The relationship between language and gender and the implications for language planning.

The relationship between language and gender and the implications for language planning.

This essay will discuss the relationship between language and gender, and argue that some of the differences between men’s speech and women’s speech contribute to build and maintain a power imbalance between the two sexes. A summary will first be given of some generalizations about gender-language association, followed by an outline of the main sociolinguistic approaches used in the study of gender-related language variations. Some consideration will then be given to the influence of language on establishing and maintaining social structures and social divides, with some implications for language planning.

One of the study areas of Sociolinguistics is articulated around language varieties that are associated with one gender or the other. Since their distinguishing element is the association with gender, these varieties are also known as genderlects and their characteristics vary across countries, cultures, generations, religions, and social groups. For example, speech patterns associated with male western-European youth cultures are different from those associated with male eastern-European youth cultures, or male western-European adult cultures. Commonly, there are numerous stereotypes associated with male and female speech that give rise to generalizations about men and women, like the perception that women are more empathetic and polite while men are more factual and “dry”. 

Initial interest in gender-related speech patterns arose in the 1960s, when Labov published a study on the social motivation of sound changes (1963) and another one on the social stratification of language (1966). The objective of Labov’s studies was to examine the contexts in which certain phonological patterns would apply in relation to a set of social variables, among which were status, ethnic group, and sex. Among his findings there was a tendency of women to adopt standard variants and to “follow an extreme pattern of stylistic variation” (1966, p. 312), or to “hypercorrect”, in an effort to emulate other linguistic patterns that are perceived to be somewhat superior or set the benchmark. The systematic study of genderlects, however, seems to have started in the early 1970s, when Lakoff published a study on the frequency in which a number of linguistic features occurred in women’s speech compared to men’s speech (1973). Lakoff’s approach was labelled the “deficit approach”, because it alleged that women’s speech was characterized by “uncertainty” and “lack of confidence on the part of women” (Fromkin et al. 2011, p. 449). This view was supported by the notion (at the time) that male speech was considered to represent the unmarked standard form; therefore any variation from the unmarked form (like the variation brought by female speech) was - by definition - a marked form. As a result, with the male speech setting the benchmark by convention, any variation from it would automatically be perceived somewhat inferior.

Moving in a similar direction was the “dominance approach”, according to which male speech was dominant over the subordinate female speech, probably as a result of traditional western patriarchal social structures (Spender, 1985). Even though the dominance approach does not overtly assume female genderlects to be substandard or inadequate, it still reflects a concentration of power and authority in male speech, placing male society in a status of supremacy. 

The “difference approach” removes the ideas of “better” and “dominant” and looks at male and female genderlects as manifestations of two different sub-cultures: there is no differentiation in terms of power, but there is differentiation in terms of cultural contexts. Tannen (1990) looked at genderlect differences from a pragmatic point of view, looking at meta-messages: what is really being communicated as opposed to what is actually being said. For example, an offer for help might convey a meta-message that the person offering help is more capable and competent than the person being helped. This way, meta-messages can cause the listener to perceive either a difference or an equality in status between the conversation participants. Tannen’s findings show different areas of differentiation between male and female speech. For example, Tannen claims that women tend to focus more on intimacy and connection with their interlocutors, while men tend to shape their conversation around meta-messages of competition and independence. Also, men tend to be more comfortable than women when talking in public, while women are generally more comfortable than men when talking in private settings.

Cameron (2007) argues that historical approaches to the study of genderlects may be incomplete, especially with reference to both the dominance approach and the difference approach. One aspect of Cameron’s argument is that male genderlects are usually considered to be unmarked dialect forms, whilst female genderlects by reflection become the deviant forms. However, this is just an artificial benchmark, since there is no evidence to suggest that it could not be the reverse: female genderlects providing the unmarked form and male genderlects being deviant. Another aspect of the argument against the difference approach is that, although it tries to offer a more egalitarian or levelling perspective on genderlects by focusing on contextual differences rather than power and submission, it seems to miss the idea that those differences are still actual manifestations of relative two-way dominance. For example, conversational dominance is not just about the behaviour of certain participants of the conversation in the establishment of hierarchical prestige: it is also about the conscious choice of the other participants to allow that to happen. In general, Cameron argues, there seems to be no evidence to support the relationship between the roles of men and women in society, and their language use.

