Language is a
conventional way of human communication. The relationship between language and
gender depends on the areas of sociocultural linguistics, conversational
analysis, critical discourse analysis, and many more. A gender-free language is
a natural language but most of the phenomenon of the language is gender-based. Now
throughout the assignment we will see the gender, relationship between language
and gender, and the differences in the usages of language between male and
female gender.
In the first place, sex
is biologically determined. One is born a male and another is a female. On the
other hand, gender is socially determined. One choose to speak in feminine or a
masculine way. The transgender and the cisgender are the members of sex
categories but ‘male’ and ‘female’ are always completely clear. Gender involves
a consideration of the psychological, social, and cultural differences between
men and women. We cannot talk about gender without mention to sexuality, or
vice versa.
Cameron (2006, 724) says:
‘Sex is a word used in connection with the biological characteristics that mark
humans and other animals as either male or female, whereas gender refers to the
cultural traits and behaviors deemed appropriate for men or women by a
particular society.’
Actually, we create our
gender identity like other aspects of identity through the language we use. This
is culturally determined and reinforced by socialization practices.
Men and women speak
differently. The differences between the way males and females speak like
restriction to grammatical features. These differences can be phonological,
lexical, morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic. The ideas about how gender
and sexuality are produced and reproduced through language will reveal that
women talk more or less than men, women break the rules of turn-taking less
than men, women’s speech is less direct or assertive than men’s, women use more
standard forms than men, women use more pause and also establish informal
atmosphere rather than men.
According to Cameron and
Coates (1985), ‘the amount we talk is influenced by who we are with and what we
are doing.’ They also add that if we aggregate a large number of studies, it
will be observed that there is little difference between the amount men and
women talk.
In the first phase of
language and gender, we can say that standard forms are used by both genders
but women usually tend to use it more than men and by definition men use more
vernacular forms than women do. In many aspects men and women differ in their
speaking, such as turn-taking and interruption, minimal responses, using
hedges, compliments, asking questions, apologizing, and more.
At the point of
interruption, we can see that men interrupt more than women because they have a
tendency to perform the dominant response. They seek to achieve the upper voice
to prevent others from dominating them. Whether women interrupt more than men. Generally
women think of closeness or intimacy, and men always concern for status and
independence.
The features of women
language are lexical hedges or fillers like you know, well, you see; tag
questions like she’s good, isn’t she?; using intonation like it’s really good,
and empty adjectives like cute, charming, and divine; precise color sense;
intensifiers like just, as, so; avoid the strong swear words; emphatic stress
like brilliant, outstanding.
Needless to say, the
differences between women and men interaction may be the outcome of different
socialization. Women’s gossip focuses on personal experiences and personal
relationships regarding personal problems and feelings. Men particularly
discuss with shared values and referential information. Sometimes men get
involved in conflicts and change the topic abruptly. Women tend to be more
supportive whether men are tend to be more competitive.
Another important thing
to be remembered is minimal responses, which are monosyllabic utterances, such
as yeah, huh, hmm and many more. Minimal responses are used mainly to show the
agreement. In this case, women tend to use minimal responses more than men. Men
prefer to keep silent rather giving minimal utterances. Additionally, women use
more often hedges rather than men because women are more concerned about style
of interaction, such as I think, I guess, you know, maybe etc.
Moreover, women give more
compliments like appearance, possession, and ability. They prefer friendliness
as a stress. We can say that language is used by both men and women in an
informal way at the particular relaxed atmosphere. In this matter, both men and
women use informal forms of language equally.
Consequently,
sociolinguists tried to explain that why women speak differently than men and
what is the reason of women using more standard forms than men. There are four
main reasons for this difference –
- · Social status
- · Role in society
- · Status as a subordinate group
- · Speech expressing masculinity
So, women use more
standard forms because they think it is more prestigious and associated with
hierarchical or upper class. Another reason is society expects better and
polite behavior from women than from men. Women have to be correct and polished
in their speaking and behavior.
In contrast, men usually
prefer to use vernacular forms because they want to prove themselves as macho
and carry tough connotations of masculinity. Though men are generally lower in
pitch, whether women are comparatively higher in pitch. In terms of language
and gender, there are used different language forms in different age-graded
among both men and women. For instance, the use of vocabulary, pronunciation,
and grammar.
As shown above, language
and gender actually traces the relationship between language and our ideas
about male and female. Most of the times, language and gender expresses the
role of gender stereotyping.
But in conclusion, we can
say that language and gender both influence each other. Though gender is not
only major in language, but also dealing with human behavior, cognition,
institutions, occupations, society, and culture.
References:
1. Coulthard, C. R.
(Ed.). (n.d.). GENDER AND LANGUAGE. 11, 4th ser. Retrieved from
https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/GL.
2. Holmes, J. (2001). An
Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2nd Ed.). Essex, U.K: Pearson Education
Limited
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