Chapter 13, Language and Gender

Men's and Women's Language

Women's and Men's Forms in Koasati (given in Fasold 1984)

lakawwil	lakawwis	I am lifting it
lakáwc	lakáws	you are lifting it
lakáw	lakáws	he is lifting it
ka:hál	ka:hás	I am saying
í:sk	í:sks	you are saying
ka:	ká:s	he is saying

Languages where special forms are used to indicate the gender of the addressee are rare, but many languages use adjectives that show agreement for gender:

Vosotras	sois	buenas	amigas	mías.
You (FEM PL)	are	good (FEM PL)	friends (FEM PL)	of mine (FEM PL)

Kurux (a Davridian language from India)

Man speaking, any addressee	Woman speaking,
Woman speaking, man addressee	Woman addressee	Gloss
bardan	bar?en	I come
bardam	bar?em	We (excluding you) come
barckan	barc?an	I came
barckam	barc?am	We (excluding you) came
xaddar	xadday	children

Man or woman speaker,	Woman speaker,	Man speaker,
Any addressee	Woman addressee	Woman addressee	Gloss
barday	bardin	bardi	you come
barckay	barckin	barcki	you came

(Note that the verb "to come" so far has at least 14 inflected forms, and we haven't even seen third person!)

Sociolinguistic Gender Pattern - Male speech tends to be stigmatized, whereas female speech is characterized by use of prestige forms.

Exceptions

Among children the gender differentiation is insignificant.

Plat Amsterdams - Cheshire's study (1982) shows that low status men favor one stigmatized variant in informal settings, [A:], while low status women favored a different variant, [ã:].

	High			Low
	Men	Women	Men		Women
[A:]	20%	20%	60%		0
[ã:]	0	0	20%		50%

Trudgill (1972) (summarized in Fasold, 1990) gives these reasons for the sociolinguistic gender pattern in English:

Women feel responsible for transmission of correct speech to their children.

Women are more aware of the social value of correct speech because of their lower status.

Woman may be used to being judged on appearances, and therefore use prestigious speech.

Linguistic Correlates of Social Networks in Ballymacarrett (neighborhood of Belfast)

Milroy's network analysis (1980) is now being used to explore the issue of language and gender. Network strength is calculated by adding up number and closeness of social ties. In Ballymacarrett, the difference between men and women may be summarized as follows:

Male	Female
high network strength	low network strength
local employment	outside employment
leisure time in pubs	leisure activity elsewhere
local linguistic norms	general linguistic norms

Sex-Differentiated Covert Linguistic Prestige in Norwich

covert prestige - a postive value associated with vernacular forms

Trudgill discovered that women were more accurate than men in reporting use of [o:], a socially prestigious linguistic variant. Men tend to underreport use of this variant. Men may wish to emphasize local norms and traditions.

Gender and Stigmatized Pronunciation

Gender may be the most significant factor, as opposed to social class, in explaining distribution of stigmatized and prestigious linguistic variants. In the Northeast part of the U.S., some speakers pronounce the word 'this' as [dIs]. That pronunciation is highly stigmatized. Hovarth (1985) defined a person as having a low (dh) index if he or she used the 'd' substitution, the stigmatized form, about a third or less of the possible total times (56 out of 150). This chart shows the percent of men and women surveyed who had a low (dh) index.

Lower Class		Middle Class
Men	Women		Men	Women
47%	80%		69%	100%

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

This chart shows the percent of words used by the subjects in each category that had glottalized 'p' instead of bilabial 'p.' Glottalized 'p' is stigmatized.

Sex Differences in Language Use

linguistic insecurity - speech that belies a low sense of self-competence; overuse of prestigious linguistic variants; underevaluation of one's L2 proficiency

Sex-differentiated categories of language use (some examples are tongue-in-cheek):

	Women	Men
lexical	peach	sorta pink
distinctions	chartreuse	puke green
	freshen up	take a dump
expletives	fudge	f_ck
	shoot	sh_t
	gosh darn	_od damned
	meanie	as_hole
adjectives	marvelous	ok
	darling child	cute little tyke
	lovely woman	good lookin' broad
questions	Do you mind?	What’s the problem?
intonation (answer)	Is 6 ok for dinner?	Chow is at 6, or we'll throw it to the hogs.
speech acts	It's so drafty, honey.	Hey baby . . . the door!
	You wouldn't mind shutting
	the door, would you?

