Placing the discursive psychological analysis of sexuality at its centre, this article considers a number of overlapping fields of linguistics: women’s language, construction of gender identities and language and sexuality. By encompassing these fields, in spite of potential differences in terms of theoretical stance and foci of analysis, the present study suggests a wider stance in the analysis of language, gender and sexuality. The study considers two important post-structuralist concepts: performativity and heteronormativity. More precisely, the analysis shows how the sexual identities of British heterosexual female teenagers are discursively constructed and regulated via language use when aggressively relating to other girls in Facebook. The analysis is based on the assumption that sexuality is but one aspect of identity. Although on the surface these British teenagers’ constructions present masculine ‘negative’ mean girls, a closer analysis reveals that more subversive and challenging interpretations can be applied.
Anderson RE ( 2002) Youth and information technology. In: Mortimor J and Larson R (eds) The Future of Adolescent Experience: Societal Trends and the Transition to Adulthood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 175-207.
2.
Atwood F. ( 2009) Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualisation of Western Culture . London: IB Taurus.
3.
Baker P. ( 2005) Public Discourses of Gay Men. London : Routledge.
4.
Baker P. ( 2008) Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality. London: Continuum.
5.
Bernstein M. and Reimann R. ( 2001) Introduction. In: Bernstein M and Reimann R (eds) Queer Families, Queer Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1-17.
6.
Blood R. ( 2002) The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.
7.
Boudourides MA and Drakou E. ( 2000) Gender @ Cyberspace. Available at: www.math.upatras.gr/~mboudour/articles/gender@cyberspace.html .
8.
boyd dm ( 2008) Why youth social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In: Buckingham D (ed.) Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 119-142.
9.
boyd dm and Ellison NB ( 2007) Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship . Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication13(1): article 11. Available at: jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html.
10.
Brown BB ( 2004) Adolescents’ relationships with peers. In: Lerner RM and Steinberg L (eds) Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 363-394.
11.
Butler J. ( 1990) Gender trouble, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic discourse . In: Nicholson L (ed.) Feminism/Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 324-330.
12.
Butler J. ( 2006) Response to special issue. Troubling identities: Reflections on Judith Butler’s philosophy for the sociology of education . British Journal of Sociology of Education27(4): 529-534.
13.
Chirrey D. ( 2003) ‘I hereby come out’: What sort of speech act is coming out? Journal of Sociolinguistics7(1): 24-37.
14.
DiMaggio P., Hargittai E., Neuman WR and Robinson JP ( 2001) Social implications of the internet. Annual Review of Sociology27: 307-336.
15.
Donohue WA ( 1998) Managing equivocality and relational paradox in the Oslo peace negotiations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology17: 72-96.
16.
Dorias M. ( 2004) Dead Boys Can’t Dance - Sexual Orientation, Masculinity, and Suicide. Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
17.
Duits L. and Van Zoonen L. ( 2006) Headscarves and porno-chic: Disciplining girls’ bodies in the European multicultural society. European Journal of Women’s Studies13(2): 103-117.
18.
Eggins S. and Slade D. ( 1997) Analysing Casual Conversation. London : Cassell.
19.
Evans A., Riley S and Shankar A (2010) Technologies of sexiness: Theorizing women’s engagement in the sexualization of culture. Feminism and Psychology20(1): 114-131.
20.
Frosh S., Phoenix A. and Pattman R. ( 2002) Young Masculinities. Basingstoke : Palgrave.
21.
Galambos NL ( 2004) Gender and gender role development in adolescence . In: Lerner RM and Steinberg L (eds) Handbook of Adolescent Psychology , 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 233-261.
22.
García-Gómez A. ( 2009) Teenage girls’ personal weblog writing: Truly a new gender discourse?Information, Communication and Society12(5): 611-638.
23.
García-Gómez A. ( 2010a) Disembodiment and cyberspace: Gendered discourses in female adolescents’ personal information disclosure. Discourse and Society21(2): 135-160.
24.
García-Gómez A. ( 2010b) Competing narratives, gender and threaded identity in cyberspace. Journal of Gender Studies19(1): 15-30.
25.
Gill R. ( 2007) Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility . European Journal of Cultural Studies10(2): 147-166.
26.
Gill R. ( 2008) Empowerment/sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising. Feminism and Psychology18(1): 35-60.
27.
Gill R. ( 2009) Supersexualize me! Advertising and the ‘midriffs’ . In: Attwood F (ed.) Mainstreaming Sex. London: IB Tauris .
28.
Gottman JM ( 1979) Marital Interaction: Experimental Investigations . New York: Academic Press.
29.
Hammer MR ( 2001) Conflict negotiation under crisis conditions. In: Eadie WF and Nelson PE (eds) The Language of Conflict Resolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 57-80.
30.
Hinduja S. and Patchin JW ( 2008) Cyberbullying: An exploratory analysis of factors related to offending and victimization. Deviant Behavior29(2): 129-156.
31.
Hogg MA and Vaughan MV ( 2002) Social Psychology, 3rd edn. London: Pearson.
32.
Huffaker D. and Calvert S. ( 2005) Gender, identity and language use in teenage blogs . Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication10(2). Available at: jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker.html.
33.
Irigaray L. ( 1985) Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gill GC. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
34.
