LANGUAGE AND

GENDER
WEEK 4
INTRODUCTION

• Sociolinguistics also investigates

•  the connection, if any, between the structures vocabularies, and ways of using
particular languages and the social roles of the men and women who speak these
languages.
INTRODUCTION

Do the men and particular language use it in different ways?

If yes
Do these differences arise from the structure of that
language (one kind of confirmation of the Whorfian
hypothesis) or, do these differences reflect the ways in which
the sexes relate to each other in that society?
LANGUAGE AND GENDER

• Language exists as a system of symbols, in terms of abstract thinking and senses, it reveals
a method and pattern to describe the objective world. From another perspective, language
system and language structure’s difference reflected our different recognitions of the world
in some degree. In addition, as a kind of historical and cultural heritage, during the process
of using it , the language in a certain sense, reflects the formation of cultural traditions ,
evolution of civilization, national spirit creation, social life improvement. If we could
stand on the panoramic view when we observed the specific using conditions during the
mutation and change process in concrete social context, the research of sociolinguistics can
open up more growth point in exploring the process of linguistic theory
LANGUAGE AND GENDER

• As we study language we study it in relation to the society, i.e. the contexts of situation and the contexts of culture in
which it occurs. So we could say that language is ‘in’ rather than ‘alongside of’ society, and inseparable from it.
•  Gender refers to society's expectations about how we should think and act as girls and boys, and women and men.
It is our biological, social, and legal status as women and men.
•  Gender roles are the way people act, what they do and say, to express being a girl or a boy, a woman or a man.
These characteristics are shaped by society.
• Gender roles are the social and behavioral norms that are generally considered appropriate for either a man or a woman
in a social or interpersonal relationship.
• the product of socialization
•  Feminine  Masculine
CONT.

• In the study of language and gender differences, many linguists such as Leonard
Bloomfield, McConnell-Ginet, Haas, Zhao Yuanren and so on have dabbled in them. In
the process of the study, they concluded that: in different contexts, men and women
have differences to a degree in phonology, vocabulary and grammar, syntax options.
CONT.

• During the last twenty years there has been an explosion of interest in relationship
between gender and language use. The interest has increased so much that now it is hard
to believe that early sociolinguistic work ignored gender as a social variable. Their
androcentrism sprang from a sense that men and people were the same thing. A ‘Male-as-
norm’ approach was taken; and women tended to be invisible in sociolinguistic research.
This changed in the 1970s with the publication of an article – later a book – Language
and Woman’s Place (1975) by Robin Lakoff, a female sociolinguist based at the
University of California, Berkeley.
GENDER AS A SOCIAL CORRELATE

• Lakoff drew attention to a wide range of gender differences in language use and argued
that these differences were directly related to the relative social power of male speakers
and relative
CONT.

• Today, there is a shift in the concept. Sociolinguists now distinguish between sex – a
biological term – and gender, the term used to describe socially constructed categories
based on sex. The first British sociolinguist to make an impact with this quantitative
sociolinguistic approach was Peter Trudgill. His work on his native city, Norwich showed
whatever their social class, men in Norwich tended to choose pronunciations which were
closer to the local vernacular and less close to Standard English. He argued on the basis
of these findings that non-standard speech must have covert prestige, in competition with
the overt prestige of Standard English.
EXAMPLE

• Sociolinguists in the 1980s turned their attention to broader aspects of talk such as the
conversational strategies characteristic of male and female speakers. Following are some
strategies that were investigated:

• Minimal responses (e.g. yeah, mhm), Hedges (e.g. I mean, you know, maybe) Tag
questions (e.g. isn’t it?, Command), Directives, Swearing , Taboo language ,
Compliments , and Turn-taking patterns
SOCIAL ROOT OF LANGUAGE GENDER
DIFFERENCES
• Gender differences in language phenomenon are not accidental; they have the profound
social root. Gender differences are the fundamental facts of social life and human
differences. It reflects that there is a long historical origin in language difference
phenomenon. Men and women have different status and play different roles, thus they
have different duties and different rights.
SOCIAL ROOT OF LANGUAGE GENDER
DIFFERENCES
• Researchers engaged in sociolinguistics explain different phenomenon of language
gender difference from the perspective of social structure, consistency and rights. They
think the formation of language difference is due to the unequal status of males and
females. For one thousand years, the traditional concept of “men outside, women inside”
has dominated people, and men are seen as the dominators of the status and power.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LANGUAGE G E N D E R D I F F E R E N C E
S T U D I E S CONNOTATION OF LANGUAGE GENDER
DIFFERENCE

