Cooperative competition in adolescent “girl talk”

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Abstract
Differences between male and female participation in speech events are based in differences in gender roles in society as a whole. Fruitful discussion of such differences, therefore, must account for the function of male and female interaction within a social theoretical framework. Such an approach is taken here to girl talk, a typically female speech event involving long and detailed personal discussions about people, norms, and beliefs. It is argued that the function of girl talk derives from the place of females in society, particularly as a function of the domestication of female labor. Deprived of direct power, females are constrained to focus on the development of personal influence. Thus constrained to define themselves, not in terms of individual accomplishments, but in terms of their overall character, females need to explore and negotiate the norms that govern their behavior and define this character. Girl talk is a speech event that provides females with the means to negotiate these norms and to measure their symbolic capital in relation to them. An examination of 2 hours of girl talk among six adolescent girls shows the verbal means by which this negotiation is accomplished. The girl talk interaction constitutes a temporary community within which norms are cooperatively defined through a painstaking process of negotiation and consensus.