Language and Gender
Congruence of two areas: Sociolinguistics
and Gender Studies
• Sociolinguistics: linkage of linguistic variables to social
factors.
• Gender studies: the social phenomenon of gender.
• Results in the study of the linkage of linguistic variables
and socially defined gender roles.
Sex versus Gender
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Sex Differences: biologically based
Gender Differences: socially constructed
Sociobiology:
– The study of genetically-based behavior in humans.
– Could be applied to ethnic groups: x is inferior because of "unfortunate" gene
distribution.
– Sociobiology might argue that women have higher voices because their vocal cords
are shorter.
• This does not explain why French women's voices are so high.
• Why high pitch may be employed by men in certain circumstances. E.g. West African griots.
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Most Scholars consider differences in behavior between men and women to be
largely socially constructed.
– Some gender distinctions may build on sex differences.
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No comparable distinction for the basis of race differences.
• What has happened is that behavior by gender has
been socialized.
• Consequently one must look to social factors for an
explanation.
• The social elaboration of gender
• Sex differences v Gender differences
• Need to examine the dimension of
dominance/subordinance v equal
Lexicon: lexical Asymetries
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Mistress v master
postman v lettercarrier (postperson)
Spinster v bachelor
chairman v chairperson, dept head, chair
Witch
v warlock
stewardess v flight attendant
governess v governor
Lady
v lord
Cow
v bull
Secretary v secret-ary
s/he
v cameroon pidgin ithe lexical bias reflects a social bias in the culture
What happens when you try to correct lexical bias?
Once alternatives have been offered, each speaker is faced with a choice of
which form to use.
Sociolinguistic Variables
• Differences can be:
• Morphological: Haas. Gender differentials among the
Koasati.
• Whole languages: Carrib v Aarwak
• Example: Interruptions and overlap (Zimmerman and
West 1975).
Interruptions and overlap
Zimmerman and West (1975)
Survey of faculty
meeting
X
interrupts
Y
InterOverruptions laps
% of utterances
that
involved
interruptions and
overlaps
MM
43%
35%
FF
57%
45%
MF
96%
100%
FF
4%
0%
Crossing the Sex barrier: Asymmetries
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What happens when women adopt a masculine form
What happens when men adopt a feminine form?
Crossing the race barrier
What happens when blacks talk like whites
What happens when whites talk like blacks
Why is it more of a stigma for men to use female
speech than the other way around?
– downward mobility?
What do men and women talk about
• Komarovsky (1962 describes the extensive sex segregation in the lives
of blue-collar couples in America, a segregation that also affects
patterns of talk. In her study, each sex felt that it had little to say to the
other, and even in social situations involving couples, the sexes split up
for conversation. The women talked to other women about family and
interpersonal matters; the men talked to male friends about cars,
sports, work, motorcycles, carpentry, and local politics. The men
ridiculed female conversation (... a derogation the women were aware
of, but did not apparently reciprocate, although they did complain about
a lack of communication in their marriages. Thorne and Henley, p 21
Stages of Awareness of
Underprivileged Groups in the minds of
Overprivileged Groups
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Stage 1: Invisibility: Group does not exist.
Piaget's work on intellectual growth (cf. Gilligan
Stage 2: Marginality: Group Exists, but not seen as significant
Women are classified by class according to husband's
occupation.
• Stage 3: Problematic: Group exists and is seen as problematic
because it does not conform to the views and expectations of the
majority.
• Working Class Women hyper correct.
• Stage 4: Resolution
Hypercorrection
• Hypercorrection is defined by authors as "whereby in formal styles
their [the users'] scores on certain variables are nearer to the
prestige standard than the scores of the highest status group
indicating conscious overcompensation". This is not to be
confused with the term "hypercorrection" as used in language
acquisition and elsewhere where a rule is applied to forms it
shouldn't.
MEN
UMC
LMC
UWC
LWC
6.3
32.4
40.0
90.1
1.4
35.6
58.9
WOMEN 0.0
Percentage of multiple negation, Tugdgill 1978: Detroit
Trudgill’s Explanations of deviance
• #1. Conservatism: women stick to older
patterns than men.
• #2 Status sensitivity: women are more
sensitive to social connotations of speech.
• #3. Covert prestige: Nonstandard speech is
associated with the working class which has
connotations of masculinity.
#1. Conservatism: women stick to older
patterns than men.
• Which is the conservative form?
– Not much agreement by linguistics as to which form is
conservative: both forms have been around for a long time.
• Women as innovators
– There is considerable counter evidence to suggest that
women are often in the vanguard in linguistic change.
• Women are not always conservative.
– While true in middle class women, it is not true with
working class
#2. Status sensitivity:
women are more sensitive to social connotations of speech.
• Trugdill speculates that women may be more status
conscious than men because:
– society sets more standards for women and
– Women’s typical activities do not confer status itself.
– this insecurity offers a parallel with the insecurity of
the lower middle class who also hypercorrect.
• But if so, why does society set different
standards for women?
#3. Covert prestige
• Nonstandard speech is associated with the working
class which has connotations of masculinity.
• But why should the working class be associated with
masculinity?
Limitations in the traditional model; Occupation as an
indicator of Social Class.
• Both Trugdill and Labov use a standard sociological model which place
a heavy emphasis on occupation as an indicator of social class.
• But this model on which sex-difference findings depend - itself uses
sex differentiated criteria. Men are rated on their own occupations, but
women are classed with the men on whom they are assumed to be
dependent.
