סיפורי מחלוקת מפי נשים ישראליות: השימוש בדיאלוגים מובנים למיצוב ואתגור של יחסי כוח

The current research investigates Israeli women’s use of constructed dialogue when telling narratives of conflict mainly with persons of power and status, focusing on questions of positioning and identity construction. Our corpus is based on interviews with 30 women aged 50 to 93 from the southern city of Beer Sheva. Within this corpus, we identified 42 narratives of conflict, mostly (but not only) with representatives of bureaucracy as well as managers and colleagues in the workplace arena. Using detailed micro-analysis, we demonstrate several linguistic and performative strategies through which the storytellers contested power relations and expressed a unique and active identity, in addition to demonstrating their skills as gifted storytellers. In contrast to previous studies arguing that women describe themselves as avoiding conflict, our findings indicate that, like men, women are also likely to insert themselves into conflictual situations, and at times may even subvert hegemonic power relations.