Finishing Gender

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Finishing Gender

• and our next topic Multilingualism

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Fat Talk

• Presentation by TA Amy Land on
• Fat talk what girls and their parents say about
  dieting by Mimi Nichter
• fat talk is an adjacency pair typical of the
  speech of adolescent girls also used by women
• Topics what is fat talk? fat talk and
  collusion fat talk as womens talk

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Social power vs. 2 cultures

• Two cultures different but overlapping speech
  communities

• Social Power
• One speech community, with men setting the
  standard

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Two cultures says

• Childhood socialization translates into
  differences in the way that adult men and women
  speak with each other, and differences in how
  they interpret the same linguistic behaviors.
• Therefore, when men and women talk to each other,
  it is a form of cross-cultural miscommunication.
  Men and womens goals for conversation may be
  very different due to different worldviews

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according to 2 cultures

• Women tend to use questions to maintain
  conversation, show interest and respect for the
  speakers story
• Men tend to see questions as requests for
  information, or even as challenges to their
  authority to speak.

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according to 2 cultures

• Women share experiences to promote solidarity and
  intimacy.
• Men discuss problems in order to solve them.

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Male/female worldviews in Two cultures model

• Female Emphasis on social harmony, equality,
  concern for feelings of others, de-emphasis of
  self and selfs accomplishments emphasis on
  collaboration
• Male Emphasis on social hierarchy, personal
  position within hierarchy, emphasis on
  individual, independence

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Behavior and worldview

• Men have more strategies for dominating
  conversation
• Interrupt frequently
• Often dont acknowledge or link their statement
  to a previous statement from an interlocutor
• Make many declarations of fact
• Often dispute claims of their interlocutor

• Women do the shitwork of conversation
• ask a lot of questions
• use the pronouns you and we frequently
• If women are interrupted, they tend to stop
  speaking
• Say yes, right and uhuh frequently

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Social Power vs. Two Cultures differing
analysis of key features

• Positive Minimal Responses (PMRs)
• mmhm, yeah, right, uhuh
• In the US, men use far fewer than women on
  average
• Social power says
• Men withhold PMRs as a way of showing their
  power
• Women offer a lot of PMRs to puff up the person
  they are talking to
• Two cultures says
• For men, PMRs signal agreement
• For women, PMRs signal Im listening
• How does this lead to miscommunication?

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• Questions
• Social Power model argues that the less powerful
  ask questions the more powerful answer questions
• Two cultures says that men and women see
  different reasons to ask questions
• Men see questions as requests for information
• Women see questions as a way of maintaining
  smooth conversational flow (men will just
  introduce a new topic to keep a conversation
  going)

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• Aggressiveness (e.g. disagreement)
• Social power says that men are displaying their
  power by cutting down women
• Two cultures says that men are taught to organize
  conversations through oppositions. Women view
  opposition as negative and a personal attack.

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The new model Performance

• Performance theory focuses on community standards
  for judging the genderedness of linguistic
  behavior in a given instance.
• Gets away from men do this women do that BUT
  acknowledges that there are power differentials
  in society that may be performed as part of
  performing gender identity.

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Example Cameron article

• performing gender identity
• Online reading focused on how young, heterosexual
  men performed their gender identity in all-male
  conversations
• Recall that the conversation focused on other
  men, their actions, and their dress. In this
  context, performance of male, heterosexual
  identity focused on referring to other men as
  gay
• Clearly, in another context, linguistic
  performance of male, heterosexual identity would
  not depend on the same use of features.

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Multilingualism

• Reading for this week is online Spitulnik, and
  Zentella articles

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Monolingualism

• Individual monolingualism refers to a persons
  status as knowing only one language
• Societal monolingualism refers to linguistic
  homogeneity within a population, where there are
  speakers of only one language.

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The Multilingual Norm

• In America, the dominant language ideology is
  that monolingualism is the norm
• However, throughout the world, more people are
  multilingual than monolingual

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Multilingual Nations

• societal multilingualism, where more than one
  language is spoken in a society, is not the same
  as individual multilingualism, where a person
  speaks/understands more than one language.
• Bilingualism is a common form of multilingualism,
  in which two languages are known, whether on the
  individual or societal level.

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Fun Fact

• The US is a multilingual nation
• The 2000 census categorized all the responses
  about languages spoken at home into 380 language
  categories, including 120 Native American
  languages.

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Legal Equality?

