Resisting Essentialism in Quantitative Language, Gender and Identity Research

This book draws on four case studies of quantitative language, gender and identity research to address a key theoretical and methodological question for the field: how to handle the problems of essentialism without abandoning quantitative approaches entirely. Quantitative approaches risk taking an essentialist view of identity, insofar as they become positioned as neat categories that might show or explain some form of inter-group difference. However, post-structuralist philosophy highlights how identity is neither static nor easily categorizable, and there is therefore sometimes a disconnect between the philosophical positioning that scholars should take, and the affordances of quantitative research methodologies. The main audience for this work will be researchers and students of language, gender, and identity, as well as others interested in quantitative research on these topics.