| The purpose of this study was to expand the scholarly discussion of romantic attraction beyond biologically based theories by addressing relationships between systems of cultural discourse and different forms of attraction. Evolutionary psychology emphasises male-female biological differences as the source of attraction and its behaviors. Though a dominant view, the evolutionary focus on invariant laws across cultures excludes social contexts and is therefore a theoretically insufficient basis for any social science of male-female relations. Undergirding this theory is an individualist psychobiology of the emotion of attraction that similarly excludes contextual dimensions. A major consequence of these concepts is their perpetuation of gender stereotypes and ongoing proscriptions of female normativities presumed "natural" by appeal to "science.";This study used discourse analysis of attraction stories from 30 individuals in 15 California couples to address these gaps in the literature. Rather than eliminating culture, discourse analysis attends directly to cultural meanings within attraction-talk. These demonstrate the unique ways people in the first months of relationship formation use discourses to construct relational identities and attractions to a partner. Foregrounding ethnicity, religion, family traditions, gender, community, and goals beyond relationship, the study analysed how partners' language enacts relations of alliance, opposition, complimentarity, and/or indifference to these discourses, or parts thereof. These fine-grained analyses of partners' talk evidence the dynamic quality of social construction and the fluidity with which people might locally enact alignment with one part of a traditional discourse of gender and yet disown other parts.;Results demonstrated three discourse patterns with which partners build a relational identity and attraction to their partners: (1) a 'male dominant' attraction coordinated by gender differences and hierarchy; (2) a 'two-planet' attraction coordinated by gender differences without hierarchy; and (3) a 'peer' attraction in 60% of the sample enacting no alliances to gender discourse. The first two construct patterns with only some alliance, and/or complimentarity, to evolutionary discourse, validating previous claims for the insufficiency of biological approaches. Results support a theoretical and clinical preferencing of social-semiotic studies of attraction and mate selection as primary and necessarily theoretically prior to biological perspectives in the social sciences. |
