Tielke Vogt, Hauptstudium, LN

1
Prof. Penelope Eckert
Language and Gender

• Tielke Vogt, Hauptstudium, LN
• Svenja Follmann, Hauptstudium, LN
• Julia Selzer, Grundstudium, TN
• Meike Tadken, Grundstudium, LN
• Judith Mertens, Hauptstudium, TN
• Sonja Schröder, Grundstudium, TN

Prof. Sally McConnell-Ginet
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Contents

• Constructing gender (Tielke)
• Linking the linguistic to the social (Svenja)
• Organizing talk (Julia)
• Making social moves (Meike)
• Positioning ideas and subjects (Judith)
• Working the market use of varieties (Sonja)

3
Constructing gender- Introduction

• The study of language and gender got started as a
  result to an article by Robin Lakoff entitled
  Language and womans place
• Difference approach
• Dominance approach
• Later consideration of context
• What is the nature of the diversity among men and
  among women?
• How do these diversities structure gender?

4
Constructing gender- Sex vs. Gender

• Sex biological categorization based primarily on
  reproductive potential
• Gender social elaboration of biological sex
  gender as social construction

5
Constructing gender- Learning to be gendered (1)

• Dichotomous beginnings Its a boy! Its a girl
• By the (different) treatment and expectations
  from others children learn to adapt to their
  gender role a child learns to be male or female
• Learning asymmetry
• Males are more engaged in enforcing gender
  difference than females
• Result behaviour and activities of boys are more
  valued than that of girls, and boys are
  discouraged from having interest in girls
  behaviour or activities
• Tomboy vs. Sissy

6
Constructing gender- Learning to be gendered (2)

• The heterosexual market
• End of elementary school beginning of a social
  market
• structured system of social evaluation
• Matches are initially short lived the number of
  trades (with the right Partner) establishing
  ones value
• This activity precedes actual sexual activity
• Developing desire
• Gender conscious element of desire
• Girls want to feel small and delicate, learn to
  display their emotions to others at the
  appropriate time
• Boys want to feel big and strong, learn to
  control their emotions

7
Constructing gender- Conclusion

• Gender is learned
• It is not only learned but taught and enforced
• Gender is collaborative
• We can not accomplish on our own
• Gender is not something we have, but something we
  do
• Children often do gender quite consciously, later
  their gendered performances become second nature
• Gender is asymmetrical
• Inequality is built into gender at a very basic
  level

8
Linking the linguistic to the social-
Introduction (1)

• Dominant ideology and linguistic conventions are
  not static
• They are rather constructed, maintained,
  elaborated, and changed in action and talk
• Change happens in the accumulation of action
  throughout the social fabric
• e.g. Sir not female aquivalent

9
Linking the linguistic to the social -
Introduction (2)

• Embedded in history are not only the things said
  and done, but also
• identities and status of the people who have said
  and done them
• Individual act enters into a broader discourse
• Our contributions can be seen as an offer to a
  market

10
Linking the linguistic to the social - Social
locus of change

• Change comes in subtle ways
• Gender order and linguistic conventions exercise
  a constraint on our thoughts and actions
• Change interruption of patterns
• Change can be intentional or unintentional
• We perform gender in our minutest acts
• Accumulation of those acts leads to maintaining
  gender order

11
Linking the linguistic to the social- The speech
community

• Def. a community sharing rules for the conduct
  and interpretation of speech, and rules for the
  interpretation of at least one linguistic variety
• Speaker of the same language may have difficulty
  communicating if they do not share norms for the
  use of that language in interaction
• e.g. English and Pakistani speakers of English in
  London

12
Linking the linguistic to the social-
Communities of practice

• Participants develop ways of doing things
  together
• They develop practices common knowledge and
  beliefs, ways of relating to each other, way of
  talking within communities of practice linguistic
  may spread within and among speech communities
• People participate in society through
  participating in a range of communities of
  practice

13
Linking the linguistic to the social- Face

• Def. the positive social value a person
  effectively claims for himself by the line others
  he has taken during a particular contact
• Everyday conversational exchanges are crucial in
  constructing gender identities as well as gender
  ideologies and relations
• Face can be lost and saved
• Link to gender order desire to avoid
  face-threating situations or acts

