‘You are stupid, you are cupid’

Abstract

Abstract:Whereas language and gender studies' explorations of couples' talk have tended to focus on collaborative vs competitive conversational style, social psychological work on couples' intimate relationships has long been driven by an interest in expressions of affection. This paper aims to show that linguistic discourse analysis can make a significant contribution to our understanding of how affection is expressed in intimate relationships. The paper focuses on the playful switching of frames, voices, codes and personas which emerges as central to the affectionate practice in the spontaneous talk of a young multi-cultural London couple. It argues that quantitative interview studies based on an a-priori understanding of affection are unable to capture many of the idiosyncratic and creative ways in which speakers express their affection for one another in their intimate talk. 1) IntroductionThis paper aims to make a contribution to research on the talk of heterosexual couples in intimate relationships, an area which has not received much attention in language and gender studies in the last 2-3 decades. The self-recorded talk of the young couple I will explore in this paper has redirected my focus from conversational dominance and difference, topics which were at the centre of previous language and gender research on couples' talk, towards an exploration of expressions of affection. At the same time as offering a fresh perspective to the long tradition of language and gender studies of couples' talk, this paper will demonstrate the contribution that a discourse analytic approach based on frame analysis (Goffman 1974, Tannen 1993) is able to make to the study of affection in intimate relationships, an area of research that has been dominated by scholarship in social psychology. The paper will focus on the playful switching of voices and personas that emerges as a central resource for the expression of affection in the spontaneous talk of a young multi-cultural couple, arguing that research exploring affection on the basis of predetermined behaviours or locutions (such as 'I love you') does not encourage exploration of more idiosyncratic and indirect ways in which intimate partners express their affection for one another.The pioneering work of Pamela Fishman (1980), Victoria DeFrancisco (1991 and Deborah Tannen (1990) investigated the interaction of women and men in intimate relationships. The argument that women and men's conversational style differs and can be the cause of miscommunication in couples' talk was of course most prominently promoted in Deborah Tannen (1990) book You just don't understand. The book had a vast non-academic readership but was vigorously critiqued by language and gender scholars for its reliance on anecdotal