Skip to main content

Men, Masculinities and Leadership: Different Discourse Styles at Work

  • Chapter
Gender and Spoken Interaction

Abstract

In the last few decades we have become increasingly aware that ‘gender is one of the central organising principles around which social life revolves’ (Kimmel 1987: 5; see also Kimmel 2000). Accepting the notion that, through their association with particular roles, activities, traits and stances, certain socio-pragmatic, discursive and linguistic choices, or ways of speaking, ‘index’ (Ochs 1996, 1992) or culturally encode gender (Cameron and Kulick 2003: 57), I explore a range of different ways of ‘doing masculinity’ through spoken interaction in the workplace. The analysis focuses in particular on different discourse styles available to instantiate masculinity in the workplace.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Bond, Michael Harris and Hwang, Kwang-kuo (1986) The social psychology of Chinese people. In Bond, M.H. (ed.) The Psychology of the Chinese People. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. 213–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, Deborah (1997) Performing gender identity: young men’s talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. In Johnson, S. and Meinhof, U.H. (eds.) Language and Masculinity. Oxford: Blackwell. 47–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, Deborah and Kulick, Don (2003) Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Angela (2005) Openings and Closings in Business Meetings in Different Cultures. Unpublished Ph.D., Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coates, Jennifer (1997) One-at-a-time: the organization of men’s talk. In Johnson, S. and Meinhoff, U.H. (eds.) Language and Masculinity. Oxford: Blackwell, 107–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coates, Jennifer (2003) Men Talk: Stories in the Making of Masculinities. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dwyer, Judith (1993) The Business Communication Handbook (3rd edn.). New York: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edley, Nigel (2001) Analysing masculinity: interpretive repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions. In Wetherall, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S.J (eds.) Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis. London: Sage. 189–228.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edley, Nigel and Wetherall, Margaret (1997) Jockeying for position: the construction of masculine identities. Discourse &Society 8 (2): 203–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fletcher, Joyce (1999) Disappearing Acts. Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work. Cambridge: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardner, John and Terry, Deborah (1996) Communication, leadership and organisational change. In Parry, K. (ed.) Leadership Research and Practice. Emerging Themes and New Challenges. Melbourne: Pitman. 153–61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2005) Styling men and masculinities: interactional and identity aspects at work. Language in Society 34 (2): 163–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gumperz, John J. (1996) The linguistic and conversational relativity of conversational inference. In Gumperz, J.J. and Levinson, S.C. (eds.) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 374–406.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunnarson, Britt-Louise (2001) Academic women in the male university field: communicative practices at postgraduate seminars. In Baron, B. and Kotthoff, H. (eds.) Gender in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 247–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hearn, Jeff and Parkin, P. Wendy (1989) Women, men, and leadership: a critical review of assumptions, practices, and change in the industrialized nations. In Adler, N. and Izraeli, D. (eds.) Women in Management Worldwide. London: M.E. Sharpe. 17–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet (2000) Women at work: analysing women’s talk in New Zealand workplaces. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL) 22 (2): 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet (2005a) The glass ceiling — does talk contribute? Gendered dis-course in the New Zealand workplace. In Mills, C. and Matheson, D. (eds.) Communication at Work: Showcasing Communication Scholarship: Publication of the Annual Meeting of the Australia New Zealand Communication Association 2005. http://www.mang.canterbury.ac.nz/ANZCA/FullPapers.shtml (accessed 31/07/07)

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet (2005b) Workplace narratives, professional identity and relational practice. In De Fina, A., Schiffrin, D. and Bamberg, M. (eds.) Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 166–87.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet (2006) Gendered Talk at Work: Constructing Gender Identity through Workplace Discourse. New York and Oxford: Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet (2007) Humour and the construction of Mâori leadership at work. Leadership 3 (1): 5–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet (forthcoming) ‘Is that right?’ questions as control devices in work-place meetings. In Freed, A.F. and Ehrlich, S. (eds.) ‘Why Do You Ask?’: The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet and Marra, Meredith (2004) Relational practice in the workplace: women’s talk or gendered discourse? Language in Society 33: 377–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet and Marra, Meredith (forthcoming) Relativity rules: politic talk in ethnicised workplaces.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet and Schnurr, Stephanie (2006) Doing femininity at work: more than just relational practice. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (1): 31–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet, Schnurr, Stephanie, Chan, Angela and Chiles, Tina (2003) The discourse of leadership. Te Reo 46: 31–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet, Schnurr, Stephanie and Marra, Meredith (2007). Leadership and communication: discursive evidence of a workplace culture change. Discourse and Communication 1 (4): 433–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet and Stubbe, Maria (2003a) Power and Politeness in the Workplace. A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet and Stubbe, Maria (2003b) ‘Feminine’ workplaces: stereotype and reality. In Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M. (eds.) The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell. 573–99.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet, Bernadette Vine and Gary Johnson (1988) Guide to the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Human Rights Commission Report. (2005) New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation in Governance and Professional Life: www.hrc.co.nz/hrc_new/hrc/cros/files/documents/11-Aug-2005_21–35–04_CensusofWomens_Participation.pdf

