Identity Construction Of Female Managers In The Institutional Talk

More researchers focused on the female language with the rising of feminist movement. Nowadays, with women’s social status being improved, language in use affected by social factor is more salient. The subject of research is the female managers who are endowed high power by the institution. Influenced by theory of dualistic opposites and stereotypes, people always connect the leadership with male. Many people continue to "think leader, think male". Such conditions exert pressure on female manager to do their power. This thesis is meant to explore how the female managers do their leadership effectively by social action in the institution and construct the identity.In the research of Institutional Talk, the methodology adopted is Conversation Analysis which origins in twenty century. The field of research involves Telephone Calls, Doctor/Patient Talk, Courtroom Talk and News Interview etc. Few studies have been put to the focus on the how the senior women act in the institutional talk. In this thesis, the author would put the eye on how the senior women construct their identity in the institutional talk. We analyze identity construction mainly from two aspects of fundamental structures of conversation, namely social action and sequence organization based on the authentic and natural recordings. The previous studies on identity construction are mainly employed a qualitative research method. In this thesis, a combination of qualitative and quantitative method is adopted.Research shows that when female managers construct their institutional identity, they are by means of masculine linguistic speech style and action. In addition, as to the biological characteristics of female manager, the gendered identity should be mentioned here. In this thesis, the notion of Speer is used in illustrating the process of gender identity construction, that is, how gender can’creep in talk’through reference to conventionally gendered activities. In light of this notion, we focus on the feminine speech features, summarized by previous researches in this domain, manifested through the structures of conversation in transcription to understand such constructed process. For example, from conventional perspectives, the female prefer to adopt the affective strategies in the interaction than the male do. We could start with such characteristics to find out that how such strategy is embodied through structures of conversation. Then, the gendered identity is constructed. The theoretical significance of this research lies in that it enriches and enlarges the domain of researches on institutional talk. And the practical significance lies in that it broadens and deepens our understanding to such ’new group’ from linguistics perspectives.