Conversación juvenil e identidades de género: despliegues de feminidad heterosexual en grupos de jóvenes veinteañeras

Abstract

This article addresses the performance of gendered identities in spontaneous conversation, applying the constructivist/performative approach that currently prevails in studies on Language, Gender and Sexuality (Ehrlich, Meyerhoff y Holmes 2014; Bengoechea 2015), along with the notion of Community of Practice (Lave y Wenger 1991; Eckert y McConnell-Ginet 1992). More specifically, it analyses extracts taken from two conversations maintained by two groups of female twenties, in which the communicative activity is focused on sharing confidences about sexual/romantic relationships with men. The analysis highlights the construction of two versions of heterosexual femininity in the data, which correspond to each of the two groups of speakers. While in one of them, the participants speak implicitly of ‘informal relations’ as a transition to a stable relationship and from an affective view, displaying a conventional feminine identity, in the other group the ideals of romantic love are parodied and such kind of relationships are exclusively discussed in sexual terms, performing a more liberal version of heterosexual femininity. Finally, the article comments on some problematic issues in relation to these discourses from the point of view of gender equality.