  • Jackson, Brad and Parry, Ken (2001) The Hero Manager: Learning From New Zealand’s Top Chief Executives. Auckland: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Sally (1997) Theorizing language and masculinity: a feminist perspective. In Johnson, S. and Meinhof, U.H. (eds.) Language and Masculinity. Oxford: Blackwell. 8–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Sally and Meinhof, Ulrike H. (eds.) (1997) Language and Masculinity. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendall, Shari and Tannen, Deborah (1997) Gender and language in the workplace. In Wodak, R. (ed.) Gender and Discourse. New York: Longman. 81–105.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kiesling, Scott F. (2001) ‘Now I gotta watch what I say’: shifting constructions of gender and dominance in discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11 (2): 250–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kiesling, Scott F. (2004) Dude. American Speech 79 (3): 281–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kimmel, Michael S. (1987) Rethinking masculinity. In Kimmel, M.S. (ed.) Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kimmel, Michael S. (2000) The Gendered Society. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kotter, John P. (2001) What leaders really do. Harvard Business Review. Special Issue on Leadership 79 (11): 85–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maher, Karen J. (1997) Gender-related stereotypes of transformational and transactional leadership. Sex Roles: A Journal of Leadership 37 (3–4): 209–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marra, Meredith and Holmes, Janet (2005) Constructing ethnicity and leadership through storytelling at work. In Mills, C. and Matheson, D. (eds.) Communication at Work: Showcasing Communication Scholarship: Publication of the Annual Meeting of the Australia New Zealand Communication Association 2005. http://www.mang.canterbury.ac.nz/ANZCA/FullPapers.shtml (accessed 31/07/07)

    Google Scholar 

  • Marra, Meredith, Schnurr, Stephanie and Holmes, Janet (2006) Effective leader-ship in New Zealand workplaces: balancing gender and role. In Baxter, J. (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 240–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marra, Meredith (2008) Recording and analyzing talk across cultures. To appear in Spencer-Oatey, H. (ed.) Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness (2nd edn.). London: Continuum. 304–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, Judi (1993) Organisational cultures and women managers: exploring the dynamics of resilience. Applied Psychology: An International Review 42 (4): 313–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, Judi (1995) Women Managers Moving On. Exploring Career and Life Choices. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mean, Lindsey (2001) Identity and discursive practice: doing gender on the football pitch. Discourse &Society 12 (6): 789–815.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Metge, Joan (1995) New Growth from Old: The Whanau in the Modern World. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyerhoff, Miriam (1994) Sounds pretty ethnic, eh?: a pragmatic particle in New Zealand English. Language in Society 23 (1): 367–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ochs, Elinor (1992). Indexing gender. In Duranti, A. and Goodwin, C. (eds.) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 335–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ochs, Elinor (1996) Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In Gumperz, J.J. and Levinson, S.C. (eds.) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 407–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parry, Ken and Meindl, James (2001) Models, methods, and triangulation. Researching the social processes in our society. In Parry, K. and Meindl, J. (eds.) Grounding Leadership Theory and Research: Issues, Perspectives, and Methods. Greenwich: Information Age. 199–221.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, Jock (1996) A Man’s Country?: The Image of the Pakeha Male. Auckland: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roper, Michael and Tosh, John (1991) Introduction: historians and the politics of masculinity. In Roper, M. and Tosh, J. (eds.) Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800. London: Routledge. 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schnurr, Stephanie (2005) Leadership, Humour and Gender. An Analysis of Workplace Discourse. Unpublished Ph.D., Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schnurr, Stephanie and Chan, Angela (2007) Politeness and leadership discourse at work: a case study of New Zealand and Hong Kong. Paper presented at the 3rd International Politeness Symposium University of Leeds 3–5 July 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schnurr, Stephanie, Marra, Meredith and Holmes, Janet (2007) Being (im)polite in New Zealand workplaces: Māori and Pākehā leaders. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 712–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sinclair, Amanda (1998) Doing Leadership Differently. Gender, Power and Sexuality in a Changing Business Culture. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stodgill, Ralph (1997) Leadership, membership, organization. In Grint, K. (ed.) Leadership. Classical, Contemporary, and Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 112–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stubbe, Maria and Holmes, Janet (2000) Talking Maori or Pakeha in English: signalling identity in discourse. In Bell, A. and Kuiper, K. (eds.) New Zealand English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 249–78.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 2009 Janet Holmes

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Holmes, J. (2009). Men, Masculinities and Leadership: Different Discourse Styles at Work. In: Pichler, P., Eppler, E. (eds) Gender and Spoken Interaction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230280748_9

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics