Ethnography and the Shifting Semiotics of Gender and Sexuality: Practice, Ideology, Theory

Jenny L. Davis, Kira Hall

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

This chapter focuses on ethnography as a multi-method research approach in the study of language, gender, and sexuality. The approach is especially appropriate to the field’s understanding of gender and sexuality as intertwined social systems that are brought into being through situated discursive practice. Yet the dynamism of gender and sexuality is difficult to capture in published work. H ow can researchers write about a particular time and place in a way that acknowledges the ongoing processual nature of that particularity? The chapter illustrates how ethnography answers this question through its attention to the conceptual triad of practice, ideology, and theory. Drawing from fieldwork among groups in the United States and India associated with systems of gender outside colonial cisnormativity and heteropatriarchy, the discussion demonstrates the advantages of ethnography for assessing how gender and sexuality come to matter in the semiotic exchange of everyday life.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationThe Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality
EditorsJo Angouri, Judith Baxter
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter6
Pages93-107
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781315514840
ISBN (Print)9781138200265
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2021

Publication series

NameRoutledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics

Keywords

  • Language
  • gender
  • sexuality
  • ethnography

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Arts and Humanities
  • General Social Sciences

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