Gendered Roles and Power Dynamics in Spousal Communication: A Genderlect Analysis of An American Language by Tayari Jones

Abstract

This study examines the communication between spouses in Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage (2018). It investigates how gendered speech practices, power relations, and identities in marriage are transformed as a result of wrongful incarceration. The study uses a qualitative, text-based approach that entails an in-depth analysis of important dialogues and passages. The researchers have drawn on the Genderlect Theory of Deborah Tannen to examine the shifts between Rapport and Reporting talk. Also, the concept of gender performativity is used as an analytical tool to show how identities are performed and transformed through linguistic usage. The findings reveal that speech patterns of Roy and Celestial gradually demonstrate the struggle between emotional dependence and self-preservation, which result in different communicative patterns in their marriage life. The analysis demonstrates that the traditional gendered communication is disrupted by the long term separation and other institutional constraints, which causes the change of emotional vulnerability, power, and rational control between the male and female voices. The gendered-based distinctive of language are also made more complicated by the shifting narrative of the novel offers both males and females to express introspection, vulnerability, and restraint of their emotions. This study, using close textual and narrative alertness, examines the topic of marital discourse in literature around the aspects of the reshaping of power, intimacy and identity within the institution of external pressures. It also highlights the necessity of further investigation concerning gender, identity and sociolinguistic tendencies in literary narratives.