• ... it can hardly be denied that there is a problem for sociolinguistics in
using the traditional model which takes the family as the primary unit of
social stratification at a time when our traditional concept of the family
(...) is breaking down.
• [What would an alternative look like?]
. Network Analysis: Milroy
• Networks are measured by:
– Density: number of associations
– Multiplexity: kinds of associations (more types ascribed to men than women
• Network analysis allows one to examine the nature of the
individual as opposed to the membership of the individual in a
social role. A praxis oriented approach.
• Milroy argues that sex differences [in language use] can be
explained by the controlling influence of the network:
• men's tighter-knit networks maintain vernacular norms, where as
women’s relatively looser-nit networks have less capacity to
enforce linguistic norms.
Networks
Sparse
Dense
Market forces
• Some evidence to suggest that different
economic forces (secretaries v unskilled labor
may be of relevance.
• That is, individuals take an active role in deciding
how to speak.
• Note, this focuses on praxis. The individual’s
point of view.
Island v mainland residents
Group description
Deg of Creolization
MAINLAND ELITE:Small group of educated elite
professionals (teachers, preachers, school board
members, political figures, business men)
Least
ISLAND LAND HOLDERS: Several generations on
island. Originally communual rice farmers, now
construction workers and domestic laborers.
In between. All but one
islander adult could
read and write.
MAINLAND POOR:
Larger group of poorer, less educated, construction
workers and domestic laborers.
Most
• Both economically and linguistically, island residents contrast with Black
mainland residents.
• Men worked as construction workers
• Women worked as domestic workers (homes & motels), sales clerks, & 1 mail
carrier. Some island women became teachers but moved off the island to do so.
Groups
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ISLAND V MAINLAND RESIDENTS
– Both economically and linguistically, island residents contrast with Black mainland
residents. 57
MAINLAND: Groups
– small group of educated elite professionals (teachers, preachers, school board
members, political figures, business men)
– larger group of poorer, less educated, construction workers and domestic
laborers.
– (this group had most creolized speech)
– For mainland residents, women have a higher percentage of creolized speech
than men.
ISLAND
– land holders, several generations on island, originally communual rice farmers,
now construction workers and domestic laborers.
– Overall, speech is less creolized than mainland poor and less standard than
mainland elite. All but one islander adult could read and write.
Island Groups
• Old adults: over 65 who stayed mainly on the island.
– For island residents, men and women in the oldest age group use
approximately the same percentage of creolized speech.
• Middle age adults: between 30 & 50 who commuted to daily mainland
jobs
– Men work as construction workers
– Women work as domestic workers (homes & motels), sales clerks,
& 1 mail carrier. Some island women became teachers but moved
off the island to do so.
• Young and middle island women use the least.
– Young adults: between 15 and 25 (typically in school, unmarried,
and socially interactive as a group. 59
– Young island men use the most.
INDICATORS OF CREOLISMS
PRONOUNS
i- 3rd sg and possessive pronoun; and
um 3rd sg object}
ex. i took i mother 'long with um.
cf. CP* i bin tek i mama witi am
COMPLEMENTIZER
fo Use of particle to mark senential verb complement
ex I come fo get my coat.
cf. CP A bin kom fo get ma kot.
LOCATIVE
to Use of generic locative marker
ex Can we stay to the table?
cf. CP We fit ste fo tebu?
cf. Krio We ebul ste na tebul?
CP=Cameroon Pidgin English: A Creole spoken in Cameroon. Krio is spoken in Sierra Leone
Distribution of Creolisms
ANALYSIS
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Language use patterns within the black speech community suggest that where
educational and occupational opportunities are limited, women will show more
"conservative" linguistic behavior than men in their group.
When these opportunities begin to expand,they do so along sex-segregated lines.
White collar jobs in sales, nursing and elementary school teaching are opening up
primarily for women, in part because of the low salaries associated with such jobs.
Somewhat paradoxically, such jobs are also ones that require knowledge and use of
standard English, even heavy investment in higher education.
Families often make great sacrifices to send their daughters to college, recognizing the
importance of their earning power to the family; 63
Blue collar jobs are largely available to men. They pay more, but require little formal
education.
[Thus] island men have far less incentive to change their linguistic patterns or their
traditional educational goals in a similar way.
What seems clear is that future studies of sex-differentiated language can no longer
rely on traditional sociological models of social class if their results are to have any
validity.
Conclusion
• Language use patterns within the Black speech
community [in South Carolina] suggest that,
where educational and occupational
opportunities are limited, women will show more
conservative linguistic behavior than men in the
group.
Nichols 1983
CONCLUSIONS
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Linguists have long understood that the interaction of language and social life
has important consequences for linguistic behavior (Ferguson 1959; Hymes
1967, 1973). Hymes observes that inequality among speakers arise because
some speakers participate in social situations not available to other speakers.
If men and women have differentiated social roles within society, we must
expect language use to reflect that fact. If their life experiences are sharply
different, their speech will be different. However, the way and the extent to
which they differ can be expected to vary from social group to social group. In
some speech communities, men or sub-groups of men may exhibit more
conservative linguistic behavior than women; in others, the reverse may be
true. The linguistic choices made by both men and women are always
constrained by the options available to them, and these options are available
always and only in the context of the group which shares rules for the use and
the interpretation of language. To speak fo "women's language" outside that
context is linguistically naive.
Nichols 1983:66
The End