Content Details | NUML Online Research Repository

Title Analysing Multiple Identities in the Workplace Discourse: A Gender Based Study

Author(s) Ms. Atia Anwer Zoon

Abstract ABSTRACT Thesis Title: Analysing Multiple Identities in the Workplace Discourse: A Gender Based Study This research aims to explore how males and females in leadership positions negotiate and construct their multiple identities within the micro instances of workplace interactions. This study is grounded in the social constructionist paradigm, where the research on identity shifted from exploration of having a pre-given singular identity based on static categories of age, gender, class and status to discursively negotiating and constructing multiple identities in talk. This research is conducted in the academic settings of selected public sector universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The qualitative data for this research is collected from workplace meetings and interviews of males and females whereas quantitative data is collected through a structured questionnaire. The research adopts Judith Butler’s theory of ‘performativity’ and West and Zimmerman’s notion of ‘doing gender’ to explore the dynamic and fluid negotiation of identities within workplace interactions. The analytical framework adopted for this study for the analysis of qualitative data draws on various concepts and approaches: the community of practice (cofp) approach, the notion of gendered discourses, Foucault’s conception of discourse and power and Ochs’s concept of indexicality. The quantitative data is analyzed with the help of two statistical tests which include Chi Square and independent t-Test.The key finding of this study is that both male and female leaders use language as a flexible resource and employ a variety of discursive strategies and linguistic forms for doing leadership and negotiating identities according to settings and various contextual factors. Hence the study concluded that there is variation in the features of interactional styles of male and female leaders and they cannot be neatly and permanently fixed into masculine and feminine styles of interaction. The shift from static and fixed to more fluid and dynamic investigation of identity attempted in this study has potential of social change and transformation as it contests the stereotypical notions which constrain individual agency and attempt to impose normative patterns. The significant contribution of this research is that studies like this bring forth the alternative, diverse and dynamic models of doing leadership and negotiating professional identity which is important in order to de-gender the notion of leadership and set it free from its confining associations with masculinity and the normatively masculine features of discourse.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2020-09-14

Subject English Linguistics

Publisher

Contributor(s)

Format

Identifier

Source

Relation

Coverage

Rights