The Primacy of Discourse in the Study of Gender in Family Therapy

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12294
• Author: Andrea LaMarre,Olga Sutherland,Carla Rice

The Primacy of Discourse in the Study of Gender in

Family Therapy

OLGA SUTHERLAND*

ANDREA LAMARRE*

CARLA RICE*

To read this article in Spanish, please see the article’s Supporting Information on Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/famp).

Family therapists and scholars increasingly adopt poststructural and postmodern con-

ceptions of social reality, challenging the notion of stable, universal dynamics withi n fam-

ily members and families and favoring a view of reality as produced through social

interaction. In the study of gender and diversity, many envision differences as social con-

structed rather than as “residing” in people or groups. There is a growing interest in dis-

course or people’s everyday use of language and how it may reflect and advance interests

of dominant groups in a society. Despite this shift from structures to discourse, therapists

struggle to locate the dynamics of power in concrete actions and interactions. By leaving

undisturbed the social processes through which gendered and other subjectivities and

relations of power are produced, therapists may inadvertently become complicit in the very

dynamics of power they seek to undermine. In this article, we argue that disco urse analy-

sis can help family therapy scholars and practitioners clarify the link between language

and power. We present published examples of discourse analytic studies of gender and sex-

ism and examine the relevance of these ideas for family therapy practice and research.

Keywords: Discourse; Discourse Analysis; Gender; Diversity; Power; Family Therapy;

Social Constructionism

Fam Proc 56:669–685, 2017

Discourse is not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but is the

thing for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is the power which is to be seized

(Foucault, 1981, p. 52).

Foucault’s introductory quote captures this article’s main tenet that languag e is the

central site in the production and reproduction of gender and gender-based oppres-

sion. The shift in the field of family therapy to conceptualizing gender and gendered power

as socially constructed (Dickerson, 2013; Knudson-Martin, 2015) has not been accompa-

nied by developments and applications of social constructionist or discursive methods of

inquiry. Conceptions of gender as produced through social interaction and with reference

to broader cultural systems of meaning are not accompanied by analyses of how,

*Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, ON, Canada.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Olga Sutherland, Couple and Family

Therapy Program, Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, Guelph,

ON N1G 2W1, Canada. E-mail: osutherl@uoguelph.ca

Special thanks to Lorna Martin and journal reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Family Process, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2017 ©2017 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12294

specifically, dominant gender identities, differences, and hierarchies are discursively con-

stituted and challenged. It is this inconsistency and delay in adopting discourse analytic

(discursive)

1

methods, distinctly concerned with how phenomena—including gender and

gendered power—are constructed through discourse, that we explore in this article, along

with suggestions for remedying the situation. Our overall aim is to stress the significance

of discourse and promote the use of discursive inquiry within family therapy, particularly

among constructionist gender and diversity scholars and practitioners. We encourage fam-

ily therapy scholars to use discourse analytic or discursive approaches and practitioners to

read more discursive studies. To diversify and strengthen research to ensure that the field

is better equipped to address the complex needs and challenges of a diverse society, it is

important that scholars strive to expand their research toolbox and adopt promising

research frameworks. We address family therapy scholarship, as the inconsistency we dis-

cuss is particularly notable in this area, although our arguments also apply more broadly

to the study of family relations within family therapy.

We are informed by social constructionist and postmodern feminist perspectives and

have had an ongoing interest in discourse and its link to gender and power, including in

the context of family therapy (Sutherland, 2007; Sutherland, LaMarre, Rice, Hardt, &

Jeffery, 2016; Sutherland, LaMarre, Rice, Hardt, & Le Couteur, 2017). The first author is

a family therapist and the second and third authors are gender scholars. I (OS) am Cana-

dian and the first-generation immigrant from Eastern Europe. I am white, able-bodied,

middle-class with working-class roots, bisexual in a relationship with a white heterosexual

man, cisgender woman in my early 40s. I (AL) am a young, white, Canadian, middle-class,

cisgender, heterosexual, single woman. I suffer from chronic back pain and have recovered

from an eating disorder. I (CR) am an aging, white, Canadian, affectively working-class,

financially middle-class, episodically disabled, queer femme in a committed relationship

with an Indigenous woman and three adult Indigenous step (our preferred language is

“faux”) children, and embedded in a vibrant, politicized, urban Aboriginal community.

Our positions of marginality related to gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, and Indi-

geneity have fueled our commitment to social justice and desire to challenge stereotyping

and exclusion in institutions and communities, including in the context of family therapy.

We begin the article by discussing the originsof the field’s concern with discourse, includ-

ing in the study of gender and other socially constructed differences. We then explore a dis-

connect we have observed between how gender is increasingly theorized in the field and

how it is studied. Subsequently, we offer a brief overview of discourse analytic methodolo-

gies and examples of their application to the study of gender and oppression. We conclude

by examining the relevance of these ideas forfamily therapy practice and research.

TURN TO DISCOURSE

Family therapists first stressed the significance of discourse in the latter part of the

20th century, when they began applying social constructionist and related (e.g., postmod-

ern, poststructural, feminist, critical) insights to family therapy (Anderson, 1997; Hare-

Mustin, 1994; McNamee & Gergen, 1992; Weingarten, 1991; White & Epston, 1990). Dis-

course can be defined as a “system of statements which constructs an object” (Parker,

1992, p. 5) or “ways of seeing the world, often with reference to relations of power” (Sun-

derland, 2004, p. 6). The application of constructionist ideas marked a “turn to discourse”

1

We use the terms “discourse analysis” and “discursive inquiry” interchangeably as umbrella terms for

various approaches to the study of language use (e.g., conversation analysis, critical discourse analyses,

membership categorization analysis, discursive psychology). Although we recognize that discursive

inquiry may be conceived more broadly and include other, nondiscourse analytic methods (e.g., Borcsa &

Rober, 2016), our focus in this article is on discourse analysis.

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