“And Then She Said”: Office Stories and What They Tell Us about Gender in the Workplace

Jeanne Weiland Herrick University of Illinois Chicago

Abstract

This article calls for a rhetorical perspective on the relationship of gender, communication, and power in the workplace. In doing so, the author uses narrative in two ways. First, narratives gathered in an ethnographic study of an actual workplace, a plastics manufacturer, are used as a primary source of data, and second, the findings of this study are presented by telling the story of two women in this workplace. Arguing that gender in the workplace, like all social identities, is locally constructed through the micro practices of everyday life, the author questions some of the prevailing assumptions about gender at work and cautions professional communication teachers, researchers, and practitioners against unintentionally perpetuating global, decontextualized assumptions about gender and language, and their relationship to the distribution and exercise of power at work.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
1999-07-01
DOI
10.1177/105065199901300303
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (10)

  1. Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  4. Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Show all 10 →
  1. Literacy in Composition Studies
  2. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  4. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  5. Technical Communication Quarterly

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