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The social marketplace and gender identity
Goffman (1959) has suggested that individuals can be viewed as actors who
perform and sustain social roles that are validated by their interactional partners. Just as
actors need to convince an audience of their sincerity so the social actor must
successfully manage the discursive ‘impression’ she/he presents within their everyday
interations. Goffman suggests that social actors have a moral value invested in their
‘performance’ of self that allows them to accumulate symbolic capital from their
achievements in the social world. For women this social capital is often achieved by
‘selling’ their moral worth within the social marketplace in order to obtain domestic
status,
The marketplace establishes the value of men's capital, but women's symbolic
capital must be evaluated in relation to community norms for women's behaviour.
The establishment and maintenance of these norms require regular monitoring,
and because it is women who must compete in relation to these norms, it is they
who have the greatest interest in this regular monitoring. (Eckert, 1992: 34)
Eckert's notion that women's social identity is tied to characteristics such as moral
worth, physical appearance and social behaviours, suggests that women may discursively
use co-operative strategies in order to maintain social status through competing for social
capital. Eckert's work raises the issue of competitiveness within women's talk by
suggesting that 'to the extent that they can control norms, women can increase their
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Convention