BIOGRAPHY OF B. McELHINNY



 
  

  




 
  
STATEMENT OF RESEARCH INTERESTS:

  
My research focuses on language, gender and political economy. 
  Many linguistic studies of gender assume that gender is is the
  attribute of an individual.  I'm interested, rather, in
  exploring gender as a structural 

  principle,  as an ethically indefensible, yet nearly universal,
  basis for systematic inequalities of power in organizations,
  institutions and societies.  My recent research focuses
  on crosscultural and transnational 

  caregiving in Canadian households.  In particular, I'm interested
  in Filipina women who are domestic workers/nannies in Toronto. 
  In domestic work class, cultural and racialized-ethnic differences
  shaped by global 

  economic forces are played out in interpersonal interactions,
  especially interactions between the female employer and the female
  employee.  These interactions are often characterized by 
  the dehumanization and 

  infantilization of the worker, though occasionally employers
  help workers gain access to certain resources.  Although
  some scholars argue that the dynamics of employer/employee relationships
  offers employers' justification for material exploitation, as
  well as ratification for racialized ethnic identities and their
  hierarchialized ranking, such a perspective seems to assume that
  interactions simply reflect existing notions of cultural difference
  and hierarchy, rather than providing possible fuel for resistance
  to such negative views of cultural difference. Further, as important
  as the focus on employer-employee interactions is, it ignores
  domestic workers' interactions with children, and from a child's
  point of view, in particular, cultural categories may not be
  so easily assumed--they are in the process of being constructed. 
  It's precisely these questions I'm currently investigating.

  
In earlier and ongoing work  I conducted an ethnographic
  and sociolinguistic study which considered the effects and effectiveness
  of affirmative action by examining how women learned to integrate
  themselves into a previously all-male and masculine workplace
  (a police department), and how the workplace adapted to them.  
  In particular, I focused on whether and how women used "masculine"
  interactional styles in order to be perceived as competent police
  officers.  That study demonstrated that affirmative action
  can lead to radically rethinking the division of labor into women
  and men's work, but that it does not significantly alter traditional
  workplace structures. A book manuscript  resulting from
  this project, Working on Gender:  Women and Gender in a
  Traditionally Masculine Workplace, is currently under review.
  I've also conducted research in concert with WAGES (Women's Action
  to Gain Economic Security), a nonprofit organization based near
  San Francisco, California, to document and analyze the interactional
  styles of nine unemployed or underemployed women who are forming
  themselves into a worker co-operative, in order to consider feminist
  strategies for the construction of non-hierarchical workplaces
  where workers are owners.

  
I'm also interested in language and ideology, language and
  sexuality, biography and life histories, language  socialization,
  and feminist anthropology.

  
My research has been or is supported by the Social Science
  and Humanities Research Council (Canada), National Science Foundation
  (U.S.), a Connaught New Staff Matching Grant, the Mellon Foundation,
  the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the
  Stanford Humanities Center and the Stanford Center for the Study
  of Conflict and Negotiation.

  


    SELECT PUBLICATIONS:

  
In press. “’Kissing a Baby is Not At All Good For Him’: 
    Infant Mortality, Medicine and Colonial Modernity in the U.S.-Occupied Philippines” 
    American Anthropologist. To appear June 2005. 107(2). Length = 31 pp.

  
In press. Bonnie McElhinny. "Deborah Cameron." In Encyclopedia 
    of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Editor-in-Chief, Keith Brown. Section 
    Editor, Kurt Jankowsky. Oxford: Elsevier. Length = 2 pp..

  
In press. Bonnie McElhinny. "John Rickford." In Encyclopedia of 
    Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Editor-in-Chief, Keith Brown. Section 
    Editor, Kurt Jankowsky. Oxford: Elsevier. Length = 2 pp..

  
In press. Bonnie McElhinny and Shaylih Muehlmann. “Discursive Practice 
    Theory.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Editor-in-Chief, 
    Keith Brown. Section Editor, Michael Silverstein. Oxford: Elsevier. Length 
    = 14 pp.

  
2005. “Gender and the Stories Pittsburgh Police Officers Tell About 
    Using Physical Force.” In Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, eds. 
    Caroline Brettell and Carolyn Sargent. 4th edition. London: Pearson Prentice 
    Hall. Pp. 219-230.

  
2004. “’Radical Feminist’ as Label, Libel and Laudatory 
    Chant: The Politics of Theoretical Taxonomies in Feminist Linguistics.” 
    In Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries, 2nd expanded edition 
    by Robin Lakoff and edited by Mary Bucholtz. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
    Pp. 129-135.

  
2003a. “Language and Gender.” In Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: 
    Men and Women in the World’s Cultures, eds. Carol R. Ember and Melvin 
    Ember. Human Relations Area File/Kluwer/Plenum, pp. 150-162. 

  
2003b "Theorizing Gender in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology." 
    The Language and Gender Handbook, eds. Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff. 
    Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Pp. 21-42.

  

  
2003a. “Fearful, Forceful Agents of the Law: Ideologies about Language 
    and Gender in Police Officers’ Narratives about the Use of Physical 
    Force” Pragmatics 13(2):253-284.

  
2003b. "Gender, Publication and Citation in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic 
    Anthropology: The Construction of a Scholarly Canon" (with Claire Hicks, 
    Marijke Hols, Jeff Holtzkener and Susanne Unger). Language in Society 32(3):299-328.

  
2002a. "Women and Child-rearing." In Cultural Anthropology, First 
    Canadian Edition By William Haviland, Gary Crawford and Shirley Fedorak. Nelson 
    Publishers, pp. 143-5. 