• Many countries in the world have official
  multilingualism as part of their constitution.
• Legal equality is not the same as there being no
  linguistic stereotypes. And official
  multilingualism doesnt imply that all of the
  languages are legally equal.
• linguistic stereotypes ideas about what a
  language is good for and what its speakers are
  like

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• A multilingual nation can mean almost anything
• a country with two official languages
• a country with many imported languages like the
  US
• a country like India, with hundreds of indigenous
  languages spoken

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• Use of languages that are not known by the whole
  populace can create a linguistic barrier that
  prevents individuals or populations from
  participation in education, govt, economic
  advancement.
• In Estonia, nationalists are trying to create
  linguistic barriers for non-Estonian speakers.
  Why?

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Language Planning

• Language planning includes all government
  activities having to do with language (including
  revitalization, standardization, schooling, laws,
  and picking a national language).

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(No Transcript)
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Multilingual National Policy

• Why might you need to legislate language use in
  the media in a multilingual nation?
• Spitulnik gives the example of Zambia. In Zambia,
  state policy of pluralism says that 7 languages
  (Bemba, Kaonde, Lozi, Lunda, Luvale, Nyanja, and
  Tonga) represent the 73 tribes of Zambia.
  English is also used as a neutral national
  language.

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Ideologies of language use

• Language ideologies are ways of thinking about
  language what language means, what role it
  plays in society.
• Ideas about language can influence whether it is
  considered suitable for differerent uses, like
  radio broadcasting, newspaper printing, public
  speaking, joking among friends, etc.

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Policy vs. language value

• English
• Bemba, Nyanja
• Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, Tonga
• Kaonde, Lunda, Luvale
• Other languages and dialects
• The big four languages (Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga
  and Lozi) have much more time than the smaller
  Northwestern languages

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Lingua Franca

• Bemba and Nyanja are urban lingua francas in
  Zambia. A lingua franca is a language that is
  spoken by most people in an area as a first or
  second language and therefore can be used to
  communicate across many languages.

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Linguistic division of labor

• A linguistic division of labor happens when
  language attitudes say that certain languages are
  more suitable for certain uses, such as types of
  radio programming (Spitulnik, pg. 174)
• What kind of programming is associated with
  different languages (what is each language
  considered good for)?
• International news? Local/national news? Hip
  urban programming?

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• Is this different from the US?
• What language attitudes govern which languages or
  dialects we hear in different kinds of television
  or radio programming?

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Multilingualism/Bilingualism

• Multilingualism and Empire

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Back to faff

• Have you been using it?
• Have you heard it used?
• What factors influenced whether or not you used
  the word? What factors have influenced whether
  it could be successfully introduced?

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• linguistic inferiority principle - The speech of
  a socially subordinate group will always be
  interpreted as inadequate by comparison with the
  socially dominant group.

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Language and Empires

• Different empires have had different approaches
  to managing language in conquered territories
• Over time, these language policies affected
  language change, language shift, and the relative
  status of colonial vs. indigenous languages.

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Colonial powers

• Can cultivate a local elite and offer advantages
  to learning the colonial language
• Can piggyback on an established elite by
  valorizing one language/dialect over others
• Can try to force the entire population to shift
  languages, e.g. by passing language laws and
  restricting access to education, publishing,
  media or through reeducation
• Can encourage bilingualism and/or language shift
  actively or passively

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Powerful Language

• standard language adopted, prescriptive norm
• literary language the language used in writing
  (Latin)
• hegemonic language variety/language to which
  others are compared, and which is expected to be
  used, even though if this is not done
  prescriptively. e.g. American English (not
  British) is hegemonic in the U.S., but a certain
  dialect of American English is also hegemonic.

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more powerful language

• official language legal language. English only
  movements want to make English the official
  language of the U.S.
• administrative language language used by a
  country for internal business. English is the
  administrative language of the United States.

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Historical Example Inca Empire

• In the Andes, the Incas promoted Southern
  Peruvian Quechua as an administrative/contact
  language, but encouraged peoples to maintain
  their linguistic diversity
• After the Spanish arrived, they encouraged all
  indigenous peoples to learn Southern Peruvian
  Quechua. Learning Spanish was emphasized as an
  important part of converting to Christianity.

