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Though narratives had been found to both conduct the work of the institution and help form and convey an institution’s identity, I also found that narratives often reinforce an institution’s hierarchy, whether referentially or evaluatively, and that personal narratives in the institutional environment may carry important indications as to how one sustains a personal identity in the institutional surround.
Interestingly, gender distinctions were readily apparent in examining institutional narratives as a function of engaging in the mutual endeavor of the workaday Air Force. Those gender distinctions affirmed research that has found that women use more detail in narrative, create more dialogue in narrative, and generally tell narratives of community, whereas men construct narratives that relay a tale of achievement or contest. However, I found that where women’s motivation to tell a story may be community oriented, in the military environment the narrative she tells may, by virtue of its form and subject matter, serve to reinforce both the masculine ideals of the institution and masculine constructions of narrative.
Also apparent in these data was the indication that institutional ideology was a pervasive influence in even the subtlest of linguistic cues. Specifically, the findings in these data often came back to the institution’s reliance upon the ideology of hierarchy. It is important to keep in mind, though, that military hierarchy is also the key to military solidarity. Additional analysis of these data showed that the solidarity that springs from the military’s hierarchical structure results in superiors’ devotion to subordinates and their well-being, and subordinates’ desire to please their superiors. However, the masculinity associated with the military is deeply rooted in its hierarchical structure and ideology—all reinforced through language.
With this study, I open the door to considerations of power, gender dynamics, and language and ideology in a community that has not yet been studied using the techniques of discourse analysis. And while some have criticized the utility of examining “outlying cases,” particularly in studies of gender or sexuality in language, the military community, though not studied, can hardly be considered an outlying case.