• As a method of communication between people, language is sure to reflect all kinds of social
relationships during communication. In terms of sociolinguistics studies, most scholars’ main
research contents are not just about gender grammar neither of specified language system nor
about physiological gender study. There are gender differences in sociolinguistic phenomena
mainly because of social structure types, culture backgrounds and pragmatic mentality like
phenomena of social gender. Gender language difference is objective, and even in society
using the same nation language or region dialect, it is common to see different languages
because sexual, physiological and social factors. They mainly exist in construction change
features of language use like pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and communication mode.
GENDER DIFFERENCE IN UTTERANCE-
CHOOSING
• Normally, men usually talk eloquently in all kinds of competitive topics like sports while
women’s topics are usually about family life, individuals and emotions. So the dialogues
showing directly one’s inner lives are more from women, on the contrary, men are inclined
to hide their feelings.
• Klein once made a research in an ordinary worker’s family. He found what men mainly talk
about are working conditions, sports news and other related topics, while women mainly
talk about family and family members. It’s mainly related to males’ and females’
mentalities: women prefer to harmonize and soften interpersonal relationship while men just
think about showing their leading roles and assert their dignities.
PRONUNCIATION AND INTONATION DIFFERENCE

• For pronunciation, we set English pronunciation as an example because lots of research

achievements are made in English backgrounds. After making researches, lots of linguists
have found women’s pronunciations are more close to British pronunciation standards.
• For /t/ and /r/, women pronounce more easily. Thus we can see, women’s pronunciations are
more correct and concise. Usually, the upper class and the educated do better to pronounce
correctly. Trevor once said, because of the lower social position and high expectation,
females have to pay attention to their methods and make sure they can make pure
pronunciation while males relatively undisciplined and free pronunciation further reflect
their prestige. Perhaps men are not eager to show their high position in this aspect.
PRONUNCIATION AND INTONATION DIFFERENCE

• For intonation: Chinese Academy of Sciences once conducted an experiment to test the
intonation values of men and women. They chose eight men and eight women to let them
read ten of Mandarin vowels and find that women’s intonation values are obviously
higher than men’s. Usually, intonation changes mean rich expressions, so women prefer
to use several intonations in one sentence. On the contrary, men prefer falling tones rather
than modified tones.
VOCABULARY DIFFERENCE

• Some extreme and commendatory adjectives are more used by women like great, lucky, happiest,
excellent and etc. They also use some positive degree adverbs to emphasize in good aspects like
really, largely and so much. It proves that women are inclined to use euphemistic expressions and
cautious words like “ai”, “a”, “taoyan” in Chinese and “My dear”, “Oh god” in English which men
will not care about.
• Women usually avoid using slang and dirty words even they are really angry beyond endurance. But
those words will be used by men like “tamade”, “goudongxi” in Chinese and “Shit”, “Darn” in
English. Besides, there are greeting differences for males and females. Males will not add more
emotional colors to salutations while females add more individual inclination and preference. The
most obvious one is that females prefer to add- i.e. to some nouns, like bookie, luckier and etc.
SYNTACTIC DIFFERENCES

• Distinguished linguist Lakoff did some researches and pointed that women are more likely to use
tag questions which can be regarded as an obvious feature that cannot be neglected. For example,
“She is a very nice girl, isn’t she?” They are not common in men’s daily expression. And if men
want to express the same views, they will choose the direct way “The girl is very nice”. Tag
question will make the speaker’s tone more euphemistic and modest. It also can avoid the speakers’
making mistakes and offer approaches to avoid the conflicts between speakers. Tag questions
usually reflect the speakers’ uncertain views and wishes to get others’ affirmation. So women will
choose general question and special question to express their uncertain views and ask for others’
opinions. However, men are inclined to speak bluntly and will not give much speaking right to
others.
• Thus, males’ discourse certainty is stronger than females’. Besides, there are similarities
between grammar and pronunciation feature differences. Females are inclined to use
more standard and exact syntactic structures. There is an example: M: “He walks too
quick” or “I known that”; F: “He walks too quickly” or “I have known that”. There are
lots of cases like that because women want to show their good education and status in
speech and pronunciation.
THE DEVELOPMENT TREND OF LANGUAGE
GENDER DIFFERENCE STUDIES
• Gender language studies are divided into several fields. It can be divided into dispersion,
concentration, systematic and thorough stages. Some scholars think it’s a process to
research inwardly and extend outwardly. These processes have great influence on the
common linguistics and create a new world for linguistics study field.
• The gender differences between males and females have got great attention. Professors
and scholars in different fields have made researches in different degrees about it. But at
the same time, the similarities have been neglected. Because the matter of gender
difference and language aroused great attention, many professors and scholars think there
should be a new subject: gender linguistics. But still there are lots of disagreements,
which hold that gender language studies belong to sociological linguistics and should not
be listed exclusively or it will confuse the linguistic field. Though having disagreements,
professors and scholars have coincident views:
• a. Enrich the research methods and patterns of gender language studies. Combine the research
and demonstration from contradiction perspective and analyze from multilevel and multi-
dimension.
• b. Establish a relatively perfect theory frame, research all kinds of difference phenomena
comprehensively and research through categorization. We should plan the whole research
direction from an overall point of view.
• c. Revise related language policies after sufficiently considering social effects. Every language
has its established features and we should devote to eliminating negative language gender
discrimination.
THE REASON