  
2002b. "Language, Sexuality and Political Economy." Language and 
    Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, eds. Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, 
    Robert Podesva, Sarah Roberts, Andrew Wong. Palo Alto: Center for the Study 
    of Language and Information, Stanford Univ. Pp. 111-134.

  
2002c. "Armed Robbers, Assholes and Agency: Linguistic Ideologies, Gender 
    and Police Officers." Gendered Practices in Language, eds. Sarah Benor, 
    Mary Rose, Deyvani Sharma, Julie Sweetland and Qing Zhang. Palo Alto: CSLI, 
    Stanford, pp. 65 - 90. 

  


    2001 "See No Evil, Speak No Evil: White Police Officers' Arguments Around 
    Race and Affirmative Action." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology . 11(1):65-78.

  
2000a. "Dale Spender." Routledge Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories, 
    ed. Lorraine Code. NY: Routledge, p. 473. 

  
2000b. "Affirmative Action and Veterans' Hiring Preferences: Two Quota 
    Systems." For Voices: Newsletter of the Association for Feminist Anthropology. 
    July, 4(1):1-6.

  


    1999 "More on The Third Dialect of English: Linguistic Constraints on 
    the Use of Three Phonological Variables in Pittsburgh." Language Variation 
    and Change 11(2):171-195.

  
1998 "Cooperative Culture: Reconciling Equality and Difference in a 
    Multicultural Women's Co- operative." Ethnos 63(3):383-412.

  
1998a "Genealogies of Gender Theory: Practice Theory and Feminism in 
    Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology." Social Analysis 42(3): 164-189.

  
1998b "'I Don't Smile Much Anymore': Affect, Gender and the Discourse 
    of Pittsburgh Police Officers." Language and Gender: A Reader, ed. Jennifer 
    Coates. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Pp. 309-327.

  
1998 "It's a Process, I Guess": The Role of Language in Building 
    an Ethnically Diverse Worker's Co-operative for Women. Engendering Communication:Proceedings 
    of the Fifth Berkeley Conference on Women and Language, eds. Suzanne Wertheim, 
    Ashlee Bailey and Monica Corston-Oliver. Berkeley Women and Language Group, 
    University of California Berkeley. Pp. 347-359.

  
1997 "Ideologies of Public and Private Language in Sociolinguistics." 
    Gender and Discourse, ed. Ruth Wodak. London: Sage Publishers. Pp. 106-139. 
  

  
1997 "Challenging Analytic Dichotomies in Sociolinguistics: Ideologies 
    of Public and Private Language." Salsa III: Proceedings of the Third 
    Annual Symposium About Language and Society--Austin, ed. Yukako Sunaoshi et 
    al.

  


    1996 Freeman, Rebecca and Bonnie McElhinny. “Language and Gender.” 
    Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching, eds. Sandra Lee McKay and Nancy Hornberger. 
    Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 218-280.

  
1996a "Strategic Essentialism in Sociolinguistic Studies of Gender." 
    Gender and Belief Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Conference on 
    Women and Language, eds. Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica 
    Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim and Melinda Chen. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language 
    Group, University of California Berkeley. Pp. 469-480.

  
1996b “I teach talk only, not language': Writing the Scholarship of 
    Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi into Histories of Eighteenth Century Linguistics" 
    Gender and Belief Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Conference on 
    Women and Language, eds. Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Monica 
    Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim and Melinda Chen. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language 
    Group, University of California Berkeley. Pp. 803-814.

  


    1995“Challenging Hegemonic Masculinities: Female and Male Police Officers 
    Handling Domestic Violence.” Gender Articulated, eds. Kira Hall and 
    Mary Bucholtz. NY: Routledge, pp. 217- 243.

  
1995 Cunningham, Clark and Bonnie McElhinny. "Taking it to the Streets: 
    Putting Discourse Analysis to the Service of a Public Defender's Office" 
    Clinical Law Review 2(1):285-314.

  


    1994 “An Economy of Affect: Objectivity, Masculinity and the Gendering 
    of Police Work.” In Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, 
    eds. Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne. NY: Routledge. 159-171.

  
 1993 "Copula and Auxiliary Contraction in the Speech of White Americans." 
    American Speech 68(4):371-399.

  
1993a (with Peter Patrick) "Speakin and Spokin in Jamaica: Consensus 
    and Conflict in Sociolinguistics." Nineteenth Proceedings of the Berkeley 
    Linguistic Society, pp. 280-90. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. Eds. 
    Joshua Guenter, Barbara Kaier and Cheryl Zoll.

  
1993b "'You Don't Smile A Lot': Gender, Affect and the Discourse of 
    Pittsburgh Police Officers." In Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second 
    Berkeley Conference on Women and Language, eds. Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz, 
    and Birch Moonwomon, pp. 386-403. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group, 
    University of California, Department of Linguistics. 

  
1993c "The Interaction of Syntax, Semantics and Phonology in Language 
    Change: The History of Modal Contraction in English." CLS 28: Papers 
    from the 28th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 1992. Eds. 
    Costas Canakis, Grace Chan and Jeannette Denton. Volume 1, pp. 367-381. 

  
TEACHING INTERESTS:

  
Language and Gender Field Methods 

    Discourse Analysis Ethnography of Speaking

    Language and Political Economy Language and Affect 

    Introduction to Language and Culture Language and Globalization

    Feminist Anthropology Language Socialization

    Politics of Reproduction Anthropology of Space & Place

    Language & Political Ecology Children & the Politics of Culture

    Gender and Imperialism

    Discourse in Linguistic Anthropology and Historical Anthropology

  

  
 

  
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