Third-Wave Feminist Linguistics: A Discursive Approach to Female Specific Interests in Maya Angelou’s <i>Gather Together in My Name</i>

Abstract

This paper used the Discursive Approach to Language and Gender studies to examine all-female linguistic choices and how linguistic variation amongst female interlocutors is a representation of each female’s individual and cultural identity and feminist ideology. The study revealed that linguistic variability abounds between individual women as well as amongst women as a social group and further showed that each individual woman’s talk-style reflects her linguistic idiolect and translates to her individual feminist ideology. The study also showed that the interactional style of Black American women and the use of their peculiar Black vernacular English called Ebonics identify them as a separate socio-cultural group with a separate feminist ideology different from that of their white counterparts. The study concluded that individual women’s linguistic choices and socio-cultural background militates against a universal feminist ideology but rather makes feminism multicultural / pluralist in theory and practice.

Keywords: Discursive approach, Ebonics, Multicultural, Pluralist, Third-wave feminist linguistics