Language, Gender, and Identities at Work: Exploring Professional Communication in the IT Industry

This book critically examines gender and professional communication in the IT industry, demonstrating the value of an applied linguistics perspective in better understanding the discourses and gendering of work in the field and more broadly. Drawing primarily from sociolinguistics research but also interdisciplinary lines of inquiry, Loew considers the discursive processes that contribute to the gendering of work in the IT industry. The volume features discussions of gendered hierarchies and inequalities in the workplace and the ways in which ideologies around professional competency perpetuate stereotypes of gender in IT. The book features data from business interactions and interviews with IT professionals from Switzerland, the UK, and the US, and centres on agile working, whose focus on regular open communication and reduced hierarchies offer opportunities to explore tensions between different gender ideologies. In engaging with these issues, Loew outlines ways forward for engaging with the theoretical, analytical, and methodological issues around the gendering of work without perpetuating binary notions of gender in professional settings. This volume will be of interest to scholars working on language and gender, professional communication, business communication, and applied linguistics.