Discourse as Ideology: A Feminist Study of Selected Conversation from Andrew Kure's Harvest of Woes

This study examines discourse from an ideological perspective, via an analysis of family conversational exchange which is typically issues-laden. John J. Gumperz, cited in Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (2001, p. 218) submit that “to interact is to engage in an ongoing process of negotiation, both to infer what others intend to convey and to monitor how one’s own contributions are received. In other words, what is at issue is shared or non-shared interpretations rather than denotational meaning.” To convey message, participants of discourse use language in specific forms (discourse strategies) as a demonstration of both linguistic and communicative competence. The study hinges on three theoretical frameworks: Gender Mainstreaming Theory, Critical Social Theory and Standpoint Theory), Gender Mainstreaming Theory captures the fundamentals for effective feminist struggles, as evident in personality traits of articulate feminsts. The Critical Social Theory holds the view that gender discrimination is the product of social structures, but can be condemned and abolished, regardless of its dimensions or domains. Standpoint Theory is germane to this study because it elucidates the implications of social variales in the literature of feminism. This study concludes that feminism is one of the ideological perspectives of discourse, and its thrust is to explore discourse in the emancipation of the female folk from suffocating culture-driven gender discrimination through the instrumentality of language: skillful use of speech acts that convey discrete disourse strategies. The discourse strategies used in the conversation include: recall, clarification, justification, imposition, comparison and reiteration.