Page 470 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

448 Saskia Corder and Miriam Meyerhoff

(1) Player 1: Use the lines boys … right wings and left wings get them in the
game coz they’re fucking shit down the lines boys
Player 2: Aye they’re lost at the cross balls.
(8. 11. 03, 004, 00:55)

This is in direct contrast to Studmuffins who analyse the game on a superficial
level, e.g.

(2) Sonia: Yeh, yeh. Or Jen, what I was thinking sometimes Jen … if you
stand completely still and just give me an arm I’ll just throw the
ball in that direction and then hope … (laughter)
(7. 11. 03, 001, 01:55)

(3) Laura: I like just kind of toot around at the back [of the pitch].
(20. 11. 03, 007, 02:55)

Corder contextualizes this difference in terms of more long-term issues of iden-
tity, what other communities of practice they are members of, and how these are
interleaved, making up their gendered biography. Although Studmuffins have
taken themselves out of the traditional feminine marketplace by playing a male
dominated sport, this team of women are not interested in re-packaging them-
selves as part of the masculine marketplace. The lack of a typical boys’ bi-
ography that gradually and cumulatively incorporates experience with playing
football helps to maintain the essential femaleness of their identities. Corder
found they reinforce their identity as ‘girls’ playing football in several ways,
5
drawing on a ‘gossipy’ style when discussing team tactics, as seen in (2), and in
changing room discussions more generally. This is how Studmuffins have
jointly negotiated a response to the double-bind of being female participants in a
hegemonically male culture.
Examples 2–3 illustrate how the locally shared history of a community of
practice may be partly dependent on patterns that exist beyond the community
of practice. In this case, the style Studmuffins have converged on for discussing
football tactics is constrained by other factors such as how society expects
women to talk, and how it constrains their movements and experiences – that is,
their biographies – as children and adults.
This discussion of the criterial features of a community of practice and the
framework’s emphasis on historicity and agency indicates ways in which com-
munities of practice overlap but also differ from other widely-used frameworks
for analysing language in use. In the next section, we provide a more explicit
comparative focus.