Sociolinguistics of gender/sexual stereotyping: a transnational perspective

In: Gender and language, Band 11, Heft 4, S. 575-585

Abstract

In commenting on the articles in this special issue, I focus on a sociolinguistics of gender and sexual stereotyping through a transnational perspective. Defining stereotypes as distillations of types of persons and practices expressive of ideological meanings and integral to power relations, a sociolinguistics study of stereotyping is proposed as encompassing a number of dimensions: the constitutiveness of language, discourse and genre; flatness and roundedness of stereotypes; negative and positive social meanings; enduring and shifting stereotypes; identity entanglements; power(s) of stereotyping; and local and translocal aspects. The multifaceted dimensions emerge out of a transnational perspective of studies from a variety East Asian contexts. Such a perspective surfaces shared resonances of heteropatriarchy across these contexts as well as distinctive articulations of hegemony and change in particular situations.