På catwalken med en matris 3x3. Kön, språk och symboliskt kapital i anställningsintervjuer

Abstract

Within research on language and gender, a classical standpoint is to assume a straightforward relation between gender on the one hand and social and linguistic practises on the other. Men are assumed to speak and act in one way - competing and construcdng power hierarchies - whereas women are assumed to aim at solidarity and mutual support in their social and linguistic practises. In this paper, which is based on a study of job interviews, I suggest that the classical standpoint has, in fact, much to offer. The study of job interviews confirms one of the classical hypotheses: the men among the job applicants talk more than the women. Furthermore, the men gain power by talking more - the study also shows that talkative applicants are more successful in job interviews. The practise of job interview seems biased in men's favour. However, the study of job interviews also shows that women and men are not homogenous groups: some women talk a lot and get a job, some men talk little and do not get a job. It seems that there are more to job interviews and to social and linguistical practises than construction and reconstruction of a simple binary gender system. Through qualitative discourse analyses I suggest that there are other determinants at play than gender in the binary sense. I analyse two j ob interviews with female applicants and demonstrate that linguistic practises vary substantially within one gender. My explanation is based on social theory: the two women are socialised differently and therefore make use of language in different ways. Their language practises are enactings of habitus and symbolic capital as Pierre Bourdieu would put it. And here another bias emerges: the practise of job interviewing also seems biased in favour of applicants with a middle class as opposed to a working class background.