14
Linking the linguistic to the social- Linguistic
resources

• Language highly structured system of signs
• Gender embedded in these signs
• Primary gender can be content of a sign
• Secondary associated meaning
• The way someone talks tone and pitch of voice,
  patterns of intonation, choice of vocabulary,
  pronunciation, and grammatical patterns

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Linking the linguistic to the social- Phonology

• Phoneme /s/
• In North America generally pronounced with tip of
  tongue at the alveolar ridge behind the upper
  teeth
• A pronunciation against the edge of the front
  teeth (slight lisp) is stereotypically associated
  with women or gays

16
Linking the linguistic to the social- Gender in
grammar (1)

• Some languages force the speaker to specify
  gender
• e.g. English third person pronoun
• Grammatical gender when a language has noun
  classes that are relevant for certain kinds of
  agreement patterns
• In many Indo-European languages grammatical
  gender has complex connections to social gender
• BUT no perfect correspondence

17
Linking the linguistic to the social- Gender in
grammar (2)

• Especially problematic when referring to nouns
  wih a pronoun
• e.g. le professeur can refer to a woman, even
  if it is a masculine form, but one tends to
  switch to a feminine pronoun (elle)
• In English, cats are usually referred to as she
  and dogs as he
• Speakers assign masculine respectively feminine
  attributes according to grammatical gender

18
Organizing talk- Introduction (1)

• Men are encouraged to talk on all occasions,
  speaking being a sign of masculine intelligence
  and leadership
• The ideal woman is submissive and quiet, silent
  in her husbands presence
• e.g. Araucanian culture of Chile at gatherings
  men do much talking, women sit together
  listlessly, communicating only in whispers or not
  at all

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Organizing talk- Introduction (2)

• A persons contribution to an ongoing discussion
  is determined not simply by the utterance the
  person produces, but by the ways in which that
  utterance is received and interpreted by the
  others in the conservation
• The right to speak depends on the right to be in
  the situation, and the right to engage in
  particular kinds of speech activities in that
  situation

20
Organizing talk- Introduction (3)

• Example
• Joking about mens impatience with discussing
  relationships has already made it to the top
  among discourses of gender, but joking about
  womens impatience with babies has not

21
Organizing talk- Men vs. Women

• Men
• Most technology is designed by men
• It is primarily men who have the authority to
  engage in conversation that effect large numbers
  of people
• Perform speech acts that change peoples civil
  status

• Women
• Women in medical practice, schools, social work,
  etc.
• Cannot be priests in the Catholic Church, but the
  Protestant ministry is feminized
• No woman has ever given a state of the union
  address in the US

22
Organizing talk- Looking like a professor

• The words of a person who doesnt appear to be a
  professor are less likely to be taken as
  authoritive than the same words coming from
  someone who does look like a professor
• Many men dont recognise women as professors
• Many women wrote novels and poems under a mans
  name in order to be published
• e.g. George Eliot - real name Mary Ann Evans)

23
Organizing talk- Speech activity

• Lecturing,sermonizing,gossiping,talking
  dirty,joking,arguing,therapy talk,small talk,etc.
• There are some speech activities that occur in
  all speech communities, while others may be
  specific to, or more common in , particular
  communities

24
Organizing talk- Gossip vs. Arguing (1)

• Gossip derives from Old English god sib
• ( supportive friend or godparent)
• Gossip is supposed to characterize much of
  womens talk
• Many people - esp. men - think that gossiping
  means talking bad about others
• BUT just any informal talk among close women
  friends

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Organizing talk- Gossip vs. Arguing (2)

• Arguing in most English-speaking countries- men
  argue, women quarrel or bicker (zanken)
• Quarreling has a more personal orientation in
  general and is seen as more emotional
• Arguing is essentially focused in the subject
  matter- involves giving reasons and evidence
• In many Italian-speaking communities of practice
  lively and loud arguments involving both women
  and men are frequent

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Making social moves- Contents