More recently, the social constructionist approach has developed a dynamic study of language and genders, following the principle that language is an expression of culture and, as a result, social constructs are directly linked to speech constructs. Speech constructs, however, go beyond being simply a projected expression of an underlying “fixed” social structure and become tools that the participants actively use to dynamically shape and maintain the social structure (Zimmermann and West, 1975). The use of different language varieties across specific social structures was examined in detail by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1999), who introduced the concept of Communities of Practice, in which groups of people are connected by common tasks or projects and over time construct a set of shared practices. As such communities are established and maintained, linguistic patterns and speech strategies are also established and maintained therein. When single-sex communities of practice come to exist, whether by coincidence or by some form of social or institutional barrier, it is easy to mistake for gender identity the linguistic identity that those communities build and develop for themselves. In other words, the association between a language form and a community of practice whose member just happen coincidentally to belong to the same sex, over time can transform into an association between that language form and a specific gender, according to some kind of social projection where community of practice and gender are two faces of the same sociolinguistic coin.

As theories of language and gender developed, attention seems to have shifted away from physical and biological variables towards social, cultural, and historical variables. The deficit approach considered sex to be one of the variables that shaped and influenced language patterns, while the dynamic approach completely reverted the cause-effect relationship and considered linguistic variables to shape and influence the expression of gender.

In general, modern approaches look at linguistic patterns and conversational styles, and some generalizations have become popularized with various degrees of accuracy. For example, minimal responses are paralinguistic features in the form of vocal expressions that can be used for different purposes by men (showing agreement) and women (building collaborative discourse). Questioning is usually a strategy adopted by men to request information and without further motive; it is however adopted by women to build participation, elicit contributions, and generally engage in collaborative discourse. Disclosure of personal information is perceived by men as a sign of weakness and strongly avoided, but it is a subtle strategy used by women to connect and build intimacy and trust with other discourse participants. Attentiveness and listening are two important factors in the construction of meaning, because meaning is shaped in the mind of the listener thanks also to other types of input than just what is being said. Women’s tendency to build intimacy and trust makes them also “good listeners”, while men’s tendency to build up status through turn dominance makes them “bad listeners”. 

While all the above strategies and tendencies may be verifiable in certain contexts and cultures, there seems to be no consensus on their universality. There appears to be, however, agreement on the notion that gender is one of the identity traits expressed through language. Language is used by individuals not only to negotiate meaning but also to negotiate identity, so gender is something that people “do” or construct through language. If it were true that standard forms were perceived as being more prestigious and desirable than non-standard forms, then there should be very little motivation for individuals to keep using non-standard forms. However, ordinary life experiences present strong evidence not only of the existence of numerous social groups that use non-standard forms, but also of their conscious effort to keep those forms instead of aiming at the adoption of standard forms. According to Labov (1966), this is due to group members perceiving and receiving covert prestige in the establishment and maintenance of group identity, instead of pursuing more standardized dialect variants.

There are two main areas of concern about genderlects that have emerged thus far in this essay: the first one pertains to their initial development (how genderlects came to exist and separate in the first place), and the second concerns their preservation (how or why they still exist in modern societies). In terms of their initial development, genderlects may find the roots of their differentiation in the establishment and perpetuated existence of single-sex communities of practice in the past. For example, in many societies war used to be an activity reserved to men alone, while women would engage in “safer” activities like socializing and nurturing, and so it was for many centuries. It seems therefore logical to suppose that most dialects that developed in the communities of practice directly related to war activities eventually became male genderlects. With time, the establishment of numerous single-sex communities of practice contributed to the reinforcement of genderlects (and gender) differentiation in what Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1999) call “institutionalization of gender” (p. 189). In terms of genderlects preservation, Labov’s explanation that group identity is more prestigious than the adoption standard forms of language seems to be very logical. It is important to stress that individuals can and do belong to multiple communities of practice, and that is why group identity is not simply adopted or built unilaterally: it is negotiated according to the prevailing context. Following a social constructionist view, it is important to consider the notion that humans participate in the construction of a dynamic society with multiple aspects or facets, and the construction of individual identity and group identity is part of the process. Since social facets are not natural constructs they need to be continuously maintained, and humans do this through the institutionalization of social phenomena and the construction of traditions which, when applied to single-sex communities of practice, serve to also maintain gender separation and relative dominance.

