Gender and Language

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Gender and Language

• The ideology of gender categories is typically
  enacted in linguistic practices indeed, it is
  through language that the individual cultural
  understandings of gender categories are learned
  and the coordination of gender roles achieved
  (Foley 2001 289)

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LANGUAGE AND GENDER

• Sex versus Gender
• Sexual differences masculine and feminine
• Gender categorization Social construct
• Daily practices social interaction
• Habitus

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Habitus

• A concept by Pierre Bourdieu (with roots going
  back to Marcel Mauss), denoting the totality of
  learned, bodily skills, habits, styles, tastes,
  etc.
• Culture inscribed in the body
• Gender habitus

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Anthropology of Gender

• Rosaldo, 1974
• Leacock 1978
• Moore 1988
• Study of the asymmetry of between the sexes
  universal
• exceptions

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Main Question

• Why it is widespread?
• Public realm and private realm hypothesis
• Women (work practices) private, viewed inferior
• Men Public, risky activities, economic and
  social capital, politics

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Socialization

• Perpetuation of asymmetrical patterns between the
  sexes
• Learning gender categories and rules in the
  childhood

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The Asymmetry of the Sexes is not Universal

• Errington and Gewertz (1987)
• Gender can be complementary Separate but equal
• Western versus Chambri (New Guinea)
• Western Separation of the private and public
  Exclusion
• Chambri person define by his/her relations

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What is the connection between Gender and
Language?

• Gender as Ideology
• Language as a tool for learning gender
  categorization
• Commonly highly valued ways of speaking
  association
• Example Malagasy speech norms Indirectness in
  speech male activities
• Kabary Speech

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Gender Styles in English

• Alternatives pronunciation, word selection,
  grammatical construction.
• Youre driving rather fast, arent you? Well, I
  guess its approximately four feet high.

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Why?

• Socialization
• Gender roles and cultural values
• Social norms construct and reinforce gender
  attitudes

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Gender Roles Are Reflected In Language Styles

• Pronunciation tone, intonation, volume
• Grammatical forms
• Choices of vocabulary

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Phonological variations pronunciation

• Conversational interactions
• Tendencies in language use
• Example New England study
• -ing the progressive suffix of verbs

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Fischers study(1958)

• prefer ing prefer in
• Boys 5 7
• Girls 10 2

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Social Meaning in language use

• -ing
• Formality, symbolizing female speaker
• -in
• Informality, symbolizing male speaker
• Style of speech is connected to a u
• unified cultural structure of behavior

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Intonation

• Rhythm. Volume, pitch
• Different intonation in English
• Women wide range of pitches, rapid shift in
  volume and velocity (more emotional)
• Men Atonal (control, restrain)
• Cultural interpretation cultural valued behavior

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Grammatical Variants

• Standard versus non-standard grammar
• Cheshire (1982) in Reading, England

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Present tense s with non-singular subjectsWe
goes shopping on Saturdays.2. Has with
first-and second-person subjectsWe has a
little fire keeps us warm.
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Tag Questions

• 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 didnt leave together last
  night, did they?
• Bill took Luke to the park last night, didnt he?

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Robin Lakoff

• --are reluctant to make direct assertions
• --thus avoiding coming into conflict with the
  addressee
• --uncertainty lack of definite opinion

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Choice of Vocabulary

• Different social and cultural domains
• --assumption of expertise
• --profanity

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Gender interactions

• Different styles
• Introduction to topics
• Topic control

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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

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The child caught the ball.The ball was caught by
the child.
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Conversational Styles

• Assumptions about conversational domination
• McConnell-Ginet (1988)
• ---Men 12 min
• --Women 3.17
• Edelky (1981)
• --25 to 400 longer

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Cross-cultural analysis

• 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

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Malagasy (Madagascar)

• Speech norms indirectness in speech
• Articulated in public Kabary ceremony
• Through use of proverbs, allusions and innuendo
• Kabary speech and male activities

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Women and Exclusion

• Encourage to violate norms
• Womens style of speech secondary
• Indirect speech public male prestige
• Direct speech domestic female secondary

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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

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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

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Kuna (Panama)

• 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
• Private ---Exclusive for women

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What do these examples tell us about the
asymmetry in the cultural evaluation of the
sexes?

• Malagasy and Kuna Egalitarian
• Javanese stratified
• Malagasy and Javanese marked linguistic behavior
• Kuna no great differences

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Languages with Gender-Preference 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

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Summary

• Language reflect the way we construct gender
  pronunciation, grammar structure, etc.
• Womens 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

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Discussion Question

• In what ways are the relationship between
  language and gender cross-culturally similar or
  different to the relationship between language
  and race?