Are You With Me

Threw out this article I couldn't help but go back to and think of the other articles about code switching and how women are the teachers and the ones that are softer spoken. In this article it starts off with saying that African American women were often overlooked. This study looked at African American teachers and how they communicated with their students. Also how they used code switching and metaphors both in teaching and interviewing.
When they taught the used the word performance when it came to have class discussions. Foster almost wanted you to feel like you were reading something like a play or a movie. He went into great detail how at the start of class everything was very structured and the teachers did all the talking but when they got into the performance stage of the class everyone was equal. The teacher wanted the students to feel comfortable speaking and giving them plenty of chances to speak. Foster even states that The teacher spoke 296 and the students spoke 211. This tells me the teacher played close attention to the students and wanted to hear them. The teacher also put things in metaphors to help the kids understand and help them relate to what the teacher is teaching and trying to tell them.
During the interviews it went into code switching and how the teachers in one group didn't code switch until later in the interview when they felt comfortable or just couldn't keep up the "proper english" anymore. But how in the other interview group they pretty much started off code switching from "proper english" to "African American english" depending on what they were trying to say and what the conversation was covering.
I chose a clip of students and teachers talking about why they talk the way they do and what it says about them. Also how they feel like talking tells a lot about a person. It tells how they were taught and who taught them. They express how that it brings them closer to old African American language. Their dialect helps identify them and who they are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQrtB7cZDrA&feature=related

Are You With Me?

In the article, Are you with Me by Foster he shows how African American women that are teachers try to communicate with their children on an intimate level.  He breaks the article up in two different scenarios, the first half is him sitting in a classroom with an African American woman teacher and the second half is him interviewing four African American teachers.

The classroom scenario shows the teacher using performance speech to teach and communicate with the class.  Performance speech is shifting from Standard English to a more black style of discourse using elongated vowels, utilizing pitch and stress, repetition, and uses gestures.  She compares this with an African American church she attends, in which she says she always is more involved and people enjoy the service more when the Pastor uses performance speech.

The interview scenario shows the four women using codeswitching deliberately to show speakers’ identities and emphasis.  While the teachers express times when they speak with their students they use a more black style when expressing students’ responses and a more Standard English when developing the story. 

I chose a scene from an African American church service.  From this scene, you can see the performance speech taking place.  The pastor uses repetition by repeating phrases to get his point across.  He uses stress and change in pitch to engage the audience.  He uses a more black style of speaking like discussed in Foster to relate to his audience and to get his point across. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rffwcLVm93w

Anna Frick

McElhinny and the police force

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEBLrCGhTVM

             “Miss Congeniality” is a movie about a woman CIA agent (Sandra Bullock) who goes undercover as a beauty pageant contestant.  In this video clip we are able to see the media ideologies of woman in the CIA. Sandra Bullock’s character is physical, has messy hair, aggressive, tough, and out spoken. All of these adjectives fit with the description of being masculine, which we listed in class just the other day. This clip goes along with the societal view that women in the police force are “masculine” because it is the only way that they can earn respect from their fellow officers and criminals.

            In McElhinny’s article, “Challenging Hegemonic Masculinities”, the author states, “ women who work as police officers are often assumed to have either a certain kind of personality (tomboyish or tough)….”. However, McElhinny clarifies that there are no single personality traits that are shared by all women in the police force.  Miss Congeniality proves that we are being socialized, as media viewers, to believe that woman in the police force are all masculine.  In reality, there are masculine, tomboyish police women, but there are also police woman who are seen as feminine.

            At the end of the movie we see Sandra Bullock’s character not only acting feminine, but also looking feminine. This reminded me of one of the woman police officers who was interviewed in the article that believes “her occupational persona is a mask.” I think that the movie portrays this idea well because we can see at the end of the movie Sandra Bullock is comfortable as portraying her feminine qualities while still being in a “masculine job”.  

Stephanie Channing

Gossip Revisited: Language in all-Female Groups

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZooRizQQ5k&feature=relmfu

The video clip I found is from The Desperate Housewives. Unlike what Coates studied in her article, this one is just a very brief 40 seconds conversation.

As we concluded in class, Coates concludes four formal features of femal gossip, including topic developement, mininal responses, simultaneous speech and epistemic modality.

We can see the four women establish their topic because they are watching their new neighbour moving in and commenting based on their "assumptions." They are not interrupting each other, but developing the topic in a collaborative way. Everyone is actively participating in the discussion to draw some kind of conclusion.

Due to the length and the form of the conversation, there isn't many minial responses in this clip. At one point, Lynette picks up two key words from the previous two persons' comments to start for her comment. This functions as a minial response to indicate herself paying attention to other speakers. Similarly in some other videos I saw, sometimes minimal responses could be replaced by transitional words or phrases, or even facial expressions and head nods.

Simultaneous speaking refers to multiple speakers voicing at the same time which doesn't really happen here. It's more like turn taking in this case where thay are talking on after the other to make the conversation flow.

Epistemic modality is very apparent here because we can hear words like "definitely" and "maybe." Like we discussed in class, it is a way of showing confidence to save face for others or themselves. We would later learn that the women who use "definitely" are actually very confidence in their conclusions because they've seen the new neighbor earlier whereas the woman who uses "maybe" are just guessing based of her past experience. Beyond words, their tone would also suggest if they are confident with what they are talking.

