Gender ideologies and language ideologies on facebook feminist pages

Abstract

The present study deals with issues of relations between gender ideologies and language ideologies, with a view to discussing the hypothesis of convergence of linguistic hegemonies and hegemonic order of gender, secured by Western ethnocentric tradition. It has been developed on the basis of examples extracted from two Facebook feminist activist communities. The latter have been subjected to investigation since 2013 by a virtual ethnographic study. This research focuses on the metapragmatic function exerted by comments made by participants of those communities. It is guided by understanding language as social action (BAUMAN and BRIGGS, 1990), the concepts of “language ideology” (WOOLARD, 1998), discursive conflict (BRIGGS, 1996), and “metapragmatic attack” (JACQUEMET, 1994), as well as by comprehending processes of identity construction in relation to power dispute and control within interaction and the social world (SIGNORINI, 1998; MOITA LOPES, 2010). Gender/sexuality hegemonies as well as linguistic hegemonies are co-articulated in space-time, thus fulfilling the purposes of (dis)crediting arguments, achieving (non)keeping of participants’ face, and (re)orientation of interactions. This particularly occurs in an attempt to render language use normative, which evokes a school-related cultural model and is capable of establishing relations between such a model and the ability individuals have to understand issues of gender and sexuality under discussion.