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’.