• In most societies men and women communicate freely with one another, and there appear
to be few social barriers likely to influence the density of com­munication between the
sexes. We cannot, therefore, account for the development of gender differences in
language in the same way as class, ethnic-groμp, or geographical dialects. How, then, do
such differences arise? Why do men and women often speak differently? Let us take a
few examples of the kind of differences that have been reported, and attempt to see what
factors may have been important in their development.
GENDER DIFFERENTIATION IN LANGUAGE

• Gender differentiation in language, then, arises because, as we have already seen,

language, as a social phenomenon, is closely related to social attitudes. Men and women
are socially different in that society lays down different social roles for them and expects
different behaviour patterns from them. Language simply reflects this social fact. If the
social roles of men and women change, moreover, as they seem to be doing currently in
many societies, then it is likely that gender differences in language will change or
diminish also, and we have seen above some evidence that this may be so. If, moreover,
we want what 'society lays down' for women and men to change, then one way to do this
may be to fotus to a certain extent on language and try and change that.
• The classic example of linguistic sex differentiation, well known to students of language,
comes from the West Indies. It was often reported that when Europeans first arrived in the
Lesser Antilles and made contact with the Carib Indians who lived there, they discovered that
the men and women 'spoke different languages’.
• This would of course have been a very startling discovery, and one that does not appear to have
been paralleled anywhere else in the world: nowhere else has sex differentiation been found to
be so great that people have been led to propose that there were actually distinct men's and
women's languages. However, it does seem that these reports (or later embellishments of them)
were stretching things somewhat. A contemporary report (from the seventeenth century) says:
• The men have a great many expressions peculiar to them, which the women understand
but never pronounce themselves. On the other hand the women have words and phrases
which the men never use, or they would be laughed to scorn. Thus it happens that in their
conversations it often seems as if the women had another language than the men.
THEREFORE,

• The men and women, that is, did not speak different languages. Rather, they spoke
different varieties of the same language - the differences were lexical only
THE RESEARCH MEANING OF LANGUAGE
GENDER DIFFERENCE
• Language gender difference studies have been the focus of sociolinguistics. Language is
the main method of human thinking and self-expression. Thus, linguistics has close
relationship with other subjects. The gender language phenomenon is not only a linguistic
matter, it also involves in lots of other fields like psychology, philosophy, social science,
education and media. In terms of sociolinguistics, language gender difference studies
have at least three contributions: first, it builds a gender pattern research paradigm based
on linguistics analysis;
• Firstly, the field of gender language studies expands linguistic studies which mean the
connotation of language studies. People increasing realize that traditional language
studies do not meet the social development. Different sexual discourse styles based on
gender difference studies inject new strength and vitality to linguistic researches. Because
of this, the research methods need involvements in many different fields.
• Secondly, gender language studies keep pace with the direction of language research
development and are also the objective requirement of the new century’s Chinese rhetoric
development. The rhetoric since 1990s not only has paid attention to the dynamic
development but also combined static studies and made breakthroughs in colloquial and
acceptance rhetoric. According to different purpose, sexual factors will directly affect the
rhetoric methods and patterns. Based on this, studies of language and gender can go
farther.
• Thirdly, the development of western rhetoric enlightened and guided the development of
Chinese rhetorics. At that time, feminism rhetoric comments make us understand more
about the close relationship between the speaking right and patriarchal culture. French
feminists believe that language can reflect the functionality of social power and it shows
more in communication. So for improving speaking right, the most important is to change
patriarchy. This is a new start and a challengeable task for gender language studies.
• the contents of the language. They both make effect with each other. The gender
difference phenomena in language reflect that the cultural psychology and social value
orientation of language users are affected not only by social and environmental stress but
also family culture and experience. The gender differences in language are not invariable.
They are influenced by the age, education degree, occupation and status and change
according to social development. So this study has crucial theoretical and practical
significance. Also, it benefits not only the further comprehension of linguistic
systematical rules but also the concrete linguistic studies.
• With the development of education levels and the increase of social communication
activities, language differences based on gender will decrease and the language
similarities between males and females will increase. It will help to comprehend the
similarities and differences of language use between males and females. It also
contributes to communication and comprehension and makes people use it exactly in
social life. At the same time, it will benefit the social culture studies and promote to
predict the development trend of language and make policies. Besides, it has positive
effect on the social spiritual civilization development.
• Great philosopher and thinker Marx once said the society’s civilization degrees are
closely related to the degree of female liberation. In contemporary society, the attention of
gender matters directly suggests the degree of social civilization and advancement. As an
independent, brand-new and fringe subject, femaleology is built by mainly using
humanistic view and tries to review human culture by writing female culture. And it
offers an extensive field for studies of relationship between gender and language in
linguistics. Concerning the relationship between language and gender coincide with the
social development and pace of the time.