• Speech act theory
• Functions of talk and motives of talking gender
  oppositions
• Politeness
• Affective and instrumental talk
• Intimacy and autonomy, cooperativeness and
  competitiveness
• Speech acts embedded in social action
• What is a compliment?
• Evaluation of face work
• Do they really mean it? Whats the key?
• Conclusion

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Making social moves- Introduction

• Social move speech act which is embedded in
  social practice, it is a continuing discourse
  among interactants
• Speech acts consist out of two parts talk and
  action
• Each utterance is part of a social situation in
  which it occurs
• Kinds of speech acts compliment, insult,
  request, command, promise etc.
• A repeated move of a particular type can become
  an activity

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Making social moves- Speech act theory

• Philosopher J. L. Austin initiated the systematic
  study of speech acts
• The main question was How to do things with
  words?
• Performative utterances words starts a chain of
  events
• Judith Butler speech acts consist out of
  performative utterances and other performances
  which come off, acquire their meaning and do
  their work
• All utterances are actions
• Three kinds of action
• Locutionary acts
• Illocutionary acts
• Prelocutionary acts

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Making social moves- Politeness

• Everyone has got two faces positive face and
  negative face
• Positive face projecting a self that is
  affiliated with others
• Negative faceprojecting a self that is a
  separate individual
• Two kinds of politeness
• Positive politeness addressing positive face
  needs
• Negative politenessaddressing negative face
  needs
• Politeness depends on the context what looks
  like the same kind of act might be positively
  polite in one context but not in another

30
Making social moves- Affective and instrumental
talk

• Three functions of talk
• Affective function of talk
• Referential function of talk
• Instrumental function of talk
• Affective and referential functions are closely
  interconnected
• Women are more interested in affective talk
• Men are more interested in instrumental talk

31
Making social moves- Intimacy vs.
Autonomy/cooperativeness vs. competitiveness

• Women
• Most interested in promoting intimacy with others
• Women speak in ways that build egalitarian
  societies
• In case of a strugglegirls try to negotiate and
  satisfy everyone

• Men
• Are interested in establishing their autonomy
• Males engage in speech acts that build
  hierarchies
• In case of a struggleboys tends to engage in
  physical tussles over possession rights, raising
  their voices etc.

32
Making social moves- What is a compliment? (1)

• Compliments
• Social moves that live in a landscape of
  evaluation
• Have different functions and possible motivations
• Are loaded with cultural values
• Are associated with cultural norms
• Criticism and insults inhabit the negative area
  of the same landscape
• A compliment must at least try to make the
  addressee feel good about themselves

33
Making social moves- What is a compliment? (2)

• What is regarded as a compliment depends on the
  situation
• Like other gifts a compliment can put the
  complimentee in dept to the complimenter
• Classifying a move as a compliment is a matter of
  situating the move maker and the other
  participant in a larger social landscape

34
Making social moves- Evaluation of face work

• Evaluation of one another is central to social
  interaction and to the construction and
  enforcement of social norms
• Receiving a compliment increases self-esteem and
  warm feelings toward the complimenter
• Compliments can flow down a socially asymmetric
  relation between complimenter and complimentee
• But compliments given up the hierarchy are often
  classified as inappropriate
• Compliments are important in constructing and
  regulating the gender order

35
Making social moves- Do they really mean it?
What is the key?

• Compliments can be suspected on several different
  grounds
• Compliments are often routine and formulaic
• Sarcastic compliments
• Deceptive compliments
• People can have mixed motives

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Making social moves- Conclusion

• There are various kinds of speech acts
• A conversation between interactants depends on
  different influencing factors
• Women are more polite than men because they are
  more other orientated
• Men are more interested in establishing their
  autonomy
• Social moves are not only in face-to-face
  conversational interactions, they can also occur
  in the mass media

37
Positioning ideas and subjects- Contents

1. Introduction
2. Womens language and gendered positioning
3. Showing deference or respect?
4. Addressing
5. Conclusion

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Positioning ideas and subjects- Introduction

• Positioning ideas and subjects
• Discourse What happens when we talk?
• How do we take positions?
• Two aspects of discourse positioning
• We position ourselves through meaningful content
• Through the role we take pupil, judge, clown,
  sympathetic friend, storyteller, etc.

