Building power asymmetries in girls' interaction

This study, based on three years of ethnographic research (and over 60 hours of videotaped interaction) in a Southern California elementary school, investigates how enduring asymmetrical relationships among females in a multicultural peer group are built in moment-to-moment interaction. By exploring how relations of power, based on forms of opposition, bullying, and exclusion, are both built interactively and commented upon in female groups, I call into question the generalizability of accounts of female same-sex talk which focus exclusively on cooperative or polite interactive practices. I employ both ethnographically grounded observations and the methodology of conversation analysis to analyze practices for building power asymmetry in naturally occurring same-sex female talk during play and at lunch.