"Women Speaking Up": Gender & Discourse
PI: Cecilia Ford
Study Description
Dr. Ford's research documents how women get their voices heard in meetings. Using videotapes and detailed transcriptions of naturally-occurring conversations in a variety of meetings, Dr. Ford found that the women in her data regularly use questions to open participation and to project trajectories of further talk in which the questioners emerge as major contributors. This finding contrasts with some previous studies that pointed to women's use of questioning as a powerless or weak strategy; Ford proposes that some forms of questioning give power to the questioner rather than the addressee. The book also offers a chapter presenting a fine-grained analysis of two women who succeed in presenting disaffiliative or disagreeing turns directed toward persons of higher institutional rank (persons who happen to be men).
Reports and Presentations
Refereed Publications
- Ford, Cecilia E.; Sandra A. Thompson; and Veronika Drake. 2012. “Bodily-Visual Practices and Turn Continuation.” Discourse Processes. 49:192-212.
- Ford, Cecilia E. and Trini Stickle. 2012. “Securing Recipiency in Workplace Meetings: Multimodal Practices.” Discourse Studies. 14(1):11-30.
- Ford, Cecilia. “Questioning in Meetings: Participation and Positioning.” 2010. In Why Do You Ask? The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse (Susan Erlich and Alice Freed, Eds.) New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Ford, Cecilia E. 2007. Women Speaking Up: Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Meetings. Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire, England.
Refereed Presentations
- Ford, Cecilia. May 15, 2006. "Methods and Challenges in the Study of Language in Interaction" (Invited speaker). Department of Linguistics. Stockholm University. Stockholm, Sweden.
- Ford, Cecilia. May 11-14, 2006. "Studying Turn Taking in Workplace Meetings as 'Interdisciplinary/Applied' Conversation Analysis." International Conference on Conversation Analysis. Helsinki, Finland.
- Ford, Cecilia and Teddy Weathersbee. July 25, 2005. "Women's Agency and Participation: Feminist Research for Institutional Change." Symposium on Gender in Public Settings: Approaches to Third Wave Feminist Analysis at the 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics Conference. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, WI.
- Ford, Cecilia and Barbara A. Fox. July 6-9, 2005. "Reference and Repair as Grammatical Practices in an Extended Turn" (Plenary address). 15th Annual Meeting of the Society for Text & Discourse. Amsterdam, Netherlands.
- Ford, Cecilia. June 11-16, 2005. "'Can I Make a Brief Comment on That': Reference and Social Organization In and Around an Extended Turn" (Invited lecture). Symposium on Reference and Referential Form in Interactional Linguistics, organized by the Nordic Research Board. Helsinki, Finland.
- Ford, Cecilia. May 3, 2004. "'Having our ideas ignored': CA and a Feminist Project." American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference. Colloquium entitled "CA as Applied Linguistics: Crossing Boundaries of Discipline and Practice." Portland, OR.
- Ford, Cecilia. July 2003. "Gender and Language in/as/on Academic Science: Combining Research with a Commitment to Institutional Change." Perception and Realization in Language and Gender Research Conference. Michigan State University. East Lansing, MI.
Papers in Progress
- Ford, Cecilia E. and Barbara A. Fox. 2005. "'Can I Make a Brief Comment on That': Reference and Social Organization In and Around an Extended Turn." In progress.
Non-Refereed Presentations
- Ford, Cecilia. March 8, 2006. "The Extraordinary Precision of Ordinary Talk: A Linguist's Prespective on Social Interaction." University Roundtable. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, WI.
- Ford, Cecilia. May 2005. "Language and Heteronormativity." Workshop on Global Perspectives on Sexual Diversity and Gender Relations in a Changing World. Multicultural Student Center and International Student Services. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, WI.
- Ford, Cecilia. February 16, 2004. "Getting our Voices Heard: Patterns of Participation in University Meetings." WISELI Seminar. Madison, WI.
- Ford, Cecilia. September 16, 2003. "Gender and Talk: Looking Back and Looking Forward." Women's Health Forum of the UW-Madison Center for Women's Health and Women's Health Research. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, WI.
Related Work
- Kaatz, Anna; Melissa Dattalo; Caitlin Regner; Amarette Filut; and Molly Carnes. In press. “Patterns of Feedback on the Bridge to Independence: A Qualitative Thematic Analysis of NIH Mentored Career Development Award Application Critiques.” Journal of Women’s Health.
- Isaac, Carol; J. Chertoff; B. Lee; and Molly Carnes. 2011. “Do Students’ and Authors’ Genders Affect Evaluations? A Linguistic Analysis of Medical Student Performance Evaluations.” Academic Medicine. 86(1): 1-8. PMID: 21099389. PMCID: PMC3321359.