1st Edition
Language, Gender, and Identities at Work Exploring Professional Communication in the IT Industry
This book critically examines gender and professional communication in the IT industry, demonstrating the value of an applied linguistics perspective in better understanding the discourses and gendering of work in the field and more broadly. Drawing primarily from sociolinguistics research but also interdisciplinary lines of inquiry, Loew considers the discursive processes that contribute to the gendering of work in the IT industry.
The volume features discussions of gendered hierarchies and inequalities in the workplace and the ways in which ideologies around professional competency perpetuate stereotypes of gender in IT. The book features data from business interactions and interviews with IT professionals from Switzerland, the UK, and the US, and centres on agile working, whose focus on regular open communication and reduced hierarchies offer opportunities to explore tensions between different gender ideologies. In engaging with these issues, Loew outlines ways forward for engaging with the theoretical, analytical, and methodological issues around the gendering of work without perpetuating binary notions of gender in professional settings.
This volume will be of interest to scholars working on language and gender, professional communication, business communication, and applied linguistics.
1. Introducing a linguistic lens onto agile IT 2. Agile ways of working and gender 3. Solving methodological and analytical challenges when working with authentic workplace discourse 4. Navigating gendered work in the field of IT 5. Degrees of gendering in agile communities of practice 6. De-gendering agile IT 7. Gender, agile work, and identity: layers of (de-)gendering in workplace discourse 8. Implications and future directions Appendix Index
Biography
Joelle Loew is a lecturer and researcher in Applied Linguistics with a PhD from the University of Basel. She is also the editor-in-chief of HAZ – Queer Zürich Magazine.
"This engaging book explores the role of gender and the processes of gendering in the largely overlooked professional context of agile IT companies. Using naturally occurring interactions and interviews, it convincingly demonstrates how gender and agile are interwoven in complex ways. A must read for anyone researching gender and language!"
Stephanie Schnurr, University of Warwick
"This book presents the first linguistic study to empirically engage with agile methodologies and linking them to gendering processes. It convinces with careful ways of reflecting on theory and methodology and is of interest to scholars of professional discourse, identity construction and gender."
Miriam Locher, University of Basel
