Abstract
Human beings are notorious categorizers with a predilection for defining, labelling and evaluating. By referring to categories like for instance sex, age, religion and occupation, we construct social roles for ourselves and for our fellow human beings; we thereby develop identities that give us a sense of security. However, such membership categorization at the same time functions as a system of social control (Sacks and Jefferson 1995) because stereotyped perceptions (Pickering 2001; Schneider 2004) about who we are (our identities) and what we can do (our actions) tend to constrain our range of freedom. This chapter subscribes to the social constructionist view that identities are discursively constructed and negotiated in social encounters. This will be illustrated on the basis of two sets of data obtained from focus group interviews. In the first set of data, female employees in a Danish bank, ‘the Bank', discuss their prospects of obtaining management positions in the financial sector. In the second set of data, male colleagues discuss the same issue. My analysis will explore how social roles are stereotyped and evaluated (Martin and White 2005) by two focus groups; in this process I shall pay particular attention to membership categories and focal themes such as uncertainty and self-confidence (Roberts and Sarangi 2005).
Original language | Danish |
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Title of host publication | Discourse of Course : an overview of research in discourse studies |
Editors | Jan Renkema |
Number of pages | 19 |
Place of Publication | Amsterdam/ Philadelphia |
Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company |
Publication date | 2009 |
ISBN (Print) | 978 90 272 3258 8, 978 90 272 3259 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978 90 272 8981 0 |
Publication status | Published - 2009 |