Page 393 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

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364 THE ISA HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

Table 24.6 Activists’ distinctive vocabulary by gender (El Salvador and Honduras)
WOMEN MEN
WORD TF PF Z WORD TF PF Z
women 458 429 99 people 471 277 8
we (fem.) 54 53 14 service 31 27 6
they/them (fem.) 95 80 11 situation 185 118 6
I 550 360 10 activities 22 19 5
maquilas 103 83 9 price 27 22 5
woman 94 77 9 university 51 38 5
men 49 45 9 actions 47 36 5
maquila 73 60 8 workers 201 123 5
workers (fem.) 66 56 8 same/equal 68 47 5
companies 157 116 8 (the) left 67 47 5
children 65 54 8 (we) consider 28 23 5
code 48 43 8 marginalization 15 13 4
owners 63 52 7 federation 37 27 4
teachers 20 20 7 (we) call 21 17 4
goal 20 20 7 services 74 50 4
comrades (fem.) 30 28 7 really 120 73 4
rights 181 128 7 president 68 45 4
production 42 36 6 persons 191 110 4
insurance 61 49 6 issues 25 20 4
violence 35 31 6 interests 50 35 4
human 41 35 6 conflict 18 15 4
(I) say 130 92 6 (we) struggle 18 15 4
job 405 257 6 aspects 15 13 4
hours 31 27 5 situations 33 24 4
(we) see 132 90 5 oligarchy 12 11 4
spaces 40 33 5 face 16 14 4
worker (fem.) 28 24 5 epoch 13 12 4
communities 64 48 5 peasant 56 38 4
rural 16 16 5 faith 19 16 4
municipalities 15 15 5 (to) give 94 59 4
organization 139 94 5 causes 13 12 4
votes 17 15 4
TF: Total Frequency – number of times a given word appears in the activists’ discourse as a whole;
PF: Partial Frequency – number of times a given word is used by activists to respond to a specific question;
Z: Level of significance of the difference between the expected partial frequency and the observed partial frequency

analysis in order to detect patterns of word tended to make an explicit connection
use. The fact that the research participants between the idea of justice and the subjective
tended to organize their narratives around experience of ‘ordinary people’, including
specific terms provides us with an insight themselves. They identified the foreign
into their social representations. Even though investors who own the maquilas as the bene-
there is a growing interest in the symbolic ficiaries of the unjust economic system and
dimension of social mobilization, few sociol- by doing so they again linked the larger
ogists and political scientists dwell on picture – neo-liberal globalization, market
social representations as objects of analysis liberalization – to their everyday life. We
per se. Our goal is to contribute to fill this have seen that social activists focus on self-
research gap. organization, learning, and a desire for ‘more’
This chapter presented some results from a and ‘better’ rather than ‘something else’.
cross-country study. The answers to the five They trust the church, but not necessarily the
questions in our interview protocol showed political parties. Very few traces of a national-
certain clear patterns. We saw that respondents ist stance were observed in their discourse.