Language and Gender: Part Two
Unlike sex, gender is a cultural
construction, and part of this
construction seems to be that women
everywhere and their domestic sphere
of influence are accorded inferior
valuation as opposed to men and their
world of public action (Duranti, 1986:
305).
Gender Styles: English
• Alternatives: pronunciation, word
selection, grammatical construction.
• Language styles: reflection of gender
differences
• “You’re driving rather fast, aren’t you?
“Well, I guess it’s approximately four feet
high.”
Why?
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Socialization
Cultural values
Gender roles and cultural values
Social norms: construct and reinforce
gender attitudes
Gender Roles Reflected in
Language Styles
• Pronunciation: tone, intonation, volume
• Grammatical forms
• Choices of vocabulary
Sociolinguists look at:
• Conversational interactions ( styles of
interactions)
• Tendencies in language use: Phonological
variations:
--Example: New England study, “-ing”; the
progressive suffix on verbs-
Fischer’s study(1958)
–prefer –ing
– Boys
– Girls
5
10
prefer –in
7
2
Intonation: rhythm, volume, pitch
• Different intonation
• Women: Wide range of pitches, rapid shift in volume and
velocity (more emotional)
• Men: Atonal (control, restrain)
• Cultural interpretation: cultural valued or negatively
evaluated behaviors
Grammatical Variants: Standard
versus non-standard grammar
• Cheshire (1982) in Reading, England
• Present tense –s with non-singular subjects:“We
goes shopping on Saturdays.”
• Has with first-and second-person subjects:“We
has a little fire keeps us warm.”
Tag Questions
• Tag questions are sentences in which the
speaker makes a declarative statement and
add on a tag in the form of a question about
the assertion
• Louise and Lucille didn’t leave together
last night, did they?
• Bill took Luke to the park last night,
didn’t he?
Why?
• --are reluctant to make direct assertions
• --thus avoiding coming into conflict with
the addressee
• --construed as polite
• --uncertainty lack of definite opinion
Choice of Vocabulary
• Different social and cultural domains:
--assumption of expertise
--profanity
Gender Bias in English
• Nouns, adjectives, and verbs
• English covertly and overtly degrades
females
• normative roles and secondary roles
• Creating a context for interaction of genders
---term opposite sex
---covert and overt inequality
The child caught the ball.
The ball was caught by the child.
Conversational Styles
• Assumptions about conversational
domination
• McConnell-Ginet (1988)
---Men: 12 min
--Women: 3.17
• Edelky (1981)
--25 to 400% longer
Cross-cultural analysis
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Ideology of gender enacted in language:
Example: English
Gender specific ways of comm…
Universality of gender asymmetry
Highly valued speech and men
Three cross-cultural examples: Malagasy,
Javanese, Kuna
Malagasy (Madagascar)
• Speech norms: indirectness in speech
• Articulated in public: Kabary ceremony
• Through use of proverbs, allusions and
innuendo
• Kabary speech and male activities
Women and Exclusion
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Encourage to violate norms
Women’s style of speech; secondary
Indirect speech = public = male = prestige
Direct speech= domestic = female =
secondary
Javanese Language
• Importance of politeness for both sexes
• Status of addressee and speaker reflected in
speech
• Highly stratified
• Weak distinctions along gender lines
• Strong ideology of gender equality
• Differences of speech in public and private
Private and Public Spheres
(Javanese)
Private
• Women: mas or “older brother”
• Men: dkik or “younger sibling”
• Difference in seniority
Public
• Women: Less skillful
• Men: Greater art of polite speech
Kuna (Panama)
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Egalitarian society
economic, political. Labor
Complementary separate but equal
Private and public contexts: speech styles
Public: --equally accessible to both genders
--Generally the domain of men
• Public: ---Exclusive for women
What do these examples tell us about the
asymmetry of the cultural evaluation of the
sexes?
• Malagasy and Kuna: Egalitarian
• Javanese stratified
• Malagasy and Javanese: marked linguistic
behavior
• Kuna: no great differences
Chiquita (Bolivia)
• Nouns
• Identical for women
• Men’s speech: nouns divided into two
--nouns associated to supernatural beings:
refering or talking to men
--not used when talking to women
• reflects social conflicts
Languages with “GenderPreference” Patterns
• Gender exclusive: alternatives appropriate
to their gender
• Gender preference: language style a social
or cultural choice
• Japan: class, seniority, gender
• Men: less polite and more assertive
• Women: more polite and less assertive
Choice of words depending on
the context
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Less polite forms More polite forms
Stomach
hara
onaka
Water
mizu
ohiya
Delicious umai
oisii
Eat
kuu
taberu
Summary
• Women’s domestic sphere -- less value
• Cultures evaluate gender styles in a similar way
• Example: Malagasy, Javanese and Kuna Languages
• Ways of evaluating lang and gender relationship
----Gender exclusive
---- and gender-preference patterns
Discussion Question
• In what ways are the relationship
between language and gender crossculturally is similar or different to the
relationship between language and race?