'If you had only listened carefully...': the discursive construction of emerging leadership in a UK all-women management team

Judith Baxter*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Increasingly, feminist linguistic research has adopted a discursive perspective to learn how women and men 'do' leadership in gendered ways. 'Women' as a social category is made relevant to this study by virtue of the lack of female senior leaders in UK businesses (Sealy and Vinnicombe, 2013). Much previous research has analysed leadership discourse in mixed gender groups, relying on theories that imply comparisons between men and women. Using an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach, this study aims to learn more about how women perform leadership in the absence of men by analysing the spoken interactions of a women-only team who were engaged in a competitive leadership task. The analysis reveals that the women accomplish leadership in multiple and complex ways that defy binary gendered classifications. Nonetheless, there is a distinctive gendered dynamic to the team's interactions which, it is argued, might be disadvantageous to women aspiring to senior positions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)23-39
Number of pages17
JournalDiscourse and Communication
Volume8
Issue number1
Early online date24 Oct 2013
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2014

Keywords

  • discourse
  • feminist linguistics
  • gender
  • interactional sociolinguistic analysis
  • leadership language
  • management team meetings

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