There is also a third area of concern about genderlect differentiation: the rise of discriminatory attitudes towards sex (as a biological trait) and gender (as a component of identity). Linguistic discrimination happens when people are treated differently based on the language they use. If certain linguistic forms are distinctly associated with one gender or the other, then linguistic discrimination can become a form of sex discrimination. The preservation of genderlects as instruments used to assert individual identities therefore may become (perhaps thanks to the popular “law of unintended consequences”) a mechanism to also preserve sex discrimination. Also, if the standard form of a language has a bias towards the use of male-specific or female-specific lexicon and constructs, this may well have an influence on the perception that one gender has a higher prestige than the other, shaping social attitudes accordingly and maintaining unequal states in society. For example, the Italian language is gender-biased in many ways, one of which is that there is no neutral grammatical gender, so all nouns are either masculine or feminine, and pronouns in a sentence are assumed to refer to masculine entities unless specifically intended otherwise. In modern societies there seems to be widespread acceptance of gender-discriminatory constructs even in languages that are not perceived to be gender-biased. For example, the English language is grammatically gender-unbiased (nouns can be masculine, feminine, or neuter), but it is not uncommon to find tiles like “stewardess”, “fireman”, or “waitress” on job adverts in English-speaking countries, maintaining the historical gender connotations of various communities of practice.

Wardhaugh’s views on the development and preservation of gender-specific constructs are that

“[...] men’s and women’s speech differ because boys and girls are brought up differently and men and women often fill different roles in society. Moreover, most men and women know this and behave accordingly” (2006, p. 354).

In other words, there seems to be a strong traditional attitude in the sense that the social development of new generations has always been accomplished in a certain gender-biased way, and unless something is done to disrupt this attitudinal inertia it will endure in exactly the same way. Wardhaugh continues by proposing that less sexist child-rearing practices and role differentiation would reflect into less sexist language practices and bring a “greater freedom of choice”.

According to Wardhaugh, language planning is “an attempt to interfere deliberately with a language or one of its varieties” (p. 379) and there are different ways in which it operates. Corpus planning is a form of structural engineering for a language: it involves processes that are aimed at altering linguistic constructs through graphization (the prescription of orthographic conventions), standardization (the elevation to standard form of one variety over the others) and modernization (the extension of a variety to meet new functions). Status planning aims at influencing the perceived status of a language variety with respect to other varieties, by means of association with specific functional domains, so that the language variety acquires the same status as the functional domain in which it is commonly used. It is perhaps thanks to a combination of both, channeled through the education system and the media, that progress can be made in the mitigation and control of sex discrimination.

This is in some ways an application of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity: if the language we use influences thought and society, and if linguistic constructs determine cognitive constructs, then any changes in the language we use will determine some changes also in our social attitudes, so by carefully crafting a series of structural linguistic alterations around sexist dialectal forms we should be able to induce favourable changes in society’s sexist attitudes towards a higher degree of gender equality. If that is the case, then these principles can be used by language planners in the formulation of appropriate policies to reduce or even eliminate sex discrimination in society.

Marco Scata

References

Cameron, D. (2007). The Myth of Mars and Venus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Eckert, P., and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1999). New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research, Language in Society, 28 (2), 185-201. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Fromkin, V. et al. (2011). An Introduction to Language (9th ed, international). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.

Kaplan, B., & Baldauf, B. (1997). A framework for planning: who does what to whom?. In Language planning from practice to theory (pp. 28-58). Philadelphia, PA: Multilingual Matters.

Labov, W. (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19, 273-309

Labov, W. (1966). The social stratification of English in New York city. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and woman's place. Language in Society, 2 (1), 45-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Spender, D, (1985). Man made language. (2nd ed.) London: Routledge & Kegan

Tannen, D. (1990). You just don’t understand. Women and men in conversation. New York: William Morrow.

Wardhaugh, R. (2006). An introduction to sociolinguistics (6th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Zimmermann, D.H., and West, C. (1975). “Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation”.  In Thorne, B. and Henly, N. (1975). Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, 105-29. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury.