Survival or success? A critical exploration of the use of 'double-voiced discourse' by women business leaders in the UK
Survival or success? A critical exploration of the use of 'double-voiced discourse' by women business leaders in the UK
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DOI：
10.1177/1750481311405590
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发表时间：
2011-08-01
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
Baxter, Judith
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Baxter, Judith
本文探讨使用领导语言是否可能是导致高管层女性人数持续严重缺乏的一个尚未充分探讨的原因。女性在董事会中的语言影响力是否比男性小？通过分析来自七家英国跨国公司的高级管理层会议和后续访谈的语言数据，我们建议，除了一个关键方面外，高级女性和男性使用一系列非常相似的语言策略来领导他们的团队。女性似乎比男性更能监督和规范自己的语言使用，并根据同事的担忧和议程调整自己的言论。这种“双声话语”的使用（巴赫金，1994/1963）使女性能够在男性主导的商业世界中生存，但这有时会使她们的声音“更难听”。然而，双声话语也是语言专业知识的一种形式，可能为女性领导者提供成功的策略。
This article considers whether using leadership language may be one under-explored reason why there continues to be a significant lack of women at executive level. Do women make less of a linguistic impact in the boardroom than men? By analysing linguistic data from senior management meetings and follow-up interviews in seven multinational UK companies, we suggest that senior women and men use a very similar range of linguistic strategies to lead their teams except in one key respect. Women appear to monitor and regulate their use of language more than men, adjusting what they say in the light of their colleagues' concerns and agendas. This use of 'double-voiced discourse' (Bakhtin, 1994/1963) enables women to survive in a male-dominated business world, but this can sometimes make their voice 'harder to hear'. However, double-voiced discourse is also a form of linguistic expertise and potentially might offer women leaders a strategy for success.