Sammy's Visit

The All in the Family episode “Sammy’s Visit” chronicles the situations and conversations the Bunker family has when they find themselves in the presence of a celebrity. The significance and use of gendered/sexed voices becomes very apparent throughout the episode as the characters interact and communicate with one another. At the beginning of the episode, the audience gets a sense of the dynamic between husband and wife, Archie and Edith. Archie gets home from working his second job as a cab driver, sits down, and immediately asks Edith for a cup of coffee. His tone makes it clear that he is annoyed that he even has to ask for coffee; He seems to expect it. She quickly obliges and asks about his day, which makes clear their subordinate/superior

As Palczewski states, “Masculine style avoids personal disclosure and vulnerability... [and] uses communication to establish and maintain control or status,” (66). He asks rhetorical questions as a way to mock his wife and the other characters and is the initiator of most conversation topics throughout the episode. Archie’s conversation style and identity work is heavily influenced by his intersectional identity. He is a white, straight, cisgender, middle class, able-bodied man, which essentially puts him at every advantage possible. As a person who doesn’t experience any sort of prejudice or mistreatment, it is apparent that he doesn’t really know how to treat others who are different from him. He is ridiculed for making a number of racist and xenophobic remarks throughout the episode, but does not see a problem with what he is saying. The power of his intersectional identity gives him a sense of entitlement over the other characters.

Even after Sammy Davis Jr. arrives at the house, Archie continues to make bigoted, narrow-minded remarks. After a number of gawking neighbors enter the house to take pictures with Sammy, he and Archie begin talking about his career. Archie makes comments about Sammy’s race and religion, and gets upset when Edith and his daughter tell Sammy some of the things he has said about black people. Sammy makes clever, sarcastic remarks

In one sense, he spoke and carried himself according to the two-culture approach as Archie did. This masculine style of speech was evident in his tone of voice, his assertiveness and directness, and through his sarcastic remarks. However, he seemed to follow the critical ethnographic approach in some ways. In comparison to Archie and Mike (Archie’s son-in-law), Sammy was much more polite, reserved, and spoke with better grammar. Characteristics like these are typically attributes of a feminine style of speech, but Sammy resists them to some