PowerPoint Presentation - Language and Gender Day 1

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Today

• Speaker Variable Gender
• Variability in the speech of males and females
• - Evidence
• - Explanations
• Hypothesis 1 sex-based variability
• Hypothesis 2 gender-based variability

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Key terms

• Sex-related variability Differentiation of
  speech behavior between males and females related
  to physiological, neurological and biological
  factors.
• Gender-related variability Differentiation of
  speech behavior between males and females related
  to gender roles.

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Today

• Speaker Variable Gender
• Articles
• Eckert, 1998 Gender and Sociolinguistic
  Variation
• Eckert, 1988 Adolescent social structure and
  the spread of linguistic change
• Gal, 1997 Peasant men cant get wives

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Background

• Subfields of linguistics conducting research
  bearing on language vis á vis gender
• 1. Phonetics
• 2. Discourse analysis
• 3. Sociolinguistics
• -- language attitudes
• -- language variation

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Evidence for malefemale differences

• 1. Phonetic features
• 2. Pragmatic and discourse features
• 3. Grammatical features

Chambers Sex differences, being visible, are
usually taken as individual variables to be
correlated with sociolinguistic factors, while
often ascribed as gender in the absence of any
real consideration of gender roles within the
community.
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Phonetics

• Sex-related variability
• Differentiation of speech behavior between males
  and females related to physiological,
  neurological and biological factors.
• Gender-related variability
• Differentiation of speech behavior between males
  and females related to gender roles.
• Perceived visibility of sex has lead to masking
  of gender effects

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Phonetics

• Sex-related variability
• Differentiation of speech behavior between males
  and females related to physiological mechanisms
  of speech
• males
• larger larynx lower pitch
• 17-24mm (males)
• 13-17 mm (females)
• Fundamental frequency
• 80-200Hz (males)
• 120-400Hz (females)

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Phonetics

• Sex-related variability
• Vowel quality differences
• Acoustic analysis and normalization
• Linguistic advantages tending to correlate with
  female sex
• less likely to stutter
• less likely to acquire aphasias (speech
  disorders)
• less likely to have reading disabilities
• There are very few biological differences between
  males and females that have an effect on
  language. These differences relate to vocal
  production, and almost never to language use.

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Discourse Analysis

• Discourse Analysis The study of the linguistic
  regularities in continuous stretches of speech,
  with specific attention to functions of
  conversational structures (topic, turn-taking,
  gap-overlap).
• Brendt (1975)
• Women make greater use of intonational contours
  associated with surprise and politeness
• Maltz and Borker (1982)
• Discourse strategies women use mmhmm to
  backchannel men to signal agreement
• (backchannel a minimal response intended,
  e.g., to indicate a listeners active attention)

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Discourse Analysis

• Lakoff (1973)
• Women use more precise color terms than men
• (mauve, beige, aquamarine, lavender, magenta)
• Women and men use different adjectives
• (precious, divine, lovely, adorable, darling)

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Putting it all togetherGender in early research

• Studies of Language Variation
• 1.) Quantitative studies of correlation between
  linguistic variables and social identity have
  shown a set of recurring patterns.
• -- main effect of social class or social network
• -- (smaller) main effect of gender
• 2.) effect assumed to be uniform across cultures
• 3.) Popular generalization womens speech is
  more conservative
• 4.) and a set of popular explanations
• women are more status-conscious, more polite
• To what extent is this generalization TRUE and
  NOT TRUE?

treated as independent, reflecting academic
practice as well as traditional thought on gender
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Putting it all togetherGender in early research

• Studies of Language Variation
• 1.) Quantitative studies of correlation between
  linguistic variables and social identity have
  shown a set of recurring patterns.
• -- main effect of social class
• -- (smaller) main effect of gender
• 2.) assumed to be a uniform effect across
  cultures
• 3.) Popular generalization womens speech is
  more conservative
• 4.) and a set of popular explanations
• women are more status-conscious, more polite
• To what extent is this generalization TRUE and
  NOT TRUE?

Interaction relationship between independent
and dependent variables, such that a main effect
may be observed to be particularly strong for one
level of the independent variable.
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Putting it all togetherGender in early research

• Studies of Language Variation
  
• 1.) Wolfram, 1969
• AAE--women at all social levels were more
  conservative
• Womens lower levels of non-standard variants
  are likely to result from womens greater
  exposure to MUSE speakers (i.e., broader range of
  social contacts)
• 2.) Milroy, 1976
• Belfast--here, women were vernacular speakers,
  as well
• In societies where gender roles are sharply
  differentiated, such that one gender has wider
  social contacts and greater geographical range,
  the speech of the less circumscribed gender will
  include more variants of the contiguous social
  groups.ital. mine

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Putting it all togetherGender, as understood now

• (Eckert again) CAUTION!
• Women tend to be more conservative (sometimes
  meaning more standard) in their use of stable
  markers e.g., (ing), (dh)
• Men are frequently more conservative, however, in
  their use of innovatory variants, e.g., raising
  of (ae), in changes in progress
• Women are frequently more conservative in their
  use of grammatical markers (NEG)
• One factor at the heart of the issue
• Linguistic markets, Physical Capital, and
• Symbolic capital Social and affective
  resources that enable successful functioning in
  society. What is right depends on the market
  in which one is embedded.