39
Positioning ideas and subjects- Womens language
and gendered positioning

• Robin Lakoff (American linguist) made experiments
  in the early 1970s
• Typical for womens language
• Tag questions (e.g. It is terrible, isnt it?)
• Rising intonation on declaratives (e.g. Husband
  When will dinner be ready? Wife Six oclock?
• The use of various kinds of hedges (Thats kinda
  sad or its probably dinnertime)

40
Positioning ideas and subjects- Womens language
and gendered positioning

• Boosters or amplifiers (Im so glad youre
  here)
• Indirection (saying something like Well, I
  have got a dentist appointment then.)
• Diminutives (e.g. panties)
• Euphemism (going to the bathroom instead of pee
  or piss)
• powerless language

41
Positioning ideas and subjects- Showing
deference and respect

• Showing respect generally looks very much the
  same as showing deference
• Deference involves not only respect it also
  implies placing others claims above ones own,
  subordinating owns own rights to those of others
• Ritual deference
• Question of position and also status

42
Positioning ideas and subjects- Addressing (1)

• Sensitive indicators of how speakers are
  positioning the addressees
• Comparison English vs. German
• English
• Sir, maam, social titles like Dr., Mr. or Mrs.
• assign high position and respect
• First name indicates familarity, solidarity or
  that you do not respect the other person

43
Positioning ideas and subjects- Addressing (2)

• German
• du (singular) and Sie (plural)
• du more intimate, familiar or when you talk to
  children
• Sie shows respect
• Several centuries ago hierarchy was more
  important
• English had distinction, too thou (singular)
  and you (plural)

44
Positioning ideas and subjects- Conclusion

• Positioning is a very important part of discourse
• Differences between women and men
• Differences because of age and social status as
  well
• Question of respect

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Working the Market Use of varieties- Contents

1. Languages, dialects and varieties
2. The linguistic market
3. Language ideologies and linguistic varieties
4. Gender and the use of linguistic varieties
5. Whose speech is more standard?

46
Working the Market Use of varieties- Language,
dialects and varieties

• Children learn a particular language with a
  particular variety
• Children, who have contact to different
  communities might grow up speaking more than one
  variety
• Bilingualism learning two languages with two
  varieties not just grammatically, but
  strategically
• Differences in dialects can be very subtle
• Grammatical differences
• Phonological differences by which we distinguish
  regional dialects

47
Working the Market Use of varieties- The
linguistic market

• Right linguistic varieties can facilitate
  access to positions and situations of societal
  power
• Wrong linguistic varieties can block such
  access
• Standard language is normally the language of
  societal power also used at the global market
• Locally based varieties are commonly referred to
  as vernaculars and are used at the local market
• Vernaculars may be distinct languages from the
  standard or they may be alternative varieties of
  the same language

48
Working the Market Use of varieties- Language,
ideologies and linguistic varieties (1)

• Members of elite classes are and speak a more
  global / standard language
• Is designed to unite diverse populations
• Is associated with rationality, stability and
  with impersonal and formalized communications
• Symbolizes the objective knowledge from global
  sources
• Is associated with refinement
• Ones linguistic variety can enhance ones
  chances in economic life

49
Working the Market Use of varieties- Language,
ideologies and linguistic varieties (2)

• Local language represents membership and loyalty
  to a local community
• Is associated with personal and affective
  engagement
• Knowledge and judgement function in a different
  realm
• Is associated with physical, practical knowledge,
  roughness and toughness

50
Working the Market Use of varieties- Gender and
the use of linguistic varieties

• Requires access to the communities in which the
  variety is used and the right to use it
• Being in the workplace may provide greater access
  to certain varieties
• Marriage opportunities may also play a role
• Social networks may also lead to differential
  linguistic patterns
• Modernization tended to affect mens work before
  it affected womens work
• Different employment opportunities for women in
  general

51
Working the Market Use of varieties- Whose
speech is more standard?

• It is commonly claimed that womens speech and
  grammar is regularly more standard than mens
• Possibly the educational patterns put women more
  in the standard language market than men
• Men use reductions more often than women
• Socio-economic difference is greater among women
  than among men