Jackson C. ( 2006) Lads and Ladettes in School: Gender and a Fear of Failure . Maidenhead: Open University Press
35.
Katzer C., Fetchenhauer D. et al. (2009) Cyberbullying: Who are the victims? A comparison of victimization in internet chat rooms and victimization at school. Journal of Media Psychology21(1): 25-36.
36.
Kimmel MS and Mahler M. ( 2003) Adolescent masculinity, homophobia, and violence: Random school shootings, 1982-2001. The American Behavioral Scientist46(10): 1439-1458.
37.
Kumar R., Raghavan P., Novak J. and Tomkins A. ( 2005) On the bursty evolution of blogspace. World Wide Web8(2): 159-178.
38.
Lenhart A., Madden M. and Hitlin P. ( 2005) Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation. Washington, DC: PEW Internet and Family Life.
39.
Livingstone S. ( 2008) Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: Teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New Media and Society10(3): 459-477.
40.
Livingstone S. and Bober M. ( 2005) UK Children Go Online: Final Report of Key Project Findings . April. Available at: www.lse.ac.uk/collections/children-go-online/UKCGOfinalReport.pdf .
41.
Meyer CF ( 2003) The World Wide Web as linguistic corpus. In: Leistyna P and Meyer CF (eds) Corpus Analysis: Language Structure and Language Use. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 241-254.
42.
Moretti MM, Odgers CL and Jackson M. ( 2004) Girls and Aggression: Contributing Factors and Intervention Principles. New York: Kluwer-Plenum
43.
Myrttinen H. ( 2003) Disarming masculinities. Disarmament Forum: 4. UNIDIR.
44.
Nurmi JE ( 2004) Socialization and self-development: Channeling, selection, adjustment and reflection. In: Lerner RM and Steinberg L (eds) Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 85-124.
45.
Olekalns M. and Smith PL ( 2000) Understanding optimal outcomes: The role of strategy sequences in competitive negotiations. Human Communication Research26: 527-557.
46.
Paasonen S., Nikunen P. and Saarenmaa L. ( 2007) Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture . Oxford: Berg.
47.
Putallaz M. and Bierman K. ( 2004) Aggression, Anti-Social Behaviour, and Violence among Girls. London: The Guilford Press .
48.
Rainie L. and Hitlin P. ( 2005) The Internet at School. Washington, DC: PEW Internet and American Life.
49.
Renold E. and Ringrose J. ( 2008) Regulation and rupture: Mapping tween and teenage girls’ ‘resistance’ to the heterosexual matrix. Feminist Theory: An International Interdisciplinary Journal9(3): 335-360.
50.
Ringrose J. ( 2006) A new universal mean girl: Examining the discursive construction and social regulation of a new feminine pathology. Feminism and Psychology16(4): 405-424.
51.
Ringrose J. ( 2007) Successful girls? Complicating post-feminist, neoliberal discourses of educational achievement and gender equality. Gender and Education19(4): 471-489.
52.
Ringrose J. ( 2008) ‘Every time she bends over she pulls up her thong’. Teen girls negotiating discourses of competitive, heterosexualized aggression . Girlhood Studies1(1): 33-59.
53.
Ringrose J. ( 2010) Are you sexy, flirty, or a slut? Exploring ‘sexualization’ and how teen girls perform/ negotiate digital sexual identity on social networking sites. In: Gill R and Scharff C (eds) New Femininities, Post-feminism, Neoliberalism and Identity. London: Palgrave, 99-116.
54.
Ringrose J. and Walkerdine V. ( 2008) Regulating the abject: The TV make-over as site of neoliberal reinvention toward bourgeois femininity. Feminist Media Studies8(3): 227-246.
55.
Sunderland J. ( 2004) Gendered Discourses. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan.
56.
Sveningsson Elm M. ( 2009) How do various notions of privacy influence decisions in qualitative internet research? In: Markham AN and Baym NK (eds) Internet Inquiry: Conversations about Method. Los Angeles : Sage, 69-87.
57.
Taylor PJ ( 2002) A cylindrical model of communication behavior in crisis negotiations. Human Communication Research28: 7-48.
58.
Taylor PJ and Donald IJ ( 2003) Foundations and evidence for an interaction based approach to conflict. International Journal of Conflict Management14: 213-232.
59.
Thomas-Jones A. ( 2010) The Host in the Machine: Examining the Digital in the Social. Oxford: Chandos Internet Series.
60.
Tokunaga RS(2010) Following you home from school: A critical review and synthesis of research on cyberbullying victimization. Computers in Human Behaviour26(3): 277-287.
61.
Tsui ABM ( 1994) English Conversation. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
62.
Turner JC, Hogg MA, Oakes PJ, Reicher SD and Wetherell MS ( 1987) Rediscovering the Social Group. Oxford : Basil Blackwell.
63.
Walkerdine V. ( 1991) Schoolgirl Fictions. London : Verso.
64.
Weekes D. ( 2006) ‘Hey Mr DJ, song pon de re-play’: Re-visiting and re-theorising Black girlhood. Paper presented at the ESRC New Femininities Seminar Series, Open University , 2 April.
65.
Woods S. and Wolke D. ( 2003) Does the content of anti-bullying policies inform us about the prevalence of direct and relational bullying behaviour in primary schools ? Educational Psychology23(4): 381-401.
