Gender Display
Gender display — a concept introduced into scholarly use by Erving Goffman. It refers to the culturally determined and socially conditioned variety of manifestations of sex/gender belonging at the level of interpersonal communication, and to the main mechanism through which gender is produced in face-to-face interaction.
Interpersonal communication in a concrete situation is always accompanied by a process of sex categorization. The very possibility of categorizing an individual by sex is a precondition of communicative trust. A person is assigned to a sex category on the basis of various kinds of information that correspond to conventional rules. Name, appearance, tone of voice, linguistic manner, movements, style of emotional expression – all these multiple manifestations constitute gender display, which makes it possible to identify the interlocutor as a man or a woman (Zhukova, 2012, p. 75).
Following Erving Goffman, supporters of social constructionism argue that manifestations of gender cannot be reduced to the performance of sex roles, and that gender identity cannot simply be cancelled or changed like a dress or a role in a play. Gender display is the variety of representations and manifestations of the “masculine” and the “feminine” in interpersonal interaction.
Gender display – or the conventional manifestation of the masculine and the feminine – cannot be reduced to a combination of speech, facial expressions, costume, and make-up. It is a truly virtuoso “performance,” oriented toward the partners in the play and toward the mise-en-scène. This performance has long since merged with the lives of the “actors” and appears to both performers and observers as a natural manifestation of their essence.
This is the puzzle of the construction of gender: every minute, while participating in the “masquerade” of presenting their own sex/gender, people do so in such a way that playing by the rules appears to be a natural expression of the human self. However, gender display is not universal; it is socially and culturally conditioned. Different cultures, different historical epochs, and different social groups reveal different gender displays, which makes it impossible to reduce them to biological determinants (Zdravomyslova & Temkina, 2002).
Goffman calls the means of expressing sex/gender belonging formal conventional acts. These are specific models of masculine and feminine behavior that are acceptable in a particular situation and that contribute to the preservation and reproduction of the norms of everyday interaction. Different forms of situational behavior are always gendered.
The performers of conventional acts are socially competent actors who are included in the social order. The social order, in turn, guarantees them protection from individuals perceived as inadequate. To be a man or a woman and to display this, according to Goffman, means to be a socially competent person who inspires communicative trust.
References:
Zhukova, I. N. (2012). Slovar terminov mezhkulturnoi kommunikatsii [Dictionary of terms in intercultural communication]. Moscow: FLINTA. [in Russian].
Zdravomyslova, E. A., & Temkina, A. A. (2002). Gendernyi displei [Gender display]. In A. Denisova (Ed.), Slovar gendernykh terminov [Dictionary of gender terms]. Moscow: Informatsiia XXI vek. Retrieved from http://www.owl.ru/gender/046.htm [in Russian].
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