Gender stylization and language ideologies: theoretical connections

Abstract

This paper discusses about the theoretical connections between gender stylization and language ideologies. The concept of gender stylization comes from the gender theory of Judith Butler (2019) about the stylization of the body and the definitions of language ideologies are given by Judith Irvine (1989), Jan Blommaert (2014) e Deborah Cameron (2014). The main objective is to comprehend how language ideologies act on gender stylization to produce and legitimize gender differences. Moreover, the paper intents to show the utility of aligning the studies of those two phenomena for the field of Feminist Linguistics. The discussions are founded on the theorizings about language ideologies and gender stylization, performativity and speech acts (AUSTIN, 1962), and sex/gender distinction (RUBIN, 1975). There is, still, an overview of feminist studies and of Feminist Linguistics before and after the performative turn launched by Butler. The paper shows, in its theoretical observations, that language ideologies participate actively on the highly rigid regulatory structure which builds gender stylization. In order to display the agency of the two phenomena on the current western context, the paper concerns itself with some aspects of new biologism (CAMERON, 2009; 2010; 2014), a language ideology with scientificity content.