Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, University of Nizwa

This monograph contains fourteen chapters and covers four main topics relating to the construction and performance of gender identity through conversation. The first topic concerns the use of gendered terms to refer to the self and other. Even the gender-neutral pronoun ‘I’ is shown to convey gendered identity in some contexts. Gender may also be relevant to how speakers use terms of reference to categorize themselves as belonging to a social group, and in conversational storytelling.

The second topic addressed in this book covers aspects of conversational practices, such as repair moves and ways in which speakers orient their speech toward their interlocutors (termed here ‘recipient design’). The author of the first contribution examines how speakers initiate repair moves to remedy the perceived inappropriate categorization of a person during conversation through the use of the terms ‘girl’, ‘lady’, or ‘woman’. In the following contribution, the adaptation of pre-fabricated talk to the gender of the interlocutor in the context of calls to a help-line is examined. The author discusses clues provided to the advice-provider, which indicate the caller’s gender and subsequently trigger the appropriate gender-oriented pre-fabricated talk. The final contribution in this section concerns the use of question tags in conversational exchanges. The authors’ findings challenge an earlier understanding of the use of question tags as a symptom of relative powerlessness; rather, the authors posit that question tags are often employed as a strategy to induce the interlocutor toward a particular response or behavior. As a result, the authors provide an alternatively de-gendered perspective in contrast with an over-gendered analysis of the linguistic aspects of conversation.

The third topic covered in this book examines the role of gender in performing particular social actions, such as complimenting or joke-telling. The first contribution in this section investigates the function of reported compliments in the construction of the gendered self-identity of transsexual patients. Reported compliments that refer to gender-specific features of the receiver’s attributes are used to strengthen the speaker’s self-identification as a ‘real’ man or woman during telephone assessment sessions with a psychiatrist. The contribution that follows considers the role of gender in joke-telling in social settings. The author analyzes both speech and body language of the communicative event to determine how the joke-telling act can be identified as a male in-group event. The final chapter in this section considers how storytelling among family members may involve gendered features, which contribute to building intimacy between interlocutors.

The final section of the book concerns the construction of gender identities through membership categorization practices. One contribution examines children’s use of language to construct or evoke gendered identities, and another examines how assumptions of gender roles contribute to the construction of arguments during divorce mediation sessions.

All contributions contain excerpts from audio or video recordings of conversations to illustrate issues discussed, drawn from a broad range of social contexts and institutional settings (e.g. help-lines, everyday telephone conversations, children’s play activities, police-suspect interviews, psychiatric assessments, and mediation sessions). The book has a strong methodological component and will offer insight to postgraduate students and researchers about how a gender-related analysis of conversational interaction may be undertaken.