Gender Roles and Narrative

Lucy DanforthDixon

Final project

Background On page 99 of The Gendered Society,

Kimmel writes that, “our lives depend on social interaction, literally it seems.” He then goes on to describe an experiment done during the Roman Empire, where babies were tended to physically, but deprived of lullabies and speech. All of the babies died, which just proves the importance of speech in our lives.

Background “Narrative is a central function of language.

Not, in origin, an artifact of culture, an art, but a fundamental operation of the normal mind functioning in society. To learn to speak is to learn to tell a story...” -Ursula K Leguin

With this in mind it is safe to say that we identify ourselves through our stories and the way we tell them.

Background “Interest in the way men and women talk

has grown astronomically since the 1970’s, and sociolinguistic studies carried out in many different cultures means that we now know far more than we did about the ways women and men interact and about the ways in which their patterns of talk differ.

We also know that in all known societies it is the way men speak that is held in high esteem while women’s ways of talking are compared unfavorably with men’s (Coates 1993).”

Hypothesis “Our language and the way we

communicate shows our differences and emphasizes the ways in which our genders are constructed. By examining the ways males narrate versus the ways women narrate, I will show that there are indeed differences in gender roles which can be studied through the stories we tell.”

Research To support my hypothesis I used documents,

specifically Barbara Johnstone’s research as a reference

In her research she used fifty-eight personal experience narratives.

All the subjects were white middle-class Americans from in and around Indiana.

Thirty-three stories were told by women and twenty-five by men; ages fourteen to around seventy.

Research “On the most general level the women’s stories tend to

be about community, while the men’s tend to be about contest.

When a male storyteller is not the protagonist in his story, the protagonist is a man; men rarely tell stories involving women.

The women’s stories on the other hand revolve around the norms of the community and joint action.

The women tell about incidents in which they violate social norms and are scared or embarrassed as a result. Women tell stories about themselves, other women, and about men.” page 69-70

Thoughts This is a direct contribution to my

hypothesis and relates to stereotypical gender roles.

Women are thought of as “community building, nurturing, and inclusive”

Men are thought of as “macho, competetive, independent”

Conclusion I found all of the research I did on the subject of

narrative to be very interesting. In the future I will definitely be more aware of the ways in which people narrate and how it relates to social expectations. As a woman, I can embrace the gender role and community I am a part of, but also continue to challenge norms by encouraging more stories about strong females, and soft males.

Kimmel noted that schools have started to include more books with gender neutral characters, and using this as a reference we can examine the way our genders are defined throughout history and into the future.

References Women, Men and Language by Jennifer

Coates, published in 1993

Community and Contest: Midwestern Men and Women Creating Their Worlds in Conversational Storytelling http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=barbara_johnstone

The Gendered Society by Michael Kimmel