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Language Standardization in the Roman Empire

• How did Rome get conquered peoples to speak
  Latin?
• Soldiers settled in new territories
• Poor urban-dwellers moved to territories
• Within a generation of a territory being
  conquered, almost all of its inhabitants spoke
  Latin (incorporating local language)

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Language policy

• The burden of learning language is on the people.
• The state is not responsible for the language
  acquisition of its subjects.- if you do not
  learn Latin on your own, you cannot conduct
  business or attend assemblies- in the ancient
  world it was common to know several languages and
  dialects, even for illiterate people

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Multilingualism and society
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Bilingual communities

• In bilingual (or multilingual) communities,
  speakers develop strategies for use of their
  languages
• May restrict each language to particular
  contexts, participants, or topics.
• Can be stable, or unstable

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Diglossia

• Diglossia in a situation where two languages
  are used, each language is systematically
  employed in certain domains
• high variety prestige language (public
  language) in a diglossic situation.
• low variety non-prestige (home language)
  language in a diglossic context

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High vs. Low Language

• High Language Low Language
• Public Private
• Prestige Non-prestige
• school, government home, bar
• literary tradition often
  unwritten
• signals high status signals intimacy

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Example Paraguay

• Spanish and Guarani
• Spanish is official language used in formal
  situations and associated with urban life
• Guarani is national language strongly
  associated with national pride, but also with
  ruralness and lack of sophistication.

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Example Swiss German

• High language is High German
• used in schools, govt
• Low language is Swiss German
• until recently not written
• Swiss German is used in ads for products like
  cheese
• High German in ads for cars and technology.

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Lingua Franca

• A language that is used interacting with speakers
  of different codes (languages). All the
  participants are expected to know the lingua
  franca, but it may be (and often is) no ones
  first language.

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Language policy

• Tanzania Swahili is the lingua franca and is
  used in education to encourage widespread
  literacy
• Kenya English is the lingua franca and is used
  in education to select a small part of the
  population to go on and become educated

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Language Ideologies in Zakarpattia

• Area of Ukraine that borders on Poland, Slovakia,
  Hungary and Romania
• Large populations of Romanians, Hungarians and
  Ukrainians
• Lingua franca is Russian

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Shifting ideologies

• Speakers of one Ukrainian dialect go to a
  mechanic who speaks another dialect and who has
  some Romanian customers. They speak Russian
• After the Romanians leave, Ukrainians speaking
  different dialects talk about how annoying it is
  that Romanians dont learn Ukrainian

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• When the Ukrainian dialect speaking customer
  returns home, she talks about the Romanians, and
  then comments on how funny the mechanics
  Ukrainian is.
• Depending on context, different language
  ideologies dictate different types of collusion
  in those ideologies, such as language choice and
  expression of group identity.

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Situational language choice

• In each interaction or situation, a bilingual has
  a choice of languages
• context, participant, topic and goal influence
  these decisions

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Code switching

• When bilingual speakers converse, they frequently
  integrate linguistic material from obth of their
  languages within the same discourse segment.
• Borrowing borrowing involves adapting words to
  fit the language you are speaking, including
  sounds and grammar

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Examples

• code switch
• Lets go, lets go. Poshli!
• borrowing
• Ja ljublju koka-kolu.
• (I like Coca-Cola)

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Conversational code-switching

• Code-switching is often used for pragmatic
  effects.
• Examples include emphasis, emotional coloring,
  shifting between topics, shifting from narration
  to commentary, separating quoted speech from your
  speech

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Example Codeswitching in Spanglish (Zentella
article)

• To get attention, enhanced speech marking
• For emphasis repeating the same sentence twice
  in two different languages
• Signal boundaries between your speech and quoted
  speech
• Shifting topics or addressing a different person
• Involvement or expression of emotion

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• Young Spanglish speakers in a New York
  neighborhood belong to a speech community.
• The meaning of codeswitching is part of a set of
  social norms
• At the same time these codeswitching practices
  are easing the language shift in the community
  from Spanish to English.

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Code mixing

• Code mixing is a linguistic process that
  incorporates material from a second language into
  a base language, adding morphological markers of
  the base to introduced elements.
• In other words, you take a word from another
  language, but treat it like it is from your
  language.

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Examples

• code switching
• Lets go. Poshli!
• code mixing
• Well, I guess wed better be poshli-ing
• Nado pisat grenty (You have to write grants).

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Social function of code-mixing

• code mixing can be used to create a sense of
  community among a small group of bilinguals (e.g.
  Russian academics)
• in a diglossic situation, use of some words from
  the High language incorporated into your speech
  can mark you as higher status, more intellectual,
  or less traditional

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Bilingualism good or bad?

• Many bilinguals in the US evaluate their language
  poorly. Use of code-switching is perceived as
  indicating that you dont know either language
  well.
• In fact, code-switching requires a high level of
  competence in both languages, as well as an
  understanding of cultural rules surrounding
  switching and its meaning.