DeFrancisco et al. (2014, p. 59) warned against the risks of doing studies that focus on
“sex difference only” in communication research. First, they contended that researchers asking the sex-difference question are “likely asking the wrong question and will only reinforce essentialist views of gender/sex in communication” (p. 59). Second, they criticized researchers who conflate sex and gender as variables. Third, they claimed that studies looking for statistical differences between communicative practices of gendered persons may overlook the very substantial similarities in their communications. Finally, they asserted that studies focused on sex-difference are missing the possibility of an
“instersectional analysis,” would would “explore whether interdependent ingredients serve to influence the gender performance in unique ways yielding unique privileges [and] inequalities” (p. 60).
Their critique is thoughtful, but it overlooks important counterarguments. First, whether researchers are asking the right or wrong question probably depends on the
context of the question. But to contend that sex-difference (or gender-difference) studies will “reinforce essentialist views” is to assume that such studies will find patterns of differences. If a well designed study shows, however, that there are few or no differences between the communications of female and male authors when the writing context is taken into account—exactly what the study in this dissertation does—that seems a powerful anti-essentialist argument about sex-differences. Showing that males and females are equally capable of adapting to the communicative conventions of a new professional identity is one way of reinforcing the view, which I believe DeFrancisco et al. (2014) embraced, that patterns of difference in communication arise in contexts where the participants are in incongruent power relationships.
Second, for reasons I explain below, I contend that researchers in communication are almost never studying sex differences but rather gender differences. Communica-tions researchers are unlikely to engage in the kind of physical examination of study participants that would allow them to make an ascription of a sex category. At best, they can make educated guesses by identifying external physical characteristics—which can be misleading—or asking participants to identify their own sexes—which calls on the participants to make gender performances. That is, when the participant responds
“male” to the question on a survey that asks his sex, he is providing evidence of what he wants the researcher to believe his sex is, which is to say, he is making a gender performance.
Third, the only way to show whether there are communicative similarities and dif-ferences between men and women in similar contexts is to look. And if there are statistically significant differences, one can then proceed to ask whether the statistically significant differences are actually “socially significant” (DeFrancisco et al., 2014, p. 60).
The absence of well designed studies that look for gender differences has two possible consequences. If the studies would have shown folk beliefs about men’s and women’s communicative practices are wrong, they would have proved useful for the very project for which DeFrancisco et al. (2014) advocated. If, on the other hand, well designed studies of gender differences would discover differences, an intersectional theory of gen-der and communication should either account for them based on other “interdependent ingredients” or acknowledge that there are deeper differences between the genders (or
sexes) than the theory previously admitted. In either case, an opportunity for knowledge making is lost.
Finally, if a study can show—as I believe the study in this dissertation does—that study participants need to have very little in common before their writing exhibits none of the patterns of difference seen in previous studies, researchers and educators are in a position to help students understand how they can alter their communicative performances (if they seek to do so) to achieve their goals. Of course, richer ethnographic studies of the kind for which DeFrancisco et al. (2014) advocate still have incredible value. Nevertheless, knowing in advance the ease with which one of those variables can cease to have an apparent effect on the communicative practices of participants in some contexts is itself valuable to the ethnographic researcher seeking to provide a thicker description of communicative practices from an intersectional perspective.
I adopt the views explained by Hultgren (2008), who called the strand of research in which the empirical study in this dissertation lies “correlational sociolinguistics.” She defined the practice and also noted its infrequent use in recent years:
[Correlational sociolinguistics is] research within the field of language and gender that (1) takes binary sex as a legitimate starting point for analy-sis, and (2) relies on quantification to identify general patterns of variation between male and female speakers. Whilst such methods are still promi-nent within variationist sociolinguistics, they have virtually been abandoned within language and gender research.
Hultgren argued that this approach to studying sex (or gender) and language should work alongside more ethnographic (and other) approaches. This approach, she said, offers three important advantages:
First, it strives to reduce researcher interference in the data; secondly, its reliance on quantification means that it has the capacity not only to report on sex differences but also on the absence of such differences; lastly, it is not as guilty as ‘gender in discourse’ approaches of theorising in a void (Hultgren, 2008, p. 34).
The second of these advantages I discussed above. As for the first and third, they perhaps require further elaboration.
Hultgren’s choice of the expression “researcher interference in the data” is unfortu-nate; I believe her argument on this point owes more to notions that researchers should be able to expose their methods of analysis and interpretation in such a way that other researchers can interrogate them and enter into conversation with them. As she said:
In correlational sociolinguistics, it should be possible to justify why you have coded data in the way you have and, more importantly, to communicate this justification to a wider audience. In discourse analysis it is often not possible for readers to trace the analyst’s moves from data to interpretation and hence much interpretation remains clandestine (Hultgren, 2008, p. 35).
The term “clandestine” also suggests to me a predisposition to distrust discourse anal-ysis (and other qualitative approaches). My view is rather that such studies play an important role, but that they should enter into dialog with quantitative studies so that each can support the other: Quantitative studies can help on a larger scale to validate the findings of small qualitative studies; and qualitative studies can provide an under-standing of subtle variables that can greatly affect the findings in quantitive research if they are not accounted for.2
The third advantage Hultgren (2008) identified for quantitative studies of this kind is “avoiding theorizing in a void.” Here, she was largely noting that an academic view
“that there is no prediscoursive gendered reality. . . fails to resonate with most people outside academia” (p. 37). I read her argument as saying that if the academy intends to deny the everyday conceptions of reality of folks outside academia, the academy needs to speak from a ground that the rest of society will respect. This means acknowledging common public conceptions of sex or gender difference. And in my view it means using the kind of data that the public accepts as authoritative and that has given rise to the essentializing gender-difference narrative that now prevails—using quantitative data is fighting fire with fire where the cool water of academic theory won’t do.
Of course, a researcher doing quantitative gender-difference studies in communica-tions should examine the studies of others for methodological soundness and should construct her own studies with methodological rigor. This is done less frequently than we might hope. Studies that are constructed carefully with regard to many aspects
2 I don’t mean to suggest an order or priority by discussing the value of quantitative studies before that of qualitative studies.
often fail to theorize gender or sex and often fail even to explain how those categories were ascribed to study participants or artifacts. The following sections take up those methodological limitations and others.