Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T20:44:38.110Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Challenging hegemonic femininities? The discourse of trailing spouses in Hong Kong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

Stephanie Schnurr ,
Olga Zayts  and
Catherine Hopkins
Stephanie Schnurr
Affiliation:
University of Warwick, Centre for Applied Linguistics Gibbet Hill Road, CV4 7AL, [email protected]
Olga Zayts
Affiliation:
School of English, The University of Hong Kong Run Run Shaw Tower, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, [email protected]
Catherine Hopkins
Affiliation:
Hong Kong, China
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While the notion of hegemonic masculinity has received a lot of attention in recent scholarship, hegemonic femininity remains largely underdeveloped. We aim to address this gap by illustrating the benefits of using the concept of hegemonic femininities in sociolinguistic scholarship. Conducting a case study on the discourse of trailing spouses in Hong Kong, we analyse hegemonic femininities at the local, regional, and global level and explore how they are interlinked with each other. Findings show how these trailing spouses often challenge and reject hegemonic femininities on the local level, but largely accept and reinforce them on the regional and global level. The specific femininities that are considered to be hegemonic are highly context-dependent, and, unlike masculinities, the hegemony of femininities is a matter of internal degree—that is, certain femininities take hegemonic status compared to other femininities but do not take a dominant position in the gender order. (Hegemonic femininities, hegemonic masculinities, trailing spouses, Hong Kong, gender order)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , September 2016 , pp. 533 - 555
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Archer, Louise (2001). Muslim brothers, Black lads, traditional Asians: British Muslim young men's construction of race, religion and masculinity. Feminism & Psychology 11(1):79–105.Google Scholar
Anderson, Eric (2008). Inclusive masculinity in a fraternal setting. Men and Masculinities 10(5):604–20.Google Scholar
Budgeon, Shelley (2014). The dynamics of gender hegemony: Femininities, masculinities and social change. Sociology 48(2):317–34.Google Scholar
Collinson, David, & Hearn, Jeff (1994). Naming men as men: Implications for work, organization and management. Gender, Work and Organization 1(1):2–22.Google Scholar
Connell, Robert (1987). Gender and power. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Connell, Robert (1995). Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Connell, Robert & Messerschmidt, James (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society 19:829–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denscombe, Martyn (2010). The good research guide for small-scale social research projects. 4th edn. Maidenhead: Open University Press Google Scholar
Dornyei, Zoltan (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Edley, Nigel, & Litosseliti, Lia (2010). Contemplating interviews and focus-groups. In Litosseliti, Lia (ed.), Research methods in linguistics, 155–77. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1972). The archeology of knowledge. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Glenn, Phillip (2003). Laughter in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guendouzi, Jackie (2001). ‘You'll think we're always bitching’: The functions of cooperativity and competition in women's gossip. Discourse Studies 3(1):29–51.Google Scholar
Holliday, Adrian (2012). Interrogating researcher participation in an interview study of intercultural contribution in the workplace. Qualitative Inquiry 18(6):504–515.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet (1991). Variation and change in New Zealand English: A social dialect investigation. Wellington: Department of Linguistics, Victoria University.Google Scholar
Kiesling, Scott Fabius (2005). Homosocial desire in men's talk: Balancing and re-creating cultural discourses of masculinity. Language in Society 34(5):695–726.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koller, Veronika (2004). Businesswomen and war metaphors: ‘Possessive, jealous and pugnacious’? Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(1):3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krane, Vikki (2001). We can be athletic and feminine, but do we want to? Challenging hegemonic femininity in women's sport. Quest 53(1):115–133.Google Scholar
Kvale, Steinar (2007). Doing interviews. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Lampropoulou, Sofia, & Archakis, Argiris (2015). Constructing hegemonic masculinities: Evidence from Greek narrative performances. Gender & Language 9(1):83–103.Google Scholar
Luyt, Russel (2012). Constructing hegemonic masculinities in South Africa: The discourse and rhetoric of heteronormativity. Gender & Language 6(1):47–77.Google Scholar
Marwick, Alice (2010). There's a beautiful girl under all of this: Performing hegemonic femininity in reality television. Critical Studies in Media Communication 27(3):251–66.Google Scholar
McElhinny, Bonnie (1995). Challenging hegemonic masculinities: Female and male police officers handling domestic violence. In Hall, Kira & Bucholtz, Mary (eds), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self, 217–43. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McNulty, Yvonne (2012). ‘Being dumped in to sink or swim’: An empirical study for organizational support for the trailing spouse. Human Resource Development International 15(4):417–34.Google Scholar
Messerschmidt, James (2012). Engendering gendered knowledge: Assessing the academic appropriation of hegemonic masculinity. Men and Masculinities 15:56–76.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley (1987). Language and social networks. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Murgia, Annalisa, & Poggio, Barbara (2009). Challenging hegemonic masculinities: Men's stories on gender culture in organizations. Organization 16(3):407–23.Google Scholar
Pawelczyk, Joanna (2008). Symbolic annihilation or alternative femininity? The (linguistic) portrayal of women in selected Polish advertisements. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 4(2):311–32.Google Scholar
Renold, Emma (2004). ‘Other’ boys: Negotiating non-hegemonic masculinities in the primary school. Gender and Education 16(2):247–65.Google Scholar
Richards, Keith (2003). Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Richards, Keith; Steven, Ross; & Seedhouse, Paul (2012). Research methods for applied language studies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schippers, Mimi (2007). Recovering the feminine other: Masculinity, femininity, and gender hegemony. Theory and Society 36:85–102.Google Scholar
Speer, Susan (2000). Reconsidering the concept of hegemonic masculinity: Discursive psychology, conversation analysis and participants’ orientations. Feminism & Psychology 11(1):107–35.Google Scholar
Wetherell, Margaret, & Edley, Nigel (1999). Negotiating hegemonic masculinity: Imaginary positions and psycho-discursive practices. Feminism & Psychology 9:335–56.Google Scholar
Wright, Jan, & Clarke, Gill (1999). Sport, the media and the construction of compulsory heterosexuality: A case study of women's Rugby Union. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 34(3):227–43. doi:10.1177/101269099034003001.Google Scholar
Zayts, Olga; Schnurr, Stephanie; & Hopkins, Catherine (2016). From ‘career woman’ to ‘homemaker’ and ‘mother’: Constructing and negotiating gendered identities by trailing spouses in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong, ms.Google Scholar