assessed. This paper proposes instead that self-report data should be considered as talk-in-interaction. Using data from our own research on young women's experiences of refusing sex, we show how young women's talk about (what analysts call) `emotion work' can be analysed as a participant resource through which young women construct consensual versions of men as emotional weaklings, and portray themselves as active agents who are knowledgeable about heterosexual relationships. The implications of this analytic shift are explored in relation to feminist approaches to sexual coercion, and with reference to qualitative data analysis more generally.

Reflexive Accounts and Accounts of Reflexivity in Qualitative Data Analysis

“…3 Instead, there is a tendency to simplify the complex processes of representing the 'voices' of respondents as though these voices speak on their own (Reinharz, 1992: 267; but see Frith and Kitzinger, 1998), rather than through the researcher who makes choices about how to interpret these voices and which transcript extracts to present as evidence.…”

The contingent smile: A meta-analysis of sex differences in smiling.

“…Hochschild (1983) defined emotion work as "the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display" (p. 7), and she proposed that emotion work is gendered work. Such emotion work is gendered either because women are socialized to attend to the emotional needs of others or because they are steered to roles, pursuits, and occupations in which emotion work is a key element (Frith & Kitzinger, 1998). J.…”

“If a girl doesn't say ‘no’…”: young men, rape and claims of ‘insufficient knowledge’

“…In their study of young women's talk about sexual refusals, Frith and Kitzinger (1998) also note the frequent use of 'if-then' hypothetical structures. They argue (after Edwards, 1995) that these structures serve to blur the distinction between actual and hypothetical events: for example utterances like 'if you turn around and say that then they'll think you're a slapper', work, through implicit claims to general commonsensical knowledge, to distance the speaker from any direct, personal-and hence accountable-claim to knowledge based on specific experience (Frith & Kitzinger, 1998).…”

“…They argue (after Edwards, 1995) that these structures serve to blur the distinction between actual and hypothetical events: for example utterances like 'if you turn around and say that then they'll think you're a slapper', work, through implicit claims to general commonsensical knowledge, to distance the speaker from any direct, personal-and hence accountable-claim to knowledge based on specific experience (Frith & Kitzinger, 1998). The 'if-then' structure works to present sexual interactions as predictable and scripted, implying both unproblematically causal relations between actions and their consequences, and a natural and universal flow to these chains of events (cf.…”