Women and Language

The present volume of essays examines women’s communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became “gossip girls” and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women’s literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women’s communication in the technology-rich 21st century.

Melissa Ames is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. Her work has been published in a variety of anthologies and journals, and she is the author of two books.
Sarah Himsel Burcon teaches composition and literature at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. She specializes in feminist theory and 20th century American literature.

Edited by Melissa Ames and Sarah Himsel Burcon
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 244
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4944-6
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8621-2
Imprint: McFarland

INTRODUCTION: WOMEN AND ORAL CULTURE      1
Melissa Ames and Sarah Himsel Burcon

PART I. SPOKEN SPACES: THE HISTORICIZATION, EVOLUTION, AND GENDERING OF “GOSSIP”
1. Pandora’s Voice-Box: How Woman Became the “Gossip Girl”      17
Giselle Bastin
2. Just Like a Woman: Misogynistic Gossip in the Correspondence Between John Chamberlain and Sir Dudley Carleton      30
Emily Ross
3. “Paper cannot blush”: Martha Fowke, an 18th-Century Abandoned Woman      45
Earla Wilputte

PART II. LITERARY SPACES: THE CONVERGENCE OF ORALITY AND PRINT IN WOMEN’S WRITING
4. Delete as Appropriate: Writing Between the Lines of Female Orality in The Wife’s Lament      61
Miriam Muth
5. Voicing the Feminine and the (Absent) Masculine in The Concealed Fancies      75
Lindsay Yakimyshyn
6. The Wartime Diaries of Dang Thuy Tram: Extolling and Gendering the Heroine’s Voice in Postwar Vietnam and Beyond      90
Hanh N. Nguyen and R. C. Lutz
7. When Talk Meets Page: The Feminist Aesthetic of Adapted Narration and Language Play      104
Melissa Ames
8. Blurred Boundaries and Re-Told Histories: Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents      119
Sarah Himsel Burcon

PART III. PERFORMATIVE SPACES: CONSTRUCTING AND INSTRUCTING GENDERED BEHAVIOR
9. Bodies in Dialogue: Performing Gender and Sexuality in Salsa Dance      137
Aleysia Whitmore
10. “Tell me, does she talk during sex?” The Gendering of Permissible Speech on Dr. Phil      151
Diana York Blaine
11. Read My Profile: Internet Profile Culture, Young Women, and the Communication of Power      167
Ashley M. Donnelly

PART IV. TECHNOLOGICAL SPACES: TRANSFORMING “TALK” IN THE 21ST CENTURY
12. Women, Kin-Keeping, and the Inscription of Gender in Mediated Communication Environments      185
Julie Dare
13. Gendering the Construction of Instant Messaging      199
Koen Leurs and Sandra Ponzanesi
14. Gender Blogging: Femininity and Communication Practices on the Internet      215
Adriana Braga

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS      229
Index      233