Language and Gender: Part Two

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Language and Gender Part Two

• Unlike sex, gender is a cultural construction,
  and part of this construction seems to be that
  women everywhere and their domestic sphere of
  influence are accorded inferior valuation as
  opposed to men and their world of public action
  (Duranti, 1986 305).

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Gender Styles English

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

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Why?

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

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Gender Roles Reflected in Language Styles

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

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Sociolinguists look at

• Conversational interactions ( styles of
  interactions)
• Tendencies in language use Phonological
  variations
• --Example New England study, -ing the
  progressive suffix on verbs-

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Fischers study(1958)

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

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Intonation rhythm, volume, pitch

• Different intonation
• Women Wide range of pitches, rapid shift in
  volume and velocity (more emotional)
• Men Atonal (control, restrain)
• Cultural interpretation cultural valued or
  negatively evaluated behaviors

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Grammatical Variants Standard versus
non-standard grammar

• Cheshire (1982) in Reading, England
• Present tense s with non-singular subjectsWe
  goes shopping on Saturdays.
• Has with first-and second-person subjectsWe has
  a little fire keeps us warm.

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Tag Questions

• Tag questions are 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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Why?

• --are reluctant to make direct assertions
• --thus avoiding coming into conflict with the
  addressee
• --construed as polite
• --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 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
• Public ---Exclusive for women

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What do these examples tell us about the
asymmetry of 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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Chiquita (Bolivia)

• Nouns
• Identical for women
• Mens speech nouns divided into two
• --nouns associated to supernatural beings
  refering or talking to men
• --not used when talking to women
• reflects social conflicts

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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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Choice of words depending on the context

• Less polite forms More polite forms
• Stomach hara onaka
• Water mizu ohiya
• Delicious umai oisii
• Eat kuu taberu

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Summary

• 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 is similar
  or different to the relationship between language
  and race?