Gender Uptake

Theorizing the Semiotics of (Un)Doing Gender

Bibliographic Data

ID2997809
AuthorsYuchen Yang (0000-0001-8122-3035, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-09-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0735-2751 • E-ISSN: 1467-9558
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/07352751251368897
OpenAlexW4414154930
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited80

Doing Gender" is often read as a theory of how people signify femininity/masculinity via expressive "performances." This prevailing interpretation falls short of what the theory calls for-an ethnomethodologically informed analysis of gender's emergent "naturalness." To further this agenda, I theorize the audience's "gender uptake" as a central component of doing gender by elaborating ethnomethodology's attention to interpretive acts. Integrating Dorothy Smith's intellectual legacy for feminist interpretive sociology, ethnomethodology's neglected insight on categorization, and cultural sociology's recent rediscovery of Peircean semiotics, I argue the facticity of gender's "naturalness" remains underdetermined until the audience makes a series of ideological moves that cannot be predetermined by the performer. With case studies of how feminist parents account for their children's gender-stereotypical interests, I illustrate how this audience-centered approach helps us unpack the interactional production/naturalization of categorical differences processually as open-ended negotiation of sign relations, where meaning emerges from selective attention

Gender Studies in Language · Multilingual Education and Policy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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