LANGUAGE AND GENDER
BY PETER THAMIN
Introduction
A major issue in the sociolinguistics of speech is the relationship between sex and language. It has been well documented from linguistic research that in many societies, the phonological, morphological and lexical forms of men and women differ. Some studies of language and sex have correlated these linguistic variations in relation to society’s view that men are often perceived as the important, aggressive and dominant sex while women are perceived as the subordinate, submissive and weaker sex. Other studies have concentrated on the role language plays in the location of women in a disadvantageous society. Recent studies have suggested that sex was closely related to social characteristics of speakers such as social class, region, ethnicity and age. However, many scholars tend to agree we must not overgeneralise some of the verbal reperyoire and speech styles of men and women since male and female typical behavioural variables seem to be related to the values that are commonly and stereotypically attached to men and women themselves. The various social dimensions relevant to understanding the sexual differentiation of language should be observed instead. Despite some attempts by feminists to eliminate sexist language, any such remedy will require change in both society and language.
Body
Sex differences are a fundamental fact of human life and it is not surprising to find them reflected in language. Fromkin et al. (1978: 277) made a valid point that although language reflects sexism in society, language itself is not sexist, but it can convey sexist attitudes.
Many studies have suggested words associated with males convey notions of power, prestige, and leadership. Conversely, female words convey weakness, inferiority and often have negative connotations. For example, slut and stud both designate a person who often sleeps around, but the female term has negative connotations to it. Such a distinction reflect society’s attitude that while it is natural and desirable for men to be sexually active, it is condemned and seemed as undesirable for women to practice it. Other examples are master/mistress, wizard/witch, bachelor/spinster, sir/madam. Thus, these linguistic assymetries clearly reveals women are indeed in a disadvantageous position in our society. Similarly, to be called a professional man is a compliment (prestige), but to be a woman and a professional is perhaps to be a prostitute (derogatory – Lakoff 1973). In general, it seems the English language has many more terms to refer to a sexually promiscuous female than to a sexually promiscuous male. As a result, some feminists have gone so far as to say English is a language made by men for men in order to represent their point of view and perpetuate it (Romaine: 105-106).
From another perspective, Spender (1980) devoted a whole chapter in describing English as a “he/man” language. That is, the word man often encompass women as in this example: man lives in this society, and he will fight for all makind. Similarly, everyone should get his hat is supposed to refer to both men and women, despite the use of the pronoun his. The replacement of their instead of his is deemed to be non-standard (Bodine-in press, cited in Thorne et alm 1975: 28-9). This reflects society’s attitude that the inclusion of women is sometimes perceived as unimportant or unnecessary. As a result, some feminists have attempted to suggest new gender-neutral singular pronouns such as tey to replace he and she. However, opponents such as Lakoff, strongly opposes such move, claiming that androcentric generics are so thoroughly embedded in language and are relatively unavailable to a speaker’s conscious analysis, that “an attempt to change pronominal usage will be futile” (p. 75). Other traditional grammarians also believe to change pronominal usage would be awkward and clumsy (Bodine-in press) since the elegance of expression and accuracy would be lost.
The fact that females are often addressed by their first names as well as endearments (Poynton, 1085) while men by title and last name also suggest to be a woman is to be subordinate. Brown (1965) relates this relationship to social status of men being the superior one. Moreover, occupations such as doctors, lawyers, professors (higher status professions) are associated with men and secretaries, nurses and shop assistants (lower status positions) are associated with women, reflects the disadvantageous role women plays in society. Thus, female doctors, female lawyers and career women are all marked terms in the English language. It is not surprising to learn if a term is associated with women, it is bound to have negative images to it, eg., housewife– unpaid and unrecognised. However, Finegan et al. (1992: 440), did give a word of caution we must be careful not to overgeneralise because certain occupations are low status, it is automatically assumed to be held by women- as in this example: put out a bottle of beer for your garbo at Christmas, she’ll appreciate it, since there are some imbalances in gender reference we need to take into account.
Despite the effort of some feminists to argue the points positively for women, they have again lent their concerns to ridicule and criticism. Examples such as “are you the house person who advertised for a cleaning person?” or “gone like the snowperson” or “one upspersonship” given by the press, reflects the idea that such proposed changes are seen as pointless and preposterous (Romaine, 1994: 108-9).
Feminists have also argued that the practice of taking a man’s family name or using titles such as Mrs or Ms symbolises women’s position as men’s property and furthermore, represent their status as sex objects, whose availability or non-availability has to be marked. Thus, reasons to refer objects such as ships, boats, and cars as she reflects the male point of view that, like women, they are generally owned and controlled by men (Romaine: 113).
It is also observed that in nonverbal gesture, males signal dominance through nonreciprical touch, with women responding passively or by cuddling to the touch and males smile less often (asserting dominance) and women more often (signalling submission; Henley 1973: 74, cited in Thorne et al 1975: 16). However, Henley did in fact mentioned that thse interpretations are due to the norms that in western societies, if a woman stars at a man aggressively, he is likely to interpret her gesture a sexual advance, or perhaps label her a lesbian. Thus, the importance of taking into consideration the social context of the analysis rather than simply assuming this is a result of differences in sex is evident here (cited in Thorne et al: 26).
In regards to verbal repertoire, males speakers are often found to us socially disfavoured variants of sociolinguistic variables while women tend to avoid these in favour of socially more favoured variants. For example,