Using a Feminist Tongue: Exploring the Speech Genre of Sexual Violence Prevention within University Documents

Abstract

As posited by the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, language has a “taste”. Words are imbued with the “taste” of characteristics and values from past voices and understandings. In this thesis, I introduce the concept of a feminist tongue to interrogate this dynamic nature of language. This feminist tongue works not only to uncover “taste” in words but to develop a linguistic repertoire to describe the taste. With this sense, I explore the “taste” of language in sexual violence prevention documents authored by the Australian National University (ANU). While the type of education and research that is valued by universities has been widely critiqued in the context of the neoliberal turn in higher education, less focus has been given to an institution’s equity work. Through an analysis of the ‘entrepreneurial self’, I come to question the intentions behind the use of certain language choices in these policy documents. And further, how these ways of talking and knowing have emerged and are actively sustained by the university. The results from Change the Course: National Report on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment at Australian Universities (2017) and the National Student Safety Survey (2021) have been transformative for the way Australian universities, in particular the ANU, have recently changed their response to sexual violence prevention. In 2019, the ANU released its first Sexual Violence Prevention Strategy. As such, performing “doing well” in this area, through the language and production of equity documents has become the leading concern under the “carelessness of the entrepreneurial university”. By analysing and comparing documents authored by ANU management and other campus groups, predominantly the ANU Women’s Department, I establish the development of an ANU speech genre within the framework of Bakhtinian understandings of dialogue. This entrepreneurial speech genre has implications for the way that sexual violence prevention is allowed to be conceived and acted upon within the institution. The method in this project has therefore been about “tasting”, and importantly, finding the taste in words that are presented as being without “taste”. Show more