Feminism and identities in the core of research principles

Abstract

Feminism emerges from the struggles of the subject ‘woman’, installing a set of political practices and identities. What would this group, feminist women, have to do with language? Cameron (1992, 1998) shows that feminists have treated language as an essential part of the struggle for women’s liberation. She points out that the organized movements in the nineteenth century put language as a central element of their claims, rejecting the restrictions on women’s public speaking. This centrality continued throughout the twentieth century and reflected in linguistic studies in the late 1970s. However, Cameron (1998) notes that theoretical pluralism prevails in feminist discussions about language in the last thirty years. This context is the backdrop for this article. Reviewing articles, chapters and doctoral theses by women in Brazil, this article highlights a relatively homogeneous field of counter-hegemonic knowledge production that articulate linguistic theory and description with practices of feminist identity. This field shows that feminists push identity to the core of science, not as object but as an organizer of the research principles. Feminist linguists in Brazil, especially those influenced in recent years by discussions on language, action, and power (Cameron et al., 1993), confronted the interest in dismissing power struggles involved in linguistic research. 

Key words: feminism, identity, research, language, discourse.