Sex Differentiated Roles in Conversation

West and Zimmerman (1977) conducted an analysis of naturalistic and experimental conversation between men and women and people of the same sex.

Deep interruption - cutting off the last two words; in 7 same-sex conversations, there were 10 interruptions, with no difference between male and female pairs; in 11 conversations, males interrupted 46 times; females 2 times

	Same-sex	Cross-sex	Cross-sex
	either speaker	male speaker	female speaker
Conversations/Interruptions	7/10	11/46	11/2

Silence - calculated as a ratio by "charging" silence to the speaker who has just finished, and expressing silence in the conversation as the ratio of least silence charged (men) of the to most silence (women). Interruptions and silence lead to topic control by men.

	Same-sex	Cross-sex
	conversation	conversation, ratio of male to female silence
Silence	0.6-1.0	<0.5

Topic Introduction (topic picked up/topic initiated)

Women try more often to introduce topic (TI), in Pamela Fishman's data (1983, reported in Fasold 1990), but men always succeed in getting the topic picked up (TP).

	Men	Women
TP/TI	28/28	17/45

Sex-Related Terms in Language - generic masculine

Mankind has progressed in controlling its environment

One should bide his time.

Everyone should consider what is right for him.

Experimental evidence confirms the complaint of feminists that such terms do exclude women.

Stimulus sentence: When a botanist is in the field, he is usually working.

Over 90 % of the time, male and female students indicated that such sentences cannot refer to women. If a female pronoun is substituted, it cannot refer to a male.

Stimulus sentence: A botanist in the field is usually working.

42% stated that sentences with neutral occupations could not refer to women.

68% stated that sentences with traditional male occupations could not refer to women.

19% stated that sentences with traditional female occupations could not refer to men.

This shows women are assumed to be excluded from neutral jobs. Men are not assumed to be excluded, except by a small proportion (19%). Fewer women apply for jobs that have gender-specific language referring to males.

Semantic Derogation - Negative overtone of female terms, sex-paired words

Masculine	Feminine
gentleman	lady
bachelor	spinster
boy	girl
guy	gal
governor	governess
warlock	witch
sir	madam
gigolo	whore
master	mistress
bull	cow
stud	bitch
party animal	party girl

Semantic Derogation - Proverbs and guides on manners also reflect the stereotyped differences in language behavior between the sexes:

"A woman's tongue is the last thing about her that dies."

Proverbs like this are never about men, but instead directed against women.

Semantic Derogation - How many negative words are found in the English language to refer to a promiscuous woman? How many are found that refer to a promiscuous man? In fact, who is more promiscuous? What reasons are there for this inequity? As you can see from the table below, there are far more terms in English to refer to a promiscuous woman, despite that men are clearly more promiscuous.

Semantic Derogation - An even more striking example is the complete absence in English dictionaries of any word specifically reserved for male that has the meaning "ill-tempered." And again, which of the two sexes gets in more fights, starts wars, and is in general more irascible? Does the following chart present evidence for semantic derogation? In what way? Can you think of words meaning "ill-tempered person" that refer specifically to a male? Do you agree that the terms classified below as gender-neutral are indeed gender neutral? It may be that the dictionary has not kept up with the times, since a word like "bastard," is indeed reserved exclusively for males in the minds of many people.

Gender-neutral language - Given the sorry state of the English language with respect to semantic derogation, it is not unfair for feminists to ask for gender neutral language. These efforts are often derided as "politically correct," but on the other hand, the evidence that language reflects and perpetuates discrimination against women is pretty strong. Can you think of other gender neutral terms?