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Language, Gender and Parenthood Online explores the digital interactions of parents on the UK-based internet discussion forum Mumsnet Talk, a space dominated by users sharing a common identification as women, parents and mothers. Using a qualitative approach grounded in feminist poststructuralist theory, Jai Mackenzie uncovers 'common-sense' assumptions about gender and parenthood, explores the construction of gender and parenthood in digital contexts and how discourses of gendered parenthood are negotiated, resisted and subverted. This is key reading for students, scholars and researchers in the field of language and gender, as well as language and digital communication.

AbstractThis article considers how two gay male parents negotiate normative discourses of gender, sexuality and the family in an interview context. Employing a three-level framework for exploring narratives-in-interaction, the micro-linguistic analysis identifies and unravels two gay parents' multiple layers of self- and other- positioning through their telling of 'small stories'. The findings support insights from existing sociological and psychological research to some degree, showing how these parents' liminal situation amidst multiple and intersecting normative discourses can lead to conflict as they work to position themselves as partners, parents, and gay men. However, the analysis also reveals new insights about the specific and nuanced forms such conflict can take, depending on individuals' circumstances and experiences. The findings suggest that everyday encounters are important sites for the (re)constitution of such normative discourses, and that the small stories parents tell about these encounters can be important resources for making sense of their lives in relation to broader social norms and structures.

This article explores the discourses and related subject positions that are negotiated by contributors to the discussion forum of a popular British parenting website, Mumsnet Talk. Drawing on analysis of a single thread posted to this forum, I explore the ways in which participants, who present themselves as women and as parents, negotiate dominant discourses of gendered parenthood that position them as 'mothers', and often, by association, as the primary caregiver, who is defined and positioned exclusively in relation to children. I also show that contributors use a range of linguistic and digital resources to challenge such discourses, and that their resistance can be facilitated, at times, by the affordances of the forum itself. The potential to connect with a large community of Mumsnet users, for example, is identified as a powerful resource at their disposal. Overall, I find that Mumsnet Talk is a fruitful site for negotiating, resisting and subverting socio-cultural norms and expectations, but that it remains difficult here, as elsewhere, for women to escape dominant discourses that work to position them in restrictive gendered subject positions.

This study provides a feminist stylistic account of gendered agency in a set of Disney Heroes collectible trading cards designed for young children. Through a mixed-methods analysis of grammatical, semantic and social agency in the texts, we show how the representation of male and female characters in these cards reinforces limiting, and potentially damaging, gender norms around men being more socially agentive, having more impact on the world around them and ultimately being more 'heroic' than women. There is some cause for optimism in the improved representation of female characters over time and the foregrounding of female heroes' agentive roles in their worlds, but overall the cards uphold the hegemonic status quo. The quantitative and qualitative dimensions of this analysis also reveal quite different insights, demonstrating the importance of analyses that account for the way linguistic strategies are deployed in context, and in combination with a range of other resources.