This conversation, though short, still consists a bit of storytelling in the end. They do start out talking about things, but they are not talking about how to do things, but what those things represent.

I think Coates do have some great observations, but her sample is too small and it might just represent a certain group of people instead of general female gossip. I do agree that female gossip is not a chaotic mess, but a constructive and continueous process. It is also important to see how women incorporate nonverbal during conversations as well.

Cheerleader Gossip

Bring It On (Watch First Minute)

This scene is from the movie Bring It On, and is a good example of high school senior cheerleaders gossiping in their "typical location." The scene shows the cheerleaders discussing in a gossipy fashion who deserves to become the next captain and who just isn't good enough. The majority of the scene is set talking about the current head captain and how certain cheerleaders truly feel about her. This scene mirrors Coates four steps that she found in every female conversation. The first being topic development, the cheerleaders are feeding off one another’s conversations, in somewhat of a joint production, without even necessarily noticing it. One girl starts by saying, “She puts the ass in massive” and three other girls follow her cue ending with Courtney saying, “She puts the whore in horrifying.” The next feature is minimal responses, which Courtney shows when she gives a little “uh-huh” to acknowledge Whitney’s comment about a cheerleader she doesn’t think deserves the captain position. Simultaneous speech is shown when both Courtney and Whitney speak in agreeance that the current captain doesn’t deserve anything from them. The final step shows epistemic modality when all the cheerleaders are voicing who they believe will get the captain spot.

I thought this scene is a good representation of dramatized gossip. This movie is obviously from a different day and age then the conversation that takes place in the Coates article, with the girls in Bring It On speaking with a more “inappropriate” language they still manage to speak in the “co-operative” nature that the women in the article speak. Agreeing with Coates conclusion that “women’s talk can be described as co-operative.” This movie stereotypes cheerleaders and women as using gossip as their main form of conversation and helps prove Coates’ several points about how women use gossip as their way of communication.

Anger and Gender

Snookie/JWow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8rTYeKsIy0

Mike/Ronnie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqDRZMW1xfE&feature=related

Although these particular clips of The Jersey Shore is a little extreme, I
still found it fitting based upon the excerpt of the conversation between
the two women. There are vulgarities and extreme profanities between the
two women just as there is between the two girls in this particular clip.
They instantly start screaming at each other with no real background of
meaning behind what they are saying.  The part that I thought was
particularly interesting was the reaction of the boys while the girls were
yelling at one another.  They really sit there and observe what?s going on,
almost like they have accepted in. In the Kulick article, the men were
observed as acting in a very similar sense. They have accept that their
women will be vulgar to one another and use profanities in public but they
simply walk by and discuss later. The men in the Jersey Shore and the men
from this Papua New Guinea article react to this particular gendered social
norm with acceptance.

Another thing that I thought was interesting within the gender social norms
in relation to this article was the different ways of fighting based on
gender in each community. Within the Papua New Guinea community, the women
are expected to converse or bicker in the kroses while the men are expected
to say certain things and express slight emotions within the oratories.
Each method of confrontation is accepted in a way that does not allow the
men or women to express themselves in another way. Throughout the show the
boys fight just as much, if not more than the. girls do, but just like the
gendered social norms of the Papua New Guinea community the ways in which
they fight are different but accepted. Most of the time women fight very
verbally, using words and explanations combined with profanities and
insults, only sometimes leading to physical fights. On the other hand, the
men are a bit less emotional in the sense that their fights are almost
strictly physical each and every time. When the boys get physical with one
another, most of the time they are left to sort it out by themselves
because it is an accepted way they can work it out. On the occasion that
the girls get physical though, the boys are almost instantly on them
pulling them off one another since they are more accepting of their verbal
form of confrontation.

In both the community discussed in the article and on the Jersey Shore,
there are accepted gendered social norms when it comes to methods of
confrontation that are distinct to each gender.

Mali

Title: “Gossip Revisited: Language in all-Female Groups” by Jennifer Coates

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIBpn5ob60s&feature=related

Title: “Gossip Revisited: Language in all-Female Groups” by Jennifer Coates

This clip from Sex and the City seemed to be a great example of how women talk among each other when they are together. As the four women have brunch, the topic of sex obviously comes up with Cynthia Nixon’s character, Miranda bringing up an event that happened the night before. As each girl gives their input and codes sex as “coloring” because of Charlotte’s daughter also being in their presence, this light topic becomes somewhat more serious. “The brief account of the development of one topic in a conversation between women friends provides an example of the way that women develop topics progressively” (Coates, 207). After listening and to each other and comparing their sex lives, Miranda is able to realize that her and Steve are having a problem, but this realization is almost light-hearted with her friends input. Each woman progressively shared their experiences while also aware of Miranda’s concern.

When Carrie cuts Samantha off by saying, “We get it, you love to color.” I thought it was not only funny, but a perfect way to show how simultaneous talk can include interruptions without gaining the floor. Since all of the ladies are equals, the main goal of the conversation is to catch up on their friendship and if more than one person speaks at a time, it is not thought of as rude, but rather as an active contribution. I also think that this is apparent in girl talk everyday. If only one person is talking, it isn’t always a negative, but when a lot of girls are trying to voice their opinion, it kind of makes it more fun, interesting and open. In almost every “Sex and the City” episode, the conversations are meant for each girl to collectively participate in the brunch or dinner discussion with no competitiveness, but co-operativity.