Extract 12
1 Angela: .hh you know as pa rents we put up with the
2 [backlash .hh
3 Paris: [(hh)
4 Angela: from all of this [as well (.) and i mean you
5 Paris: [(hh)
6 Angela: can chuckle as much as you like but as a
7 parent you know >you might not appreciate <
8 .hh [this is- this is how it fee:ls .hh
9 Paris: [((rolls eyes))
Angela positions herself within a category of “pa rents” (line 1), expressing the “backlash ” (line 2) faced by members of this category due to gender-neutral children’s clothing. Paris, who has been accorded topic-relevant Expertise as a Transgender Rights Activist earlier in the debate, indicates her distain for Angela’s position with laughter (lines 3, 5). Angela retaliates with an ‘us and them’ contrast device (Housley and Fitzgerald, 2009b), echoing her phrase “as a parent” (line 7), followed with the accusatory address “you might not appreciate ” (line 7). This constructs Paris’s ‘outsider’ status, as someone potentially unable to understand “how it fee:ls” (line 8). Invoking her Mother-cum-Expert incumbency in a manner which explicitly locates Paris as an outsider, Angela elevates her rights to be heard and undermines her interlocutor’s expertise and her capacity to appreciate an alternate perspective.
A further consideration of context illuminates the inherent normative force of Angela’s words, demonstrating the “mundane mechanics of prejudice” (Housley and Fitzgerald, 2009b, p. 352). Guest Paris, a self-identifying transgender women, is a well-known public figure who regularly engages with the UK media to speak out on issues of trans-rights. Paris further orients to her identity as a trans woman throughout this debate. As such, Angela’s argument takes on an increasing cisnormative force which not only discounts Paris’ argument on the basis that she does not have membership of the category mother, but, given mundane notions that situate cisnormative gender-based criteria as a fundamental requirement of motherhood, Paris is hearable as someone who cannot occupy the category. Paris’ performed boredom (eye-roll, line 9; laughter, lines 3, 5) suggests her familiarity with such challenges. This exchange exemplifies how the discursive creation of moral knowledge reinforces existing societal norms (Jayyusi, 1984, 1991). Moreover, it demonstrates how wide-scale prejudice is routinely generated via the use of ‘us and them’ discourse on an interactional level, relying upon normative expectations as constitutive of moral knowledge, and thus reinforcing the exclusion of ‘outsider’ individuals or minority groups from being entitled to the same moral rights as ‘insiders’.