Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:56:05.427Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Communities of practice, gender, and the representation of sexual assault

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 1999

SUSAN EHRLICH
Affiliation:
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, York University, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada, [email protected]

Abstract

This article investigates the utility of Eckert & McConnell-Ginet's concept of “community of practice” for an analysis of the language used by women in a sexual assault tribunal. It is shown how the questions asked by two tribunal members (a male and a female faculty member), in a university sexual “harassment” tribunal, function to (re)frame and (re)construct the events in question as consensual sex. Although the female complainants (i.e. victims) in the tribunal characterize their experiences as sexual assault, two of the tribunal members – one of whom is a female faculty member – ask questions that presuppose the inadequacy and deficiency of the complainants' signals of resistance, suggesting that their so-called lack of resistance was tantamount to consent. Clearly, any homogeneous notion of “woman's speech style” or “woman's point of view” would fail to account for the differences between the discursive patterns of this woman tribunal member and the women complainants in this context. However, if (as argued by Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992a,b) our linguistic practices arise out of the kinds of community of practice with which we are involved, then an understanding of such local practices and activities should provide greater insight into the differential linguistic behavior of the women involved in this sexual “harassment” tribunal.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)