In the first excerpt, a women literacy worker I'll call Martha is discussing what happens - or doesn't happen - when co-workers discuss gender issues or incidents such as sexist comments, heterosexist jokes, and male / female teasing. Martha says:

I think some of that has to do with the fact that literacy isn't considered to be -like that isn't the main work of literacy, dealing with that stuff. Although we all know that we do, to some extent. But because it's not. clearly acknowledged, it's hard to find the time or the place or the way to go through what you wanted to do or what everybody said they wanted to do. And to actually feel like you're dealing with what you're feeling - And so I think that we probably talk a lot more about issues than we actually act on here. (Lloyd, 1991a, p. 14)

One way of considering this excerpt is to look at the difficulty Martha seems to have actually naming what is going on. There are four instances of what is called, in linguistic terms, "false deixes" - when "it," "this," or "that" have no identifiable reference. A potentially awkward or explosive situation is defused because the listener or reader has to make up an interpretation that makes sense to them.

If Martha used actual words instead of "it" or "that," she might acknowledge that her co-workers are not accepting sexism and heterosexism as priorities for action in the program. She might also leave herself open to accusations that she is breaking solidarity around the political action which they have named as priorities - action that focuses on class, abilities, and, to a lesser extent, racism.

Here, I interpret Martha as illustrating feminist and postmodern critiques of emancipatory literacy and critical pedagogy. Her sentence fragments, contradictions and absences could be seen as mirroring what she feels happening within the program - that the program has a fragmented response to sexist incidents, that there are strong contradictions between the program's theoretical . stance around emancipation in general and women's liberation in particular, and the program's practice in respect to women. There is an absence of action in the presence of sexism and heterosexism.

When Martha begins to express these feelings, the feelings themselves remain both partial and distanced.

She says,
"- and to actually feel like you're dealing with what you're feeling."

She might have said,
"- and to actually feel like I'm dealing with what I'm feeling" and then added,

"then I would really have to push. And if I really pushed then.…"