Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Discourse & Society
This Article
Right arrow Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Rellstab, D. H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Staging gender online: gender plays in Swiss internet relay chats

Daniel H. Rellstab

UNIVERSITY OF BERN, SWITZERLAND, daniel.rellstab{at}germ.unibe.ch

The relationship between chat and gender is a topic that has been discussed for more than 20 years now. Feminist theorists have claimed that virtual reality effaces gender. Others have pointed to the fact that gender matters online as well as offline; linguists in particular have shown that `real-life' gender leaves traces online in the form of discourse styles and patterns. This article has a somewhat different focus. It analyzes blatant plays with gender in Swiss internet relay chats (IRCs). In these games, chatters make use of gender, and put it on stage. These plays are possible because the construction of the gender in IRCs is achieved almost exclusively by communicative means. They might also be possible because the IRC releases the pressures of social constraints with regard to gender. And they have an effect, which could be described in gender theoretic terms as `queering.' But it has to be observed that these plays are made visible as plays, marked, and temporally limited; afterwards, gender constraints are effective again.

Key Words: conversation analysis • cyber-communities • deconstruction of gender • doing gender • internet relay chat

Discourse & Society, Vol. 18, No. 6, 765-787 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0957926507082195
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?